“Worse. I listened how you puppeted those yokels on your strings. Two proposals in one morning and the day not over yet.”
She pulled hard on a swipe.
“Ouch. Do you tear the wings off grasshoppers?”
She finished shaving and wiped the blade, and then taking a towel, patted his face clean of soap. To Rachel, most men seemed stupid or selfish. Colonel Rourke evoked a camaraderie and intelligence that cut through her pretenses, and he treated her as a peer. To spar with someone on equal footing proved stimulating.
“How is it a southern belle has knowledge of an insignificant Union officer?” His lips parted in a dazzling display of white teeth.
He referred to her recognition of his name when he had told her who he was. She carried the bowl of soapy water across the room, placing it on the dresser. “I make it my business to know.” As a rogue spy, she memorized all of those in the Northern command, never knowing when she would have to employ their services.
She turned and smoothed her chestnut hair. “And you are significant. You are one of the three Chiefs of Civilian Spying working under General Grenville Dodge. A West Pointer, graduated top of your class, excelling in tactics, and later won distinction in an Indian fight where you were wounded. You come from a well-respected Virginia family. Despite your family’s loyalty to the Confederacy, you have chosen to throw in your allegiance with the Union. Your courage at Manassas and Antietam earned you respect, but it remained your stealth in scouting and ferreting vital information that earned you admiration and trust of your superiors which precipitated your ascension to a high office in Washington.”
“Bravo,” he drawled, studying her as if he could read her every thought.
Had she blundered? Did he suspect she and the Saint were one and the same?Stupid.
He leaned back on the pillows, his expression as cunning as a fox. If he learned of her true identity all may lay in ruin. No man could take that amount of torture for long and not crack. The Confederates in their wrath would come straight for her. She closed her eyes. The people who worked for her…she must not fear. Fear was the mind killer…let it pass over her…through her. When the fear was gone, she opened her eyes, and seeing a clearer path, settled in a chair opposite him.
“Enlighten me, Colonel Rourke. How did you find yourself in this precarious situation? Picking the capital of the Confederacy to dally is not good for your health. I’d think Washington a better climate for a man with…Union sympathies.”
“On my desk, I received a message from the Saint assigning an immediate meeting place and time, citing important information that only he could give me and, of course, with his signature “S”. I trusted him. Traveled alone, at night, to the Potomac, and then was seized by a group of ruffians, obviously Confederate sympathizers. Fought them off, but their sheer numbers overwhelmed me. I can only guess, but I believe I was drugged and smuggled through the lines.”
She shifted, thinking of all he’d endured. “Via information I overheard at Jefferson Davis’ ball, I was lucky to locate you before they transferred you to Castle Thunder. Into the ‘Mouth of Hell’ they call the impossibly guarded behemoth. Even southerners cross themselves when they pass.”
“I owe you a great debt.”
Rachel tapped her finger on her lips.Who sent the note? Who was close enough to copy the Saint’s inscription?Six possibilities came to mind. Three she ruled out—two high level officials who would never betray the Union and Lucas. The other three were his superior, General Grenville Dodge and his immediate subordinates. “Do you have any idea—”
“If I knew who betrayed me—” He turned his head, giving her his fierce profile. The remaining light etched his cheekbone and the line of his jaw, his expression lost in gloomy shadow. With certainty, his clever mind probed the acts and motivations of men he suspected.
“I gather there are no servants other than Simon.”
She flinched. Why the abrupt change in subject? Why the accusatory tone? “You are correct.” There was no point lying. He had plenty of opportunity to free range her home when she was gone to know the truth. She didn’t need servants around to complicate her activities. “I prefer to live alone.”
“And your parents?” he asked.
She steeled her reserves. But inside, her chest ached with buried grief until she thought she might bleed to death from the pain of it. “My mother died with the influenza, and my father passed on…two years later.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, and seeming restless, he flexed his cramped arms, and eased from the bed and rose. The sheets, he kept around his midsection, and the rest trailed across the floor. Time to get him proper attire.
He gazed out the window and despite the bars of red scars, his back muscles were a masterpiece of movement. “And what prompted you to get into the spy business?” he asked.
She tightened her fingers around the arms of her chair. “My father was a staunch abolitionist and made no secret of his dislike of slavery. Upon my grandfather’s death, my father freed the slaves. Hearing that the children or relatives of neighboring plantation slaves were to be sold by their owners, he bought and liberated them. When he ran low on funds, he helped them escape.”
“A hazardous activity.”
“Very.” The memories dug their claws into her soul. The memories of slavery, the cruelties she’d seen some men inflict upon others gave her nightmares. Daymares, too. The horror of her father’s death that stayed with her forever, playing over and over for the rest of her life. It didn’t go away; it became a part of her, step for step, breath for breath. “Slavery is cruel, tyrannical, not only over the slave, but mankind itself. I want it destroyed. And you? Were you riding at the head of the column, gathering the bouquets the ladies threw at soldiers?”
He turned toward her. “I could see the war coming and looked on it with detached inevitability. How it possessed every mechanization to make it occur…arrogance with an ample amount of flint and steel to strike a spark. My sad privilege to differ in many things disdained by the opinions and principles of my locality, where fighting against Virginia deigned an unnatural act. For myself, to uphold the Union came at all costs…a country united in infinite strength. A vision of what it could be.”
Like a stump orator, he bristled with his dogma.
“Your profession is paramount to you?”
“Very. Hopefully with recognition through promotion.”
“Is it your pride, Colonel Rourke, where you must be recognized for your martial genius, manifested in a career singularly original and romantic; in the forceful fluency of your record of history made by yourself for the Union? Or is it your endowed diligence and honor that will win the approval and subsequent elevation you seek from General Grant and President Lincoln?”
