Читать книгу Redeeming Gabriel - Elizabeth White - Страница 13

Squeezed between her grandmother and her fourteen-year-old brother Schuyler in the family pew the next morning in church, Camilla watched Reverend Leland walk past, affecting a limp and leaning romantically on a Morocco cane. He stood in the aisle looking for a place to sit, until Lady called his name and invited him to sit with them.

He shook hands with Schuyler and her father, his smile grateful and a bit bashful. Oh, he knew how to charm them all.

She’d known somehow that he would be here today. His presence was entwined with God’s answer to her prayer, this stranger with the beautiful face and whiskey-smooth voice. It made her afraid and angry and all mixed up, sitting here beside him in church, even with Lady seated between them.

He was all kindness and sincerity on the outside, and Lady seemed to think he was God’s gift to the Christian community of Mobile. But he’d all but admitted he’d been on that boat, holding her close. And now he’d come after her.

Halfway through the service, she sneaked a glance at him. He was listening to Brother Lewis’s dull-as-ditchwater sermon with rapt attention. His dark hair was slicked back, the hard angles of his face piously composed, his shirt collar white and starched.

What was she supposed to do when he tried to get her alone? Yesterday he looked like he wanted to eat her for lunch…

As if he felt her gaze, Reverend Leland suddenly looked at her. The expression in his black eyes was warm, but she still felt chilled somehow.

God protect me from this man.

He smiled and returned his attention to the minister.

After the closing hymn, Camilla stepped away from him, but Lady snagged her elbow before she could slip out of the pew.

“Reverend Leland, I hope you’ll join us for dinner. Portia’s pork roast and mashed potatoes are famous all over the county.”

“I’d be delighted!” The reverend’s white smile was made more engaging by one tooth turned slightly crooked.

Determinedly unengaged, Camilla pulled at her arm.

Lady squeezed it harder. “Camilla will keep you company on the way.”

“I appreciate your hospitality.” The reverend’s eyes sparkled. “But I’m afraid I rode to church today. My horse might object to an extra passenger.” When Lady cackled, he smiled at Camilla. “However, I will claim a carriage ride at some time in the near future.”

“She will look forward to that with great pleasure.” Lady shooed Camilla toward the door. “We’ll go on ahead and see you as soon as you can get there.”

Sunday dinner in the Beaumont household was a prolonged affair, involving much conversation and laughter. Camilla watched Reverend Leland, seated across from her, flirt gently with her grandmother, filling Jamie’s absence with an agreeable mix of self-deprecation, humor and thoughtfulness. She had to admit he was fascinating in the way of a beautiful and dangerous animal.

Without compromising her own secrets, it was going to be difficult to prove Reverend Leland wasn’t what he purported to be. But there had to be some way.

She cleared her throat and braced herself for the impact of his eyes. “Reverend, please forgive my curiosity, but I noticed you carry a cane. Have you perhaps sustained a war wound?”

“Camilla!” Lady frowned. “That is a very personal—”

“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.