Free Gwyneth Atlee by Against the Odds Page B

want you
to be sorry later, either; I want you to be safe. Please, stay away from
them the rest of the trip. How far are you going?”
The words “St. Louis” stuck in her throat. She couldn’t tell him,
couldn’t tell anyone, just in case someone followed her. “I’ll be on
board another day or two,” she said instead.
His index finger brushed her cheek. Though the gesture seemed
innocent enough, the pleasure that rippled through her body felt
white hot. For a moment, she feared he saw the blaze the touch
engendered, that he would insist on staying here to ruin her for any
decent man.
The idea that he might be a decent man skimmed across her surface,
as graceful as an egret. But what sort of decent man told his secrets to
a stranger, an enemy, no less? Still, the impression stayed with her, a
ghostly image of a stark white bird in flight.
He reached for her but at the last moment stayed his hand.
The longing in his eyes made her heart race with a mixture of
apprehension and desire.
A smile faltered, and he dropped his hand to the doorknob.
“Good-bye, Miss Alexander, and once again I thank you.”
He stepped out into the darkened main cabin. She stared at the door
as it clicked softly shut. She really should have felt immense relief.
Yankees were so often vilified for their lewdness that no true lady of
New Orleans would willingly spend time alone with one.
So why had she? And worse yet, why did she feel so disappointed
that he’d been such a gentleman and left?
Her mind turned back to the letter she had written to Marie, the
question she had asked her: How could you allow romantic sentiment to
blind you to the fact that this man was an enemy? How ever did you come to
love a cursed Yankee?
Her own words shamed her, for at last she understood how much
more a man was than his uniform. Yes, her sister had been wrong, but
not for seeing past the Union blue. Her failure had been one of naïveté
and not disloyalty.
She’d take that letter from her reticule, Yvette decided, and she’d
tear it into bits. She did not delude herself that such an action would
truly benefit Marie, but it was the only way she could imagine of
taking back her angry words. And letters to the dead had their own
strange brand of logic.
Panic jolted through her at the realization that her reticule was
missing from the room. It contained her letters to Marie, her small
supply of money, and most importantly, the document she’d sewn
into the lining, the letter, written in Darien Russell’s hand, that she
hoped would save her life—and destroy his.
Suspicion blazed into anger as she thought of Gabriel. Had he
taken it with him? Had he played her for a fool the same way Russell
played Marie?
Her heart thundered its denial. Gabriel Davis might be a damned
Yankee, but he would not steal from her. He could not have said the
things he had, kissed her the way he had, and stolen . . .
Darien Russell had kissed her sister, and much more. She wanted
to grasp her chamber pot and vomit, but instead she forced herself
to think.
Where had she last seen the cloth bag? When had she last held it?
Then she knew. She’d taken it with her to the galley, and she had
not brought it back. She swayed with the realization that she must
have somehow lost it. With her whole life riding on that reticule, she
had dropped it somewhere, perhaps when she had given that poor,
starving man her food.
As terrible, as frightened, as she felt, relief came, too. That she had
not been so wrong about Gabriel, that he had not repaid her trust
with treachery.
The thought gave her strength, which she needed desperately, for
she had no other choice but to try to retrieve her reticule from the
wretched prisoners, who had undoubtedly discovered it by now.
For without it, she knew she had no chance at all.

Five
    The North is determined to preserve the Union. They are not a fiery,
impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when
they begin to move in a given direction,