Ashes in the Wind Read online

  To date, her uncle’s sole use of Tarnation was when he had hitched the animal up to a decrepit cart and went to plead his poverty with the Yankees. Perhaps Angus had been wise, for he had managed to retain possession of at least two horses, one a fine gelding of moderate spirit, which the man used on his own high-wheeled gig, and the other, Ol’ Tar. The beast seemed a random collection of bones connected by rawhide sinew, the whole of which masqueraded in a worn and well-scarred horse’s hide. He had two gaits. A loose-jointed shuffle appeared to be his normal one. It was perhaps faster than a walk. But when an unusually winsome mare happened by, the blood stirred in his veins, he arched his scrawny neck, flagged his tattered tail, and with great effort actually lifted his hooves from the ground, all of which resulted, if a rider was present, in a spine-snapping trot.

  In her dirty, ragged garb, Alaina felt much akin to the unhandsome steed. A handful of Angus’s grain now and then was her tithe to the aging mount. She tried not to strain the Craighugh’s larder either and made it her habit to eat her meals at the hospital, stowing portions of the more delectable fare in her leather pouch for use in the kitchen or, occasionally, a late snack. It was her rule to pay Uncle Angus at each week’s end. His Scottish frugality displayed itself as he murmured a few embarrassed words on the hardships of war before tucking the coins away in his purse. Alaina was fully aware that available goods for the store were sharply curtailed since the occupation and that his account books were heavy with entries of unsatisfied credit. It gave her a sense of freedom knowing that she did not further burden his resources.

  The lantern was doused, and through the darkness Alaina groped her way along the flagstone walk from the stable to the house. A thoughtful extravagance on Dulcie’s part met the weary late arrival in the form of a candle stump left aglow in the kitchen and water simmering on the hearth for a bath. Hopefully she would not be expected to work the later hours very often, but with the overload of wounded this day there had been no chance to escape the rapidly mounting chores and no sympathetic ear to listen to her complaint. Doctors apparently had little compassion for the healthy and able.

  In the converted pantry, the boyish garb fell into an indiscreet pile on the floor, given no more notice by the one who gradually lowered her aching body into the water. Alaina moaned a soft mewl of delight. After the long, tiring day, when she had to drag herself through the last hours of work by keeping the thought of a bath uppermost in her mind, she intended to enjoy it now at her leisure. Slowly she lay back and closed her eyes, letting the heat seep into her tired limbs.

  Only a moment of this revelry had passed when the rattle of the doorknob made Alaina sit up and snatch for a towel. Without so much as a knock, Roberta came boldly in, beautifully clothed in a red crepe de chine dressing gown. As she paused and shaded her eyes against the lamp, the wide sleeve fell back, displaying exquisite white, ruffled lace at her wrist.

  “I thought I heard you come in.”

  Modestly Alaina tucked the linen towel over her bosom, not wishing to contrast herself with Roberta’s roundly proportioned form. Her cousin began to pace fretfully, a difficult task considering the narrow space left by the tub.

  “Do you have any idea what kind of day I’ve had?” Roberta demanded. “Why, it’s been terrible! Terrible! I declare, Lainie darling, I just don’t know what this world is coming to!”

  It had all the appearance of being a long session, and though Alaina objected to this intrusion, her voice was casual and chatty. “Your situation sounds dire, Robbie. I thought you were having a guest this evening?”

  “I am not!” Roberta whirled in high agitation. “Oh, posh! I wish these damned Yankees would get their war over with!”

  “I think they’re trying their best,” Alaina retorted, growing a little annoyed herself. Sometimes she wondered where her cousin’s loyalty really lay, but then, Roberta had given nothing to the war but hours of complaint about her highly vocalized inconvenience.

  “The sooner the better, I say!” Resentfully Roberta folded her arms beneath her bosom. “Then the rest of us can get back to doing things the way they were before!”

  “I believe Mister Lincoln has other ideas,” Alaina reminded her dryly.

  “That backwoods oaf!” Roberta railed and faced the tub. “I’m sick to death of that man’s name! I’m sick of all this—this killing!”

  Alaina’s eyebrows raised as she stared at her cousin. Roberta rarely, if ever, concerned herself with the casualties of war. “Whatever has upset you, it must be serious.”

  “I’ll tell you what has upset me! Just look at this!” Roberta pulled a crumpled note from the pocket of her wrapper and waved it beneath Alaina’s slim nose without giving the girl a chance to comply. “For some damn reason, Captain Latimer couldn’t come tonight! He sent this instead.” She shook the missive angrily above her head, making the flame flicker in the lamp which sat high on a shelf. “A righteous excuse! An emergency! Bah! All the Yankees ever do is march about Jackson Square or ride their horses up and down the streets to look threatening. How can anybody get hurt that way? All Gen’ral Banks does is steal cotton or some such thing! Why, there hasn’t hardly been anybody killed since Cock-eyed Butler hanged William Mumford and no one has come down sick with yellow fever since that terrible ol’ Yankee got so scared he would catch it. Imagine, gettin’ all those men out to sweep the streets! Why, New Orleans never had such a cleaning! And here we all were hoping the Yankees would come down sick and die.”

  Alaina’s bath was becoming increasingly tepid, not to mention the fact that she was beginning to feel slightly waterlogged. It went against her grain to defend a Yankee and his reasons for not coming, yet Alaina realized her own comfort was at stake. Despite her great reluctance, she relented. “There was a skirmish upriver, Roberta. The wounded were brought back, and the doctors were kept busy trying to tend them all. I had to haul away bloody bandages and muddy clothes all afternoon just to keep an open passageway through the wards.”

  “Muddy clothes!” Roberta’s mind grasped at Alaina’s statement like a vulture at raw meat. “Lainie! You don’t mean you’re there when they undress men!”

  Offended by the way of her cousin’s mind, Alaina gritted, “I haven’t seen a naked man yet! And I wish you would stop calling me Lainie. You know I hate that name.”

  “I guess you always did prefer ‘Al’ to anything more genteel,” Roberta simpered and, ignoring her cousin’s frown, flounced down upon the low stool that sat beside the tub. “What’s so hellishly important about Cole tending those men anyway? Surely other doctors are there to bandage up those men.”

  “There are other doctors,” Alaina conceded. “But it seems they were all in demand today.”

  Roberta sensed her cousin’s growing irascibility and changed the subject, though not adroitly. “You must have learned a lot about Captain Latimer.”

  “I hear the other doctors talking.”

  “You spy on them?” Roberta queried, leaning close.

  Alaina glared. “I do not! I’m just not deaf, that’s all! They don’t care who’s around to hear.”

  “Tell me more about Cole,” Roberta urged.

  “Cole?” Alaina looked at the other woman wonderingly.

  “Is he rich?” the older cousin questioned excitedly. “Real rich?”

  “How should I know?” Alaina snapped. “I only know that he can afford to pay me three dollars a week for cleaning his apartment, and he never seems to have a shortage of money.”

  “You didn’t tell me you cleaned his apartment!” Thoughtfully Roberta tucked her tongue in her cheek. “I bet Daddy doesn’t know about it either.”

  “I can ill afford to turn down three dollars for a few hours work,” Alaina said crisply. “And I see nothing wrong with it since Captain Latimer is not there when I am.”

  “You mean he trusts you in his apartment alone?”

  “And why not? I’ve never stolen a thing in my life!”

  “But he can’t b
e sure of that.”

  “He was confident enough to give me a key.”

  “A key? To Captain Latimer’s apartment?” Roberta’s interest rose with every passing second. “How do you manage to work all week at the hospital and then clean his apartment, too?”

  “I do it after work the nights he has duty. He doesn’t live far from the hospital, so I don’t have to go far out of my way.”

  “And where does the captain live?” Roberta sweetly inquired.

  Alaina looked at her suspiciously.

  Smiling pleasantly, Roberta warned, “If you don’t tell me, Lainie, I’ll inform Daddy you’re cleaning that Yankee’s apartment. I don’t think he’ll approve. He might not let you work there after he finds out.”

  “I don’t know what you have in mind, Roberta,” the younger girl snapped, “but I really don’t care. If you want Captain Latimer so much, take him.”

  “Where does he live?” Roberta questioned eagerly.

  Alaina shrugged. “Pontalba Apartments. Anything else you’ll have to find out from the good captain himself.”

  “You’re mean, Lainie,” Roberta pouted. “You always did like to tease me and be hateful about things. You’re getting just what you deserve for being so spiteful.”

  “Da’ ye say now?” Alaina retorted, affecting the Scottish burr of her father. “The truth ne’er hurt me nane, but ye’ll na be hearing more aboot his lordship from these here lips!”

  Roberta sulked for a long moment, but realizing even a fine pout would not impress her cousin, changed her tactics. “I’ll ask Captain Latimer when he comes.”

  “Comes?” Alaina straightened in the tub and grasped the linen cloth more firmly when it threatened to fall from her bosom. “You mean Captain Latimer—is coming—here—despite this evening?”

  Roberta was the epitome of angelic goodness now that her tirade was spent. “Didn’t I tell you, Lainie? He wrote that he’d try to make it next week if the invitation is still open.” Her voice took on an edge of command. “Now you be sure and tell him next Friday is just fine. Daddy said it would be.”

  Alaina wrinkled her nose as if she smelled something sour. “What do you see in that Yankee, anyway?”

  “Everything.” Roberta laughed gaily. “But most of all, a way out of this miserable hole!” She leaned forward, her dark eyes asparkle, and spoke as if she confided a deep, dark secret. “Did I tell you that he addressed the letter to me and signed it simply, ‘Cole’?” She hugged her knees and rocked in sheer joy.

  “Not until now,” Alaina murmured wryly. She propped her elbow on the rim of the tub and leaned her chin in her palm. She could almost spell out what was coming next.

  “The way he looked at me,” Roberta sighed, her eyes half closed with the blissful memory. “And right in front of Daddy, too! You saw that, didn’t you, Alaina?” She ignored the girl’s perplexed frown and rushed on. “Oh, he’s a bold one, that Cole! And I tell you, Lainie, I’m going to wrap that long-legged Yankee right around my little finger.”

  She rose with a delicious giggle and kicked the ruffled lace at the hem of her nightgown before she danced out of the cubicle.

  “Would you mind closing the door?” Alaina called in exasperation.

  Roberta leaned in with a smile on her face. “Right around my little finger!” she crooned, crooking the mentioned member to make the point. Waving her fingers coyly, she pulled the door shut, leaving Alaina at last to her bath.

  Alaina climbed from the now-cool water and ruefully regarded her own water-wrinkled fingers. “Right around my little finger,” she mimicked with sarcasm. “Right around—” She suddenly scowled and stamped her bare foot, hissing to herself, “Jaybird Yankee!”

  Chapter 5

  IT was not difficult for Alaina to avoid the busy doctor, yet far too often for total peace of mind, she found herself forced into his companionship. A certain animosity flourished between the boy, Al, and the man, Cole, and more than once Alaina felt the bite of the captain’s reproof. Though it gave her some assurance that he had not yet guessed her secret, she wondered if all he saw was the soot on her face, for it was there his criticism thrived. He could not know, of course, of the effort she took to smudge her face every morning or of the treatment her short mane received. The dirt and grease had proven an excellent replacement for the old battered hat that he had forbidden her to wear in the hospital, but it only aggravated his ambition to see the urchin clean.

  “One of these days,” he threatened, “I’m going to teach you how to properly wash yourself. Look at your hair! It’s so stiff you could pound a strand through a fence post.”

  “Betcha you was born with a chunk of soap in your mouth,” Alaina retorted with a fervor to match the doctor’s. “I ain’t never seen a body so attached to washing as you.”

  “That raises the question of what you were born with,” Cole returned with sarcasm before striding away beneath her glare.

  The night the captain came to call on Roberta, Alaina took herself far from the house. She had no intention of joining the group for dinner. Dressed as a filthy boy, she would simply be subjected to the Yankee’s disapproval if it didn’t arouse his curiosity as to why Angus would allow the child to appear in such an untidy state at their table.

  If Alaina managed to escape that evening’s festivities, she was not able to avoid hearing all about them from Roberta. The older cousin sought her out as soon as possible, not caring that Alaina was just dozing off to sleep when she burst into her room.

  “Oh, Lainie, it was the most exciting evening ever! And do you know, Cole’s father is also a doctor and has been a widower since shortly after Cole was born. I’m sure they’re rich, too.”

  “Did you ask him?” Alaina yawned sleepily as she snuggled deeper into the soft bed.

  “Of course not, you silly child. That would be rude. But I know they are,” Roberta smiled slyly. “Cole has traveled abroad and was educated in the East where he and his father have properties, besides their home in Minnesota. I imagine when the old man dies, Cole will inherit all of his fortune. Why, he already owns properties of his very own. Now tell me, what man without money can boast of that?”

  Alaina peered up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “He boasts?”

  “Oh, Lainie, you’re exasperating!” Roberta snapped. “Of course not. But I know how to ask subtle questions to find out things.”

  “I think I’ll ask him if he’s rich,” Alaina mused aloud. “That’s what you really want to know, isn’t it?”

  “And why not?” Roberta questioned defensively. “A girl must look out for her own best interests these days. And I’m tired of wearing these rags the war has left me. I’m going to find me a rich man who can afford to buy me all the things I want.”

  Alaina stifled another yawn. “It’s late, Roberta, and I’m tired. I nearly fell asleep by the bayou waiting for that critter to leave. Can we talk about this some other time? I have to get up with the sun.”

  Roberta sighed as if in sympathy with her cousin. “Poor Al, you do have your hardships. But then—”

  “I know! It’s nothing more than what I deserve!” Irritably the girl fluffed her pillow and punched a small fist into it. “And Captain Latimer seems to have been sent here for the special purpose of destroying my sleep!”

  By now Al made the rounds of her wards in two days, cleaning and scouring and scrubbing as if only to show one Captain Latimer that she was worth every cent of her wage despite her own untidy appearance. The wounded soidiers began to welcome the break in the otherwise endless monotony. Al began to exchange quips with them, sometimes biting remarks returned in anger, but as the soldiers became known as individuals instead of faceless enemies, the tones softened.

  Questions of home and family were asked, of origins and leanings, political and otherwise. Some soldiers struggled to retain some humor in this dismal place. With these Al exchanged light banter. Others were dismayed at their wounds and disappointed with the pain and effort of life. To t
hese Alaina gave a challenge, a dare to live. To those who were deeply injured, she grudgingly gave pity and sympathy and an odd sort of bittersweet tenderness. She ran errands for those who couldn’t go for themselves, sometimes purchasing a comb, a shaving brush, or a bottle of lilac water for a girl back home. The packet of letters she carried to the post became a daily thing, and the appearance of the youthful lad with his bucket, brooms, and mops was awaited with eagerness by those who were trapped in the wards. It gave the day a brightness, a spark so small yet brightly seen and cherished. The dull gray silence of the wards had yielded to a youthful and oftentimes rebellious grin. The musty, cloying odor of molding debris became the pungent scent of lye soap and pine oil. The moans of pain were now more often hidden beneath a muffled chuckle of laughter or the low-voiced murmur of shared experiences.

  For Alaina, it had begun as a simple chore—a job, a task, a way to earn money. It soon became for her a time of conflict. Her sympathies were firmly with the struggling Confederacy, yet against her will she found herself liking some of these men, many within a year or two of her own age, and several much younger. Bold and brazenly righteous, they had marched off to do battle, much like her own father and brothers, thence to lie on narrow beds of pain and helplessly wait either healing and its rewards—or death.

  There had been times at Briar Hill when death seemed what every Yankee deserved. Now she found it an agonizing experience to watch one of those same struggle through their last moments of life. She knew them! They were human! They ached! They suffered! They died! More than once she was forced to seek privacy where she stood with trembling hands clasped desperately across her mouth in an effort to hold back the sobs, while tears flowed unchecked down her cheeks. Her attempts to harden her emotions failed. Instead, she seemed to become more vulnerable to the hurt and agony of watching death have its way.

  On this morning in early November, Alaina vowed to keep her distance from any who were close to that dark door. She carefully reasoned it through and came to the decision that the only way to avoid such disturbing grief was not to get close to it.