by Alyssa Cole
He emitted a low sound that conveyed how very frustrated he was with her, and one of the deserters marching alongside them gave him a narrow look.
“Do you think I’d leave you with a group of strange men known for pillaging the countryside?” he asked. A flash of lamplight passed over his face, revealing just how angry he truly was.
“These men fight against the Confederacy,” she said.
“A common enemy does not mean they are friends to us,” he said. “It does not keep you safe, and given their number, neither can I.” He had been speaking in a low voice, but the last bit came out loud and harsh. Ewan’s mouth slammed shut into a blanched white line, as if he’d just revealed confidential information. Given how closely he guarded his thoughts, perhaps he had.
“Your woman is safe here,” the man holding the lantern interjected. “I’m Henry. If anyone gives you a problem, tell them you’re a friend of Henry’s. Won’t be any more problems, maybe ’cept for them.”
Marlie looked over at him; his skin was only slightly lighter than hers, but his hair was long, dark, and pin straight. She knew there were Tuscarora who piloted Union soldiers and fought with the skulkers, but she couldn’t be sure of his tribe.
“Thank you, Henry. I’m Marlie and this is Ewan.”
Henry nodded. “We’ve got rules like any army here, and unlike the Home Guard, we abide by ’em. No hurting women and children.”
“Since you’re here with the deserters, I assume that you have not served,” Ewan said. “But surely you know what soldiers have done, soldiers on both sides, whether the rules allow it or no.”
Henry stopped and faced Ewan. “Like I said. Tell ’em you’re a friend of Henry’s. These men know better, but if one of ’em don’t, he knows better than to hurt a friend of mine. Your woman is safe.”
Marlie was about to interject that she was no one’s woman, but Ewan nodded and took her hand again. If she pulled away, it would create a scene, so she walked on, face heated. This would be the last time, though; Marlie was making decisions for herself from now on.
“Where are you taking us?” Ewan asked.
“To see our commander, who took ill after the last skirmish,” Henry said. “We got a lot of sick men around here, and if you can doctor ’em, we’d be much obliged.”
“How many men are you all together?” she asked. She had a few bottles of tonics, dried leaves for healing teas . . .
“About five hundred or so,” he said. “Got everything from dysentery, headaches, diphtheria, festering wounds, blood sickness, fever—laying out ain’t an easy life, miss.”
Marlie was overwhelmed by the numbers, but she felt a kind of peace settle over her. She had been hoping for a way to help: She was no detective, no warrior, but she could help in this small way. And if she ingratiated herself with them on behalf of the Loyal League, she could offer the possibility of an alliance to LaValle, as he’d requested. With the right support, these men could do even more damage to the Confederacy, like a sickness that weakens from within, making a body susceptible to the least outside blow.
“I’ll help as best I can,” she said. They were heading up an incline, and Marlie understood they were in the mountains now. She had heard of skulkers in the caves in this region, and it appeared the reports were correct.
“And I’ll assist you,” Ewan said, interjecting again.
“I don’t need your help,” Marlie whispered, finally pulling her hand away. “I can do this myself. I know I’m one of your projects, but if you need to keep yourself occupied there are surely other ways to be of use.”
Ewan’s brows drew close together. “I understand that everything in your life has changed. But my feelings for you have not altered; I don’t know what project you speak of, but I said I would protect you and help you and I intend to do it.”
“Feelings for me? A few kisses in the dark do not connote feelings, Socrates. You need to understand something and understand it well—I am not in your control.”
She stalked off ahead of him, shaking with a rage whose source she could not pinpoint. Ewan had done nothing to be the recipient of such a tongue lashing, but he was the most convenient target. She could understand this—logically, which he would appreciate—but she was just plain angry and the heat of it boiled her logic down to one molten spike, directed at whoever ventured nearest.
They walked on in silence until Henry led them behind a spray of kudzu that hid the entrance to a cave. It wasn’t large enough to fit five hundred men, but a fair amount had crammed their way in, judging from the murmurs that echoed off the stone walls—and the stench.
Low fires were burning, more for light than to give off heat, and the trio picked their way around exhausted men lying stretched out on the floor. This wasn’t so different from the prison: men down on their luck and lacking resources. But Tobias was not a few feet away, ready to step in if needed. No carriage waited outside the gates to bring her back to her life of luxury.
Ewan is here, some pesky inner voice reminded her, and she tried not to allow herself to feel heartened by that.
They reached a man laid out on a pallet, one pant leg cut off to reveal a sloppily bandaged wound. He was mixed race, with light brown skin that was flushed with fever. It was warm in the cave, but not so warm as to induce the sweat streaking through the dirt on his face. He was shivering, which wasn’t a good sign.
“This woman is here to doctor ya, Colonel Bill,” Henry said as Marlie knelt down beside him. The man turned his head stiffly, and startled a bit when he caught sight of her.
“Look at them eyes. You a witch woman?” he asked through chattering teeth.
Marlie debated what answer to give. Weeks ago, she would have taken offense at the question. But she thought about her mother’s memoirs, of the work she had been taught that was passed down through generations.
“Something like that,” she said gently, laying the back of her hand to his forehead. “I’m going to do my best to help you. And your men.”
“My wife and kids is waiting for me,” he said. “I told them I’d come home, so I’d ’preciate that.” He struggled to smile and Marlie stood.
“I must go collect the items I’ll need. Can you get plenty of water boiling?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Henry said. “Do you need an escort?”
“For God’s sake, I’ll go foraging with you,” Ewan said. The frustration in his tone was evident. Marlie rolled her eyes. Henry let out a chuckle.
“Day will break soon,” she said, “meaning none of you should be out and about. We’ll make the first trip, and if we need assistance, we’ll come wrangle a few men.”
Henry handed them a few burlap sacks and then they headed back out into the weak light of the impending dawn. Marlie didn’t look at Ewan, not because she was angry but because she had pushed him away and didn’t know what to do now.
They walked the path down the mountain in silence, and she thought that perhaps this was just how it would be between them now. That was what she wanted, wasn’t it?
She spotted some young dandelions growing, the roots of which made a potent painkiller, and began to move toward them. Ewan took her by the arm, holding her in place.
“Marlie.” He closed his eyes for a moment, nostrils flaring, and damned if it didn’t remind her of the moment he’d found his release between her thighs. The thought of it sent a shock of desire through her, incompatible with her internal directive to avoid contact with him at all costs.
He lowered his mouth toward hers, slowly, giving her time to turn away, but she didn’t. She waited for what seemed much too long and then his lips pressed firmly against hers. She marveled at how familiar—how right—his lips moving against hers, his tongue easing its entry, felt. He kissed her like a man without language, whose only method of conveying a message was this spectacular communion. She allowed herself a moment of that bliss, of desire racing through her recklessly, and then she pulled her head back.
“What are you doi
ng? You agreed not to touch me again, quite easily I might add.”
He made a sound of frustration. “Communication isn’t easy for me. I don’t always know what people mean, if I’m misunderstanding words and actions. But I don’t understand what happened between our . . . encounter and today. Please explain yourself.”
He stood waiting like a tutor who wanted to hear the multiplication tables recited.
“We established earlier that I owe you nothing,” Marlie said. “Let me go, Ewan.”
“Because you know nothing of me, is that right?” His brow bunched with trenches of contemplation. “Let me tell you. My name is Ewan Alexander McCall. My family worked the land of Helenburgh until we were driven from Scotland and arrived in the US, settling in Kentucky. I’ve told you of my childhood, but I suspect it’s the war you wish to know about?”
Marlie nodded, pinned to the spot by the sheer emotion behind his words, by the intensity of his gaze, which seemed to freeze her in place—not with fear, but with curiosity.
“I enlisted and was seen as a mediocre soldier, and rightly so. But I rose quickly through the ranks once it was discovered that I was especially good at a particular form of information extraction that would benefit the Union in these dire times. For the first time, my attention to detail, my relentless questions and my . . .” He paused. “My lack of empathy, as I was told, were seen as beneficial.”
Marlie wanted to pull away then because she felt a dread that she knew wasn’t an omen, but common sense.
“Beneficial to what?” she asked.
“I was—am—a counterintelligence agent,” he said. His shoulders slumped, but his grip didn’t slacken. “When high-value enemy agents were caught, I was tasked with interrogating them. And if they didn’t comply, if they didn’t provide the information I knew they had . . .”
“You tortured them,” she finished for him. She wished Ewan had never spoken, that she had let him just keep kissing her until the world came tumbling down. She pulled away and he did release her then. “And that’s how you know Cahill.”
Because you’re cut from the same cloth.
He nodded. “You’ve seen his limp. I caused it, during an interrogation.”
“Is that pride in your tone?”
“No, it is regret.” His grip tightened on her arm, then relaxed. “The day I interrogated him was the day I began to question everything. It should have been clear: He committed an evil act, he had information, and I needed it to prevent more evil. But he brought out something in me . . . for the first time I took pleasure in hurting another person. For the first time, I hurt a man because I wanted to.”
Those icy blue eyes of his were filled with a pain and confusion Marlie hadn’t seen before. “I didn’t kill Cahill because I feared becoming a monster. Instead I let one loose and he ended up on your doorstep.”
She tried to reconcile the kind, helpful man she knew with one who could take on a man like Cahill and come out the victor. And she could see it, now that she really thought about it. How he did everything so precisely, and could justify anything. But it didn’t make sense—when Ewan had hurt her with his words, he had suffered. What had it cost him to hurt men with his hands, to cause physical pain?
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.
“Because I care for you, Marlie. I care for you in a way I’ve never cared for another person, that I never wanted to care for another person.”
Two admissions in direct succession that pulled her heart in opposite directions. Marlie felt an actual pain and placed a hand at her chest as if keeping it from breaking into pieces.
“Ewan . . .”
“I won’t lie to you. And I know this means that you will not have me. But I’d rather you hate me for the right reasons than for false assumptions.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose and squinted, as if he were in pain, then his icy gaze was on her once more. “You wish to paint me as a villain who would use you and toss you aside at his earliest convenience, like Stephen did to your mother. As a man who would value your mind and your body and your spirit so low that I could leave them behind at the Tennessee line without a second thought, and perhaps that would be best for both of us, but I would never throw you over, Marlie. You deserve better than a man like me, so the point is rendered moot.”
He turned and walked into the woods, stooping to examine a bush a few feet away.
“Blackberry. You can use the leaves, berries, and bark, correct?”
Marlie stared at his hunched-over form, still reeling from his words. “Correct.”
Ewan continued his acts of service and in that moment she understood them for what they were—not a pastime, not a distraction, but a form of devotion. But devotion from a man who would use violence to bend others to his will—even if he never lifted a finger against her—was a frightening thing.
Her thoughts were a dizzying jumble, but day was breaking and men were depending on her. She did not know what to say to Ewan, so she headed for the dandelions and began digging them up with shaking hands.
CHAPTER 23
Marlie sat beside Bill, lifting the cup of dandelion root tea to his lips as she had hours earlier, and for much of the previous night.
“Thank you,” Bill said. “I wasn’t sure what this Loyal League was about or if it was a trap or somethin’, but if they got members like you, maybe we need to do some reconsidering.”
“We’ll talk more later,” she said, though pride welled up in her.
With the help of Ewan, Henry, and some of the other men, she had set up a slapdash work space and had been mixing steadily since her arrival, with the exception of a few hours curled up beside her workbench in slumber.
In addition to the pain-relieving dandelion tea for Bill and the others, she’d made blackberry root and sweet gum tisane for those suffering from loose bowels and dysentery. The tonic of dogwood berries she was brewing would work as well as quinine for those men who were feverish. She’d made her rounds through dozens of men, figuring who needed what, applying the herbal astringent she’d made from a mélange of plants to clean cuts and open wounds.
Her fingers ached from stripping and crushing and macerating, and she was more tired than she had ever been in her life, but she kept moving. If she stopped, she would have to face Ewan, who trailed behind her, proffering up whatever tool or tonic she needed. She wasn’t sure if he was playing at nurse or sentry, but she was too exhausted to decline his assistance.
She was angry with him, but that didn’t mean much, because she was angry at everyone. He was now another person on a long list of those who had kept things from her. Why? To protect her?
But she hurt for him, too. He did not have her bedside manner, but she could see how he brightened when a man’s pain was relieved. When he wasn’t by her side, he was helping sick men get up and about, dashing out chamber pots and bringing clean water and strips of cloth to help the immobile wash themselves. These were projects, as she called them, but not the projects of a man without empathy, or a man who drew pleasure from the pain of others.
You should be frightened, she reminded herself. You should be disgusted.
It occurred to her that the men she was offering her services to now had done things she might consider evil in other circumstances: robbing secesh of livestock and crops, ambushing Rebels. They may have been the men who burned Cahill out of his lodgings. But could she judge them and tell them they were wrong as the Home Guard tortured their families and hunted them like dogs? She had thought the line between right and wrong was clear, but now it was hopelessly blurred.
She stumbled over a stretched-out skulker and Ewan’s hand shot out to steady her even as she righted herself with her own flagging energy. Why did his touch, swift as if he’d been waiting to catch her, both irritate her and make her want to weep at the same time?
“Perhaps some rest would do you good,” he said. “Someplace better than the stone floor where you dropped when you were too tired to work any
more.” His voice was flat, neither harsh with anger nor tender.
Marlie nodded stiffly.
“Is there somewhere she can rest away from the men?” Ewan asked. Henry stepped out from a group and beckoned them. He led them out of the cave and up the mountain a bit, into the trees, where a smaller cave had been dug beneath the roots of an oak.
“No one should bother you two here.” He clapped Ewan’s shoulder, giving the words subtext that reminded Marlie of the last small space they’d been in and what had occurred. “We’ll be moving out later tonight, getting provisions for a strike we’ve been planning. Come talk once the sun has gone down.”
“Thank you. We will,” Ewan said, and led her into the small space.
Marlie dropped onto the blanket that covered the hard ground, wincing as the gnarled roots and rocks pressing up through the hard earth jabbed at her. After a moment, she no longer cared about discomfort—she was just happy to lie still.
“You worked very hard,” Ewan said, settling beside her. He left as wide a space as was possible between them, but his hand was stretched out in her direction.
“It felt good to be able to do something more for the war effort,” she said. “I’m tired, but I also feel full of . . . I don’t know. It’s like everyone I helped gave me a bit of their spirit maybe, and I can feel it. I used to feel the same after visiting the prison.” She scoffed. “I’m sure you find that ridiculous.”
It was strange how it still felt normal to sit and talk with him, even knowing what he had done. He had tortured people, but had a natural capacity for kindness. She saw it in all the little ways he’d helped her, both in her rooms and once they’d left Lynchwood. She couldn’t ignore what he had done, but should she condemn him for it? Could she?
Ewan shifted a bit. “Do you know what I felt after I did my part in aiding the Union?”
Please don’t say you felt anything good, Marlie hoped, as if it mattered. He was a torturer, no better than Cahill. But some stubborn part of her couldn’t come to terms with that.