She stepped silently onto the rug and across to one of the pallets on the floor. The flickering light revealed the unshaven face of a man about the age her father would have been, had he not found his death in battle. The man’s chest rose and fell evenly. Perhaps the fever had finally broken and he would no longer mumble strange, disconnected words in his sleep. She slipped in between the two pallets positioned so the men’s feet pointed to the glowing embers. Annabelle prayed spring would soon arrive and give way to warmer nights, lessening the amount of logs she’d need to chop.
She lowered herself to her knees between the two forms, telling herself that having only one petticoat was a good thing, since it gave her easier movement. Annabelle peered into the face of Private Jack Hanson, who seemed nearly docile in his sleep. He’d lost his right arm at the shoulder and his right foot. She’d been there helping the nurses hold him down when the surgeon had sawed them off, listening to a string of words that would have infuriated her father, had he been alive to hear them spoken in her presence.
Annabelle lifted the light and checked the bandage around the stump on his arm, pleased to see it was no longer seeping. She should check the one on his foot, but that would require removing his covering and—
A hand suddenly closed around her wrist, and she drew a sharp breath. “Shhhhh,” Edward Monroe hissed before the scream dislodged from her throat. He dropped his hand. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
She snatched her gaze from where it had rested at Jack’s feet and whirled around to level it on Lieutenant Monroe’s face. He offered a lopsided grin as his only apology for frightening her. She glared at him. “Are you mad? You could have made me drop the lamp and set fire to us all,” she whispered between clenched teeth.
He pulled himself to a sitting position and regarded her for too long. She was much too tired to indulge him in one of his long-winded conversations, so she thought to withdraw before her silence gave him the encouragement to continue.
“I know you took it from him.”
Her heart lurched. Impossible. She narrowed her eyes, wondering if he could see the truth in them in the low light. “I do not know of what you speak.”
He regarded her with the same disappointed look her father might have given her over another poorly done page from the arithmetic primer all those years ago.
“It is of grave importance,” he said in a strained whisper.
She settled back onto her heels and regarded him. “What is?”
He shook his head. “It was entrusted to us. I must leave here and get it to….” His voice trailed off, and she caught herself leaning forward in anticipation.
She rose and straightened her skirt. “How am I to know you were supposed to have it? Were it yours, then you would be the one with it.”
His eyes darkened. “You don’t know what you are fooling with, girl.”
Annabelle turned on her heel to leave, but he grabbed a fistful of her skirt. She looked down at him, just now noticing the sweat beading on his head. Perhaps fever hadn’t fully left him, and she’d not been able to stop the festering in his leg after all. He drew a long breath and blew it out slowly, stirring the hair that hung damp across his forehead.
“Are you loyal to the cause?”
Annabelle’s heart rate accelerated. She’d done everything to conceal her true feelings, hadn’t she? “Of course I am. Why would you even ask such a thing of a lady?”
He frowned. “I’ve seen many a lady with a notion that she can conduct her own thinking, even when it goes against the men of her country.”
Annabelle bristled. Why, of all the…. She ground her teeth. She wouldn’t learn anything if she snapped at him. “My father died resisting the Northern Aggression, sir. You would do well not to accuse me of disrespecting his memory.” She looked down at his hand still holding fast to her dress. “Unhand me, Lieutenant Monroe.”
He released her, slumping back onto his pallet. “It must get to him. I fear it is our only hope now.”
“Must get to whom?”
His eyelids fell. “Not for you to know,” he mumbled.
Annabelle leaned forward, but he had slipped into a fitful sleep, his eyes darting around behind their lids. She slipped out of the room and down the hall, not daring to breathe until she reached the safety of the rear porch. Once the door latched behind her, she let herself fall into the only remaining chair.
With trembling fingers, she slid her hand into her skirt pocket and touched the folded paper she had removed from the jacket of the man she’d buried only a short time earlier. Thinking it would be a message to a loved one, she’d planned on trying to find to whom it needed to be sent when she found a spare moment to do so. Now, she feared what she held was something of far more importance.
She pulled the slip of paper free and carefully exposed the message to the dying flame that could no longer hold the shadows at bay.
For more about the Ironwood books, Leveraging Lincoln, and the rest of The Liberator Series, visit www.StepheniaMcGee.com where you can also sign up for the newsletter for new release dates and cover reveals.
Books by Stephenia H. McGee
Ironwood Plantation Family Saga
The Whistle Walk
Heir of Hope
The Liberator Series
Leveraging Lincoln
Losing Lincoln
Labeling Lincoln
Stand Alone Titles
In His Eyes
Heir of Hope: Return to Ironwood Plantation (Ironwood Plantation Family Saga Book 2) Page 28