Ashes in the Wind Read online

  Alaina flinched at the cruelty of her cousin’s words, half convinced that what Roberta said was true.

  “And I’m going to tell you something else, Alaina MacGaren,” Roberta continued emphatically. “I’m going to get Cole Latimer to marry me.”

  Alaina half turned, and Roberta smiled triumphantly until the smaller woman asked almost calmly, “And what will be your excuse when he finds out you’re not a virgin?”

  Roberta gasped in shock. “How did you know?” Her voice shrank to a hushed whisper as she demanded again, “How did you know?”

  Alaina shrugged casually. “I overheard Chad Williamson boasting about it to the Shatler brothers. Of course, they’re all dead now, so I guess I’m the. only one who knows.”

  In open threat Roberta clenched her fist and held it before the other’s face. “If you tell Cole, I swear he’ll hear all about your little secret!” Roberta calmed slightly, reclaiming her power over the other. “Besides, that was a long time ago. I was only fifteen—and it was only that once.” She made a face of disgust. “I didn’t like it anyway. All that panting and pawing. I was completely exhausted afterward, and I couldn’t sit down properly for a week.”

  “Captain Latimer is a doctor. Perhaps he’ll realize—”

  Roberta cut her short. “I’ll figure out something to convince him. I’ll make him believe!”

  Alaina entered her room, throwing back over her shoulder. “I don’t think he’s inexperienced with women.”

  Roberta was a quick step behind her. “I’ll make him believe, I tell you!”

  Alaina looked at her and calmly pointed out, “But first, you have to make him want to marry you.”

  Roberta scoffed. “That’s as easy as snapping my fingers. In fact, he’s probably well on his way—”

  Alaina nodded reflectively. “You may be able to pull off your schemes. You may even fool him in bed, as you say. But I wonder, Roberta, if you’ll ever be happy—I mean, really happy.”

  “Don’t be absurdl Of course, I will. He has money—”

  Alaina laughed disdainfully. “Do you think that makes for real happiness. A wife must share her husband’s bed with joy, bear his children—”

  “Children! I’m not going to ruin myself for anybody’s brat!”

  Alaina gazed somewhat pityingly at her cousin. “If you really loved a man, you’d want his children.”

  “That’s the way you feel! And you, poor little goose, will be lucky if a man even looks at you!”

  “If you’re through with your insults,” Alaina murmured, unable to find any firmness in her voice. “I’d like to go to bed now. I have to be at the hospital early.”

  “Of course! You must rest a lot to be able to scrub all those floors. Cole mentioned that you scrub them real good.”

  Perceiving that her thrust had hit its mark, Roberta swept gracefully into the hall, closing the door behind her. Alaina stood with angry tears gathering and spilling over her thick lashes. Bruised by Roberta’s assault, she slowly put out the lamp, and in the darkness, stared at the shaft of moonlight spilling into her room. The insults had cut to the quick, and they were even more frightening because the same disparaging thoughts had found no denial in her own mind.

  Chapter 8

  FRIDAY morning came in a disorganized rush for Alaina. She overslept, and from there the day degenerated into a mad frenzy. Her mops were unusually clumsy, and once she even tripped backward over a full pail of dirty water, spilling herself and the murky liquid onto the floor. She rubbed her bruised elbow and, muttering sourly, got back to her feet. Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of Captain Latimer as he stepped into the hall to see the cause of the commotion. His sharp, clear disapproval was, no doubt, meant to shame her for her clumsiness. It almost bought him a bucket over his head. When he was gone, Alaina sneered to herself and tried to wring some of the grimy water from her baggy garments. She could do without his fatherly discipline.

  It was midmorning when she found time to check on the progress of Bobby Johnson. He was still under the effects of a heavy dosage of morphine to ease his pain and to keep him still while his wounds mended. It was enough for Alaina to find him alive.

  In the early afternoon she became the object of the captain’s perusal once again. She was polishing the last pane of a window when she noticed that he was watching her thoughtfully. It certainly didn’t settle her any. Of course, another Yankee might have seen past her disguise and laid bare her secret, but with Captain Latimer, she could only surmise that he was contemplating her filthy garb again. He seemed blinded to anything else.

  Deliberately she continued wiping the glass as he strode toward her, never turning until he was a short step away, then she whirled and looked at him suspiciously, as if expecting some dire mistreatment from his hands.

  “I’m not going to beat you,” Cole assured tersely. “At least, not yet.”

  Alaina wiped her slim nose along her sleeve with an appropriate sniffle to accompany the action. “My pa warned me never to turn my back on a bluebelly.” Her derisive gaze swept him from toe of polished boot to handsome head. “Yank-kee!”

  “You must surely find that difficult with all these good Union soldiers about,” Cole quipped with sarcasm.

  “You said it, Yankee, I didn’t.” Alaina searched in her back pocket, dragged forth a ragged cloth, and proceeded to loudly blow her nose into it. “Can’t rightly find a spot where my backside ain’t turned to a fureign’r.”

  “If you’re finished,” Cole said impatiently, “I’ve some more work for you to do, though it goes against my better judgment.”

  “I shoulda known,” Alaina lamented with a feigned groan. “You’re either a-fussing ’bout my looks or wantin’ me to do somep’n. What’s it now, bluebelly? Wiping up more Yankee puke?” How she hated that word!

  Cole smiled sardonically. Al’s ever-primed contrariness had a tendency to wear on one, but in view of the lad’s squeamish nature, Cole translated it more as bravado. The boy deliberately challenged out some rebuke or punishment, and since that seemed to be his wont, Cole concluded it must be the last thing he received. He held his temper and answered the impertinent question. “Something worse, I think.”

  Inwardly Alaina cringed. She didn’t take it as an idle threat and vowed that if he set her to cleaning the room where the doctors did amputations, she would quit. She had no stomach for such gore.

  “Follow me.” Cole stepped toward the door, then turned as Alaina paused in indecision. His voice cracked sharply in command. “Well! Get a move on!”

  Alaina chafed bitterly. This man knew how to get under a person’s skin. “I thought you might be gone ter visit Roberta this afternoon. What made ya stick around here?”

  Cole raised a wondering brow at the youth. “I think you were misinformed.”

  Alaina shrugged. “Seein’s as you were so hot and eager to get out to the Craighughs’ las’ night, I jes’ figured you’d try to see her as much as ya can.”

  “I was sent here for the prime purpose of taking care of the wounded, not to pay court to the ladies, however much I would enjoy it. And you”—the blue eyes bore into gray—“were hired to clean. Now come along.”

  Much to Alaina’s relief, they climbed the stairs to the third floor, a place where she had never been allowed before. It was a hot day, and here the heat was more intense. Perspiration seemed to pop from every pore, making the coarse cotton shirt cloyingly clammy against her shoulders and back. Small beads of moisture began to trickle down between her breasts, and it was an agony not to scratch. Even Cole, as he strode down the hall with his highly polished boots and immaculate garb, was not unaffected, and his blouse began to show a dark, damp streak down his spine.

  Alaina had to hustle in her oversize boots to keep up with the captain’s long strides. She followed him down a main hall, then they came to another where a sergeant sat at a small desk. The short corridor ended in a doorway that stood half open and betrayed a whole squad of
Union soldiers lounging and playing cards within the room. Behind the sergeant, a soldier stood guard in front of another door. The air was stifling here, and sweat darkened the soldiers’ blouses. When he saw the pair, the sergeant wiped his brow with a red kerchief, nodded to Cole, and rose to unlock the guarded door, ending Al’s bemusement. A ward fully twice as large as those below was revealed. But here the beds were filled with soldiers of the Confederacy, recognizable by various articles of the gray uniform many of them wore. Some lay still and quiet, staring upward in a daze, while a few moaned on their beds of pain. A hoarse rasping came from a young soldier whose cot was near the door. As they entered, he struggled to turn his head on the pillow, and even as a lame smile quivered across his thin lips, he was seized with a fit of painful coughing. Alaina knew too well that these men were prisoners, mending here before they were sent on to Ship Island or Fort Jackson.

  “This is Al,” Cole announced to the men. “He’s going to tidy your quarters.” He reached back to draw the slim figure forward, but Alaina snatched angrily away.

  “Git your hands off me, Yankee!” she barked. “Jes’ keep to yerself, and we’ll get along fine.”

  A tall, lanky reb hooted with laughter. “ Ooooee, Cap’n, you sure got yourself a mean kid there. Where’d you manage to catch him?”

  “In a scuffle with some of our soldiers,” Cole responded dryly. “My mistake was thinking he was outnumbered. I didn’t know then that I saved the others from certain disaster.”

  From the back of the room a burly man growled. “Hey, pup, why you working for them Yankees? Didn’t your ma teach you better?”

  Al shrugged. “She tried, but I gotta eat somehow.”

  The man leaned back in his bed and tucked in his chin thoughtfully. “ ‘Pears to me that they ain’t feedin’ ya enough. The last time I saw a little bitty runt like you, he was on his mammy’s knee. Maybe you’re too young to know that respectable people would rather starve than clean up bluebelly rot.”

  Leisurely, Al sauntered to the foot of the man’s cot and stared pointedly at the filth that surrounded it. “Ain’t bluebelly rot in here, mistah. It’s all Johnny Reb.”

  The soldier scowled at her, but the bright gray eyes never wavered. A low chuckle of laughter came from his fellows and, red-faced, the man gruffly commanded, “Get to work ‘fore I take a broom handle to your scrawny backside.”

  Alaina’s gaze casually marked the man’s good leg which was drawn up beside the one that wore a long wooden splint. “Try it, Johnny, and you’ll be needing planks fer your other leg.”

  Any concern Cole might have had for the lad’s safety faded quickly as he witnessed the exchange. Al handled himself like a small, banty rooster, full of fight and about as easily subdued.

  Alaina glanced around as an older man, white of hair and thick of frame, entered from a small room at the back of the ward. It was with more than a little alarm that she recognized him to be Doctor Brooks, the Craighughs’ physician and friend.

  “Captain Latimer,” he called. “If you have a moment I would like your opinion on a matter.” The doctor moved to the bedside of a soldier, spoke to him in a low voice, then began to draw back the sheet that covered him. Alaina didn’t wait to see if the soldier wore anything more than the bandage across his stomach. But in her haste to make her glimpse as brief as possible, she whirled and stumbled into the captain.

  “Al!” he snapped, steadying her. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Alaina fumbled for an excuse. “Guess it’s the heat.”

  “Then take off that blasted coat. You look hot enough to roast.” He reached out as if to flick the shirtfront, and there was a loud slap as Al struck the hand away.

  “Told you not to touch me!” Her tone approached a strident screech.

  A chair clattered in the hallway, and the guard rushed in, followed by the sergeant. Both appeared ready to quell whatever disturbance might be brewing. Cole’s angry frown bore into the youth as he rubbed the smarting member.

  “One of these days, Al,” he gritted. “One of these days.”

  “I warned ya, didn’t I? Don’t touch me! I said it! You jes’ don’t listen! It’s yer own blame fault.”

  “Al!” Cole’s lean cheeks flexed tensely and the blue eyes narrowed. “Do you have any notion how exasperating you are?”

  The slim shoulders shrugged indifferently, and finally Cole spoke over his shoulder to assure the sergeant. “It’s all right. Just be prepared to watch this hotheaded imp while he’s here. He’ll have another war starting before you can stop him.”

  With a last glance of warning to the youth, Cole brushed past and went to converse with Doctor Brooks. Alaina kept her gaze carefully away from the thin, bare form lying on the bed and the wound Cole was examining. She began to tidy the room and stooped to pick up several volumes of poetry that lay scattered beneath the cot near the door.

  “Hey,” the soldier rasped, too weak to raise his head from the pillow. “Are you from around these parts?”

  “Upriver,” Al replied, scrubbing around on her knees as she picked up the books. “Close to Red.”

  “Rednecks, I betcha,” the burly one tossed sourly. Alaina bristled but didn’t glance his way. Straightening the volumes, she rose with them in her arms.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know a young lady who lives about ten or so miles from Alexandria, do you?” the soldier beside her wheezed, interest lighting his eyes. “Pretty little thing. No bigger than you. She gave the bunch of us some food one time.” He swallowed heavily. “And let us bed down for the night in her barn. I never—knew her name, but she had—a big black man who always made sure—we showed her respect. She called him Saul—”

  Alaina turned aside and mumbled over her shoulder, “All the people have gone from there now. She’s probably moved on like the rest of us.”

  “That’s too bad.” The soldier coughed before he continued. “I was thinking that maybe, when this war is over—and I’m released from prison—that I’d pass that way again. She was a real lady—sharing with us—what little she had. I’d like to repay her—somehow.”

  Alaina’s hand trembled as she put the books aside. A young man, full of dreams that all too soon would be crushed behind the walls of a prison. How could she tell him that this scrawny, scraggly haired youth was all that remained of that girl?

  She started in surprise as a hand came upon her shoulder, and with reluctance she faced Doctor Brooks.

  “So, you’re the young lad Captain Latimer has been warning me about,” he chuckled. “It took an effort on my part, but he finally brought you up here to help me out.”

  The kindly blue eyes twinkled as Alaina lifted her gaze, then amazement dawned in his face, and his mouth sagged slowly open. “My lord!”

  Alaina grimaced sharply as he recognized her. Doctor Brooks had often been at the Craighugh house when she and her family were visiting there. On several occasions he had teased her about gathering in with the young boys as if she were one of them.

  Abruptly, Doctor Brooks cleared his throat and turned back to Cole, catching the younger man’s arm and leading him to the door. “There was another matter I wished to discuss with you, Captain. The morphine is almost gone—”

  The two men walked out into the hall, and Alaina slowly released her breath. Doctor Brooks would guard her secret as jealously as he guarded the lives of these men who filled the Confederate ward.

  A light breeze caressed her, bringing her to the awareness of her surroundings. It suddenly dawned on her how much cooler it was here in the ward than in any other room in the hospital. Lifting her eyes, she saw the open skylight high above her head. There, the hot air was allowed to escape while the cooler breezes from outside were drawn through the room.

  “Them dumb Yankees ain’t figured it out yet,” the lanky reb chuckled, catching the lad’s contemplation of the air vent. “They stuck us way up here to keep us from climbing out the windows, but they ain’t yet realized we got the cooles
t room in the place.”

  Alaina grinned at the humor of it, remembering the sergeant sweating in his airless corner. Lately, it was a rare day that they could snatch even a small victory from the Yankees.

  When Doctor Brooks returned to the room, his pale blue eyes met hers. “I would have a private word with you, ‘Al,’ when you’ve finished with your chores.”

  On Saturday, Alaina worked in her uncle’s store under Roberta’s supervision. Since most of Al’s chores were finished by that Friday night, the captain granted the boy the day off. When this was found out, Roberta contrived to trap Alaina into volunteering her services at the store since she had been asked to work as well. Through much of the day, Roberta made it her personal duty to see that no undue frivolity resulted, while she bent the quickness of her mind to the accounting books, bringing the figures up to date. Sitting at her father’s large store desk, more often than not she became the interest of Yankee soldiers who wandered in. She derived great pleasure when these same brushed roughly past the tattered boy who swept and cleaned and neatened the stock.

  Sunday was a day for church and socializing. Since Alaina could hardly groom herself and accompany the Craighughs, she found a few hours when she could be free of Roberta’s scrutiny and ceaseless baiting. Dulcie and her family went to their own church, and that was usually an all-day affair. Thus, Alaina had the house to herself. In her leisure she bathed, perfumed herself, put on her old but best muslin gown, and, for a small space of time, enjoyed being a woman.

  It was early afternoon when she glanced out a front window and to her dismay saw Captain Latimer riding up the lane. In sudden panic Alaina flew to her room. There was not a moment to lose! The gown and slippers were thrown aside, and the detested britches and shirt dragged on. The boots came well above her ankles and hid her stockinged feet. She rubbed a handful of ever-ready dirt over her face; the floppy hat would serve to cover her clean hair. There was no time to muddy it again, nor could she bring herself to do it.

  The doorbell clanged and after a few moments was heard again. Alaina held her breath, hoping he would go away. Finally she heard his footsteps crossing the gallery. She waited, anxiously counting the moments. From the French doors she could see no sign of the Yankee or his horse. Carefully she crept down the gallery stairs so the oversize boots would not clump against them. To avoid any possible meeting, she dashed through the tall bushes toward the back of the house. Sighting the carriage house, Alaina headed for it, jumping over the low shrubs and sprinting for the open door. She glanced back over her shoulder and darted inside, intending to saddle Ol’ Tar and head out to the bayou where she wouldn’t be disturbed. But in the next moment she charged full bore into the back of Captain Cole Latimer. She hit him with such force that she knocked him away from the water pump and sent him sprawling in the dust and dirt of the stable floor.