Rebel Rose

by Debra Glass

  Rebel Rose

  Debra Glass

  They say she’s a Rebel spy…

  Rosalie O’Kelley is not above using her feminine wiles to secure much-needed supplies for her fellow townspeople. But when Union Colonel Eric Skaarsberg is put in charge, Rose’s usual tactics fail miserably. In exchange for supplies, she comes to a scandalous arrangement with him. She agrees to become his willing plaything—to fulfill his every physical need, eagerly and without hesitation.

  Eric is duty-bound to ferret out the spy who has been leaking information to the Confederates. All evidence points to the passionate belle who readily responds to every touch and taste he metes out. One by one, he strips away Rose’s secrets, but Eric is not satisfied with owning the she-Rebel’s luscious body. He must uncover the truth of her past at any cost—even if it means the destruction of them both.

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Rebel Rose

  ISBN 9781419929304

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Rebel Rose Copyright © 2010 Debra Glass

  Edited by Meghan M. Conrad

  Cover art by Dar Albert

  Electronic book publication September 2010

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Rebel Rose

  Debra Glass

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to Stormy. Your friendship has enriched my life immeasurably. Thank you for reading, plotting, encouraging and conspiring with me.

  Prologue

  General Sherman’s Headquarters

  September, 1864

  Colonel Eric Skaarsberg knocked the mud off his boots before he ducked into General William Tecumseh Sherman’s tent at the Federal headquarters near Atlanta.

  Poring over field maps, the general did not seem to notice Eric, who took the opportunity to study the man he had not seen since the fighting at Pittsburgh Landing in 1862. Then, Eric had only been a lieutenant in the Union Army, a youngster assigned to the field hospital where Sherman had been brought after some Arkansas boys had put not one but two bullets in him.

  Eric was stunned at the general’s hardened and aged appearance. A greasy shock of chestnut hair interspersed with gray clung to Sherman’s forehead. The skin on his face was as sallow and lined as a well-traveled saddlebag. One hand trembled as if he’d been stricken with palsy.

  After Shiloh, rumors circulated that Cump Sherman was insane. To do what Sherman had done these past few years, Eric knew the man would have to be somewhat insane. But no one seemed to spread that gossip anymore since Grant had made Sherman commander in the West—and since he had pushed the Confederate Army completely out of Georgia.

  Eric had heard of the letter Sherman sent to President Lincoln in which he vowed to “make Georgia howl” and Eric knew Sherman’s hard-won victory had also secured another four-year term for the president.

  Twisting his slouch hat in his hands, Eric cleared his throat to get the general’s attention.

  Sherman twisted in his chair and looked over the top of his spectacles to eyeball Eric. “Colonel,” he greeted.

  Eric gave him a smart salute. “You asked to see me, Sir?”

  “You’re being sent to northwest Alabama.”

  “Yes Sir,” Eric said. “To Florence.”

  Sherman tugged at the collar of his shirt. “It’s hot as hell down here.”

  Eric agreed. It was already the third week in October and still, the stifling Southern heat clung like stubborn cockleburs.

  “That little corner of Alabama is a hotbed of bushwhacker activity,” Sherman said, dragging his spectacles off and tossing them on one of the maps he’d been perusing. “The worst I’ve seen.”

  Eric had been told Florence was friendly to the Federals. He was not, however, going to disagree with his commanding officer. “Yes Sir.”

  “Those folks up there will kotow to you, give you anything you want, and then stab you in the back with a smile on their face. Do you understand, Colonel?”

  “Yes Sir.”

  “The women are worse than the men,” Sherman continued.

  Eric’s spine stiffened. No one had to tell him women could be deceitful creatures.

  Sherman pinned Eric with such a stare that a twinge of dreaded expectation fluttered inside him. There was more to this meeting than he had anticipated.

  “It’s my belief there are several smugglers up in that area,” Sherman said.

  “Smugglers?”

  “Somehow, the Rebels are getting their cotton through to somebody who’s been paying a pretty penny for it. And that area ain’t hurting for nothing.” Sherman drummed his fingers on the map as if he were in thought. Then, the tone of his voice dropped as he murmured, “I fell prey to her, myself.”

  “Her?” Eric shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Yes, there was much more to this meeting than Eric had assumed.

  Sherman drew in a deep breath and then blew it out slowly. “There’s a she-Rebel who lives there by the name of Rosalie O’Kelley. I want you to keep a close eye on her, Colonel Skaarsberg. General Pike tried to ferret out her secrets last year but Pike is well—not a man of your…shall we say, stature and fine looks.”

  Eric’s lips parted to utter a refusal or a request for anything except what he worried Sherman would say next.

  “I know that you, better than anyone, can spot a spy. You did good work in Nashville,” Sherman commended him.

  “Yes Sir,” Eric said but the blood in veins turned to ice. Although his commanders had applauded him, Eric did not feel like a hero. Not in the least.

  He had been fooled by a woman—a woman he had not known was one of the most infamous prostitutes in Nashville’s bawdy house district known as Smokey Row. She had vowed she loved him. She had undressed for him, all the while playing the innocent Union sympathizer. She had collected information, which she passed on to the Confederates and Eric had only realized it at the last moment. His unbridled lust and foolishness ended in the loss of eight Union lives. While the army regretted these deaths, the leak of information had led Eric to realize his lover was a spy.

  No, he did not feel like a hero.

  Nor had he felt like a hero when he’d watched her being taken into custody or when he’d personally written eight letters to eight grieving families.

  Sherman came to his feet and took a step that closed the distance between them. “Rosalie O’Kelley is a blockade-running Jezebel. She will stop at nothing to get what she wants from you. Permission to travel through the lines, special privileges, whatever she wants.”

  “Has she taken the oath?” Eric asked in reference to the oath of allegianc
e all secessionists were required to take before they were granted services from the Federal Army.

  “Of course she has.” Sherman’s eyes narrowed. “And in spite of it, the Widow O’Kelley is also a Confederate spy.”

  “Why hasn’t she been arrested?” Eric knew the tremor in his voice betrayed emotion he thought he had long since quelled.

  Sherman scratched his rust-colored beard. “That’s what I need you to do.”

  “Arrest her?” Eric asked.

  Sherman’s eyes flashed. “Find irrefutable proof that she’s a spy.”

  “Forgive me, Sir. But spies have been arrested for much less,” Eric said.

  “Rosalie O’Kelley is the sister of Brigadier General James Ross Brownlow.”

  Eric stared. General Brownlow had been a war hero—for the Union Army. He’d fallen at Shiloh in the same Rebel rout where Sherman was wounded. “I see,” Eric said.

  “Do not tarry, Colonel Skaarsberg,” Sherman said. “Right now, Hood is knocking on the door of the Tennessee River in Decatur. We’re holding him fast but I don’t doubt if he’s thwarted in Decatur, he’ll move west to cross at Florence.”

  Despite the Indian-summer heat, a chill swept up Eric’s spine. If the twenty-thousand strong Confederate Army of Tennessee got across the river, they would have no trouble retaking north Alabama and most of southern Tennessee. If they took Nashville and possession of the Cumberland River, the entire fate of the war might turn.

  Men fighting for their own homes were a fiercer lot than men who fought because they’d been drafted.

  “If Mrs. O’Kelley can get information to General Forrest, heaven help us all,” Sherman said. “Many lives depend on you, Colonel Skaarsberg. You don’t want the blood of our men on your hands. Again.”

  Chapter One

  Florence, Alabama

  October, 1864

  Rosalie O’Kelley inhaled the crisp fall air. Dread settled in her tightly corseted stomach as she gazed up at the castle-like façade of the college building the Yankees had established as their headquarters.

  “You ain’t goin’ in there by yourself.”

  Rose glanced at the freedman servant who’d borne her husband’s corpse all the way back from Shiloh battlefield. Rueben was as dedicated to the cause of getting much-needed salt, sugar, medicine and fabric to war-torn north Alabama as she was but he did not approve of her methods. “I shall be just fine,” she said.

  Rueben shook his cane in her direction. “You don’t know this Yankee. He might not be as…generous…as the last one.” Rueben was only thirty-two years old but he had the demeanor—and the gait—of a man twice his age.

  “I haven’t come across one yet who wasn’t…generous,” Rose said as she deftly unfastened the top two buttons of her black mourning gown.

  “I don’t like it.” Rueben shook his head. “I don’t like it at all.”

  Rose remained silent. She didn’t like it either but her only other choice was conceding defeat and that was not in her nature.

  “Neither would Mister Billy,” Rueben muttered.

  Rose drew in a sharp breath. “Mister Billy’s dead and I am only doing what I have to do.”

  Rueben’s head dropped and he continued to murmur unintelligible words about Rose’s deceased husband. Rose missed Billy too but her heart went out to Rueben. After all, he and Billy had been half brothers. Although on paper, one had owned a brickyard and the other had been his slave, the two had always acted as brothers. And when Billy’s father had died, leaving Billy everything he owned, Billy’s first act as heir was to free Rueben.

  Billy had signed the papers before his father’s body had been interred in the Florence Cemetery. Rueben had been the only family Billy had left besides Rose.

  The two men had grown up a year apart in age. Since Billy had donned a gray uniform and was killed fighting for the Sixteenth Alabama Infantry, Rueben was the only family Rose had left. Then, the soldiers had been confident of an early victory, of chasing the Yankees out of the Confederacy.

  Rose’s heart twisted when she thought that her own brother might have fired the bullet that had made her a widow at nineteen. Or perhaps, Billy had fired the bullet that had killed the brother. Either possibility was the stuff of her nightmares.

  Darkly, she wondered if the stress of both deaths had been the reason her baby girl had died in her womb.

  It had been two years since she’d become barren and widowed. Now, at only twenty-one, she felt as if her life was over—as if her life had ended instead of her husband’s. The war had toughened her as it had most of the soldiers and civilians who’d shared dreams of glory. Rose sighed. There was no use in looking back. What had been done was done and all she could do now was make the best of her youthful good looks to make the lives of Florence citizens easier.

  Now that the entire Confederate Army of Tennessee was headed this way, she, and others like her, were stockpiling all they could get from the Yankees in order to replenish the Confederates’ supplies.

  If it meant brandishing her bosom to get laudanum for a suffering soldier, Rose was ready to do it. What did her reputation matter any longer? She never intended to marry again anyway. But bleakly, she recalled how wonderful it had felt to lose herself in Billy’s arms, to come utterly undone at his touch, his kiss.

  She inhaled. What man would want to marry her now? The doctor had told her when she lost the baby that she’d never be able to get pregnant again. It was just as well that she was barren. This was no kind of world to bring a child into.

  A shudder ripped through her as she climbed the stairs into what had once been—and hopefully would be again—Wesleyan College. Now it served as the headquarters for the Yankees.

  Well. Despite what she thought about sex, Rose understood the mere innuendo of the act was a vehicle through which she could obtain most anything she wanted from women-starved soldiers.

  “Wait here,” she whispered to Rueben as one of the Yankee guards nearly tripped over his own boots to be the first to open the door for her.

  “Miss Rose,” he greeted, blushing profusely. “How nice to see you.”

  “You too, Sergeant Poole. My, my, have you done something different with your whiskers?” Rose asked as she gave the youth a pat on the cheek.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Well, something about you looks different. I swear, you look at least five years older.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Rose saw a scowl cross Rueben’s features. She ignored him and instead, dazzled Poole with a smile as she swayed through the door. “I’m here to see the new officer in charge. I believe I was told his name is Skaarsberg.”

  Rose hoped he was less portly and ancient as the last staff officer in charge of issuing permits for goods.

  As Poole directed Rose up the stairs, he walked as closely as he could despite the wide sweep of Rose’s hoop skirt. She was grateful for the two feet of space the skirt kept between them. Poole stank of soured wool and that tangy stench that clung to unwashed bodies. Still, she smiled and flirted as if he were the most handsome, clean-smelling man on the face of the earth.

  “Colonel Skaarsberg,” Poole said, standing in the doorway of what had once been a classroom.

  “Yes, Poole?”

  The voice that came from the other side of Poole did not sound like that of a decrepit old man. Instead, Rose intuited the speaker was educated and bearing little evidence of the harsh, nasal accent she associated with the Federals who’d been here before.

  “Mrs. O’Kelley is here to see you, Sir,” Poole said.

  “Send her in,” a whisper-quiet voice replied.

  Poole stepped out of the way as he turned to Rose. That broad jack-o-lantern grin spread across Poole’s face once more and Rose gave him a gracious nod as she passed into Skaarsberg’s office.

  The colonel did not shoot to his feet as the Federals—even the notorious Sherman—had done. Instead, he kept his head down so that the only thing visible about him was the wealth o
f golden waves covering his head.

  Rose dampened her lips with the tip of her tongue. She toyed with the drawstring on her reticule. Waiting. Waiting.

  Anger welled at the audacity of this man. Did he not have proper breeding or gentlemanly manners?

  Finally, he raised his head and when he did, Rose suppressed a gasp. He possessed the face of a sculpted angel. His skin was nearly as golden as his sun-kissed hair. He was as fair as Rose was dark. Where the sun brought out her Cherokee heritage by turning her skin a burnished brown, the outdoors made this man glow.

  He slipped off his spectacles and as he came to his feet, it seemed as if he would go on forever. Rose swallowed as he towered and when he stepped out from behind his desk, she resisted the urge to take a step backward.

  A giant of man, he looked like one of the Norse invaders she’d read about in history books. His very presence caused her knees to quiver. He was handsome. Far too handsome. She reminded herself that she was here to work her wiles on him, not to behave like some shrinking ninny just because he had a handsome face…and a comely physique.

  Rose cleared her throat, waiting for his gaze to travel downward, to linger on her open bodice and then her narrow waist before lifting once more to her eyes. No man had ever resisted her. Instead, his gaze briefly met hers and almost immediately, he turned his attention to some lint on the sleeve of his frock coat.

  “How may I be of service to you, madam?” His voice was cool.

  “I…I need a permit for six barrels of salt,” she blurted. With the others, she had flirted, been coy, swished her skirts and batted her eyelashes. Their reaction to her beauty had made it easy for her. Skaarsberg’s reaction was…nonexistent.

  His gaze grazed hers again. “May I ask for what reason you need six barrels of salt?”

  None of them had ever asked why! Rose stared, trying to think. A breeze blew through the open window, bringing the colonel’s scent with it. Rose breathed the clean, spicy fragrance in. There was no lingering odor of cigar or pipe tobacco. No stench of damp wool or horse sweat. Instead, he smelled as heavenly as he looked. Rose realized she was trembling. What must he smell like up close?