Now, buck up. Even from a thousand miles away, I can feel your worries. Fear not! I am invincible.
But Luke always said he was invincible whenever he was afraid. It was what he’d said after getting expelled from the Naval Academy, and again after their father died and responsibility for managing the family’s fortune landed in his lap while Gray traveled home from across the globe. It didn’t surprise her that Luke would try to put a brave face on things, even as the waters were closing over his head and he was drowning.
Most worrisome was his handwriting, for it was sloppy and uneven. His earlier letters hadn’t been like that, and it worried her. If his health was beginning to fail, could she really wait for a presidential pardon?
It was time to see her lawyer again and get the process moving.
Caroline made an appointment with Mr. Alphonse, prepared to pay him a fortune to expedite the request for Luke’s presidentialpardon. Now that the election was safely behind him, perhaps President McKinley would be quietly willing to help.
Except her lawyer’s skepticism about winning a pardon for treasonous activity remained high. He didn’t even want to accept an appointment with her, but she insisted.
“Please tell me you’re not here hoping to speed up your case for a pardon,” he said as he gestured her to a seat across from his desk.
“Indeed I am,” she replied crisply. “And I want to move quickly. No more delays.”
“You have almost no chance of success,” Mr. Alphonse replied. “Why are you dumping a fortune on a hopeless cause?”
She squared her shoulders. If she worried about the magnitude of the problem, she’d have given up long ago, but something about the challenge in Mr. Alphonse’s gaze caught her by surprise.
“What are my options?” she asked.
Instead of answering, he went to open his office door, looked both ways, then closed it again. Rather than return to his desk, he drew a chair close beside her and lowered his voice.
“What I’m about to propose is for hypothetical purposes only. I can’t suggest anything that might abuse the legal process, but there are ways that aren’t entirely aboveboard that have a better shot of getting your brother out of hot water than an unlikely presidential pardon.”
“Tell me.”
As he outlined the plan, her eyes grew wide. A combination of hope and dread mingled as she considered the suggestion, because it might work. It would break her heart, but it might work. Luke would have to cooperate, and it would be difficult, but it had a good shot at succeeding.
“You didn’t hear about this from me,” Mr. Alphonse said as he returned to his side of the desk. “I was merely filling you in on how some people might handle a situation like this. Talkit over with your older brother, and if after due consideration you’d still like me to file for a presidential pardon, I shall be happy to assist. Good day to you, Miss Delacroix.”
Mr. Alphonse was right. She needed to talk to Gray. She would need a lot of help and money to pull this off, which meant she needed to recruit her older brother to the cause.
Gray had always been more like a father than a brother to her. Her earliest memory was of running across the room to fling herself into his arms when he returned from an overseas voyage. She had idolized him, but Luke’s arrest threw a bomb into their relationship, for it was the woman in Gray’s life who’d turned Luke in.
Annabelle Larkin was a homespun girl from Kansas who shared Gray’s irrational obsession with plants, and they’d quickly fallen in love last spring. It was Annabelle’s unusual closeness to Gray that brought her to the attention of the government, for they’d long suspected someone in the Delacroix household of helping the insurgency in Cuba. They pressured Annabelle to spy, and she was the one who’d turned over the evidence that condemned Luke.
Gray forgave Annabelle and married her, an outrage that still incensed Caroline. Then again, Gray believed Luke was guilty, and Caroline knew he wasn’t. Gray did his best to mitigate Luke’s abominable conditions in the Cuban jail, but he didn’t believe in Luke’s innocence, and for that she couldn’t quite forgive him.
Nevertheless, she needed his help. The plan her lawyer had outlined would require a lot of money and the use of a steamship. Gray had both. She deliberately planned her visit for a time Annabelle would be out of the house.
“Caroline,” Gray said warmly as he greeted her in the foyer of his house. “How are plans for the inauguration going?”
“Fine,” she said briskly, heading into the parlor. For a man with obscene riches, the family townhouse where Gray lived was a modest affair, close to the harbor and furnished with well-worn antiques suited to his old-world formality.
She immediately noticed the changes that had come with his marriage. A vibrant potted sunflower was positioned on the fireplace hearth, and she scowled at it.
Gray noticed. “Annabelle grows them in the experimental greenhouse at the Department of Agriculture,” he said.
Caroline turned her chair to avoid looking at evidence of Annabelle’s unwelcome presence. They had business to discuss, and she needed to avoid obsessing over Annabelle’s betrayal of Luke.
“My lawyer told me of a way we might be able to spring Luke from jail,” she said as she tugged at the fingertips of her gloves to pull them off. “I’ll need help.”
“I’ll give you whatever you need,” Gray said instantly, but then again, he didn’t know what she was about to propose.
“We need to convince Luke to change his plea,” she said. “We get a lawyer in Cuba to file paperwork with the provisional government proclaiming his innocence. He’ll have to come up with some sort of explanation for his initial guilty plea, but Luke is good at that. He can run rings around anyone.”
Gray shook his head. “I’ve been begging him to change his plea from the beginning, but he refuses. He’s been reading the Bible. He swears he’s a new man and won’t lie.”
