River Magic

by Martha Hix

  “Burke will take you both south.” What was he sending her to? Privation? Whatever greeted her, she’d have family to lean on. “Your brother can debark in Natchez to collect the fortune.”

  “Thanks be to God. And to you.”

  He went to her, allowing some of his heart to show. “You were right to stop our lovemaking. When you become a mother, you deserve for it to be in the best of surroundings. And under the best of circumstances.”

  “Don’t rub it in.” She licked her lips. “Don’t remind me that I am neither fit for motherhood nor likely to achieve it.”

  “Dammit, woman. That is not how I meant it.”

  “Please deliver me from a full explanation.”

  “As you wish.” His eyes closed for a moment. “Indy . . . I’m sorry for”—he swallowed—“for everything.”

  Her chin moved upward. “Will I see you again?”

  A casual note had floated on her tone, a hint that she still found him unfavorable, albeit she might be willing to have another go at driving him over the precipice of sanity. Dove though she might claim to be, but she’d shown an able warrior’s side in their war of wits. Forward the Light Brigades!

  Connor would miss their combat.

  “We’ll say our farewells when I leave you with Burke.” Connor ached to say more, to beg for ridiculous promises that even he couldn’t put to sensible concepts. “Good night, India.”

  She didn’t leave it go. Her hands reaching up to his shoulders, she looked him squarely in the eye. “I want to thank you for sacrificing your principles for my cause.”

  His thumb traced her lips, succumbing to her magic. “No thanks necessary, but I need to know . . . do you care for me, even a little?”

  She studied her hands. “I’ll never forget you.”

  Fifteen

  Secure in knowing Matt wouldn’t be left behind to pay for her sins against the Union, India got a fair night’s sleep punctuated with dreams of Connor, their few moments in this very bed, and a vaguely drawn Arabic lamp that could work wonders.

  Her eyes opened to darkness, to reality. Once she stepped aboard the Delta Star, Connor, by his choice, would be relegated to nothing more than memory. A sharp pain sliced her breast.

  Last night how she’d longed to spill the plenty of her feelings. “Would’ve been another invitation to mockery.”

  Suddenly chilled, she got up to light the potbellied stove, use the chamber pot, then wash her hands and face. The chill refused to abate. It was bone-deep, the knowledge that today would be her last sight of Connor O’Brien.

  Dawn broke over her melancholy; at the same moment a rooster crowed and a fist tapped on the hotel-room door.

  “Who is it?” India hoped for Connor, or at least Matt.

  “Phoebe O’Brien.”

  Not knowing whether Connor had told his aunts about her disguise, India reached for the wig still pooled on the worn-out rug. To heck with it. India answered the summons frocked in the regalia of a twenty-four-year-old who’d slept in her clothes.

  “Good gravy.” In the corridor Phoebe nearly dropped the familiar-looking valise tucked under her arm, as well as the tray loaded with a loaf of bread and a crockery pot that smelled like it contained hot tea. “Think I’ve got the wrong room.”

  “You don’t.” Holding her bodice together, and dreading the questions sure to come about her disguise as well as arrest, India nudged her head toward the room’s interior. “Come in.”

  Once the door was closed and the food placed on the bureau, Phoebe sought to know: “Who are you?”

  “India Marshall.”

  The belly laugh that went through Connor’s skinny aunt caused India to put a forefinger to her lips and urge, “Shhh. Keep it down, or the whole hotel will hear you.”

  “Life has just taken an interesting turn,” Phoebe said, looking India over. “You had us on the run yesterday.”

  “For that, I apologize.” India meant it. Yesterday, she’d been mad at herself, thus mad at the world, but not in today’s morning light. “I was horrid.”

  “True, but I won’t hold it against you.” Phoebe set the valise down. “Connor sent your belongings.”

  Undoubtedly he wished to economize on good-byes, not a cheering thought.

  “Let’s eat and drink,” Phoebe said on a bright note. “I want to hear all about you and the whys behind that old lady get-up of yours.” She nudged a finger toward her delivered goods. “Do the honors, gal. I’m pulling seniority.”

  India used the safety pin left by a past guest in this room of Hotel Gowen to fasten her bodice before pouring tea. Afterward, the women sat down to partake of breakfast.

  “Had to bribe the baker,” Phoebe allowed. “Cost me five Yankee dollars to get this bread early, plus the pot of tea. Hope you enjoy my efforts.”

  The way she’d said “Yankee dollars” caused India to wonder just how much loyalty Phoebe had toward the Union. “I do. But what brought you to my room in the first place, Miss O’Brien?”

  “Travel plans. Connor says we’ll be headed out together on the Delta Star. Figured you and I ought to make friends, since we’ll be spending weeks on a riverboat in close compansy.”

  “Friends? I’d like that,” India said honestly. “But weren’t you just a bit curious about the me you were expecting?”

  “I was, am.” Phoebe tore an end of bread. “You a Reb?”

  “Are you?”

  “Dyed in the wool. I’m a Memphis gal. Never did cotton to the Union or its ideas. We fought old George III for states to have the right to govern themselves. But let’s not get into that.” Phoebe cocked her head. “The way I spent the night figuring it, you had to be a Reb, else Connor wouldn’t have acted the fool, and wouldn’t had such a worried look in his eyes. They are nice eyes, aren’t they?”

  “More than nice.”

  “Do you love my nephew?”

  India took her time sizing the auntie up, and settled on compassion behind the blunt exterior. Funny, she had the strange urge to talk, to confide, to get another woman’s opinion.

  “I love him.” And she did. “Except for a few matters, such as his military bent, he’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a man. He’s brave and courageous. And heroic.”

  “Not bad on the eye, either.”

  “Not bad on the eye, either.” India smiled and sipped from her cup.

  “You’re a fine-looking gal, too. I like your eyes. They’ve got integrity behind them.”

  “Like your mama’s?”

  “Like Mother’s. Tessa may be off track about your age, but she hit the mark with you.”

  “Jumping Jehoshaphat!” India chuckled. “You don’t know anything about me. I may have a trail of dead bodies in my wake, and a butcher knife tucked in my drawers.”

  “Horse feathers. Connor would have you pushing up daisies, rope bums around your pretty neck, were you a villainess. You’ll make a good wife. Tessa will be tickled.”

  How little Phoebe O’Brien knew. Just as it was a long way between Rock Island and St. Francisville, it was a long way between a wish for magic and forever after.

  No use getting into that.

  India let her curiosity run rampant. Why not put forth a few questions about Connor to his aunt, since he wouldn’t discuss himself? “I didn’t even know Connor had aunts, not until you and your sister arrived. Antoinette Lawrence was the one to tell me there was a brother.”

  “He’s got two. Burke and Jon Marc. Jon Marc is as good as dead.”

  “How awful.” Be it audacious, she couldn’t help but ask, “What happened?”

  “He figured to take over Fitz & Son. Fitz balked, Jon Marc being so young back then. It got ugly. Fitz ordered him out of the house. The lad didn’t come back till a few months ago. He visited a couple of hours, but not with his grandfather.”

  “Such a shame,” India murmured, meaning her platitude.

  Phoebe nodded. “Jon Marc joined up with the Confederacy, has been doing cloak-and-dagger
work for Jeff Davis. Calls himself Jones, a nickname Burke tagged on him. Burke gives everybody a shortened name. As for Jon Marc, he travels ’round the North, undermining this person and that.”

  His was no easy job, India could attest to that. And she appreciated Phoebe’s candor. “Does Connor know about Jon Marc?”

  “Nope. Jon Marc doesn’t want him to know. The way I figure it, he won’t survive the war. Spies don’t stand much chance, outnumbered. May be dead already.” Phoebe tried without success to hide emotion. “He is dead, as far as the family is concerned.”

  “But not to you.”

  “But not to me. He’s my godson, the only other redhead in the family. And he’s not dead to Tessa, either.”

  Uneasy at the awkward situation, India found nothing to say. Yet she wondered why Connor felt animosity toward a renegade brother. There were so many, many things she didn’t know or understand about the man who had her heart fragmented.

  Phoebe gathered aplomb and placed a scrawny arm around India’s shoulders. “I like you, gal. I’d be the last to admit it, but that magic of Tessa’s couldn’t be working better.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in magic.”

  “Don’t. And I don’t approve of Eugene. All he’s after is a roof over his pate and a meal in his pot gut. Magic—horse feathers! But I do believe in love. Saw it in my parents.”

  As the older woman straightened, India steered Phoebe’s interest off love. “Do you have more sisters?”

  “It’s just Tessa and me. We had a brother, Daniel. Connor’s father. He’s gone now. Got tied up with the wrong woman. Georgia Morgan ran him, and the boys, into the ground. She died when Connor was fourteen, took Daniel with her. Good riddance. On her part.”

  “I wish I could have heard this from Connor.” Poor Connor, losing his parents at an impressionable age. “But would he add the ’good riddance’?”

  “The lad had a soft spot for Georgia. To be expected. She did dote on Connor. For a while. He isn’t a bleeding heart. It doesn’t surprise me, his not saying anything.”

  Always, India had wallowed in grief over Winny, and had never once imagined Connor knowing such sorrow. Recalling his admissions about Gettysburg, she mused aloud, “I’m lucky he said anything at all about himself.”

  “He’s not an easy man to love, I don’t have to tell you.”

  Self-pity clogged India’s throat. “He’s made it clear I’m not for the long run. But I’d do anything for him.”

  Phoebe sipped tea. Placing her cup on the bedside table with deliberate purpose, she said, “It may take Tessa’s magic to get him to the altar.”

  How true. “Care to elaborate?”

  “He’s afraid of marriage. My mother died before the boys were born, so the only married folk he’s been around were his parents. No good example. Daniel wanted to pursue the army life, took his white-trash wife with him. She couldn’t stomach the rigors. Wanted to get back to the easy life in Memphis.”

  No wonder he didn’t think both career and wife possible.

  “Daniel gave in,” Phoebe said. “Still, Georgia Morgan found fault. Decided to take off with a lover, she did. Stole every gold piece in Father’s vault at the office. Daniel, the fool, went after her. They both ended up dead. Her paramour put a gun to her head, blew her brains clear into the Mississippi. Daniel put a gun to his own head.”

  “How selfish of them to do that to their sons.”

  “My thinking, right on the money.”

  Putting everything together, India commented, “Connor and his brothers never knew much happiness, I take it.”

  “How much could they, being around sorry parents, a crotchety grandfather, and a pair of old-maid aunts? The Army is the only order Connor has ever known.”

  “No wonder it means so much to him.”

  “Wish the cotton trade appealed to him. Never did, though.” Phoebe toyed with her cup. “More than likely never will.” Gray eyes found India. “You can show him a different brand of happiness. Once he’s content, maybe cotton won’t look so black to him.”

  “We won’t be seeing each other again.” A tear threatened the woman who never used to cry. “Once I’m aboard the Delta Star, I’ll be waving good-bye to him. Forever.”

  “Horse feathers.” Phoebe’s spirit picked up. “You may wave ’bye, but you’ll be together again. Feel it in my bones.”

  The feeling in India’s bones? A wrenching ache.

  Phoebe smiled; the expression added softness to her face that made it almost beautiful. “Tessa’ll jump through a hoop, once she knows you aren’t up in years. Ha! Maybe you ought to keep the wig and those spectacles. Make her suffer a bit.”

  “Shucking the disguise is my best chance of escaping.”

  “Why do you need to escape? Why, by the way, did Connor say you were under arrest?”

  “It was his duty. I committed crimes against the Union. By impersonating a member of the Sanitary Commission. I conspired to enter a Federal prison during wartime. And—”

  “What’s the crime in those? At dinner last night—we missed you in the dining room, by the way—the serving girl kept yammering about a nice lady from the Sanitary Commission nursing the sickly prisoners at the camp.”

  “Still, I’ve involved your nephew in my schemes. Miss O’Brien, if he’s caught, he’ll be in serious trouble.”

  “Call me Phoebe.”

  “Phoebe, even if Colonel Lawrence finds it in his heart to let my work continue, Connor could be branded a conspirator.”

  “Once you escape, he can say he knows nothing.”

  India conjured up images of boar-eyed Lawrence placing the whole blame on Connor. She shivered, cold anew. “There’s something else. I’ve forced, well, it’s like this. My brother was a camp prisoner.” Where was Matt now, and what measures beyond the pardon had Connor gone to expedite his release? “Last night . . . through my efforts, Matt gained his freedom.”

  “You let him out?”

  For all intents and purposes. Yet India would stop tying others, especially the major who would forever be her hero, into her plots and schemes. “I let him out.”

  “You youngsters had best watch your actions in the future. What with the war going on, this is no time for carelessness.”

  “How well I know.”

  For the longest moment Phoebe stared at her. “What’s done is done. And to keep up the tired-out old saws, there’s no looking back.” Her lack of bosom heaved in concern before she patted the valise. “Would you like for me to help get you gussied up for traveling?”

  “I should change.”

  India opened Granny Mabel’s old carpetbag and surveyed the contents: her one youthful outfit, the silk night shift, the Adams revolver, toiletries, hair fixings, and a loose corset—the only sort India would wear. She hadn’t unpacked it in a while, since it gave too much figure to an “elderly” woman.

  Something was absent from the trove. What had he done with Arabian Nights Entertainment? She didn’t like the idea of leaving Uncle Omar’s gift behind. That Connor might have kept it as a memento gave her some solace, though.

  The strangest feeling melted over her. Anticipation. She yearned for his arrival, for it would give her a few precious moments to study his face, his stance, his every gesture . . . to commit them to memory. And maybe have something new and sweet to take with her. “I’d like to look nice when Connor and I part.”

  “Can I help?”

  “I’ve never been much good at arranging my hair. My granny, or sometimes my sister, used to help me. Do you think you could lend a hand . . . ?”

  Phoebe brightened. “I’d be honored. I’ll turn my back while you get shut of yesterday’s garb.”

  Within a half-dozen minutes India had her traveling clothes on and was presenting a brush and a handful of hairpins to Phoebe, who asked for a curling iron, put it to heat on the stove, then set a deft hand to her task. Finished, she stepped back. “A masterpiece.”

  India gazed int
o the cracked mirror above the bureau, seeing an upswept confection with curled wisps falling saucily. “Why, you’re better than Granny Mabel and Persia put together! ”

  “Gal, I’ve been rolling Tessa’s ringlets for five decades. I do know my way around a curling iron.”

  She put her hand on the younger woman’s shoulder to pat it, but India placed her palm atop the parched knuckles. “Thank you, Phoebe. I think we’re going to be fine friends.”

  “You betcha.” A wink. “Let’s eat and drink. Our tea’s getting cold and our bread as hard as a wedding prick.”

  India had little appetite or thirst, though she did have a chuckle over Phoebe’s imagery. Yet her fears for Connor and his treasured career were at the forefront of her thoughts. “Phoebe, I won’t be able to live with myself, if Connor suffers in the aftermath of my actions.”

  “It’s up to you to save him, India. It’s all up to you.”

  India knew that meant saving Connor from himself, but what kind of happiness could he have without military glory? She swirled the leaves in the bottom of her cup, wishing she could foresee the future. Should she rush to Eugene Jinnings and plead for magic, just in case?

  “Please excuse me, Phoebe. There’s something I must do.”

  He wore nightshirt and cap, Eugene Jinnings. Yawning, he let India into his room. “Good morning, Miss Marshall.”

  “You recognize me.”

  “I see things that others cannot.”

  Fine and dandy. She wouldn’t have had time enough to explain her transformation, anyway. “By the Creator, help me. Bring the lamp.”

  “Impossible. The lady Tessa had but three wishes.”

  “I’ve asked for no wishes. Allow me one.”

  “The lamp is locked in a vault at Fitz & Son.”

  “Disappear in a cloud of vapor and go fetch it, if you want your lady’s wish to come true. Connor O’Brien cannot marry me should he end up in a Federal prison. Or worse.”

  “I cannot disappear into a cloud of vapor. And your major will not come to a bad end. Lady Tessa has deemed otherwise.”

  Genies, by gosh, could vaporize, which said something about this so-called one. “Yesterday, you saw that my face powder had smudged, didn’t you?”