Portius grunted. Josh and several of the others perked up.
Jeremiah gulped a few swallows of water. “Chattanooga and Lookout Valley are absolutely crawling with bluebellies.”
Not a man in the room moved except Jeremiah.
Pearl saw all the convalescent Yankees sliding glances at each other. What would this mean for them? A hasty train ticket to Richmond? Or if they could hold out, possible freedom?
“Confederates hold Lookout Mountain,” Jeremiah said. “And Missionary Ridge. They’re pretty well dug in on Missionary Ridge, especially.” He shook his head. “Federals might have supply lines open, and hold Chattanooga, but—”
He seemed to become aware of his full audience for the first time, and he shifted to look all around the room.
“I don’t see how either side is gonna win this, easily,” he said finally.
Easy had never entered into it. Josh knew it. Most of the other men in the room knew it as well, including Pearl’s older brother.
They all exchanged glances. Resolve gleamed in the gazes of all but a few. Those who were even remotely recovered at this point were spoiling to get back into the action.
Josh hated that he felt even the slightest hesitation.
He considered the concern etched in Pearl’s face and those of her family present. Thought of his own family—how Pa had shaken his hand like he’d never let go, tears standing in his dark eyes, and Mama had clung to him, weeping. “Come back to us,” she’d whispered.
“Mama,” he’d protested, but she’d only held on more tightly.
“I wish you wouldn’t go.”
“You’d be ashamed of me if I didn’t,” he’d popped back, and finally she too released him.
He’d already heard the conflicted feelings in Pearl at the circumstances of her brother’s return. What were the others thinking? Clearly Lydia—usually so disaffected and self-possessed—had no issues with the situation. With supper finished, the children climbed into Jeremiah’s lap, and old Mr. MacFarlane beamed at everyone in general, and Clem and Pearl looked happy enough as well.
Only Portius looked grim, and Jeremiah MacFarlane himself, though he exclaimed over the food and petted the children and looked longingly at the woman who’d given him those children.
And Josh was still not sure what he thought of that situation, though he’d received Pearl’s explanation of it calmly enough. Just how far could a man justify going to be with the woman he loved? Or was it merely obtaining something to meet a baser need? Because that happened often enough—not that he doubted the intentions of someone Pearl regarded so highly, but one never knew.
Yet here was MacFarlane, after having walked his way back from Illinois, braving the wrath of family and community for how he’d been released instead of, say, going west, where no one knew him or what he’d been. Surely that counted for something.
“The children and I should move out of the attic for the night,” Pearl said suddenly, then flushed crimson.
“We couldn’t do that,” Lydia protested, her own cheeks coloring, as Josh had never seen.
Both women just sat and looked at each other, while Jeremiah looked truly discomfited. “No need for that, Pearl. I’ll just sleep in the barn.”
She looked from one to the other, then suddenly rose, walked to the door, and went outside. Josh was halfway out of his chair, but Lydia put out a hand and bid him stay then followed her out.
MacFarlane gaped after the women before fixing narrowed eyes on Josh. After a moment, he shut his teeth on whatever it was he’d wanted to say.
“Mister Thorsson and I can vacate the downstairs bedroom,” Josh said. “Surely we’re recovered enough to sleep on a floor again.”
“Downstairs bedroom? You mean—” It was Jeremiah MacFarlane’s turn to flush, apparently. “You were sleeping in my sister’s bedroom?”
Had he been? Josh’s mind tripped into sudden awareness. The dim memory of a dress hanging where his own coat now hung, and a brush and jewelry sitting on a dressing table—
MacFarlane pushed to his feet, leaning across the table, but Portius and Josh rose as well.
“Just simmer down, now,” Portius rumbled, while Josh hastened to explain.
“I confess, I did not know. We were all half-insensible when your cousin brought us, and that was—it was simply where we found ourselves.”
“Honestly, Jer,” Clem chimed in, “what are you gettin’ all worked up over? Situation’s no different here than for any of our neighbors. We had men dyin’ here. I gave up my bed for Pearl, since she’d had to give up hers for Bernie, there.”
MacFarlane’s head snapped around to look at the Norwegian, who gave him an abashed smile and nod. Introductions had taken place when they’d all come back to the house for supper—names and regiments, at least—but Josh doubted that MacFarlane had retained much.
“So yes,” Josh said, “we could give you the downstairs bedroom. It’s only right, since you’re family.”
Thus, they were in the midst of clearing the room when the women returned. Pearl’s look of surprise lasted but the barest instant before she nodded. “There are no fresh linens, of course.”
“This will more than do,” Lydia hastened to assure her.
It wrung an ache from her heart to watch her brother and Lydia stealing shy glances at each other, as if they were just now newly wedded.
Perhaps under the circumstances, it seemed to them as if they were.
Jeremiah tore himself away from Lydia long enough to corner Pearl in the kitchen, however, and seize her by the elbow. “What is that red-haired Yankee to you?”
She froze, meeting his gaze but feeling herself go hot. “Nothing, Jer. He’s just another convalescent bluebelly.”
Her brother did not budge. “He moved mighty fast when you got up to leave the room. Also was mighty quick to make sure you weren’t discomfited tonight.”
“He’s a good man, one of several.” She held firm, though his eyes were fierce. “There are some of those here. Some of course who weren’t good men, but those are no longer present.”
Jeremiah’s expression went slack. “Have you been harmed? Or—Lydia?”
“No. But partly because of Mister Wheeler and others like him.”
He seemed to chew on those words. “Why are they even still here? Didn’t they ship all prisoners off to Richmond?”
“Travis has been busy,” she murmured.
He sighed. “Likely not a bad thing, that.” He released her arm and scrubbed a hand across his face. “I can’t stay here, Pearl. Lydia and I will move back to the cabin in the morning.”
Desperation flooded her. “Pa’s not doing well. He’s had a few more spells, just these past several weeks. I’m—I’m not ashamed to tell you I’m scared, Jer. I wish you and Lydia would stay.”
His brows knitted. “Not with the Yankees here, Pearl. They ain’t gonna tolerate Lydia and me living as man and wife any more than the rest of our community. Bluebellies don’t care for Negroes more than anyone else, I’ve seen. So many of ’em afraid they’ll move up North and take their jobs.”
“I’ve seen that too.” Pearl reached up and smoothed Jeremiah’s beard. “Mister Wheeler, though, he’s trustworthy. Mister Thorsson as well. Maybe it’s just that I’ve known them longer—”
Jeremiah’s hand covered hers, his gaze softening. “Do you love him, then?”
The stabbing in her heart returned in a rush. “How could you suggest such a thing?”
She tried to snatch her hand back, but he held it fast. A bitter smile curved his mouth. “We MacFarlanes can’t be happy with the easy road, can we? But if he’s as good as you say … maybe it’s worth it.”
All she could do was stare at him, mouth open, for what seemed like the hundredth time that day. Finally he tugged her toward him, and she flung her arms around him. “I’m so glad you’re not killed,” she murmured.
“Me too,” he said gruffly into her hair, and gave her a hard squeeze. “I t
hink.”
That drew the chuckle she was sure he’d intended.
The question is,” Tattersall said, his voice nearly a whisper as the others huddled around him, “do we wait here for the Federals to break through, or risk the possibility of Bledsoe or someone else remembering that we’re here and then hauling us off?”
The MacFarlanes had all gone to bed, Pearl upstairs, Clem in his pa’s room, and the married couple in the other downstairs bedroom—Josh refused to think of them as anything else—and Portius had slipped away, likely for the very purpose of finding Bledsoe. Josh himself lay stretched on the floor, eyes closed but listening to the other men discuss their options. Most of them were in favor of attempted escape rather than wait around to see what would become of them during the inevitable, impending clash between Federal and Confederate.
Josh knew what the eventual decision had to be. Most of them were able enough to travel at this point. To even think of not attempting it was cowardly.
Except—except there was now Pearl for him to think about. And the sure knowledge that too many Federal soldiers did not regard any sort of law of chivalry or compassion, especially in the heat of battle.
Simply pondering it made him feel sick.
Someone tapped his foot. “What are your thoughts about it all?” The whisper sounded like Johnson. “You’ve more interest here than we do.”
“Think you can tear yourself away from your Rebel girl?” Tattersall quipped.
Josh stifled a sigh. The tapping on his foot continued, and after a moment, he pushed upward to sit, swiping his hand through his hair.
“Not that any of us blame you for not wanting to,” someone else muttered. Josh aimed a glare in that direction. Low laughter rippled across the group.
“I think we have as reasonable a chance of making it to Chattanooga as anything else,” he said.
His heart sank even as he said the words. But it was their duty to try to rejoin their regiments.
They all nodded, their gazes eager even in the dimness.
“I do hate to just leave without even a word of thanks,” he said, though the admission felt too revealing.
Another round of chuckles rumbled around the room. “Leave a note,” someone said. “Better your sweetheart’s broken heart than us dead because she gave us away.”
“She wouldn’t give us away,” Josh said, very low.
“Maybe not,” Tattersall said, “but we shouldn’t chance it either.”
He combed his fingers through his beard for a minute. “How do you propose we find our way through Rebel lines?”
Tattersall grunted. “That one’s more difficult.”
“I’m betting Clem would aid us.”
“The boy would talk.”
“He wouldn’t. That one holds his secrets like the grave.”
“Are we all going,” another voice said, “or could a couple of us stay behind?”
Josh met Tattersall’s gaze across the room, both of them grim. “Only should an unforeseen situation demand it, should anyone stay behind,” Tattersall said. “And you risk being sent off to Richmond.”
“The rain’s going to make it miserable.”
“It would be miserable anyway.”
“Death if we stay, death if we go.”
“Pretty much.”
Josh felt flattened by the impossibility of the task. Dragging ten men out into the wet, expecting that they’d get away without detection or being tracked, or that someone would not catch their death in the damp and cold …
Of course, none of them had enlisted for anything but the adventure of it all. And none of them were now raw recruits. They knew hardship well.
“We should go tonight,” Tattersall said. “Right now.”
“I’m not going blindly into the dark,” Josh said.
“Well, we certainly can’t wait for that darky to come back—”
“Then you leave,” Josh said. “Either we get Clem to guide us, or—”
The door at the top of the stairs opened, and soft, descending footsteps made them all quickly lie flat and pretend to be sleeping or trying to. Josh watched as Pearl came down, hesitated at the bottom, then continued on to the kitchen, where she poured a cup of water.
This time she didn’t angle toward the stairs. “Y’all are a noisy bunch, for supposedly going to bed.”
Josh held his breath then sat back up. Pearl eyed him, then the others who did likewise.
“What is it?” she said, at last.
“Miss MacFarlane, we are most regretful that we can no longer accept your hospitality,” Tattersall said gravely.
Josh was already climbing to his feet and saw the cup when it started to slip from her hands. He lunged and caught it neatly, hardly spilling a drop, and at her yelp, he offered it back to her. Eyes wide, face pale even in the gloom, she stared at him, unmoving. “Come,” he whispered, and gestured back toward the kitchen with the cup.
She turned, stiffly, and he trailed her as she made her way around the table and into the shadows near the back door. A low whistle followed them from the other side of the house, but Josh ignored it.
“You are leaving?” she breathed.
“Tattersall is a fool,” he whispered. “That isn’t how I’d have chosen to tell you.”
He could make out the opening and closing of her mouth in the dark, the wideness of her eyes. She gulped a breath. “I—should have expected it. Y’all—”
As she glanced this way and that, he held out the cup of water until her hands came back up to take it. Once she had a grasp on it, he took advantage of the moment to cup his hand around hers. She went suddenly still. Her breath lurched then released in a long sigh.
“It’s the best way,” Josh said. “Leave tonight while Portius is gone. None of us wish to risk a train ride to Richmond. Better that we leave under cover of night and try to find the Union lines.”
“You—” Another gulp of breath. “Jeremiah said the Confederate lines between here and there are too tight. You’d have to go too far around.”
“I don’t think the others are willing to wait, regardless.”
She leaned toward him a little, her gaze searching his face even in the darkness. “What about yourself?”
He released a sigh. “I should do all I can to rejoin my regiment. It is, after all, what I signed up for.”
Her head bobbed, but then she looked up at him again. “You could—stay.”
The suggestion seared through him. “What do you mean?”
“As in …” She eased closer, tried to speak, but the words would not come out. “Simply—stay,” she said finally. “At least until we see what happens with Chattanooga. But maybe … longer.”
The word slid over him like a caress.
Oh Lord …
Would that he could.
“Pearl,” he said, when he could speak. “You know I cannot. I have an obligation that sooner or later I must fulfill. Whether or not I can actually carry a rifle and fight again. I belong to the Union army until such time as they release me.”
She did not move, except for the rising and falling of her breast beneath her shawl.
“Besides,” he murmured, making sure this at least fell only on her ears. “You—you deserve so much more than half a man.”
Her breathing quickened but nothing else changed. “Do you think me so empty headed? Have I given you any indication that such a thing would trouble me?”
“No, but—”
“But nothing, Yankee.” Her eyes fairly flashed in the darkness, though her voice was still barely above a whisper. “Better a whole heart with a maimed limb than—than half a heart with a whole body, or no heart at all.”
She was—so brave. So unspeakably darling. So everything he’d wish for in a woman, if he were free to choose.
And here he was preparing to leave her to whatever depredations were yet to come at the hands of either army. Didn’t that make him worse than the ones he’d once tried to defend her against?
At his continued silence, her shoulders sagged, and she released another sigh. “I never asked whether or not you left a sweetheart behind. Or even—a wife.”
“No. I was as you described your brothers once, too wild to settle.” And it had to stay that way, because he sure as anything was not what she needed. No matter what she said.
She regarded him for a moment, head tilted, then swiftly swung away, setting her cup down on a nearby table, then back. Both of her hands came up to frame his face.
When she leaned up to kiss him, he met her halfway.
He couldn’t do this … shouldn’t.
As their kiss deepened, one of her arms went around his neck, the other around his shoulder, and for a few sweet moments, in her embrace, there was no North or South, no Union or Confederacy, just the two of them. Only Pearl and the shadows, and the heady taste of possibility.
And there in her arms, for those few moments, he felt whole again—just as he had up on that windy mountainside.
He broke the kiss at last but could not let her go—and she likewise clung to him. “I wouldn’t go if I didn’t have to,” he whispered, cheek pressed to hers.
“I know,” she breathed, warm against his skin.
She started to withdraw, but he held her close. “Could I—would I,” he fumbled, “if I were to somehow make it back here—”
She swallowed hard. “You will always be welcome here, Yankee.” She shuddered against him—was she weeping?—but then disentangled herself and stepped back, appearing composed.
He smoothed a strand of hair next to her face. “Thank you most kindly. Secesh.”
A smile flickered and was gone. She cleared her throat. “Now. How on earth do you hope to get through to Chattanooga?”
She would not think about the implications of helping Federal prisoners escape. She would not. Especially convalescent ones, on a wet night, where every move would give them away and the mad errand was sure to end in them getting shot by those she’d given her own allegiance to.
But she’d not see them running willy-nilly out into the dark, either, without so much as a guide. And so she found herself tiptoeing into Pa’s room, waking Clem, and insisting he get up and dressed.
The Rebel Bride Page 20