by Alyssa Cole
“Mmmmph!” He almost bypassed the muffled cry, but then he saw the vein of caved-in ground, and the pale hand sticking up in the moonlight. For a moment he thought to keep running; it was logical after all. Instead, he stopped and quickly began scooping up fistfuls of the soft dirt until a face was slowly revealed. His barber.
“Thank you,” the man said. His breathing was labored, his eyes wide as he strained against the heavy dirt. He was wiggling his way up through the soil, slowly, and Ewan tried pulling at his hand to speed things, but to no avail. Another shot, closer this time. More shouts, and the baying of a hound.
“Go,” the officer said. “Go quickly! Toward the river!”
“Good luck,” Ewan said. He didn’t think of what would happen to the officer when he was found. He hoped that by some turn of chance, he’d find his way out, too. But he followed the man’s command, running heedlessly because caution was a luxury he no longer had.
The dog howled again, and was joined by another.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
He repeated the phrase in his mind as he had been taught when he was a child, giving himself a single task to focus on.
Breathe in—
Ewan ran into something solid and thick at chest level, the hard thwack of it knocking him down onto his ass. A tree branch? No, it was an obstruction made of flesh; solid as oak, but all too human. He looked up and was able to make out a dark figure in the pittance of moonlight that shone down.
“Where are the others?” The whisper was harsh, hurried.
A bit of relief loosened the muscles in his back, which had been tensed and ready to spring upon the man. It seemed the appendage belonged to an ally and not a foe.
“Captured,” he replied, easing his way back. Just because he was an ally of the officers didn’t mean he’d be one to Ewan. “They brought down the stockade with their tunneling.”
There was a heavy sigh, followed by shouts from the direction of the prison.
“Let’s move. Now.” A hand reached down and interlocked with Ewan’s, the strong grip levering him up. Ewan made out the man’s shape turning in the darkness. After that his focus was fully on the man’s back, struggling to keep up, to move silently, to not fall and be left behind as they dashed through the dark woods. They crashed through trees, splashed through shallows in the river to evade the scent-seeking dogs. After what seemed like ages, Ewan realized he could no longer hear any sign of pursuit. He wasn’t sure if that was because they were no longer being chased or if the beat of his heart and the wheeze of his breath blocked out all other sound.
Ewan ran without heed of his surroundings, his sense trained on keeping up with his ally in the darkness. He regretted his tunnel vision when his foot came down into a hole and he fell forward, painfully wrenching his ankle.
He didn’t cry out as pain blasted through his ankle. “I’ve injured my ankle,” he said calmly, even as he struggled to his feet.
“Can you walk?” came the terse response.
Ewan tentatively tried to rest his weight on his injured ankle and bit back a low grunt as a million hooks of pain pulled in different directions as he applied pressure.
“I can manage.” He took a step toward the man’s voice and his ankle gave out from under him. He collapsed again, catching himself on his hands this time. “You can leave me. You’ve helped enough. Thank you.”
Ewan felt nothing at the thought of being left. It was often the most sensible solution to a problem, though rarely used because human decency and logic sometimes sat on opposite sides of the fence.
“I won’t,” the man bit out. “Besides, if you get picked up by a patrol, you could lead back to us, and I can’t take any chances.”
“I wouldn’t talk,” Ewan said. He wasn’t lying.
“So you say.” The man sighed. “I knew something like this would happen. All right, come on then.”
He knelt and pulled Ewan’s arm over his shoulders, sliding an arm around his torso to support his weight. They made their way slowly, Ewan trying his best not to be a burden. They soon arrived at the perimeter of a property. There they came upon a shack—Ewan could make out the silhouette of a large house in the distance—and the man used a key on the padlock that held it closed.
“In here for now,” he said brusquely, but his touch was gentle and slow with his own fatigue as he helped Ewan inside.
“Thank you,” Ewan managed. The words seemed inadequate, but the man gave his shoulder a pat and then moved back into the night, closing and locking the door behind him.
Ewan sat slumped against the wall of the shack, imagining what else filled the dark space. Gardening implements? Food? Weapons?
The bodies of men too poleaxed to verify who was aiding them and why?
He lay with the dull sensations that throbbed through him, accepting the burst of red behind his eyes when he shifted his leg too quickly and jarred his ankle. He breathed through the pain. The stitch in his side and the dryness of his lips, his battered feet encased in shoes that had lost their soles miles before they reached wherever he’d found himself. All of those painful things were simply reminders that he was alive, ones that he dearly needed from time to time.
Ewan started up into a sitting position at the scratch of a key searching for the lock, although he hadn’t heard any footsteps. Had he fallen asleep? Likely.
The door opened and two figures stepped in, closing it behind them. A match was struck and held to the wick of a candle. The brightness dazzled him at first, and then he was sure he must be dreaming, because there was Marlie’s face illuminated in the circle of soft light. Her hair was braided into a crown on her head, like the laurel of antiquity, and her shoulders were bare save for a fold of white material.
Had his fantasy come to life?
Then the light flickered as she made some adjustment. She pulled her robe closed, a dark, heavy wool that covered her to the neck.
She stepped closer, and then those eyes that haunted his fantasies went wide. “Socrates?”
“I’ve been called such before,” he said, his pain well and truly forgotten. Ewan realized that his mouth had curved up into a smile, rather inappropriate given his current situation. He frowned, hoping to balance it out into some semblance of seriousness. “I also go by Ewan McCall.”
The man who had guided him stepped into the light and Ewan recognized the same wry expression he’d seen a month or so ago. Get in line, son.
“And you’re Tobias,” Ewan said. “Thank you for your help.” Tobias seemed a bit taken aback that Ewan knew his name, and he heaved a sigh when he turned to Marlie.
“You’ve injured your ankle, I hear,” she said in that lovely cadence that he heard every time he read her letters to himself.
“He wouldn’t be here otherwise,” Tobias said. “I told you—”
“Well, he’s here now, so let’s see what we can do.” She knelt before him and lifted his leg up so that the heel of his foot rested between her thighs, and Ewan let out a strangled sound that she mistook for pain.
“I’m sorry.” Her hands went to the hem of his too-short pants, raising them a bit to get a better view of his ankle, and her brows drew together at what she saw. Ewan’s gaze was so fixated on her face that he didn’t notice what her hands were doing until pain radiated through his ankle. He didn’t allow himself to cry out.
“Can you move your foot this way and that?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
She stared at him. “So do it.”
Ewan let out a pained laugh at his attempt. “Perhaps my injury is graver than I imagined.”
“Perhaps.” She began pulling off his shoe, gently, and Ewan found himself caught in a strange matrix of arousal and pain—and embarrassment. She was fresh and smelled of flowers, and he needed a scouring to be anywhere near clean. Still, she didn’t wrinkle her nose as she settled the heel of his bare foot back between her thighs, squeezing to hold it in place as she examined it. Ewan was acutely aware that she
wore nothing but a shift beneath her robe.
“Looks like a sprain. A bad one. I don’t think you’ll get far if you try to go anywhere for the next few days.”
“Sarah is going to have my hide for this,” Tobias muttered, pacing behind Marlie.
“She said no new operations,” Marlie said. “This was already in place. Besides, if you hadn’t gone, what would have become of him?”
“Him? What about the others? I went for a group of men, not one.”
“Even one man is worth saving,” she said, a serious tone to her voice that Ewan had never heard before.
Tobias finally stopped pacing, his sigh indicating his acquiescence.
“He can rest out here for a spell, I suppose,” he said, peering over Marlie’s shoulder as she worked. “Melody’s been sticking that pointy little nose of hers everywhere in the house, but here is safe enough.”
“Hm. I’m not sure I agree.” Marlie’s voice was softer now, distracted, as she opened a bottle and soaked a strip of cloth with its contents. A strong herbal scent filled the air—Ewan picked up notes of sage and peppermint—and then she began wrapping the cool, damp cloth around his injury. “This shed is away from the house, that’s true, but he might be discovered at any time.”
Ewan watched the scene before him play out with detached curiosity. He combed through every bit of gossip he’d heard about Sarah Lynch: freed her slaves, paid her black staff, probable Unionist, gave freely to those imprisoned by the Confederates. At the prison he had assumed that Marlie and Tobias were at the same level, but there was something about the dynamic between them. He was deferential, as if he worked for Marlie. Which meant . . .
“Are you a Lynch?” Ewan asked, only realizing how tactless it was when both sets of eyes narrowed in his direction.
“The Lynches have the distinction of holding me in their ranks,” she said without looking up at him. He assumed the jolt his ankle received as she worked was a coincidence. Tobias rolled his eyes and resumed the conversation Ewan had interrupted.
“Melody never came out here before,” he said. “You think she’d be caught dead doing anything close to work?”
Marlie’s lips pursed. “She hasn’t come here yet, Tobias. But she could, and she likely will eventually to see what else she can try to claim as her own. Or if she keeps hinting to her Home Guard friends, Lynchwood might be searched. There’s only one place she has no access to, that would be overlooked in a search, and we both know it.”
“No,” Tobias said, drawing himself up tall. “It’s too dangerous. We need to go get Sarah.”
One corner of Marlie’s mouth turned up, as if the idea of danger was exciting, and Ewan felt the pull of her despite his throbbing muscles. “You knew it was dangerous when I asked you to do this, and yet you went out into the night to help those men. If I ask you to put yourself at risk, I must also be willing to do my part. I will handle Sarah.” She finished wrapping Ewan’s ankle and sighed. “Besides, one malnourished Yank won’t change our odds too much, given everything else.”
They looked at Ewan at the same time again, Tobias annoyed, Marlie unreadable.
“Do you know how to be quiet, Socrates?” she asked.
He nearly laughed, thinking of all those nights curled in a corner with a book in front of him; he’d peek over the top after slowly turning each page to make sure the quiet swish hadn’t caught his father’s attention.
“I’m well practiced in the art of silence, Miss Marlie.”
Finally, she smiled at him, and it was like the cool breeze that had induced him to run toward freedom back at the camp. Something danced through him, and he tore his gaze from her face. No feeling should have been dancing, prancing, or otherwise happily making itself known at the sight of her. Fantasizing about Marlie had been one thing, but this was reality, and in reality he was a man who was neither worthy of her nor available for attachment.
He forced himself to his feet, taking the pain and focusing on it instead of Marlie’s beauty.
“Come with me,” she said.
CHAPTER 6
Marlie had been attempting to decode the letter she’d received from a Mr. LaValle, one of the higher-ups in the Loyal League, for nearly twenty minutes. She’d dipped her finger in a dish of milk, spread it over the surface of the paper, and calmly waited for the scrawling black text to appear once the SS fluid was activated. She’d glanced between the words and her Polybius square, drawing out their hidden meaning. But she hadn’t been able to move beyond the second sentence on account of the distraction caused by the escaped prisoner she’d impulsively decided to harbor in her home. Ewan was separated by the wood backing of her desk and the wall it was pushed up against—and he’d been silent the entire day—but she could feel him.
Her nerves were frayed, her mouth was dry, and her hands shook every time she picked up a pencil, and not just because the man she’d spent an unseemly amount of time thinking about had been secreted into her private quarters. When she sent Tobias to complete the mission they’d undertaken on their last visit to the prison, she’d thought he’d be leading the group of men away from the prison, not bringing home an injured man in need of aid. Perhaps Sarah had been correct; Marlie was not prepared for this. She’d downplayed the danger when talking with Tobias, but now that she was sitting in the quiet of her rooms, ears straining for any sign of movement from Ewan, she realized just how foolish it had been to propose this. It was reckless, dangerous, and improper—and Marlie fairly hummed with excitement in spite of those things. Or because of them.
She turned her attention back to the page, willing herself to focus despite the fraught situation she was in. After a few moments of decoding, she finally had a complete message.
I thank you for your continued information about Cahill and his Home Guard. Reports confirm that resistance to the Secessionists is strong in your area, and shows no sign of slackening. A Dr. Johnson has reached out to Union Forces about the Heroes of America, whom you mentioned in your previous correspondence. It appears that what we thought were welcome pockets of local resistance are transforming into a coordinated anti-Reb front. I understand why Governor Vance is so eager to crush these groups and present a united Confederate front—Europe is watching, after all. But so are we. You are the only one of our people who’s had contact with the group; if ever the opportunity arises to build a stronger link with the Heroes, you have our full support.
Marlie put the letter down, her already overtaxed mind struggling to reconcile what she’d just read with reality. Her involvement with the League had occurred by happenstance, a natural acquaintance born of whispers here and there from conductors and escaping slaves. Helping the officers escape had fallen to Tobias, and had been independent of her interactions with the Loyal League. This was the first time anything had been asked of her beyond basic information, and Marlie wondered if LaValle would laugh if he knew whom he was asking. Marlie Lynch, who had spent more time with plants than people and never left her home without an escort. Who, these days, was hardly brave enough to leave her rooms.
Marlie Lynch, who has a Union man hidden in her home. She allowed herself to feel a bit proud of that bit of daring, to feel as brave as the detectives she’d read of. However, she was no detective, and the dispatch reinforced something that had been nagging at her all day: The danger of the Home Guard was clear and immediate. The area was crawling with them as they tried to flush out the skulkers; the other Railroad conductors had even temporarily ceased their work because of the danger. Thus, in addition to a woman who would turn them over to the authorities at the drop of a hat under her roof, Marlie also had irrefutable proof of the Lynches’ Unionist leanings and no idea what to do with him once he recovered beyond leaving him to his luck.
And Sarah . . . Marlie still hadn’t told her. That morning, Melody had forced Sarah to go a-calling with her, visiting the neighbors Sarah hadn’t spoken to in years—the dyed-in-the-wool slave masters who wouldn’t acknowledge Sarah in the street
and published thinly veiled threats against her in the local paper.
What she’d thought to be one secret to protect Sarah from worry had grown into out-and-out deception. She didn’t think Sarah would force Ewan to leave, but part of her was worried about how she would react. Sarah always wanted Marlie to err on the side of caution, to not do too much too fast. She’d been stunned by Marlie’s volunteering to go to the prison herself. She knew nothing of the agreement between Tobias and the officers to lead them from the prison. And she’d certainly never had an inkling of the fact that Marlie had been talking with the men enough to grow fond of one of them.
Marlie tried to imagine what she would do in Sarah’s position, if she were told that a strange man whose presence put them all at risk was holed up in the attic, but each time she could only think, Well, it’s Socrates. That was an explanation that wouldn’t pass muster.
How could she explain the interactions she’d had with him? The letters she’d written when she’d thought that the walls of the prison and society would stand strong between them? How could she explain that the last time she’d seen him at Randolph, he’d looked at her as if he knew her, and it’d made her feel as if maybe she wanted him to? His blue eyes were pure ice, but when they’d rested on her she’d felt their heat. It’d been like the realization she had the first time she’d traveled into the winter cold without gloves: Ice could burn.
And his safety now rested on Sarah’s reaction to Marlie’s omission of facts. Her fears put into stark relief the nature of the relationship between them; Sarah could say “no” and Ewan would have to leave, despite what Marlie wanted or believed was right.
There was a sliding sound beneath her skirts and Marlie jumped, nearly toppling back in her chair. She righted herself, then peered under her chair and saw a slip of paper on the floor.