Redeeming Gabriel

“It’s quite all right, Mrs. St. Clair. I don’t mind admitting to an injury gained in honorable service of my country.” The reverend smiled, a bit of a challenge in the dark eyes.

“Indeed?” Camilla said sweetly. “Perhaps you might entertain us with a description of your exploits on the battlefield.”

He shook his head diffidently and rather sadly. “I don’t think you’d find our humiliation at Shiloh appropriate dinner-table conversation. I was one of the few to escape with my life.”

A flat and embarrassed silence fell.

Camilla’s father glared at her. “Perhaps, Reverend Leland, you’d join me on the courtyard for an after-dinner cigar?”

“Certainly, sir.” Reverend Leland, leaning heroically on his cane, accompanied her father out of the room, Schuyler following on their heels.

Lady rapped a spoon against the table. “I would like to know, young lady, what brought on this disagreeable attitude toward the first presentable young man to cross our paths since the war started.”

“Lady, doesn’t it strike you as odd that a handsome and healthy young man would spend his life riding around the country preaching?”

“It rather strikes me as commendable.” Lady wagged the spoon. “He has paid his dues in military service and now spends his time serving God. Is there some unwritten law that ministers must be short, fat and bald?”

Camilla shrugged. She refused to swallow that ridiculous story about a runaway cousin. And if he was wounded, she was Tatiana, the Queen of the Fairies.

Gabriel sprawled in a wicker chair, watching his host puff with great satisfaction on a fine Cuban cigar. Though his original strategy had been to maneuver Camilla Beaumont into a tête-à-tête, he was satisfied to spend the afternoon with a man of Ezekiel Beaumont’s standing in the transportation industry.

“Terrible losses at Shiloh,” Beaumont was saying. “You were lucky to escape with your life.”

“Yes, sir, God was on my side.” Gabriel smiled as Schuyler chose a cigar from the humidor and the elder Beaumont tweaked it out of his hand.

The boy reddened. “Do you plan on going back into service, sir?”

“I’d like to, but don’t know if they’ll have me anytime soon.” Gabriel rubbed his upper right thigh.

“Next birthday I’m going to enlist.” Schuyler visibly ignored the sudden tide of red which suffused his father’s face.

Gabriel intervened. “You’d be smarter to remain here. You and your father could do more for the war effort with the railroad than by risking your hide on a Yankee bullet.”

Schuyler rolled his eyes as if he’d heard it all before. But Ezekiel jabbed the air with his cigar. “Absolutely right! I’d like to know where the army would be without a fast way to move rations, arms and men.”

Gabriel smiled lazily. “So the army plans to use the Mobile and Ohio?”

Schuyler snorted. “In this little backwater?”

“Listen and you might learn something, boy,” Ezekiel growled. “With Corinth in Union hands, we’re the only Confederate rail link between east and west. You want to see some action this summer? Then this little backwater is the place to be!” He let out a satisfied billow of smoke.

Gabriel barely registered Schuyler’s snort of disbelief. For the moment he’d said all he could without arousing suspicion, but he could see several ways to sift this family for useful information. He was going to have to do it, however, against the antagonism of Miss Camilla Beaumont. For more reasons than one, he wished he could undo his encounter with her on the riverboat.

Chapter Five

Gabriel drew up his hired calash in front of the Beaumont home. After securing the horse to the hitching post, he climbed the steps and knocked briskly at the double doors. Camilla Beaumont had avoided him for nearly a week, one excuse after the other keeping her busy. He’d had little to do but prowl the streets with an ear out for information about the fish boat.

Fortunately, Mrs. St. Clair had all but commanded her recalcitrant granddaughter to drop everything and accompany him on a tour of the military hospitals.

The butler, Horace, ushered Gabriel into the parlor, where he found Camilla—still rather schoolgirlish in appearance with a pair of dainty gold-rimmed spectacles perched on her small nose—sitting with listless boredom in a wing chair. Across the room a decorative blonde played something classical on the pianoforte.

The music stopped as the young woman lifted her hands from the mother-of-pearl keys with exaggerated confusion. Camilla stood and gave Gabriel a grudging hand to press.

“Miss Beaumont, a pleasure to see you,” he mur-mured, taking her hand to his lips. He held it there, enjoying her pink cheeks, tight lips and futile tugs against his fingers.

Once her hand was released, she shoved it into her pocket. “Charmed,” she said, teeth together.

The young woman at the pianoforte cleared her throat. “Camilla, why didn’t you tell me you were expecting company?”

“My manners must have gone begging. Reverend Leland, I’d like you to meet Miss Fanny Chambliss.” That social chore performed, Camilla retreated to the window.

Gabriel bowed over Miss Chambliss’s hand, keeping it only for the requisite two seconds. “The Lord has seen fit to honor me this day with two beautiful young ladies to welcome me.”

To Gabriel’s amusement, Miss Chambliss accepted this as her due. Simpering, she arranged her silken skirts upon a Belter rosewood sofa whose rich wine-colored upholstery flattered her golden curls and gentian-blue eyes. “Camilla, what a charming addition to our acquaintance.”

Gabriel didn’t have time for pretty distractions. “If you’re ready, Miss Beaumont, my carriage is waiting.”

Her almost-brown eyes glittered. “I’m sure Fanny will like to join us. I’ll just run get my hat.”

Gabriel gently gripped her elbow. “I’m sorry, but my carriage only holds two.”

Rage flared in Miss Chambliss’s eyes before she looked down with sweet disappointment. “Camilla’s always the lucky one. Maybe another time?” She gave Gabriel a flirtatious smile.

“I’ll hold you to it.” Gabriel smiled to take the sting from his rejection. “Your hat, Miss Beaumont?”

“I’ll get it. See you tomorrow, Fanny.” She jerked her elbow free and rushed up the stairs.

By the time Camilla returned, Fanny Chambliss had taken her reluctant leave. Gabriel eyed Camilla’s outdated jocket hat as he escorted her out to the calash. The hat’s round crown and curved brim emphasized her broad, smooth brow and big eyes, and he wondered if she deliberately played up her babyish looks.

As he tooled the calash down the bumpy brick street, she sat beside him stroking the fringe of her paisley shawl, refusing to meet his eyes.

“Miss Beaumont—may I call you Camilla?—it was kind of you to put aside your sandbag enterprise long enough to accompany me today.”

His ironic tone brought her gaze to his face. “You may call me anything you like, if you’ll just leave me alone.”

“Do you always run from confrontations? I would not have thought it of you, considering your nocturnal adventures.”

“Let me out of this buggy.” She grasped the door handle.

Slapping the reins, he gave a whistle. The startled horse jerked into a faster gait. “Oh, no, Miss Camilla. We’re going to talk, whether you like it or not.”

“I thought you wanted to visit hospitals!”

“We’ll do that, too, but first you’re going to answer some questions. I don’t know what you were doing on that boat dressed like a boy, but you’ve got something that belongs to me, and I want it back.”

“You’re the one who shoved it into my pocket, Reverend Leland. And, for that matter, what were you doing on the boat?”

Gabriel glanced at her coolly. “I told you, I was searching for my cousin. Sometimes in order to reach the spiritually lost of this world—”