In her best imitation of Aunt Amanda, she chillingly delivered a snub, looking through him as if he didn’t exist and then away.
“Bravo, Miss Devereaux,” his voice was softly jeering. “I’ve never seen even an old Charleston matron administer a better cut. Of course, it’s harder to get such an icicle of a look in ninety-degree weather.”
Pointedly she turned her back on him. She could hear his chuckle behind her.
“Oh, I am a pariah, aren’t I?” he said. “My Grandmama Soames always did tell me I wasn’t fit for polite society. ‘Course, I’ll admit,” he continued conversationally, “that I’m not attired in my finest evening wear. My shirt is a little frayed around the cuffs. And my boots—” he sighed dramatically, “well, they no longer have that mirror polish to them.” He paused for a moment. “Lord, girl, couldn’t you even give a little smile? Just a little look at your face to warm my lonely evenings?”
She whirled on him, longing to shout that he was a rude, insufferable man, but bit back the words. I won’t even deign to speak, she thought to herself, haughtily lifting her chin.
“That’s a good girl,” he said. Slowly, brazenly, his eyes traveled over her face and down her body. She felt suddenly as if he could see through her layers of clothes, as if his burning eyes were roaming her bare flesh. She felt a blush rise in her cheeks, and he grinned wickedly, as if he knew what she thought, and had intended for her to think so.
She bit her lip, trying to think of something sufficiently scathing to say. What had happened to Lieutenant Perkins? Why didn’t he return to rescue her?
“Please do not force me to call a guard,” she said coldly.
A bitter smile twisted his face. “Oh, yes, we mustn’t forget that I am a prisoner, must we? Did you and your friend come down here today to look at the animals? Was the zoo closed? Or is it just more titillating to see men in shackles?”
“You Rebels seem to sing a different tune when it’s you who are in chains. Why, I thought chains and whips and such were almost holy to you. I should think you would be proud to wear shackles, a sort of symbol of your homeland, so to speak.”
He stiffened in anger, and she recoiled a little at the blaze in his eyes. Then, visibly, he forced himself to relax and his eyes returned to their steely gray. “Miss Devereaux,” his former drawl became abrupt and clipped, “I suggest that you take a look at home before you start trying to reform me. Take a look at the women and children dying day by day in your mills. Take a look at your prisons, your insane asylums, your hospitals. Have you seen the food we receive to fortify us for hard manual labor? Have you seen the filth of our cells, the brutality of our guards? Why don’t you go home tonight and get out the Bible you stiffnecked Puritans revere so much and read the story about Mary Magdalene. ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ Or is that story considered too risque for a proper young Boston lady?”
Quivering with fury, she longed to slap him with all her strength or to roar, “Damn your impudence!” as her father would. Then suddenly one of the guards was by her side.
“This man bothering you, miss?”
Shakily she managed to say, “No!”
But Hampton, grinning that vile grin, said, “Just discussing with the little lady whether it’s true that if you bed a Boston girl, you’ll be frozen stiff before dawn.”
Katherine gasped at his vulgar insolence, then shrieked as the guard swung his rifle, clubbing Hampton with the butt end. The prisoner spun and went down at the force of the blow, but sprang back up like a cat. Half-crouching, he warily circled the guard, taut and tense, preparing to spring. Katherine stood frozen at the terrible animal beauty of his predatory movements, at the cold gray death in his eyes, at the fresh red blood trickling from his nose and mouth. The guard slowly raised his rifle and squinted down the barrel at the man.
“No!” Katherine cried, breaking out of her trance. “Don’t! Stop it, both of you!” She flung herself between Hampton and the guard. Though the guard held the gun, she faced Hampton, recognizing him as the more dangerous, even though unarmed. “Please, you mustn’t do this. He has the advantage over you. You’ll be killed. He has a gun.”
As though deaf, he sidestepped; behind her the gun tracked him; and Katherine moved again to block them. There was no reasoning with him; she could see the hatred in his eyes. Inspiration seized her and, though she could not imagine later how she had either thought of it or had the ability to do it, she suddenly smiled, forcing a dimple into her cheeks. “Now, really, Captain Hampton,” she said in mock severity, with a pretty, flirtatious toss of her head. Lightly she continued, “Didn’t your Grandmama Soames ever tell you it’s bad manners to kill someone in front of a lady?”
He stopped, nonplussed, and reason returned to his face. He dropped his clenched fists and then suddenly burst into laughter. “Lord, ma’am, you must have a Southerner lurking somewhere in your family tree. I apologize for my poor taste.”
“Now, Corporal, it was really quite innocuous. Why don’t you go back to your post and the captain here will return to work, and everything will go quite smoothly.”
“Miss Devereaux? What’s going on down there? Is something wrong?”
“Why no, Lieutenant Perkins.” She tilted her head to look up at him. “However, I am a little tired.”
“Of course,” he said solicitously, and descended the ladder. “I’m sorry to have left you down here alone; it must have been quite boring.”
A faint smile touched her face. “No, not really, Lieutenant.”
Hampton gave her a mocking salute and retreated, as Katherine took the lieutenant’s arm and left the ship. Her heart was still racing from the excitement and she felt as if she had enough energy to dance for hours. Mentally, she was in a turmoil, totally confused by Hampton and her own reactions to him. He was really a most abominable man, quite violent and rude and bold; she realized that she disliked him more than any man she had ever met and would have loved to do physical harm to him. The way he had looked at her had been infuriating and insolent, but it had sent the strangest feeling spreading through her. And his lazy, husky voice literally prickled the fine hairs on her neck. His voice, she mused, reminded her of brandy, sleek and smooth but bursting like fire within her.
Lieutenant Perkins, seeing her flushed face and the sparkle that fear had brought to her eyes, was shaken with his love. “Miss Devereaux, would you—that is, might I have the liberty of calling on you?”
She looked up at him, only half-listening. “Why, yes, if you’d like, Lieutenant Perkins.”
Stunned by his own good fortune, he almost stopped, but managed to recover. Too happy to speak, he contented himself with gently squeezing the delicate gloved hand resting in the crook of his arm.
Chapter 3
The sight of the large, rough-edged Lieutenant Perkins perched on one of the delicate drawing room chairs, holding a dainty Havilland teacup in one sea-hardened hand, was so ludicrous that Katherine had to bite her lip to keep from smiling.
Knowing what her aunt’s reaction would be to the casual way in which they had met, Katherine had told her only that a young lieutenant to whom her father had introduced her might be expected to pay a call on them soon. Aunt Amelia, knowing no Perkins in Boston, assumed he was from another city, perhaps even—heaven forbid—another state. She could only hope that he wasn’t from some horrid state like New York or Pennsylvania. There was, she thought, a rather prominent Perkins family in Providence, Rhode Island, which would not be too unacceptable, considering the fact that her niece was running out of chances.
He paid a call on them the first Sunday afternoon after he had asked her, as she suspected he would. When the butler showed him into their drawing room, he had bowed awkwardly, looking ridiculously out of place among the fragile furnishings. That didn’t surprise Katherine; it had been her experience that many seamen became suddenly gauche and clumsy when removed from their natural habitat. Aunt Amelia, expecting an ordinary civilian parading in a
navy uniform, was rather taken aback, but set up a brave chatter about the weather, preparations for the upcoming holidays, and the enormous decisions to be made concerning Christmas presents. The lieutenant listened attentively, a look of grim determination on his face. Katherine, amused, had intervened with an offer of tea, which he gratefully accepted—though no doubt he wished he hadn’t, once he was faced with the awkwardness of holding the fragile little cup and saucer.
“What part of the Navy are you in, Lieutenant Perkins?” Aunt Amelia asked him.
Katherine, realizing that the inquisition had begun, perked up so that she might be in readiness to come to his aid.
“I sail under Captain LeGrau, Miss Fritham, on the U.S.S. Pentucket.”
“He has been out chasing those Rebel pirates, Auntie. Doesn’t that sound exciting?”
But Aunt Amelia, timid though she might be, was, after all, a Fritham and not easily diverted when she was on the trail of someone’s background. “Yes, dear, it certainly is. But, of course, the lieutenant is much more used to sea adventures than I, I’m sure. Did you sail before the war?”
“Yes, I was in the merchant marine.”
“Why, how nice. Are you intending to return after the war?”
“The sea is the only thing I know. I grew up with it and I guess that I will stay with it until I die.”
“I have always thought that if I had been a man, I should have been a sailor,” Katherine said conversationally. “I have always felt quite drawn to the sea.”
“Katherine,” her aunt admonished, “you say the most outlandish things. Tell me, Lieutenant, where is your home?”
“Nantucket.”
Katherine could see the wheels spinning in her aunt’s mind as she tried to remember any Perkins in Nantucket.
The man gulped and, casting his fate to the winds, said, “My father is a ship’s captain, Miss Fritham.”
“How nice,” Aunt Amelia said automatically.
“Is he?” Katherine said interestedly. “What line?”
“The Stephens Line,” he said, wishing he could have said “his own.”
“The Stephens Line?” Amelia brightened at the name. “Katherine, are those Henry Stephens’s ships?”
“Yes, Aunt Amelia, but in spite of that, it’s a very good line.”
“Katherine!” Amelia exclaimed as Perkins choked back a laugh.
Lieutenant Perkins, miserably sure that all hope for his suit was lost, soon rose to take his leave. Politely he bowed over Miss Fritham’s hand and then Katherine’s, a slight squeeze of her hand and a warm look from his eyes telling her that he recognized and appreciated her efforts to draw the fire. Katherine smiled reassuringly at him, glad that, since frail Amelia so intimidated him, he had not had to face the heavy guns of Aunt Amanda.
“Katherine,” Amelia said after he had gone, “I really don’t think he’s quite the thing. A sailor from Nantucket?” From her tone she might have been saying “a convict from Devil’s Island.”
“Well, I wouldn’t worry about it, Aunt Amelia,” Katherine snapped. “I think you managed to frighten him off. I doubt he’ll return.”
“Dear, surely you haven’t developed an affection for that young man?”
“Don’t be nonsensical. I just think he’s a very fine man, and it makes me angry that you can see nothing but his name and where he’s from and whether his ancestors came over on the Mayflower.”
Quick tears started in Amelia’s eyes, but her aunt’s easy sensitivity simply irritated Katherine further and she flounced off upstairs to her room where she occupied herself by staring out the window and drumming her fingers on the arm of her chair. She had to admit that her aunt was not the source of her nerves; she had been on edge ever since that fight at the yards five days before.
She kept seeing again the rifle smashing into his face, the blood streaming from his mouth. Despicable and insulting as he was, it went against her grain to see a shackled man so brutally hit. No doubt one as insolent as he had to be punished, but surely a crude remark didn’t warrant that! To make it worse, she had not seen him among the prisoners the rest of the week. Had he been hospitalized? Or was he being punished by not being allowed to go on the work detail? Remembering what Perkins had said about the effect of prison on a seafaring man, she felt a stab of pain for the Southerner. And somehow she felt that it was her fault. She told herself that he had brought it on himself, that he had delivered a deliberate insult to her. But she couldn’t help but feel that she had been wrong to go down to the ship in the first place. It had been a foolish, impulsive thing to do, and she suspected it had been motivated by a wicked desire to see that impudent man brought low, chained and forced to work for his enemy.
Nor could she erase the memory of his bitter words about the treatment of the prisoners. She could see that they were not warmly enough dressed, and that the shackles chafed their skin. Finally, she had been compelled to inspect their lunch herself and was repelled by the watery bean soup that was their fare.
“Man’s inhumanity to man,” she sighed. Suddenly an idea flashed into her head and she ran out of her room and pelted down the stairs and into her father’s study.
“Papa?” she said, a little breathless from running with the iron clamp of her stays pinching her lungs. “Papa, I have an idea!”
Her father looked up inquiringly.
“About the prisoners. I want to feed them lunch.”
“What?”
“Well, supplement it, actually. I thought I would add meat and bread and perhaps a vegetable. And vinegar or limes to combat the scurvy.”
“My dear, how did you come by this madcap scheme?”
“Oh, Papa, I saw the lunch that is dished out to them; it’s so little, you can’t imagine. It—it nearly breaks my heart to see them in irons and see how their clothes are too thin and see the food they receive. And I thought, well, I can help them. Get them some warm clothes and give them decent food at least once a day. Why, it’s like charity work and that’s something I’m quite experienced at.”
Mr. Devereaux looked at her and sighed. “No, my girl, I’m afraid this is one time I must forbid you to do as you wish.”
“Oh, but it won’t cost much. There can’t be more than thirty men. And it will take a minimum of time and effort. Good staple food, nothing difficult, of course. It wouldn’t be much more work for Mrs. Woods—I can help her. You know how good I am at organizing.”
“Katherine, I know that with you in charge it would be performed quite efficiently. Nor do I begrudge the expense. But if I let you, the military would be offended. These are prisoners of war, not charity cases! Why, your efforts would be seen as a rebuke to the Army. In fact, I doubt that they would allow you to do it.”
“Not allow me! Why, that’s just so unfair. You’re paying the prison for the work these men do for you, and the prison won’t spend a cent on them. And won’t let anyone else!”
“Now, don’t get that look in your eye. This is not time for one of your fits of stubbornness. Really, Katherine, they are prisoners of war. A few months ago these very men were no doubt pillaging our ships. And just recently their comrades were tramping through Pennsylvania to Gettysburg. These are the men you have been reviling for years as monsters, bloodthirsty slaveowners.”
“I still decry their abominable slavery. But their wickedness doesn’t justify our treating them with the same wickedness. We gain nothing by it, and we release the same evil in ourselves! Can’t you see how wrong it is?”
“Katherine, I’m afraid this is one time I’m going to have to refuse you.”
Katherine was not used to being refused anything, especially by her father. She had always been so determined, so capable, so forceful that she usually overwhelmed him. She took a direct counterattack.
“Father, if I were to approach the commandant at Fort Warren and get his permission, then might I be allowed to feed these men?”
“Dear God in Heaven, Katherine, you are a stubborn girl! I do
n’t want you pestering the Army about this.”
“I certainly shan’t pester him.”
Her father raised his eyebrows quizzically at that remark, but he replied gravely, “Katherine, I think it would be best if you stopped coming to the yard. It’s not the place for you, especially with all those prisoners. It was foolish to allow you in the first place. Of course, these men are a disturbing, pitiable sight to a gently reared young lady; it’s quite natural that you have become upset. I think the best thing is for you to stay home.”
Katherine was quite happy to be diverted from the original conversation as her father, by sidestepping the issue, had not actually refused her permission to approach the commandant. She started to hotly protest her father’s wishes, but stopped. “Let him try without me,” she thought, “and see how well he gets along.” She had declared war.
Calmly, icily, she said, “Very well, Father. I shan’t trouble you with my presence any longer.” Regally she rose and exited. Josiah Devereaux sighed and dropped his head to his hands. He found it so difficult to handle his daughter and for the millionth time wished that his wife had not died.
Pegeen Shaughnessy was crestfallen the next morning when she learned that her mistress would not be going to the office. “Oh, Miss Kate,” she cried, thinking of the lost walks with Jimmy O’Toole. “How dreadful! Can’t you talk your father out of it?”
“Perhaps I could, but I don’t intend to try,” said Katherine, the light of battle in her eyes. “At least not at the moment. I have other things to do. And perhaps Papa will find out that it’s not so easy to manage without me. Don’t worry, Peggy, I’ll return before too long.”
Devereaux, at first smugly sure that he had won on all fronts, soon began to feel a change in positions. It didn’t take him long to regret barring his daughter from the office. Orders, receipts, letters, the books—everything began to pile up. Moreover, Teddy did not possess Katherine’s spidery copperplate handwriting (and grammar, punctuation, and spelling skills), so that there was no one to write Devereaux’s letters at his dictation. Clerks and secretaries were almost impossible to find—certainly none with the brains, quickness, and ready knowledge of Katherine. Devereaux, before a week had passed, was searching for a way to ask her back without losing face.
Gregory, Lisa Page 4
