Walker went still. He used his coat sleeve to wipe his forehead as he turned, a bit of a flush in his pale brown skin, an icy calm in his strange silver-blue eyes. “Mr. Lane.” His gaze landed on her. “Princess.”
Marietta withdrew her arm from Granddad’s so she could fold it with her other over her chest. “Are you still working here? I’d have thought you would have run off by now, looking for the next rush of adventure.”
Rather than rising to the bait or mentioning the wife and child that kept him chained to her household, he looked back to Granddad. “Are you sure about this, Mr. Lane?”
Were she a cat, her hackles would have risen. Whatever Granddad wanted to say to her, Walker obviously knew about it.
“It’s the only way.” Granddad drew in a long breath and caught her gaze. “Mari, I need to know where you stand. On the war.”
Of all the… “You question my loyalty? And in front of him?”
“Walker is family.”
“One’s great-grandmother being your housekeeper does not make one family!”
Walker, for some reason known only to the convoluted workings of his self-important mind, smiled. “How sorely I’ve missed you, Yetta.”
A breath of cynical laughter slipped out. He was no doubt as unhappy about his presence here as she was but just as bound by his word to Stephen.
“Could you children stop snapping at each other? We only have a few minutes.” Her grandfather led her deeper into the building, where the nauseating scent of hay and horses filled her nose. “Mari, I have no choice but to question you. Baltimore, all of Maryland, is a house divided. You married into a family with firm Southern roots—”
“Really, Granddad. Mother Hughes has been questioned enough on this subject. She may be from New Orleans, but her husband was as solid a Union man as you.” Her arms slid down to wrap around her middle. Just an attempt to keep her hands warm, that was all.
“I am asking about you, Mari.”
Why was she born to live through this blasted war? All she had wanted was to go to the theater, to entertain her friends, to dance until her feet ached. A world that seemed so far removed now. “My brother gave his life for the Union. How can you question where I stand?”
“Your cousin gave his life for the Confederacy in the very same battle. How can I help but question?”
Again tears stung…though tears for Stephen seemed somehow different than those born of regrets for Lucien. “Stephen was my best friend.” Her only friend, when it came down to it.
Granddad slid closer. “Does that mean his cause is your cause? One you believe in enough to fight for? To risk dying for?”
Her arms went limp, and icy air nipped at her fingers. “You are scaring me.”
“I mean to. Walker?”
Her brother’s friend nodded and motioned them to follow him. “This way.”
A draft of vicious wind whistled through the building, making a chill skitter up her spine. “Where are we going?”
Granddad rested a hand against the small of her back. To lend comfort or to spur her onward if her feet faltered? “What do you know about the Knights of the Golden Circle?”
“The KGC?” The wind seemed colder. “That they’re a Copperhead group. A Southern-sympathizing social club that boasts hundreds of thousands of members.”
“Social club?” Granddad’s short laugh sounded dry. “Perhaps for many of those hundreds of thousands, but not for the high-level members. It is a very serious organization, one with a very dangerous agenda.”
“Promoting slavery. I know.”
Walker came to such an abrupt halt that she nearly ran into his back. His eyes shot shards of ice at her. “You want to say that a little more flippantly next time, princess?”
She dimpled and batted her lashes. “Perhaps I could try if you could be more sensitive to the subject.”
“Enough.” Her grandfather’s tone sounded mournful, bringing her gaze back to his face. “This is serious, Mari. A matter of murder and treason, of the deliberate destruction of the Union—and of which Lucien had a part, and Devereaux too.”
“Nonsense. They both pledged their loyalty to the Union.” Words that came so easily.
But Granddad shook his head, no hint of a jest in his eyes. “Only in words. Think of that unexplained delay in reopening the rail lines last year. Their ties to the land in Louisiana.”
Conversations between the Hugheses buzzed in her ears, images flashed. If she were to look at them in that light…but no, it couldn’t be. She shook it off. “Half the city likely belongs to the KGC.”
The two men exchanged a glance that made her want to grit her teeth again. Granddad nodded, and Walker moved onward, his pace quick.
Marietta held her cape closed and wished she had taken the time to grab gloves or a muff. Her fingers were at the painful place between chilled and numb. “What does this have to do with me?”
“You will see soon enough. First, answer me this. What color dress were you wearing on the fifteenth of May in eighteen fifty?”
Of all the random… “Yellow, but I don’t see what—”
“What is the first word on the third line on the second page of the fifth book upon the shelf in your room?”
He wanted to play games? Out here in the cold, in the smelly stables with that patronizing man? She lifted her chin. “I haven’t read the fifth book.”
“The fourth then.”
She shook her head and stared at Walker’s back when he stopped in the last stall and fooled with the hay. “It’s ‘yesterday,’ but I—”
“What was the eighth word I spoke to you the last time we had dinner?”
“ ‘This,’ though I can hardly think what—”
“Well, it’s time to think, Mari.” Granddad’s gaze combined sorrow with determination. “Time to use that mind of yours for something other than drawing room repartee. Your memory is perfect.”
Walker knelt down and slid aside a board.
Marietta waved a hand at Granddad’s words. “A parlor trick.”
“A gift of God.” He gripped her arm, a silent bid for her to look at him. Though when she saw the furor in his eyes, she wished she hadn’t. “You have perfect recall, beyond even your grandmother’s. Perhaps she can draw anything she sees, but you—your recollection extends to what you’ve heard, what you’ve done, when things happened. Do you not realize how rare that is? How special you are?”
Walker’s scoffing laugh gave her the urge to place her half boot upon his back and give him a nice little kick into… “What is that hole?” Her voice felt strangled, frozen.
“Come see.” Walker held out his hands, as if they were still children. As if she could trust him.
She took a step back. “If you think for even a moment that I will descend into some dank pit—”
“We have a very small window of time, Mari. Go.” Granddad’s hand on her back urged her onward.
But it was the glint of challenge in Walker’s eyes that made her huff over to him. She tamped down the shudder when he lowered her into the black, yawning space. Followed him with chin held high when Granddad handed down a lantern and brought up the rear.
A tunnel. They were in a tunnel that stretched toward her house. “What is this?”
“I didn’t want to bring you into this business, Mari.” Her grandfather’s voice echoed strangely off the timber walls. “When my parents passed the mantle of the Culpers to me, and then when I shared it with your father and uncles and Walker and Hez, there was always an understanding that we would shield the family who wanted no part of it. You. Ize. Most of your cousins. But we have no choice now.”
Each word fell like a hammer upon a chisel, etching themselves into her mind. Yet with more force than normal words, with finality. “Culpers?”
Granddad prodded her onward. “The Culper Ring started in the Revolution. My mother was a spy in British-held New York, passing information through a collection of friends until it reached General Washin
gton.”
“Great-Grandmama Winter—a spy?” Impossible. Her portrait made her look like such a normal woman.
“When I took over during the next war with the British—”
“You?” The world tipped. Her laugh did nothing to right it. “Granddad, you are not a spy.”
“Here we are.” Walker set down the lantern and put his shoulder to a break in the timbers. “It will open only a foot, but it’s enough to get a glimpse. It’s a Knights’ castle, no question.”
A castle, one of their secret lairs? Here, between her home and her carriage house? It could not be. And to prove it could not be, she grabbed the lantern, thrust it through the opening, and stuck her head in after it.
The walls were papered with charts and maps, lines drawn over them helter-skelter. Some of the North, with stars upon the major cities, some of the South, stretching all the way to Texas. One of the entire hemisphere, with a circle drawn around Havana as a center. Papers pinned with what looked like gibberish upon them. And there, nearly out of the dim circle of light, one of Lincoln’s election posters. But with “King” scrawled above his name, and a cruel-looking X drawn through his face in an ink more red-brown than lampblack, something nearly the color of…
“Oh, God in heaven.” Blood, it was blood. She stumbled back and would have dropped the light had Walker not rescued it. Would have fallen had her grandfather not caught her.
He held her fast. “That had better be a genuine beseeching of the Almighty, Mari, because we need to fall to our knees before Him. They are going to harm the president if we don’t stop them. And we’ve done all we can from the outside.”
“Not Dev. Please, not Dev.”
Walker eased the opening shut and watched her closely in the golden light. “He’s the captain of this castle, Yetta. He took over after Lucien died.”
No. She squeezed shut her eyes, but that did nothing to blur the implications. If Granddad spoke rightly, then both of them had lied to her. Had told her she was the most important thing in the world but had undermined all her family stood for. Had made a fool of her. Had they been using her, her family’s connections?
If it were true… “What is it you want from me?”
Granddad gave her a squeeze. “Allan Pinkerton is sending in a man. He has been in communication with Dev and ought to be arriving in town any day. You cannot let either of them know you realize what they are about, but you have to protect him where you can, Mari. Make sure he has the opportunities he needs to find information.”
“His name’s Slade Osborne. A New Yorker by birth, but more recently of Chicago. He’s part of Pinkerton’s Intelligence Service.” Walker reached out and took her hand in his. Audacious, yes. Inappropriate too. And oh, how it reminded her of happier days. “Can you do this, Yetta?”
She saw again that red-brown slash upon the yellowed poster. Shivered at the hatred that must have inspired the defacing. Had the same hand that so recently cupped her cheek marked the president’s image for destruction? Had the lips that had kissed her sworn treason?
She didn’t know. And the not-knowing made her knees want to buckle. For the first time in too many years, she turned her mind to prayer.
Oh, God, if it’s true…What have I done?
Two
Slade Osborne planted his feet on the wooden platform at Camden Station and waited for the locomotive’s steam to clear. In the bleak January sunshine, Baltimore looked as he had come to expect—gray, dreary, frayed. A city on the edge of chaos. Hence the many Union uniforms milling about with dour-faced soldiers inside them.
He scanned the buildings, the muddy streets. Even never having seen Devereaux Hughes, he would know him. He would be well dressed, have a charming smile, and eyes as hard as the rails that paved his way to fortune. He’d no doubt send that skitter of warning up Slade’s spine. The self-same one that had made him spin around a second before his brother meant to put a sledge to his skull.
His jaw clenched, he hooked a finger in his waistcoat pocket and stepped away from the stream of pedestrians. His train car was being hitched to horses for the trip through the city to President Street Station, but he wouldn’t be joining his fellow passengers.
He spotted a few men who matched Hughes’s general description. Mid-thirties, dark hair, blue eyes. But he’d place his bets on the one striding from the building far behind the depot. The man was too far away to see eye color, and a top hat covered his hair, but Slade knew authority.
He leaned against a lamppost, though it was likely to earn him soot marks on his worsted wool suit. Despite the gnawing inside that made him want to hurry, he would wait. Pinkerton had trained him well in how to assume a role, and the biggest trick was never to overplay one’s hand.
Even when the role one was assuming was one’s own.
Of their own volition, his fingers found the silver chain of his borrowed watch fob. The metal was warm against the bitter air, warm as a long-gone memory. Odd how aware it made him of the price of war, the soul-breaking cost of betrayal. Of how his chance to set it all to rights was ticking away.
What an ugly time they lived in.
He released the fob and folded his arms, expelling a long puff of white breath. The passers-by hurried along, mothers adjusting their children’s coats as they stepped out of doors, gentlemen pulling hats down. The man he had been watching drew nearer, near enough to spot Slade in their agreed-upon location. He knew he, too, matched the description Hughes would have been given. A shade taller than average, hair nearly black under his bowler, lean. A description that fit any number of men milling about.
That had fit one too many before.
He waited for the man’s gaze to wander his way and then lifted his right hand to rub his forefinger above his lip. Recognition kindled in the other set of eyes, and the answering left hand came up, thumb and forefinger taking hold of his left ear.
Slade pushed away from the lamppost and let his coat fall into place around his knees while the man closed the distance between them, hand extended. He knew the Knights’ grip—that he must press his thumb against the knuckle while they shook—but it felt odd.
“Mr. Osborne, I presume. I’m Devereaux Hughes.”
Slade nodded and reclaimed his hand. “Good of you to come meet me, Mr. Hughes.”
“Good of you to travel to Baltimore.” Calculation sharpened the blue of his eyes, though his smile was the epitome of Southern charm. “You spent several years in Washington City before this, correct?”
It took all his willpower not to curl his hand into a fist. Several years nearly undone by the last three months in the field. “That’s right.”
Hughes waited, but Slade offered no more. Words, he had learned long ago, could hang one as quickly as a rope. After a moment’s pause, the other man smiled and motioned to his right. “Shall we go? I have sent a note to my mother and sister-in-law that we would have a guest for dinner tonight.”
“Certainly.” And that was the part of this business he was not looking forward to—socializing. But at least, with the war having washed all the color out of this gray, drab world, no one would expect him to be jovial.
After giving instruction to a stevedore to take care of his trunk, he followed Hughes toward a waiting carriage. Neither spoke until the door closed upon them, the thunk of the trunk sounded on the roof, and the driver’s “Yah!” prompted a lurch into motion.
Then Hughes’s eyes went sharp, and he leaned against the cushion. “I admit, Mr. Osborne, that your letter of introduction piqued my curiosity. You say you have not been officially inducted?”
Slade made himself comfortable. “Not in Washington. Too many old friends watching.”
Those sharp eyes sparked. “Indeed. Though I am curious as to why someone so…dedicated, shall we say, to one cause should turn so suddenly to the opposite view.”
A question he had pondered long and hard himself. Only one conclusion presented itself. “I suppose it wasn’t so sudden.”
“Hmm.” The man regarded him for a long moment and made no attempt to hide his perusal.
Let him look his fill. Slade knew well what he would see. The picture Ross had crafted for him—hard shell, empty insides. A picture easily donned again when he realized how deep his brother’s hatred had run.
At length, Hughes nodded and relaxed. His acceptance couldn’t possibly be so easily won, but Slade was happy to forego an interrogation here and now. He’d had enough of those for a while.
The man adjusted his gloves and offered a smile. “I understand you are from New York City. Are you related to the Osbornes of Fifth Avenue?”
He nearly snorted. “My father is a minister in Brooklyn.”
Hughes’s eyes dimmed. No doubt if Slade didn’t have the information he so wanted, he would have booted him to the cobblestones with a kick to his poor Yankee posterior. Rich, powerful Northerners were of the utmost interest to the Knights. But common ones?
His host studied the fine wool of Slade’s coat. “You seem to have risen above such humble origins.”
How many years had he wasted trying to do just that? Rise above what didn’t need leaving? But the Slade Osborne this man needed to know hadn’t realized the error of his ways. He kept his face neutral. “I’ve done well enough.”
Hughes smiled full and bright. “Well, I hope you enjoy your tenure in our city. Have you found lodging yet?”
“I was hoping you could direct me to a boardinghouse.”
Hughes waved that off. “Nonsense. I have rooms aplenty. You are welcome to stay with me.”
Southern hospitality? Slade suspected not. He knew that particular shade of smile, and it was self-serving. This, despite his confidence and charm, was a desperate man. There was no way the captain of the Baltimore castle of the KGC would invite a stranger into his home otherwise.
Slade’s blood quickened. Did he want to spend every hour in Hughes’s company? No. But then, if he were staying in the man’s house, he would be more likely to find time to poke around. He forced a smile. “Thank you.”
Circle of Spies Page 2