River Magic

by Martha Hix

  No woman acting alone, armed with no more than a revolver, could break in and find the brother who held the valuable information that sent her on an odyssey through Yankeeland and had deposited her in this pit of perdition.

  She must get in with permission.

  India fought to turn around. Icicles burdened her eyelashes, and her breath made billows of steam. Fueled by the fire of achieving her goal, she marched back to the mansion. Somehow, someway, she must coerce that handsome, dashing major into letting her have her way. Exactly how would be the challenge for a fake sanitarian unskilled at beguiling.

  Her weaponry, she decided after mulling her nettlesome nature, would have to be pure India. “Try to be nice about it.”

  Nice would be a bigger challenge than fenced walls and armed sentries, or even snake-infested watery depths.

  Two

  Dinner turned out to be boiled beef, cabbage, and potatoes, with rhubarb pie for dessert. Connor had an appetite, but not for food. He wanted facts.

  Waiting to get to the truth, Connor sat left of Mrs. Lawrence, the sanitarian to her right in a position of honor. The ladies chattered about fashions and frippery. Chattered as best they could, the commander’s wife being partially deaf.

  “Whatever has detained Roscoe’s niece?” Opal blurted, her voice out of tune. “Antoinette promised to join us for dinner.” She raised an ear trumpet for Miss Marshall’s reply. “How I wish she and Roscoe were here to share in our fellowship.”

  The quintessential army wife, Opal. Loyal, faithful, true, she adored her unlovable husband. It had been a sacrifice to serve those refreshments gone uneaten this afternoon, thanks to her husband’s close watch on expenses and his pocketing of the War Department’s rations allowance. All along, Connor had slipped Opal money to augment her grocery allowance, but other purchases also stretched her pocketbook. Finery for a niece.

  Opal needed frippery. Her looks had suffered from years of trying to spin class into her rude, crude, miserly husband. Unrequited love dulled her eyes. Frustration grooved her mouth. For putting up with Roscoe Lawrence, the lady ought to win a medal. It helped to be hard of hearing, Connor supposed.

  Connor didn’t enjoy gossip, but he’d have to be stone deaf not to hear the stories that had circulated on Rock Island. Opal Lawrence had been reared in a wealthy home, had lowered herself to marry a boorish farm boy, and things weren’t quite cricket between her husband and his blond niece.

  “Did I show you the ball gown I’m fashioning for Antoinette?” Opal asked the sanitarian.

  “You did. Have you not fashioned an outfit for yourself? You’re tall. You’d look lovely in the new fashions. Me, I’m simply dumpy. Um, I was in my younger years. What difference does it make now?” Miss Marshall smiled at the hostess, who readjusted the ear trumpet to try to catch her remark. “I beg your indulgence. I’d like to discuss the war effort.”

  “Such as your collection stand?” Connor quizzed.

  Opal, uncomprehending, tried to get into the conversation. “I’m so pleased you’re having a good time on your birthday, Major.”

  He wouldn’t hurt the lady’s feelings. Hand signals helping to get the message across, he elevated his voice. “You’ve done yourself proud, ma’am.”

  Miss Marshall retreated to a subject she’d dismissed. “Tell me about the latest in fashion.”

  The ladies again engaged in distaff chatter. Connor noted the sanitarian made no more mention of the “war effort,” but she did repeat herself over and again for her audience. When it came to talking with one of her own gender, the sanitarian had a lot of pleasantries.

  This afternoon rushed back to his thoughts. She was a puzzle. Again, he detected a certain intrinsic slyness to her, like that of his boyhood pet. Lynx, though, had been smart enough to keep her mouth shut, since language could, and usually did, make a muck of things.

  Connor made it a rule not to speak of himself, yet the nurse-sanitarian had gotten a lot out of him this afternoon.

  “I intend to tour the prison barracks forthwith,” India Marshall suddenly announced, sending an alarm through Connor.

  Opal readjusted her ear trumpet. “I didn’t catch that, Miss Marshall. What did you say?”

  “I am a trained nurse.”

  “Nurse?” Connor didn’t like this turn. “Miss Marshall, if you wish to tour the prison, you ought to know you need my permission, not Mrs. Lawrence’s. With her husband away, I am acting commander here at Rock Island Prison Camp.”

  Opal appeared bewildered. Miss Marshall set her square jaw. And Connor waited for the nurse-sanitarian’s comeback.

  None forthcoming, he pressed, “Miss Marshall, are you asking my permission?”

  The second hand on the grandfather clock in the corner made a quarter sweep before the grayed woman spoke. “I certainly do not wish to circumvent your authority, Major O’Brien. May I, please, sir, have permission to inspect the prisoners’ barracks?”

  “No. Not no. Never no.”

  “Joe? Who is Joe?” Opal shook her head, perplexed.

  Before Connor could put the lady at ease, India Marshall launched the cannonball of her tongue. “By order of the Surgeon General, I have the authority to inspect this camp, Sonny Boy. Nary a general in the Union Army can stop me, much less a mere major. As soon as the sun rises on the morrow, I will proceed.”

  “No, you won’t. No female will enter the barracks. You may be up in years, ma’am, but you’d be the first female those Rebels will have seen in months, if not years.”

  Out of loyalty Connor didn’t add the ancient Iowan reservists to his list, though some oldsters might show unseemly interest. On the other hand, it would give those guards something to do beyond complaining about hemorrhoids or bunions.

  “There could be trouble,” Connor added on a prudent note.

  “Then assign a soldier as my escort. Of course, I’d rather have the camp physician.”

  “Vernon Hanrahan is busy.”

  “Doing what? Building a snowman?”

  Inwardly, Connor chuckled, but no way would he show it, and she did have the grace to appear embarrassed when he said somberly, “You, as a sanitarian, ought to know no medical man in these times is building snowmen.”

  Actually, Hanrahan stayed busy nursing the bourbon jug, a habit not unfamiliar to the dimpled darling, Roscoe Lawrence.

  Connor returned to the crux of it all. “Miss Marshall, you may not enter the gates without my escort.”

  “Who hates? You don’t hate each other, do you?” Mrs. Lawrence fiddled with the trumpet. “Pity, why would you hate each other? We’re all on the same side.”

  Connor compelled a smile at her. “Pardon our rudeness.”

  “Neither of us hates the other,” Miss Marshall assured the lady, then took a different strategy, addressing Connor. “I beg your indulgence and prudence, sir. You would expose yourself to disease. I wouldn’t dream of endangering a United States Army officer. Provide a common soldier, one who’s survived smallpox.”

  “I’ve survived smallpox. Got pockmarks to prove it.”

  She set her cutlery down, and the appearance of her long, slender, unblemished fingers reinforced his earlier suspicions.

  “Pulling you away from your duties is a needless expense of time,” she said. “Surely you’ve got more important chores.”

  Chores. That about summed up his present functions for the Army. Lawrence took uncommon delight in handing out menial tasks unbefitting a major. It wouldn’t surprise Connor should the dimpled darling someday order him to extend a lower lip for service as an ash repository. Lawrence favored cheap cigars.

  Connor sucked on the bitter root of bad luck. There was nothing he could do to get out of here, barring a reprieve from Stew Lewis, so he had tried, and would continue to try, to make the best of it. And keep the peace with Dimpled Darling.

  No mean feat.

  Eyes on the suspicious sight of India Marshall, Connor frowned. This interloper could pass unfavorable reports
to Washington. The official sort. Under no circumstances would Major Connor O’Brien tempt trouble with yet another commanding officer by allowing big ears and eyes into the camp.

  Trying to figure out the identity beneath her disguise, he asked audaciously, “How old are you, Miss Marshall?”

  “Sixty.”

  “I’ve got aunts almost a decade under that, and they looked older than you.” Furthermore, as many times as the youthful Connor had massaged his grandfather’s rheumatism-ridden shoulders, he had a working knowledge of how shoulder muscles deteriorated with age. More likely, India Marshall was one-third of sixty. Which meant she masqueraded as an older woman.

  Why? These were times of civil war. The Confederates being desperate, now that they had lost their strongholds along the Mississippi River, India Marshall might be a spy.

  Or she might have something else in mind, like hatching a prison escape. Let her try. He had another thought, a crazed one. If she causes trouble, I’ll see more action, of a sort.

  After Gettysburg, though, he wasn’t looking for trouble. He looked to stop it. Inhaling the scent of lavender that came softly from the fraudulent nurse-sanitarian, Connor said, “If you’re sixty, I’m one of Julius Caesar’s lieutenants.”

  She scratched a finger into her hair. The kerchief moved, as did the entirety of that gray-flecked mop. Mop? Wig!

  “Tell me, Miss Marshall. What business do you have with my prisoners? I was under the impression your organization looked out for Union soldiers, not the enemy.”

  She drilled her gaze into his. And he got a look at the eyes behind those square spectacles. Despite the smudge-black rings of fatigue rimming their bases, they were wonderful. Blue. Dark blue. As dark as the devil’s ink.

  “Scared of my question?” he taunted.

  “I can’t understand one word you two have said.” Poor Opal Lawrence set the ear trumpet on her lap.

  Defiance shooting from the indigo depths of those eyes, India Marshall announced, “My business is compassion. All that illness—those men aren’t accustomed to Illinois winters. Have you not the charity one should have for a captured foe?”

  “None whatsoever.” His charity had vanished in the aftermath of Gettysburg.

  “I pity your stingy heart, Major O’Brien.”

  She sounded very like a Southern troublemaker. A true spy would take more care with commiseration, he reasoned. “Use your sympathy on our men. We’ve got guards living in vacant stores and hallways, over in Rock Island town. They’re old men in need of comforts, too.”

  “Is yours a southern accent? From where do you hail?”

  “Memphis, Tennessee, ma’am. Where’re you from?”

  “Cairo, Illinois.” Her voice held an accent not unusual in the southernmost town in Illinois, but her inflection gave it the same sound as that faraway city in the Arabic world.

  “Kay-roh. It’s Kay-roh, Miss Marshall. Your name is Marshall, isn’t it?”

  “It most certainly is. If I choose to say Cairo, you shouldn’t show the ill breeding to correct me. You did know—”

  “Why are you arguing?” Opal scrunched up her eyes, as if the action would aid in hearing the verbal exchange.

  “—it’s quite common, and very rude, to correct someone.” India Marshall took on an expression of repugnance, as if Connor were something slimy and long-dead, just washed up in the juncture of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers at Cairo.

  “Is it that you don’t know better? Did your upbringing not lend itself to the fabled Southern gentleman? Perhaps yours is more the white-trash variety.”

  White trash. As a youth, he’d overheard Aunt Phoebe unfairly call his mother that, often. He loathed that in an aunt otherwise adored.

  “Mrs. Lawrence . . .”

  The youthful orderly assigned to the mansion entered the dining room. Deuteronomy Smith, smiling as Connor had never seen him grinning before, stepped closer to the lady of the house. “Miss Antoinette Lawrence calls.”

  “Ah,” Mrs. Lawrence said after a moment, “Roscoe’s charming niece has arrived for dinner. Show her in, Doot.”

  A fair-haired, blue-eyed lady of eighteen swept in thereafter, hoops belling, ruffles flouncing. “Am I late?”

  Connor rose to welcome the songstress. Until now, he’d seen her only in passing, since she studied voice in Rock Island town, and rarely called on her uncle’s household. Connor, truthfully, hadn’t wanted to meet her.

  He liked women, not girls. He especially didn’t want to tie in with her sort. Her sights were on finding a nabob to whisk her away from the humdrum of midwestern life. Typical of an Army man, Connor wasn’t rich and wouldn’t get that way.

  Chattering like a magpie, Antoinette tugged off winter gear as she advanced, passing it to the goggle-eyed Smith. Obviously, the farm boy from Vermont had a case of the smitten. Just as obviously, the blonde was accustomed to having slavering males at her beck and call. Even her uncle.

  Connor’s interest returned to the impostor. The Lawrence ladies chatted about a voice recital set for this evening in town; India Marshall agreed to attend. “I must freshen up.”

  This time when he shoved to stand, he did it with curiosity. Plus interest. No taller than she was, her head could have fit under his chin.

  What war would this half-pint bring to Rock Island?

  She felt the Yankee from Dixie looming behind her as she started to ascend the foyer staircase. Once more she’d made a muck of winning him over, and didn’t know what to do next.

  “Get fed up with recital talk, Miss Marshall?” he asked, his deep baritone sending shivers through her youthful body. “The benign seemed to interest you earlier.”

  Brazen it out, Indy. Brazen it out.

  “That was for Mrs. Lawrence’s benefit. I care nothing for material things. It’s life that counts.” She learned that lesson when renegade Billy Blues were descending on the old family home. “My interest lies in the good of our boys.”

  “Which ones, Northerners or Southerners?”

  “Why are you asking me this, Major?”

  “You tell me.”

  She almost glared. It was best if she didn’t spend too much time gawking his way, since each time her eyes ventured a look, she’d been discomfited under the perusal of a man of war so handsome that he stole her breath.

  O’Brien insinuated his tall, lean body to where she couldn’t climb the stairs. She got an ample view of polished coatee buttons and a wide breadth of chest. Thanks to being short, though, she didn’t get a full shot of his handsome face.

  She shoved her gaze to the left and up, to concentrate on the stern tintype visage of Roscoe Lawrence. “He’s cruel,” she concluded aloud.

  “His wife likes him.”

  The major lifted an arm to plant a palm on the middle of Lawrence’s boarlike image, the action supporting India’s conclusion at teatime. Connor O’Brien might be mad for the golden leaves shining from the epaulets of his dastardly uniform, but he didn’t like being here at Rock Island. Or was it he just didn’t like the colonel? She’d bet on both.

  “I’d say you’re a Confederate,” the major surmised aloud.

  “Pish posh.”

  Being a Southerner didn’t mean the Cause had a natural claim on her loyalty. Port Hudson still fresh, India sought peace, and meant it when championing clemency for the sick and injured, blue or gray.

  She might be searching for a brother, but she wouldn’t disregard others in need. “The milk of human kindness should flow to every man at war, no matter whom he blindly follows.”

  Her eyes turned up to a face that held the visage of a god, was . . . beautiful. It took her mind from the subject. His hair was as richly hued as the darkest of sorghum syrup, a favorite taste treat for her. His face had been molded into perfect angles, his features into that same harmony, despite the present anger that locked his jaw.

  It was easy to tell O’Brien burned under the collar. “Blindly follows?” His arm dropped. “Men fight for what is rig
ht. Preserving the Union is the most noble of causes.”

  “Poppycock.” She knew she ought to clamp her mouth, or say something sweet and grandmotherly, but this just wasn’t her way, so she abandoned it. “Glory grabs men. In its name, generals—and those who seek the star—fight for causes dictated by politicians. Foot soldiers do as told. If you order them to march empty-handed over the precipice of a quarry filled with armed enemies, they will do it. ‘Forward the Light Brigade!’ ”

  “Have you never heard of patriotism?” he asked to contest her pacific statement, a forest of black-lashed lids falling to half-staff over hazel eyes.

  “If the women of this continent were making the choices, how many of their brothers or sweethearts or sons would be marching into the line of fire?”

  “Doves of peace ought to refrain from war, if they can’t stomach it.”

  “I have an iron stomach. I make no apologies for cursing war and the men who order it.” Gads, why couldn’t she come up with an argument to break down his defenses and allow her into the prison camp? Her hate of bloodshed was just too strong.

  “War is the only way to keep peace,” said he. “Tuck tail and scurry back to Kay-roh, or wherever you call home. The Yankees are coming. Lock your doors and cover your ears.”

  That gave her a case of hot-under-the-collar. She had no use for war, but, by darn, she wouldn’t have anything shoved down her throat. Moveover, he wouldn’t wrangle a slip from her lips. “Don’t jump to conclusions. I’m not a Reb—”

  “It’s a foregone conclusion.”

  “How will you occupy your time, should your prediction come true? By drowning puppies and scalding kitties?”

  From the fury boiling in that handsome face, she got the impression India Marshall was one cat he wouldn’t mind skinning.

  “I go where my country orders me.” He unclenched his teeth. “Always, there will be trouble and troublemakers. I will deal with them in whatever way is called for.”

  In a quandary about what to do next, she breathed a sigh of relief when “My goodness!” belled through the foyer.