by Lori Austin
Law’s mouth opened, then shut again, and he peered at Mikey with more interest. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen.” The man cast Ethan an exasperated glance. “I was fifteen when I came to war with Ethan. No one thought I’d be any good, but I showed ’em.”
He had to be allowed to enter the Intelligence Service with Ethan. His brother was smart about books and healing, but when it came to the world, Ethan was as blind as all the rest of them. Without Mikey to watch his back, bad things would happen.
“Mikey can find anything,” Ethan said. “Sneak up on anyone. He’s been that way since he could walk.”
“And you know this how?”
“He’s my brother.”
Law’s sharp gaze flicked back and forth between the two of them several times before he murmured, “No one more loyal than a brother.”
The tight ball of fear in Mikey’s chest loosened. Everything was going to be all right.
• • •
“Matron!”
Annabeth Phelan paused outside the surgery. Dr. Ethan Walsh was up to his elbows in a patient. Well, not literally, though from the blood coating his arms, it was very difficult to tell.
“Don’t dally,” he snapped. “I need ye over here.”
She did as she was told, not only because he was a doctor and she was a matron, but because his Irish accent sounded exactly like her papa’s. God rest his soul. And Mama’s, too, along with those of nearly everyone else she knew.
Due to the Union advance toward Richmond, which had begun with the bloody battle in the Wilderness nearly two months past, Chimborazo Hospital possessed far more patients than the staff was capable of caring for. The surgeons were overworked, but at this point, who wasn’t?
“Should I call a steward?” she asked.
The main occupations of a matron were to feed and comfort the soldiers. Thus far she’d held hands, written letters, and called a steward to remove the dead. Having nursed her parents, and many of their friends, through their final illnesses, Annabeth was capable of much more. Not that anyone had asked.
“Shove yer hands in that bucket,” Walsh ordered.
Annabeth followed instructions, hissing as the liquid burned areas previously scrubbed raw. Dr. Walsh insisted on cleanliness in his surgery to the point that most of the other doctors sneered and whispered. However, fewer of his patients had died of gangrene and fevers than any of the others.
“The sting will pass. But it’s necessary before you touch him, aye?” Annabeth nodded. “I know the others laugh, but cleansing everything with alcohol seems to help.” He lifted one shoulder. “At the least, it won’t hurt. Now, I need you to sew his wound. He’s torn it open, thrashin’ about.”
“I’m not a nurse.”
Walsh lifted his gaze. His light gray eyes shone brightly in his sun-darkened face. He was a striking man. The other matrons tittered whenever he walked past.
“That isn’t true,” he murmured.
Annabeth frowned, trying to remember what she’d said before his eyes had captured her. “I’m merely a matron, sir.”
A status revealed by her dark gown and cap, along with the once-white apron. At Chimborazo, nursing duties were performed by detailed and disabled soldiers or slaves. Although at this point in the war, all able bodies were in the war. The assignment of soldiers to nursing had trickled to nearly none.
Walsh waved a hand dripping with blood. A few drops flecked Annabeth’s bodice. She ignored them. She’d been flecked with worse. “I’ve seen ye work. You’ve nursed before, and blood”—he eyed what he’d tossed in her direction—“doesn’t bother ye.”
She wondered if he’d flecked her on purpose, then shrugged. Blood didn’t bother her. Which, considering her life over the past few years, was a very lucky thing.
“What do you need me to do?”
Dr. Walsh smiled, and the expression made him appear younger than she’d believed him to be—nearer her own twenty-three instead of her eldest brother’s thirty-two. Or the thirty-two he would have been if he hadn’t died at Sharpsburg nearly two years past.
Annabeth pushed thoughts of Abner from her mind. If she didn’t, she’d start thinking of how James had died at Ball’s Bluff and Hoyt at New Bern, then Saul at Shiloh. But nearly as bad as their names on the death rolls had been the lack of any news at all of her youngest brother, Luke.
“If ye would sew the wound closed once more,” Dr. Walsh said. “I’ll be keepin’ him still.”
Annabeth lowered her gaze from the doctor to the patient. She’d heard they’d started handing guns to anyone who could hold on to them, but she hadn’t realized exactly what that meant until now. This child didn’t even have a beard.
“You’d do a much better job than me with the needle,” Annabeth said.
“Doubtful. My samplers were never the rage.”
For an instant Annabeth stared at him. Then she laughed. “Nor mine.”
She was better at shooting than sewing. Not that it made any difference. Certainly she could have cut her hair, worn her brothers’ clothes, and joined up, but she’d believed she would be of more help here. If anyone would actually allow her to help. So why was she hesitating now?
“If he comes about and thrashes,” Dr. Walsh continued, “ye’d not be able to hold him still. He’s stronger than ye’d think for one who’s been gut shot. But that’s often the case when the pain takes over.”
Annabeth had held her brothers still often enough. But that had involved underhanded methods of pinching, hair pulling, and kicking areas no lady should know about, let alone kick. A lifetime with the Phelan brothers had taught Annabeth to fight dirty or lose. As she could not use those methods on a sick man, Annabeth retrieved the suture needle and thread from the instrument table.
“Silver suture wire is a thing of the past,” the doctor said. “I’ve not seen such luxuries since just after Manassas.”
“I’ve never seen suture wire.” Annabeth pressed the gaping belly wound together and shoved the needle through the jagged edges.
“I miss it.” Walsh wiped the welling blood away with a cloth drenched in the bucket of water that wasn’t merely water. “Doesn’t pull loose as easily as thread.”
“Mmm,” she murmured, concentrating on the wound, working quickly. The soldier stirred now and again but didn’t awaken.
She finished the sutures, reached for scissors, and had Dr. Walsh slap them into her palm. Startled, Annabeth nearly dropped the instrument. Her gaze flicked to the doctor’s, but his remained on the patient. Several days’ growth of beard darkened his chin and cheeks. Had he been on duty that long? Or had he merely lost interest, as so many had, in things that did not matter?
Annabeth snipped the thread at the final knot and laid the scissors and needle on the tray. Walsh leaned close, studying her work. “Ye’ve done this before.” His eerily pale eyes lifted. “Many times.”
“I have brothers.” Had, her mind echoed . . . but she ignored it.
“Ah.” He straightened, his true height surprising her. Until now, she’d seen him only bent over someone. “That explains it, then.”
Annabeth was considered tall for a woman. In truth, she was tall for a man. That, combined with her bright red hair and tendency to speak her mind—not to mention this hellish war, which had taken away all the boys and killed most of them before they’d had any chance to become men—might be the reason she was still Miss Phelan rather than Mrs. something else
For an instant she enjoyed looking into the eyes of a handsome fellow, imagining what it would be like if she weren’t doing so over a bloody body, in a hospital full of many more. She couldn’t quite manage it.
Annabeth stepped back. “If you don’t need anything else . . .”
“I’m keeping ye from yer duties.”
“This was more important.” And the type of work she’d much rather be doing. “Good day, Doctor.”
“I’ve watched ye,” he murmured.
A trickle of u
nease made her pause only steps from escape. “Sir?”
“Yer talents are wasted writin’ letters and stirrin’ the soup.”
Steeling herself, she faced him. “No one else agrees.”
“Dinnae worry.” He gave her that smile again, the one that made her breath catch and her cheeks flush. “They will.”
CHAPTER 2
Ethan watched Annabeth Phelan hurry out the door. There was something about her that intrigued him.
“Fool,” he muttered. He had no time for courting. Especially as he was living a lie. But she had healing hands that should be put to better use.
A sudden flash of the better uses he might have for them made Ethan grit his teeth and count out loud in Gaelic. “A haon, a dó, a trí, a ceathair, a . . .”
He struggled to recall the word for five, and instead remembered the fiery shade of her hair, the cream of her skin, the dot of freckles across her nose, and the scents of lavender and mint all around her. Perhaps he should count to one hundred, but he didn’t know how.
He had been too long without a woman if the mere sight of one caused his body to stir and his mind to forget what was important. He could wind up hung for a spy if he wasn’t careful. And a man thinking with his bod was far from careful.
Ethan’s patient remained unconscious. While a good thing during the stitching, the boy’s continued lack of awareness worried him.
Ethan sniffed the wound, caught no scent of bowel or rot. He would keep a close eye on the youth. Not that there was much he could do about a gangrenous belly wound, but he would not have the boy die alone.
The soldier still wore his trousers—homespun, not gray—but these days many of the Confederate forces were fresh out of uniforms and everything else. Ethan quickly searched the pockets, pulled out a small scrap of paper so stained with blood that whatever had been written on it was as gone as the lad’s boots. This had been the case with nearly all of the scraps Ethan had discovered so far. However, delirious ramblings were often not as delirious as they seemed.
“Gotta cross,” the youth muttered. “Cross the river.”
Ethan, who’d had his hand in the boy’s back pocket, took it out. “Yer fine,” he soothed. The soldier’s eyelids fluttered. “Not crossin’ the river anytime soon.”
“Rendezvous,” he blurted, and Ethan stilled. “Rangers to Rectortown.”
“Yer not speaking of the eternal river, are ye, now?” Ethan murmured. “Go on.”
“Yes, sir, Colonel Mosby, sir.” The boy groaned and reached for his wound. Ethan snatched his hand before it could find the mark. “I delivered the message. Rangers are a comin’.”
Colonel John S. Mosby was one of the most wanted Confederates of the war. His 43rd Battalion of cavalry were partisans, guerillas in truth, harrying Union supply lines and disrupting transportation. They posed lightning strikes on their enemy, then rode off on some of the best horseflesh in the country and disappeared, blending in with the local folk.
Ethan chewed his lip as he frowned at his patient’s homespun trousers, which now took on a whole new meaning. It was said that Mosby’s Rangers wore no distinguishing uniform beyond a bit of gray on each man’s clothes. He lifted the boy’s discarded, bloody shirt and spotted a single gray pocket.
The tide of the war had turned after Gettysburg, but the conflict was still far from over. The end of Mosby’s raids would have a twofold effect—bolstering Union morale even as it decimated Confederate confidence. Ethan had to get this information to Mikey. If they could use it to find Mosby, they could stop him.
The head matron bustled into the room, stopping short at the sight of Ethan. From her expression, the woman thought he was a lunatic. Most of the staff did. But they couldn’t argue with his results—at least in his hearing.
Dr. Brookstone had believed in two things—the genius of Shakespeare and the necessity of cleanliness in the workplace. He’d come to understand, and Ethan had too, that putrefaction was a result of invisible particles in the air. If they entered an open wound, infection set in. The particles could travel on the instruments used, the sutures, even the surgeon’s, the nurse’s, or the patient’s hands.
Brookstone had washed everything that touched a patient, including the doctor, with a mixture of alcohol and water. The practice had become second nature to Ethan. To those who didn’t like it, he said, Ag fuck tu, though never out loud.
“Mrs. Dimmity,” Ethan greeted. “How lovely to see ye, me dear.”
Mrs. Dimmity had been a matron since the day of the hospital’s inception nearly three years before. Chimborazo had begun life as a training ground for the Confederate forces. When the soldiers marched away, they’d left behind more than one hundred new wooden buildings, referred to as wards.
Dr. James B. McCaw had arrived with Mrs. Dimmity in tow and set to work turning those empty buildings into a hospital. Rumor had it that Mrs. Dimmity had served as the doctor’s nursemaid. Ethan found this difficult to believe. McCaw was thirty-eight. If that rumor were true, Mrs. Dimmity would be nearing sixty.
Ethan did not doubt rumors of her age because she appeared young. She was as wrinkled as an apple dried by the sun, yet she marched across the room, her step as solid as Old Ironsides. Ethan doubted even a cannonball could make her retreat. She was on her feet before the sun rose and long after it fell. There’d been days when Ethan would have begged to sit down. If Mrs. Dimmity hadn’t still been standing.
“I have a favor to ask of ye,” Ethan began as Mrs. Dimmity reached for a cloth.
Ethan tsked and, though she scowled, the woman moved to the bucket and plunged her hands within. She even hunted for a fresh rag with which to wipe the patient’s face instead of the already-bloody one she’d originally chosen.
Though Ethan would have preferred to finish what he’d begun with the boy, the soldier was in good hands—now that she’d washed them—and he had other duties.
“Return the private to the infirmary,” he ordered. “If there’s any sign of fever, send someone to fetch me.”
“And where will you be, sir?”
“My quarters.” The muscle beneath Ethan’s eye fluttered, and he rubbed it absently. “Resting.” Ethan headed for the door at the same nimble pace with which Mrs. Dimmity had arrived.
“You had a request, Doctor?”
He was so intent on getting where he needed to be and then back to his quarters before anyone knew he hadn’t gone there, for an instant Ethan couldn’t remember what it was. However, when he turned and saw the patient, he recalled those clever, healing hands.
“See that Miss Phelan is relieved of her duties as matron.”
“Sir?” Her wrinkled face wrinkled even more. “She’s one of my best.”
“Aye,” he agreed. “I’ll have her as my nurse.”
Mrs. Dimmity gasped. “That is not done!”
“’Tis now,” he said, and left.
• • •
Despite his size, Mikey blended into the area around Richmond with ease—lots of trees, plenty of streams, hills that rolled on forever. He’d spent a lifetime tracking animals. If they hadn’t seen him, people certainly wouldn’t.
John Law’s instructions were simple. Mikey stayed in an abandoned cabin not far from the Confederate capital. If anyone but the agent or Ethan arrived, he would pretend to be mute. Mikey had attempted both an Irish and a Southern accent. Neither had been convincing.
So far Mikey had always known folks were coming long before they arrived. He slipped into the trees, listened, looked, waited for them to leave, then returned.
He always knew Ethan was coming, too. Not that his brother was overly loud or careless. Mikey just heard things no one else did—from farther away than he should.
Ethan dismounted, led the horse to the water trough, then joined Mikey on the porch. “Ye all right?”
Mikey nodded.
“Anyone been by?” Mikey shrugged, and Ethan sighed. “Ye can speak to me, ye know?”
Mikey had done so lit
tle talking of late, he’d gotten out of the habit. He cleared his throat; his first few words came out quite hoarse. “And you don’t have to use Da’s voice while you’re here.”
“I know.” Ethan dropped the accent. “You get used to it.”
Mikey was glad he didn’t have to pretend to be someone he wasn’t all the time. From Ethan’s exhausted appearance, it wore on a man.
“John Law says he’s gonna start giving me more to do.”
Ethan frowned. “Law says a lot.”
“He teaches me things.”
“Like what?”
“Spy things. I can teach ’em to you.”
For an instant Ethan seemed interested; then his frown returned. “What does he want you to do now?”
“He recruited a sniper. Fellow needs a spotter to keep an eye out while he has his to the gun.”
“No,” Ethan said.
“I can’t just sit here all the time. I’d be good at watchin’ his back. You know I would.”
“What if I bring information and you aren’t here?” Ethan asked.
“You leave a note, in that code of Law’s. Like we talked about.”
Ethan let out a long breath, and Mikey knew he’d won. Not that he’d planned to let Ethan tell him he couldn’t work with that sniper. Or leastways, if Ethan told him no, he hadn’t planned on listening. Mikey was almost eighteen—a man grown. Had been for a while now, and he’d do what he thought was best.
“I have to get back,” Ethan said. “Before someone realizes that I’ve gone.”
“What’ll you say if they do?”
“I was out riding. I couldn’t sleep. I needed air.”
The lies tripped off Ethan’s tongue like Gospel. Mikey wished he could lie like that.
“Tell Law that Mosby’s called the Rangers to Rectortown.”
Mikey nodded and stood. Law ranted a lot about Mosby.
“Where is he?” Ethan asked.
“Not tellin’.”
“I’m your brother.”
“Don’t care.”
“What if someone sees you?”
Mikey snorted. That wasn’t going to happen.
“All right,” Ethan agreed. “Just . . .” He set his hand on Mikey’s arm. “Be careful.” He started back the way he’d come. “If anything happened to you, I’d . . .” Ethan spoke again in their father’s voice. “I’d kick yer ass so hard ye’d never let it happen again, me boyo.”
