Free Brings the Lightning (The Ames Archives Book 1) by Peter Grant Page A

this helps make up for the loss of your farm. You’ve got a fine nephew there. Thank you for backing his play tonight.”
    “Oh, I couldn’t, really!”
    The chief steward silenced her by rapidly counting off five hundred dollars in greenbacks, then thrusting it into her reticule. “It’s settled, ma’am. Thank you for assisting your nephew so capably. Now, if you’ll please put away your revolver, we’ll take care of this man, since he was obviously in on it, too.”
    With a strangled half-laugh, half-sob, Rose lowered the hammer of her revolver onto its empty chamber and put it back in her reticule. Two soldiers grabbed the burly man who’d been circling around to come up behind Walt, and dragged him over to join the gambler.
    “What are you going to do with them?” Walt asked.
    The chief steward glanced at the clock on the wall. “We’ll be tying up at Clarksville for the night within half an hour. I’ll deliver them to the town marshal and bring charges against them. I’ll take these as evidence.” He picked up the dice from the table, and scowled at the two men. “Whatever the marshal does with you, don’t let me see you aboard the
Queen
again, or it’ll be the worse for you!”
    The gambler’s eyes blazed with hatred as he looked at Walt. “I won’t forget this—or you.”
    “You’d better not,” Walt retorted, staring him down. “You’re getting off easy tonight. Next time you won’t.”
    The sergeant whispered in the chief steward’s ear, who nodded. “Yes, thank you, sergeant. If some of your men will hold these two on the afterdeck until we reach Clarksville, we can hand them over there.”
    Hard, unpleasant grins broke out on the faces of many of the soldiers as they roughly herded the gambler and his assistant out of the saloon. Walt almost felt sorry for the two men, knowing they’d be beaten black and blue before they were handed over to the law. Others lined up with the sergeant as the chief steward began to count out the gambler’s money.
    “Come on, Rose,” Walt said quietly. “Let’s get out of the way and leave them to it.”
    She didn’t demur, but took his arm again. They slipped away down the side of the saloon until they came to the stairway, and climbed it in silence. He saw her to the inner balcony door of her stateroom, where he said softly, “Go in alone—some of them are still watching us. I’ll join you in a moment through the connecting door.”
    “All right.”
    He took a moment to toss his tailcoat and gun onto his bed, then opened the connecting door to find Rose standing there, waiting. She was shaking with the aftereffects of tension. He took her into his arms and hugged her wordlessly. She stiffened for a moment at the unexpected intimacy, then suddenly relaxed and leaned against him, returning his gentle hug.
    “I– I hope I did the right thing,” she said at last, hesitantly, as he released her.
    “You were perfect!” he assured her, smiling. “Holding up that man with your revolver was exactly the right thing to do. It allowed me to concentrate on the gambler.”
    “What was that letter? Surely it’s false?”
    Walt flushed. It had never occurred to him how it might make him look in Rose’s eyes. “It is. You see, I knew I might need to convince any Union men I encountered that I was trustworthy; so I stole a few pages bearing the letterhead of the Nashville Military District from Jim Webber’s office. I forged the letter using the copperplate handwriting you taught us in school, and traced the captain’s signature from a letter he wrote to my father last year about county business.”
    She laughed, a little shakily. “I don’t know whether to congratulate you on your cleverness, or be appalled by your larceny—but I’m glad you’re no traitor to the gray!”
    He shrugged. “The war may be over, but I’ve been fighting the Union Army for the past three years. They also cost me my inheritance, what with Jim Webber marrying my