by Jo Robertson
His heart skipped a beat or two. Foolish indeed, he thought, and forced his gaze away from her mouth.
"You need to ask Jim Wade about the ring," she continued. "Pressure him into telling you the truth." She slanted a challenging glance his way. "You're good at that, aren't you?"
"I suppose I am." He cleared his throat and changed the subject. "Have you figured out Nell's code?"
"No," she confessed reluctantly. "I swear, Gage, Nell was a lot more clever than any of us gave her credit for."
He stood and held out his hand to pull her up. "Perhaps I can assist you with it."
"You don't even think the note is significant," she said suspiciously. "Why are you offering to help?"
"Good grief, Bailey. Nell sewed her dance card inside a pillow and hid a note inside the card. Of course, I'm interested."
"Oh, well, that's good." She looked somewhat mollified. "Then we shall work on it together."
She hesitated a moment. "You keep reminding me that I'm not to be involved with your investigation. Have you changed your mind then?"
Her face with its light scattering of freckles looked fragile for a brief moment. He tucked her arm through his and patted her hand. He forced a grumpy note into his voice. "It seems I'm always changing my mind around you, Bailey."
"Good." He felt her relax next to him. "That's good."
When he turned, he glimpsed the small smile of satisfaction on her face.
Chapter 16
The buck was strong, his black flesh gleaming tautly over powerful, sinewy muscles. Naked from the waist up, his shoulders and arms were like boulders. But the blow to his head had felled him and he knelt on all fours, shaking his head and roaring like a wounded beast.
The white man didn't think of himself as a killer. He thought of his actions as part of the natural order of things. After all, man had dominion over the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, and yes, the beasts of the earth.
The beasts of burden. And when those beasts became sick or failed to perform, the master put them down, didn't he? He couldn't allow one diseased animal to infect the herd.
The man stepped closer, gripping the rifle barrel, the stock stained with the buck's blood, which ran freely down the side of his face and dripped into his eyes.
The man aimed again and swung hard, catching the buck on the side of the face. He fell over, no longer roaring like a lion, but bleating like a sacrificial lamb.
The man aimed one last blow toward the front of the head and swung with all his might, the jar of the impact sending ripples of numbness from his hands and wrists up to his elbows and even his shoulders. The buck toppled sideways and lay motionless. The man panted heavily with the exertion of the task ... and the tingle of pleasure.
Long minutes later, after he'd left the body hidden in the Swamp, he examined the stock of his rifle. Damn! Gore and blood, and what bits of brain the coon had, thickened on the wood grain. Likely it wouldn't come clean.
Next time he'd find something else to use.
No sense in ruining a perfectly good rifle.
#
Meghan thought the bright and sunny, but very cold late Sunday afternoon was the perfect time to speak with Mrs. Nolan about her daughter's school progress. Church was long over and suppers likely finished. She rapped sharply on the front door of the palatial Nolan house and looked around her while she waited for someone to answer.
The porch landing was wide and neat, but not nearly as inviting as the Bailey home with its porch swing and year-long plants in colorful containers. Ivy curled around lattice on either side of the porch, but it was so overgrown that it resembled a Hawthorne setting.
The windows were dark, heavy drapes covering them, preventing the slightest hint of sunshine from filtering in. How did one survive in such gloominess?
She raised her hand again, intending to use the knocker this time, when the door suddenly swung open and Mr. Nolan stood in the doorway, his face cleanly shaven, his cheeks high rosy slashes of flesh that exuded happiness and joy. His lips were full and tinted pink and his brows were thick above the palest shade of blue she'd ever seen.
It was the eyes that betrayed him. While on the outside, Oliver Nolan was all smiles and jocularity, the eyes were like arctic skies. So light and clear they seemed transparent. So chilly that one look at them sent a frigid blast to the marrow of the bones.
"Miss Bailey, our little school teacher come to visit. How pleasant to see you." Nolan peered around her as if he half-expected someone to accompany her. "Are you quite alone, then?"
How could he make the innocuous words sound so villainous?
"Yes," Meg said, "I've come to speak with Mrs. Nolan."
He frowned and the motion seemed so artificial to her that Meghan wondered at the sincerity of his next words. "She's not feeling well today. I'm afraid she's resting."
Meg couldn't keep the disappointment from her voice. "Oh, I'm so sorry."
She fidgeted on the landing, suddenly feeling the dank cold seep into her boots and beneath her cloak and gloves. "I was rather hoping to speak with her about Emily's school progress."
"Perhaps another – " he began, only to be interrupted by Mrs. Nolan's voice directly behind him.
"Who is it, Oliver?" she asked and stepped to the side so that Meghan could see her. The woman didn't look particularly ill and she was certainly fully clothed, not at all like she'd been lying down.
When Mrs. Nolan saw Meghan, her face lifted in delight. "Hello, Miss Bailey, do come in, dear. It's such a chilly day in spite of the bright sunshine. I think the light simply mocks us with it semblance of warmth, don't you?"
As she chattered, she urged Meghan into the foyer, took her coat and hat, and ushered her into the sitting room where she pulled a bell to summon her maid, Sally.
After tea had been delivered, along with the butter cookies Sally was famous for making, the two women settled down to talk. Mr. Nolan had conveniently – in Meghan's mind, at any rate – disappeared.
"I came to talk about Emily," Meghan said when the opportunity presented itself.
Mrs. Nolan set her cup down rather sharply on the table in front of them where they sat together on the sofa. "Oh, dear, I do hope she's doing well in her studies."
"Yes, she is. Emily is one of my brightest students."
A smile and flush of color livened Mrs. Nolan's normally pale face. "I'm so glad. She's a clever little thing."
"Yes," Meghan answered noncommittally and took a sip of tea. "She's rather slow to make friends, though, don't you think?"
"I guess I've never noticed. She seems very ... content."
Content, Meghan thought. A child ought not to be content. She should be exuberant, lively, full of energy – none of the things that Emily Nolan was. "She prefers to stay close to my side rather than engage in the activities with the other children."
"She's shy," Mrs. Nolan explained.
Meghan glanced at the open door and beyond to the foyer. She wondered if Mr. Nolan were lurking behind the door, listening to every word the two women spoke.
Which was ridiculous, of course. This was Mr. Nolan's house and he could have joined them had he wished to. Why did she feel so uncomfortable around the man?
Meghan lowered her voice. "I believe it's more than simple shyness, Mrs. Nolan." She tugged at her bottom lip with her teeth. "She seems to be – to be afraid of something or – someone." The words trailed off when Meghan could hear how foolish they sounded spoken aloud.
She tried again. "Emily doesn't socialize with the other children at all. She seems almost reluctant to make friends. I thought perhaps you could think of a way that I could draw her out of her shell."
"I don't think I know what you mean, Miss Bailey," Mrs. Nolan said, rubbing one smooth hand on top of the other, a worried frown between her finely arched brows. "Emily behaves perfectly normal here at home."
Meghan strongly suspected that Mrs. Nolan had little idea how normal children behaved and didn't even rec
ognize that her child's behavior was unusual. She opened her mouth to speak further when Emily herself suddenly appeared by the open door of the parlor.
From the corner of her eye, Meghan caught the girl standing silently there. She suspected that had she not noticed Emily, she would've continued her vigilance, hovering by the door, listening, waiting until someone acknowledged her.
"Emily, dear," Mrs. Nolan said a little too brightly, "look who's come to visit, your own Miss Bailey."
Eight-year-old Emily Nolan edged into the room and immediately moved to stand near to Meghan, almost clinging in her intensity.
"Hi, Emily, what have you been doing with your several days' holiday?" Meghan asked, putting her arm around the girl's waist.
While Mrs. Nolan left the parlor a moment to replenish the refreshments, Emily spoke quietly of the activities of the past few days, but only after Meghan painstakingly pulled every item of news from her. Then the girl paused, her large blue eyes round and wide while she bent to whisper in Meghan's ear. "I have a secret."
"Oh, really? Having secrets is quite exciting, isn't it?"
Emily nodded and paused a long moment, clearly expecting Meghan to prod her about the nature of the secret.
Meghan decided to indulge her. "Can you tell me?"
Emily scrunched up her face and thought a moment. "I don't suppose it's really a very big secret. It's about Poppa."
That tidbit piqued Meghan's curiosity. "What about your father?"
"Poppa likes to play dress up."
A thrill of excitement, akin to imminent discovery, rushed through Meghan's body. What could the child mean by admitting such a thing about her father? What did dressing up mean to a child like Emily? Likely something harmless, surely nothing inappropriate.
She gave Emily a teasing poke in the belly. "What a silly thing to say about your father."
Emily's mouth turned downward in a pout. "It's true."
"What do you mean? Dress up how?" Surely Emily didn't mean Mr. Nolan dressed up in women's clothing? She'd heard that some men engaged in such unnatural activities, but she had no real knowledge of it.
Emily laughed, obviously pleased that her teacher believed her. Or was the girl simply playing a childish game?
"I'll show you," the girl said gleefully.
Meghan followed Emily out of the parlor through the foyer and around the corner where a great staircase wound upward to a second level. She didn't go up the stairs, but instead raced around to the stairwell where, scarcely seen from the decorative designs on the wall, she banged the flat of her hand on a portion of the wall and a door swung open.
"In here," she said, ducking low.
It was a storage area, hardly detectable from the outside. Meghan bent and followed the girl into the dusty well. Emily squatted down before a large trunk partially hidden in a barely discernible alcove. She swung open the lid of the trunk with some effort and Meghan was too aghast to stop her.
"Here are Poppa's dress-up clothes," Emily said.
Meghan knew immediately what the garments were, what keeping them hidden meant, and what dark secret Mr. Nolan kept in a trunk beneath the stairwell in a secret alcove.
The white robes, the pointed hat, the edge of the red cross – all screamed their significance.
It was only much later, when Meghan had left that she realized she had not pressed Mrs. Nolan with her major concern regarding Emily's behavior. How the girl not only clung to her – and other women as well – but that she had a marked fear of men.
Emily shied away from the janitor who cleaned up at the schoolhouse, a harmless, friendly old man. And behaved with silent terror when the school board visited or the mail carrier delivered a package.
It occurred to Meghan that Emily was not generally shy at all, but terrified of men.
#
Tucker Gage performed extraordinarily well during his first two years at West Point. After living in a small town, the frenetic hustle of New York excited him, and he chose to remain there year round rather than returning home for holidays.
Although he found the winters mildly distressing, he quickly adjusted. He thought the state was one of the most beautiful in the nation and spent many of his free hours along the Hudson River.
Congenial and unfailingly polite in the tradition of southern-bred young men, he was a favorite among the other cadets and particularly the teaching staff. Along with most of the five hundred ninety-nine fellow cadets that formed the core of his freshman class, Tucker studied engineering, and upon graduation and the receipt of his commission, was assigned a post in the West.
By the end of his third year, he'd assimilated the discipline already ingrained in him by his father and grandfather and the Academy code of "Duty, Honor, Country." His already highly honed sense of honor deepened, and by the time he was commissioned at the age of twenty-two, his strict moral code became the foundation of his character.
He was allowed three weeks to see his family before he was shipped by railroad to Virginia City, Nevada. He despised every moment of his time at home. A stranger to his parents, even his gentle mother, he couldn't converse with old friends or family members.
He felt like a man crawling around in someone else's skin.
When the day came for him to ship out, he felt only relief.
But within six months of his Army experience, every ethical fiber of his moral code shattered all to hell and back.
#
Solicitor Alexander Westin scrutinized Marshal Gage. He'd read the coroner's report and frankly didn't like it one bit. "There's no evidence here, Tucker," he said and worried the small pointed beard on his gaunt-looking face. "Not sure I have enough to warrant an arrest."
The two men sat opposite one another in the courthouse where Westin kept his office several blocks down from the Station House. Night had fallen and they'd been considering their options for handling James Wade.
Gage shrugged. "Maybe the arrest should be less about how guilty Wade is and more about how dangerous it is for him to roam the streets of Tuscarora without protection."
"Hmmm, true. There's a lot of vicious talk out there. Fantastic rumors that can't possibly be true, but you know how folks are. Emotions are running high."
"We could take him over to Raleigh, see if they'll house him until a trial ... or whatever's going to happen."
"Don't you think you can protect him in your own jail?" Westin challenged.
Gage bristled at the implied criticism. "That's not the point. If that mean crowd gets it in their head that Jim Wade kidnapped and murdered Nell Carver, a militia isn't going to keep them at bay."
"You think I should ask the governor to call up the National Guard?"
Gage shook his head in disgust. "They're likely to be as rowdy and drunk as any of the others. Don't know how much good they'd be."
He stood and took his hat from the peg against the wall. Settling it securely on his head, he opened the office door. "This could be a nightmare. We've got visitors passing through town just for a lark, trying to get an inside piece of news about the latest sensation of the year."
Westin looked up, his thin face clearly concerned. "We could be in a world of trouble if someone takes it in their head to relieve the law of its burden of trying James Wade."
Chapter 17
The Battle of Sugar Point occurred near the end of Gage's assignment in the West, but he'd been discouraged, disillusioned, and stripped of his idealistic fervor long before that event.
What Gage called the "Chippewa" incident in his mind was long behind him. Even to himself he seemed an altogether different man by the time he settled into Minnesota. A ghost of what he'd been, at the very least.
He wouldn't have survived if he hadn't pretended to forget the horror of Chippewa. But he'd be lying if he claimed he never woke up with the silent screams of the dead ringing in his dreams. The stench of bloody bodies gagging him. The night sweats slicking his skin with the slime of remorse and regret.
Eight
long years on the western plains could give a soldier nightmares, he realized, at least one like himself. Unlike many other soldiers, he'd never gotten the aptitude for dissociating his duty from his ethics, his actions from his shame.
Other men, he learned, were quite good at shielding themselves against a pesky and disabling morality. Men like Captain Butler steeled themselves against the atrocities of war and the plight of the plains Indians as if they wore armor around their consciences.
Gage's Infantry had been sent to apprehend "Old Bug" in Minnesota, a disastrous fiasco that resulted in six soldiers dead and ten more wounded. The Pillagers were in the right, as far as Tucker could determine, for it was about more than the flooding of the Indian reservation from the dams on Leech Lake.
The lumber men had burned the Pillagers' forests and claimed them as dead lumber which they could haul off under the terms of their contract with the Chippewa. Whatever the situation, they all knew the Pillagers didn't have a chance in hell of prevailing and the dust up that resulted was ugly and vicious. And completely unnecessary.
That was the straw that broke the camel's back as far as Tucker was concerned. He'd more than finished his seven-year requirement and had no intention of extending his service.
Trouble was, he had no fucking idea where to go or what to do next. The thought of the life he'd left in Carolina when he was eighteen and then again at twenty-two paralyzed him.
Although both his parents were long gone, why would he go back to a place that would only remind him of how much he'd lost? How could he go back to that after what he'd seen?
After what he'd done? What he'd been?
#
"Are you sure that James gave Nell the ring?" Meghan stood by the bay window in Susan Carver's home and stared at the girl who sat stiffly on the sofa.
"Yes, of course I'm sure." Susan's lower lip jutted out as if she'd burst into tears at any moment. Meghan worked not to roll her eyes at the dramatic display.
She felt instantly contrite, however, remembering that Susan had just lost her elder sister. Crossing to sit beside the girl, Meghan gently touched her shoulder. "It's just that it's terribly important, Susan, and might give us a clue about what happened to Nell. If someone else gave her the ring ... "