Читать книгу Redeeming Gabriel - Elizabeth White - Страница 14

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—”

She interrupted with a rude noise. “I don’t know what you are—bootlegger, slave smuggler, something else entirely for all I know—but you are no minister.”

He looked at her with real admiration. “That’s putting it with no bark on it. What makes you think I’m not a minister?”

“Besides the way you put your hands on me?” Her eyes sparked hot gold. “You’re too young and—” She gulped and tugged her hat brim down.

Gabriel smirked. “You’d have to be the first to admit that looks can be deceiving. Did you even look at that paper I gave you very much by mistake?”

“Of course I looked at it.”

“And what was it?”

“It looked like a sermon.”

“And that’s what it was. My sermon for my first service at the Methodist church this Sunday. I could write it again. But I’m asking you, as politely as I know how, to give it back to me.”

“You may be a preacher, but you are no man of God.”

“And you may be a female, but you are no lady.”

She gasped and then grinned at him, a dimple hovering at one corner of her mouth. “You sound like my grandmother.”

He stared at her for a moment, then growled, “Where’s the hospital?”

“Corner of the next block. Turn here.”

“That’s Barton Academy.”

“It was, before the war started. I thought you were from out of state.” Her bright-eyed look held a challenge.

“I visited here when I was in college.”

“Really? Do you know my brother Jamie?”

“Yes, but I doubt he’d know me. We ran in different circles.” He drew up the horses outside the hospital livery and got down to help Camilla from the carriage. “I did meet your cousin, Harry Martin.”

“Harry!” She turned and gripped both his hands. “I knew that message must have been from him! But what does it mean? Oh, please tell me how to read it!”

It took him a moment to realize she thought the sermon was a message from her cousin.

He glanced around. Military personnel, medical staff and visitors crisscrossed the hospital grounds. “This isn’t a good place to talk.”

Blushing, she released his hands. “It’s just that it’s been so long…” She straightened her shawl. “We’ll go inside. Lady said I should introduce you to Dr. Kinch, the hospital administrator.”

Every muscle in Gabriel’s body tensed as he followed Camilla up the broad stone steps fronting the building and held the door for her. The confrontation with Dr. Kinch was inevitable. He almost looked forward to it.

Dr. Joseph Kinch shook hands with Gabriel and gave Camilla an arch smile. “Miss Beaumont and her grandmother are two of our most ardent fund-raisers and visitors to the hospital.” He pinched Camilla’s cheek, making her squirm. “Quite the angel of mercy.”

Gabriel bowed. “The merit of your work is well-known, Doctor.”

Camilla opened her mouth to ask if the men had met before, but something in Gabriel’s hot gaze stopped her. Secrets. She’d better tread carefully.

Gabriel’s smile had an edge. “I’ve heard about your research into the causes and treatment of yellow fever. A large amount of my time is spent burying its victims and ministering to bereaved families. Seems to me the disease has carried off as many hale young fellows as the war.”

Dr. Kinch inclined his leonine head. “’Tis an unfortunate truth. My goal in life is to eradicate this elusive killer. I have my suspicions of the source, but have yet to prove it.”

“I pray for your success. Many of my former parishioners have expressed a desire to fund your research—when the war ceases to drain the Southern economy.”

“I regret to say that the war has conscripted my most promising medical students,” said Dr. Kinch. “Research is now confined to my own sporadic attempts, in between running the hospital and supplying field surgeons.” He sighed. “Medicines, especially quinine, are getting harder to come by every day.”

“Are the cases of yellow fever up, then, Doctor?” Camilla asked.

“I’m afraid so. Since New Orleans fell and refugees have descended on Mobile, the hospital is full to overflowing. We could hardly turn away the poor souls, and yet…”

“Your mercy is commendable.” Gabriel’s lips twitched.

Camilla set her teeth. “Reverend Leland, I promised to read mail to the poor soldiers here. Perhaps we should attend to our business.”

The reverend gave her a sardonic look. “An angel of compassion, indeed. Dr. Kinch, it’s an honor to make your acquaintance.”

With Gabriel behind her, Camilla entered the ground-floor ward and led the way among the patients. These visits broke her heart, but she had to come. She had no formal nurse’s training, but the doctors were glad to get any help available.

She was very conscious of Gabriel’s dark presence. Once or twice he seemed about to speak, but when she turned to look at him, he avoided her gaze and clasped his hands behind his back.

Camilla stopped at the bed of a seven-year-old girl who had caught her leg in a coil of baling wire. “This is Lecy Carrolton—” She gasped as two strong hands clasped her elbows and moved her aside.

Gabriel knelt beside the cot and gently brushed the hair back from Lecy’s hot forehead. Her delicate brows remained knit in pain, her eyes closed. “Hello, little one,” he murmured, “having a bad dream?”

Silken lashes fluttered, then lifted. “Yes, sir,” she whispered.

“How long has she been like this?” Gabriel’s hands gently explored the swollen angry flesh above and below the bandage.

“Her daddy brought her in over a week ago,” Camilla said, nonplussed. “She doesn’t seem to be getting better, no matter what the doctors do. They’re afraid they’re going to have to—” She bit her lips together and brushed the little pink toes of Lecy’s good foot. “We need to pray for her.”

“We need to do more than pray for her.” Gabriel looked around and snapped his fingers at an ancient orderly in a stain-spattered coat. “You there! Bring me some—” He caught Camilla’s eye. She stared at him wide-eyed. He raked his hand through his hair.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

He glanced at Lecy. “If the oafs would treat their instruments with carbolic acid before they operate, most of these gangrenous infections would never occur. I’ve—I’ve followed enough field surgeons to know that.”

“Dr. Kinch is one of the finest surgeons in the South. I’m sure he’s doing all he can.”

“He’s doing all he can to line his pockets.” Gabriel rose and stalked toward the doorway.

Camilla hurried after him and grabbed his arm. The muscles were corded, his expression angry. “I won’t let you speak that way about the greatest doctor who’s ever lived in this area. You don’t know him.”

His black glare scorched her. “You’re right. I don’t.”

Camilla dropped her hand. “What’s carbolic acid? It sounds dangerous.”

Gabriel took a breath and looked away. “It’s an antiseptic. If it’s sprayed onto wounds and the instruments used to operate, it somehow keeps infections from growing. Nobody really knows why.”

“Do you think we could get some? Maybe Dr. Kinch doesn’t know there is such a thing.”

“Maybe he doesn’t.” Gabriel was silent for a long moment, then gave her an enigmatic look. “Listen, Miss Camilla, I’d like to help that little girl, but I’m just a traveling preacher. If you want to inquire about carbolic spray, go right ahead, and I’ll try to convince your famous doctor to try it.”

Camilla stared at him, confused by his sudden coolness. “We should help Lecy if we can.”

He smiled. “Ah. There’s the rub. Should and can are often mutually exclusive.”

As Gabriel helped her into the buggy and started the horses toward home, Camilla’s heart was heavy. She hoped her unhappiness had nothing to do with the door Reverend Gabriel Leland had just very firmly shut in her face.

The sun was going down and mosquitoes were beginning to spread out from the swamps as Gabriel made his way on horseback down to his uncle Diron’s shack on Dog River. He couldn’t stop thinking about that little girl in the hospital with the infected foot. Maddening that, without the necessary medicines, he could do so little. He could only hope that Camilla would be able to locate the carbolic spray. Then he would think about the risk of exposing his identity by bringing himself so overtly to the attention of Dr. Kinch.

He tied Caleb to the hitching post outside, stepped over an emaciated hound lying across the doorjamb and entered the shack without bothering to knock. This time of day, Uncle Diron wouldn’t be indoors anyway.

“Uncle!” He felt his way through the dark, obstacle-strewn one-room shanty. “It’s Gabriel!”

He wasn’t surprised that there was no answer. The old man was all but deaf.

The spring screeched as Gabriel shoved open the screen door and stepped out onto the back porch. Diron’s iron-gray curls rested against the back of a cane-bottom rocker, the broken leather boots propped against one of the skinned pine posts supporting the porch. Huge, knotty hands wielded a bone-handled knife against a small chunk of cedar with delicate precision.

Gabriel approached the rocker and stepped into the pool of light cast by an oil lamp on the porch rail. The old man looked up, his rugged face lighting with pleasure as the knife blade flicked away into the handle and clamped Gabriel in an unabashed bear hug.

Then just as strongly thumped him on the ear.

“Ow!” Eyes watering, Gabriel backed up a pace. “What was that for?”

Diron’s black eyes sparkled like marbles beneath bristling gray brows. “Staying away so long without writing, you good-for-nothing whelp! All that highfalutin education, and you can’t even put pen to paper to let your old uncle know you’re alive.”

Gabriel touched his stinging ear. “Uncle, you know you can’t read.”

“Could always find somebody to read it to me.” The old man lowered himself into the rocker with a grunt and jerked his chin toward the other chair. “Sit down, boy.”

Gabriel obeyed. His father’s brother had always been crusty. “I’m sorry I lost touch. I figured you’d be better off without me making trouble.”

Diron snorted without bothering to deny the charge. He flicked the knife open and went back to work on the figure of his dog, Ajax. “You’ve grown into a man.” Diron glanced at Gabriel with a sly smile. “Do the women still follow you around in droves?”

“Haven’t had much time for women lately.” But a vision of a curly haired, golden-eyed moppet floated through his brain. In truth, he’d thought about little in the past few days but the fact that Camilla Beaumont had assumed his sermon was a message from her cousin, Harry Martin. Which meant she had been corresponding with a Federal officer.

And her papa didn’t know.

“Uncle, I’ve got to ask you something.”

“Tell me where you been for ten years, then you can ask me questions!”

Gabriel sighed. “Well, for the first couple years I roamed up and down the rivers. Gambled away what money I had left. Then I decided a job might be in order, so I went west and worked a few ranches. Punched cows so long I’m plumb bowlegged.”

Diron looked skeptical. “With your education—herding cows?”

“Uncle, the cows don’t care whether you spout Latin declensions or sing bawdy-house ditties.” Gabriel folded his arms. “An education wasn’t anything but a drawback in most of the places I’ve been.” He held up a palm. “I don’t regret it, uncle. I appreciate everything you sacrificed to help me get through college and medical school. It just—didn’t work out. I’m sorry.” He rose and moved to the edge of the porch, where he stood looking out at the river. “I’ve given up medicine for religion.”

Behind him Diron gave a disbelieving snort. “What? Why?”

“They threw me out of medical school at the end, remember? No diploma, no license. I had to find another profession, so I’m riding the circuit as a preacher now.” It was time to address the delicate topic of his identity. Gabriel was grateful for the darkness hiding his expression. “And I changed my name to Leland—so make sure you call me that.”

“You changed your name and got religious.” Resentment laced Diron’s tone. “So I’m not good enough for you anymore.”

“You know that’s not true, uncle.” Gabriel gentled his voice, tamping down the temptation to blurt out everything to his mentor and foster father. He turned and found the old man bowed over his whittling. “I mean, I am religious, and I need to distance myself from what I used to be. But you’ll always be my favorite old man.”

Diron grinned a little. “Some of the tales I could tell about you…”

“Uncle—”

“Aw, don’t worry. I can keep a secret when I have to.”

Gabriel turned sharply to study his uncle’s shadowed face. He looked around more closely. Even in the uncertain light of the flickering oil lamp, he could see improvements around the old shack. New steps with fresh paint. The pier, which had been a mess last time he was here, extended gracefully out into the river, a sturdy fishing boat bobbing against it. “What’ve you got into around here? Fishing’s never been so lucrative.”

Diron shrugged and flicked his knife across the pine. “I’m doing some work for Chambliss Brothers.”

Gabriel leaned against the post and stuck his hands in his pockets. “There can’t be many men in this part of the country who’re making money instead of losing it.”

“Beckham Chambliss is a smart businessman.” The old man grinned. “Strikes when the iron’s hot.”

Gabriel shook his head at the pun. “I suppose the war brings in machine shop trade.”

“Now you’re thinking. The secret’s providing what the military needs.” With a cagey look Diron leaned toward Gabriel. “If you’re interested in investing, I could put in a word.”

“I might, if the basic funding is secure.”

“As secure as it gets this day and age.”

“I don’t know.” Gabriel pretended to hesitate. “Who’s the bankroller?”

“Swear you’ll keep it to yourself.”

Gabriel nodded.

Diron lowered his voice as if Ajax might carry tales. “The major stockholder of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad.”

Gabriel released a soundless whistle. Ezekiel Beaumont, then, was a man with not just a finger but an entire fist in the Confederate military pie.

And his daughter had intercepted a sensitive Union document. God have mercy if she let that document get into the wrong hands.