“Look at that,” said the guards sitting around a campfire as Lucas stalked out of the jail unescorted.
Lucas ignored the men standing to attention as he passed.
“Colonel Lucas Rourke reporting,” he said as he reached Grant and saluted.
Grant raised an eyebrow. “I order you to sit down and take a stiff drink, Colonel.”
“I suppose you know where she has gone,” Lucas snapped.
General Grant raised a brow. He remained mute on the subject and that left Lucas to think of only one reason for her disappearance.
Lucas bolted from his seat. “Don’t tell me she took off on some fool mission with the Saint.”
“Please sit.” Grant offered the invitation with steely politeness. He clamped the cigar between his teeth and stared at Lucas. “You do not know the Saint’s identity?”
“No,” said Lucas.
Grant’s eyes lit with surprise. “I will offer you this. Miss Pierce has the country’s best interests at heart and that is my first and foremost obligation.” In their five-year acquaintance, Grant had never talked to him like this, in a friendly paternal banter. After a minute, the general drew his cigar out of his mouth. “I detect a romantic interest on your part, Colonel Rourke, that you should not allow to cloud your thinking. It is a hard and fast rule of mine to never let one’s passions govern his emotions.”
Lucas shot out of his chair. “Romantic notions be damned! She’s mywife.I want her immediately!”
Soldiers flooded the room to surround Lucas.
Grant waved them away. “This takes on a very different meaning then.” He lit his cigar with a lucifer until the end grew like a bright red coal, studying Lucas at his leisure. “I take it you are concerned forMrs. Rourke’ssecurity?”
“Yes.” Lucas gritted out, tamping down his anger. He’d get nowhere being a hothead. Rachel’s dismissal had him festering inside like a sealed volcano.
“Since you are her husband, I will make one small concession, but I must have your sworn oath you will not interfere with her work.”
“You have it, General Grant.”
“Very well. In twenty-four hours, I will tell you her whereabouts. Not one second sooner. Miss Pierce or rather, Mrs. Rourke, is one of our finest agents, and I will not compromise her or my word to her. I remind you of your oath not to interfere, or you will be court-martialed. Am I clear on this, Colonel Rourke?”
“Twenty-four hours!” Lucas ground out.
“I’m trying to win a war, not run a Sunday school,” Grant said with a wry tone of impatience. “I would like to speak to you before you go,” he added.
“Speak now,” said Lucas, “I’m leaving now.”
“Lock him up,” ordered Grant. Several soldiers seized Lucas. “I should have you court-martialed, Colonel Rourke, for countermanding my orders, but I’d be losing the best man the Union has to offer. I’m sorry, Soldier. I have done all I can do. It is one of the cruel fates of the war, which is cruelty itself, and there is no refining it.”
In exactly twenty-four hours, Lucas was released by General Webster with whom he had a vague familiarity. Lucas learned two things from his interview with the man. He learned how the general related to Rachel the tale of his daughter who had tried to hoodwink him into marriage, and knew, without a doubt, the firestorm now brewing in his wife. Secondly, he’d tricked the general into divulging Rachel’s destination.
Chapter Twenty-Two
She had a good clean start. Lucas landed in Washington in eight hours later, a feat that took a normal man twenty.
“Colonel Rourke, how else do you explain being in the south and abandoning your position?” asked General Grenville Dodge. With a jaundiced eye, he tilted back in his chair and gazed at Lucas with unflinching directness. Lucas sweated beneath the heat of Dodge’s glare and, with it, the uncomfortable feeling of being suspect.
“I won’t be browbeaten into a false admission or trapped by an accidental answer, sir.” Two subordinates flanked each side of him in the narrow office. Lucas suffered the welcome of a plague rat.
“You will tell me, and you will tell me now,” thundered General Dodge.
“I was kidnapped under a ruse set up by Confederates, sir.”
Lucas had the uncanny wisdom not to give further explanation. General Dodge was an old hand at playing games and, with certainty, this was his superior’s wish. The interrogation was for the benefit of his two companions. Lucas kept his mouth shut.
“I’ll have you know, you are under house arrest until I get to the bottom of this.”
