An Extraordinary Union

by Alyssa Cole

  Malcolm pulled her into the stairwell and closed the door behind him, pulling her close to his warmth. Fool that she was, she let him.

  “Elle, what’s wrong?”

  Everything.

  She shook her head against his chest. “You’re right. If Susie is sniffing after me, I should go.”

  Malcolm rubbed his palm over the small of her back. “Rufus had cornered her before I left, so you have a moment or two. Tell me what pains you like this?”

  It was the concern in his voice that did her in. He couldn’t fake that worry, that strain that said he was already preparing to shoulder whatever burden she would lay on him. Elle took a shaky breath.

  “Before I left for Liberia, my closest friend, my former beau, asked me to marry him.” She felt Malcolm stiffen, but he kept stroking his hand down her back in comfort without missing a beat.

  “Did you accept his offer?” Malcolm asked. She’d been twisting herself in knots over how slick Malcolm was, but he couldn’t keep the hesitation and fear out of his voice when he asked her that question. She thought to lie, to keep the comfortable distance of a man between her and Malcolm’s intentions, but to use Daniel in such a way seemed wrong.

  “No. I loved him very much, but not in that way.” She pressed her forehead into Malcolm’s chest at the thought that followed. He didn’t make me feel how you do. Enough. She pulled away from him and wiped the tears from her face with her sleeve. “While I was gone, he sank into a despair. One night after he’d imbibed too much, he was coerced by slavers and kidnapped down South. Daniel was a free man, born free. And I just saw a list of slaves for sale with his name on it.”

  “Are you sure it’s him?” Malcolm asked. There was no doubt or hesitation in the question, just determination.

  “No, just a name and a matching descriptor that could be chance.” She shook her head, every muscle in her body tensed against the knowledge that her hands were tied. “Even if it is him, what am I to do? I can’t break into a slave market and free everyone. That would start a manhunt for abolitionists and Northern spies in Richmond, and I’d be risking everything we’d worked for. Timothy, MacTavish and his group, the various Loyal League agents in the area. With the information we have, I could be risking the Union.”

  Malcolm nodded. “If anything alerts them to a strong Union presence, and a break-in at the slave market would do just that, they could change their plans for the ironclad and we’d have no way of knowing if we were right until too late.”

  Elle tried to think of another way to free Daniel, but her mind kept imagining him beaten and starved, dragged out before men who would grab his haunches and check his teeth like he were so much livestock. Living in the North, Elle had known of the slave markets. She’d read as much as she could about them, heard tales from the people escaping enslavement who passed through her parents’ home. But it was there in Richmond where she saw the monstrous made mundane. The slave market was located sickeningly close to the grocer’s, just another establishment to purchase goods. She heard the cries of mothers torn from children, of men separated from their wives. . . .

  Elle felt something inside her being crushed slowly: hope.

  “Just because we can’t free him ourselves doesn’t mean I can’t see if something, anything, can be done through my contacts.” He placed a hand on her elbow, lightly and with no hint of possession. “Elle, you know how I feel about you, but this is something else entirely. The other day you described us as ‘we,’ and I took that to mean you and I are partners now. I’ll do whatever I can to help in this matter.”

  Elle thought she would tumble down the stairs, so struck was she by his words. He knows what to say to gain a person’s trust, she reminded herself. But still, a warm, happy feeling was spreading from her chest, pushing out against the crushing despair that had threatened to extinguish that which drove her on. New words sprang into her mind, not those of a Chinese general, but a British author whose works had captivated her in an entirely different way. “And so she shuddered away from the threat of his enduring love.... Had she not the power to daunt him?” She’d recalled the same quote from Gaskell’s North and South when Daniel had proposed they marry, but somehow the words had lost their effect. With Daniel, she hadn’t immediately remembered the lines that followed later in the novel. “Why did she tremble and hide her face in the pillow? What strong feeling had overtaken her at last?”

  She didn’t know what to say, only that she should proffer some response to such a declaration. Before she could gather her thoughts, which had been blown willy-nilly first by thoughts of Daniel and then Malcolm’s presence, the door to the stairwell opened. Malcolm’s reflexes were quick, but Mary still turned a hard eye on him and Elle as she entered. This wasn’t the adolescent shenanigans of Althea and Zeke, and she doubted Mary would pretend she’d seen nothing as Elle had.

  “I seem to have taken a wrong turn while looking for the privy,” Malcolm said, and sidestepped Mary to exit into the hallway. Elle schooled her features into a study of nonchalant confusion.

  Mary pulled herself up to her full height and looked down at Elle. Her expression was stern, erasing the years of age and experience that Elle held over her. “I told Susie I sent you to clean up here, and that you wasn’t lazing around somewhere. Was I lying?” She held her candle up to Elle’s face and neck, seeming to examine them for signs of molestation, and then her mask of annoyance faltered and she took Elle’s hand. “Has that man tried anything? To force himself on you? You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

  There was a panic in Mary’s voice, a vulnerability that Elle hadn’t thought possible in the young woman. Her nostrils flared and her eyes were wide. This reaction could only be one borne of experience with such terrible matters. Elle clutched the woman’s hand and shook her head, desperately trying to signal that she was fine.

  Mary nodded, pulled her back up straight. “Okay,” she said, obviously still disturbed. “Okay. But the way that man lookin’ at you . . . be careful, girl. I’ve seen that look before and it don’t lead nowhere good.”

  Mary’s unconscious echoing of Elle’s own words that first night on the bluff shook her. What could possibly lie ahead for her and Malcolm? Could she really stake anything on the fact that he seemed to care about her? Daniel had cared about her, too, up until the point where she wouldn’t do as he bade, and they hadn’t had the obstacle of race between them.

  “Robert says change is coming for us,” Mary said. “But I know one thing that’ll stay the same—these men think they are entitled to not only the sweat off our back but every other part of our bodies to boot. Be careful, no matter how that one sweet-talks you. Just because he don’t hold you down, don’t mean he’s not forcing you.”

  Elle nodded again and looked away. She couldn’t meet Mary’s eye with the truth of her words hanging between them.

  Her friend sighed and briefly squeezed her shoulder. “If you think he gonna try something and you ain’t safe here, well, Robert and me could help if it came to that,” Mary said cryptically, then brushed past her down the stairs, leaving Elle feeling more alone than ever.

  She regretted so many things in that moment—not being able to respond to Mary, not being able to help the slave who could be Daniel, and perhaps most of all, not being able to fight her growing affection for a man she should have been running from in the opposite direction. She had no news to back up her claims about the ironclad, and nothing new to report to her colleagues. The souls of those men who had died from her false information seemed to crowd into the small space of the stairwell, smothering her in her own incompetency.

  She dragged herself quietly down the stairs, feeling like an unmitigated failure. Hopefully her colleagues were faring better than she, or else the country was in dire straits indeed.

  CHAPTER 11

  Anything to preserve the Union, Malcolm reminded himself as Susie preened in front of him the following night at another impromptu gathering at the Caffrey mansion. Senator Ca
ffrey had suddenly excused himself nearly an hour before, leaving Malcolm to Susie’s tender mercies. He fought hard against the fatigue-induced irritation with the woman. There wasn’t a thing he liked about her, and he was sure there was only one thing she liked about him, but that didn’t mean she should bear the brunt of his frustrations.

  “I am so sad that you’ll be leaving us shortly,” she said. “While it’s every Southern man’s duty to fight, it does leave a girl lonely.”

  “I’m sure you’ll get along fine,” he said, then raised his glass to her. “When I’m freezing out in the trenches, it will warm me just a bit to know that there’s a woman thinking kindly of me.”

  Susie giggled, and Malcolm thought he’d much prefer Elle’s unvarnished conversation to this flowery small talk. The note he’d written to her, in case they did not get to speak, was a weight in his pocket that would only be lessened when he knew she had it in hand. He told himself it was simply because he’d helped undercut the Confederacy in a small way, but he knew the information contained therein would please her, and that had become of paramount importance at some point over the last week. His brief glimpse of her hours earlier hadn’t done anything to sustain him. Seeing her on her knees scrubbing the floor had angered him but also unlocked an odd memory: his mother cleaning the house and his father coming up behind her, pulling her to her feet and sweeping her into a dance as he sang a Scottish ballad. That was when things were good between his parents, when the drink and the anger hadn’t muddled his father’s mind.

  Malcolm wondered what it would be like to partake in such domestic drudgery with Elle. To wake up beside her in their own warm home, to help with the wash and play with their children as she cooked them a meal. The fantasy was more than agreeable to him, even as Susie’s words reminded him of how unrealistic it was.

  An enslaved woman passed in front of them, her expression dour as she cleared glasses from a nearby table.

  “My word, you’d think we’d sentenced these darkies to death the way they’ve been sulking about,” she said, fanning herself in the closed air of the room. She wore some cloying scent that made Malcolm’s throat itch and his eyes burn, and each flick of her fan wafted more of the smell in his direction. “I know things are scarce in town with the blockade and all, but you don’t see us complaining,” she said as a slave gave her a cool glass of water to sip. She didn’t even look at the man.

  Malcolm mused that perhaps he’d been premature in shielding her from his annoyance.

  “Hopefully, the blockade will be broken soon,” Malcolm said, giving a nod of thanks as he took a glass of brandy. He swirled the drink in his glass and then pinned Susie with a smile that had proven to be quite effective with the opposite sex. She wasn’t the only one who knew how to flirt. “I’ve heard some talk these past days that we’re working on something to that effect. I’m assuming it’s on account of ladies needing their silk stockings.”

  He glanced suggestively at her skirts, as if imagining what was beneath. In reality, he thought of the silky skin of Elle’s thighs as he’d caressed them, how she had thrown her head back with abandon when he touched her. Something in his thoughts must have translated into his eyes, for Susie blushed and leaned toward him.

  “I don’t know much about this tiresome blockade,” she drawled, “but I know a great deal about silk stockings should you ever desire any hands-on instruction.” She raised a delicate brow at him.

  Malcolm looked her in the eye. “I just may take you up on that offer one of these days if you aren’t careful, Miss Susie.”

  Just then the senator walked over with a slight, pale man dressed in stained trousers and a threadbare jacket. He held a fine, though battered, hat in one hand and swept the other hand over his thinning hair as if checking that at least some of his coif remained.

  “May I present Mr. Alton Dix,” Senator Caffrey said. “McCall, this man is a true son of the Confederacy. He’s been working on a special project for weeks, and tonight he’s taking a well-deserved break.”

  Malcolm stood and grabbed the man’s hand, shaking firmly. Dix was the cause of the senator’s abrupt departure earlier in the evening, and so he was the man whom Malcolm needed to speak with the most.

  “Mighty fine to meet you, Mr. Dix,” he said in a reverent tone. “You must be a smart fella if they’ve got you working on a special project.”

  The man looked down shyly before answering.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say I’m over-smart,” Dix said. “But what I do know, I know well.”

  “And what is that?” Susie asked, standing and placing her arm through Malcolm’s. “Do tell, Mr. Dix.”

  Malcolm should have been happy that she asked the question instead of him, likely so she could report it to the gossip rags, but the dismissiveness of her tone irked him. She spoke to Dix as if he were a child presenting the grownups with something he’d found in the garden.

  Dix shot Senator Caffrey a nervous glance, as if asking for permission. The senator nodded, but his eyes held warning all the same.

  “I’m an engineer,” he said. “Before the war, I was in the business of building ships.”

  Were you now? Malcolm thought. The familiar sense of elation that occurred when he was on the right path in an investigation surged up in him. He imagined it was akin to the sensation of a wolf on the hunt spotting an oblivious deer.

  “A shipbuilder? I’ve always found that profession fascinating. It requires such precision and eye for detail,” Malcolm said, leaning slightly away from Susie. She tugged him closer to her and then looked up at him with wide eyes.

  “Mr. McCall, I’m terribly parched. Could you escort me to fetch some punch?”

  He’d just seen the chit drink an entire glass of water, but he supposed she meant parched for attention.

  “Would you like to join us, Mr. Dix?” he asked, hoping to continue the conversation. But the man eyed Susie, who ignored him instead of also requesting his presence.

  “That’s all right. I’m very tired, as I’ve been working and traveling all day. I’ll have to take my leave early, and I haven’t had a chance to make my rounds,” he said. He gave Malcolm a wary smile. “Perhaps we’ll continue this conversation upon my return. Will you be at the ball?”

  “I will, and I look forward to talking to you. I greatly admire a man who can conjure something as grand as a ship from numbers and measurements,” he said, shaking the man’s hand warmly. The man seemed surprised, but then returned the gesture with a kind smile, unencumbered by nervousness.

  Gotcha, Malcolm thought.

  Susie pulled him toward the punch bowl before Senator Caffrey and Mr. Dix had even turned away.

  “God, that man was tedious, standing there and sweating like a donkey,” she sniped. “And those clothes! How did he get in the front door with those? Why, even this fool is more put together than him.”

  They had reached the punch bowl, where Elle stood with a ladle serving out drinks. She wore a green-and-white-checked poplin dress that, despite its obvious age, fit her perfectly. Her ample bosoms were accentuated by a double row of white buttons along the front of the dress, and the waist was cinched tight with a length of frayed green ribbon. Her hair was different today, loosed from the plaits but pulled back into a bun covered by a piece of cloth that functioned as a snood. Wisps of her hair escaped at her temples, framing the face that haunted his dreams more often than not now. Malcolm remembered how her hair had felt in his hand as he pulled her head back and kissed her.

  And then he insulted her.

  “I don’t recall the man doing anything to warrant being compared to this simple thing,” he said, remembering how Susie had interrogated him about his behavior toward Elle before. He couldn’t show her any kindness, but he hoped she saw the irony in the insult he had chosen. “Besides, I’d hardly think that a naval engineer would be expected to be the height of fashion. He’s a shipbuilder, not a fashion plate. I look forward to learning more when he returns for the ball.�
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  He glanced at Elle. Her expression was blank as she filled a cup for Susie, but he knew she was listening, recording all of the information in his words for later processing. She handed the cup to him, and when her fingers grazed his, a jolt of raw awareness passed through him. Usually the thrill of a mission blocked out all other emotions, but since he’d met Elle he felt like nothing more than a love-struck schoolboy who couldn’t concentrate on his lessons.

  “Well, just because he’s important doesn’t mean he can dress like a poverty-stricken farmer. This society has rules for a reason,” Susie said, still stuck on Dix’s outfit. Malcolm pitied the flaying the man would get in the gossip columns the next day, then reminded himself that Dix was a Rebel.

  “And what reason is that?” he asked, masking the challenge in his question with a smile.

  “To separate people like us from them,” she said, pointing at Elle. “Animals.” She leaned closer and gave a throaty laugh, one that was well practiced and designed to seduce. “Although I do sometimes enjoy giving in to my baser instincts, Mr. McCall.”

  Malcolm simply stared at her. Hopefully she thought him enchanted by her wit.

  “But enough about that,” she said, back to being a coquette. “Papa told me that you like poetry. I have been practicing something to perform for my Ladies of the Rebellion meeting. Last time, Lucinda Smith performed and I have just the thing to top her.”

  She cleared her throat dramatically. “Oh, that these two solid breasts would melt, thaw, and resolve themselves forsooth,” she said, her mangled performance uttered with the conviction of the veriest actor who strutted the stage of the Globe.

  A violent fit of coughs erupted from Elle, some of them sounding suspiciously like laughter. She turned her back to them, shoulders shaking. It took all of Malcolm’s skill to mask his own laughter, which bubbled in his chest, drawn from him by Elle’s mirth.