“Shut up,” he said grimly.
“Oh, so that hit home, did it?” she said, perversely pleased and wounded. “You don’t like to be reminded of that, do you? That I have been handled and used by others; that you were not the only one to take me!”
“Katherine, for God’s sake, please—”
“Oh, I know, your delicate masculine ego,” she said bitingly. “You cannot stand to think that your property has been touched by someone else, can you? That made me quite unworthy of you, didn’t it? So low and common!”
“Don’t be stupid, Katherine; you know very well—”
“Yes, I know very well! There is no need for you to pretend that it isn’t so, that you still want me. Do you take me for an imbecile? Don’t you think I know that you are hanging about, professing mad passion for me, so that I will not reveal who you are? Well, you don’t need to bother, because I won’t tell them. I have no desire to spread my shame all over New York, too.”
He stared at her, amazed. “Katherine, you half-wit, do you think I am pretending to desire you?”
She leaped to her feet in rage. “Of course I think that. I don’t believe your protestations about ‘my reputation’—what a joke! When you wanted me, you weren’t halted by any such concern!”
“Good God, girl, are you taking me to task because I am not carrying you off and raping you this time? You’re insane!”
“Oh, am I? Well, thank you very much. I would rather be insane than be a low, blackhearted scoundrel like you! You are a snake, and spying is the perfect profession for you. And I shall tell you something else: you are not half the man Lieutenant Perkins is. He doesn’t care about my past. He didn’t throw me over because another man had raped me, as you did.”
“As I did! Katherine, I asked you to marry me. Is that what you call throwing you over?”
“Oh, yes, you asked me—because Dr. Rackingham forced you to! But you didn’t want me. You would not even touch me. Because I was spoiled; because other men had raped me. I was not fit for you any longer, was I? Of course not. I was stupid enough to tell you what happened, and immediately you rushed to get Dr. Rackingham to shuttle me off. And you think I am fool enough to believe you are suddenly burning with passion for me now? Well, I am not; so don’t waste your time on me. Go ahead and do whatever treacherous thing it is you came here to do. I will not betray you. Just don’t come near me again. I despise you, and I hope I never have to see your face again!”
She whirled and ran down the path out of the park. Matthew simply stared at her, stunned. His mind could not quite comprehend what she had said. He sat down heavily on the park bench. Back in Liverpool she had not wanted to go. For once he had decided to do the honorable thing: he had released her because he loved her. And she thought he had cast her away because he did not want her—and she despised him for it. Suddenly he began to laugh. What idiots they both were!
Two days later, Matthew sat at his desk in naval headquarters, thoughtfully staring out the window. This was his last day here; soon he would be either dead or back home. Yesterday he had finally located the hiding place of the Navy’s new ironclad that he had been sent to destroy. Tonight he would blow it up and escape to the South— provided, of course, that he was not killed in the process. At any rate, it would be over, and Katherine out of his reach.
And he had been unable to see her to explain the ridiculous mix-up, to apologize and declare his love for her. In one sense, it did not matter; no doubt she had lost whatever feeling she had held for him. It seemed as though everything he did in connection with her was wrong and gave her more reason to hate him. But in another way, it mattered very much: he could not stand to die letting her believe for the rest of her life that he had not loved her. At least he could give her the satisfaction of knowing she had been the only woman to capture his heart.
However, the lovely Miss Devereaux refused to see him. Each time he called, the butler announced that she was not at home. He wrote her a letter, but she returned it unopened. Wildly, he thought of forcing his way into the Van der Vries house and tracking her down, but stopped himself; breaking into the house of a prominent citizen was hardly the way to avoid detection. And he could not scuttle his country’s welfare for his own affairs of the heart.
“Ah, Commander Forrest,” a voice boomed.
Hampton winced. He recognized the voice of Major Lindale, a deadly bore from Nantucket. Resignedly he turned to greet the man—and suddenly turned ice-cold. Lieutenant William Perkins stood beside Lindale.
“Major Lindale.” Matthew forced his voice to remain calm. Surely Katherine had not given him away to her former fiancé.
“Forrest, I’d like for you to meet somebody here. Lieutenant Perkins, Commander Forrest. Perkins is from my home town; just happened to run into him as I was coming over here to see you. Thought I would just bring him along to meet you.”
“Lieutenant Perkins.” Matthew greeted him with the stiff condescension of a senior officer.
“Commander.” Perkins saluted. There was no flicker of recognition in his eyes, only the blank boredom of someone who had just spent several minutes with Major Lindale.
“Perkins here is on a blockader; sailing tomorrow for Wilmington.”
Hampton felt an insane desire to laugh and say that was his plan, too. Perkins continued to look at him and saw a small frown line crease his forehead.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but I feel that I have met you before.”
Once, at the Devereaux yards. “Perhaps you were stationed in Philadelphia?” Hampton said coolly.
“No, sir.”
“Well, perhaps, we have met each other in passing.” He shrugged, dismissing it. “Glad to have met you, Lieutenant. Good luck.”
“Thank you, sir.” Perkins saluted upon recognizing the dismissal in his voice and escaped gratefully. He had been afraid he was stuck with Lindale for hours.
Perkins went to a restaurant for his last meal ashore. Forrest’s face nagged at his memory; there was something faintly familiar about him. What a stupid thing to spend his time on—stubbornly he shoved it out of his thoughts.
After dinner he strolled past the Van der Vries house. Mr. Devereaux had written to tell him of Katherine’s visit to New York and to urge him to call on her. William had not done it. He was haunted constantly by the thought of her, but he knew that Katherine had meant it when she broke off their engagement, and he would not force his presence on her against her wishes. Often, however, he walked past the house where she was staying, hoping for a glimpse of her. Tonight he leaned against the fence, staring hungrily at the lighted windows before him. In one room, he could see several blue-coated men and the blond woman he sometimes saw leaving the house. He did not see Katherine.
He leaned his head against the iron bars of the fence, still slightly warm from the day’s sun. He remembered the taste of her lips in that last deep kiss as he left her the night of their engagement party. He remembered her smile, her wide, generous mouth, her low voice. That day when she had shown him around the ship the prisoners were working on and she had told him he could call on her. He clenched his teeth against the hot tears threatening to flow. Perhaps he could at least see her once before he sailed; not pressure her, just offer her his help and friendship, if she should ever need it.
Suddenly he stiffened and raised his head. That day on the ship … he had climbed down the ladder. There was tension in the air; a guard had stood behind Katherine and across from her a ragged prisoner with a bold face and cold eyes. Commander Forrest. Captain Hampton. Good God! Captain Hampton was in New York masquerading as a Union commander! He had stood not three feet away from the man he hated most in the world!
Perkins began to run. When he reached headquarters he found everyone long since gone, and he paused for a moment, thinking. Surely he would be in his quarters. He headed for the bachelors’ quarters, but when he reached them, he found that Commander Forrest was not quartered there. The quarters were wartime-crowded
and the newly arrived commander had been unable to get a room there. He was living in a room in town. William got the address and soon found Hampton’s room. He knocked several times on the door but to no avail.
“Here now! Can’t you see he isn’t home?” said an irritable voice, and William turned to find a heavy, middle-aged woman clutching her wrapper to her.
“Is this where Commander Forrest lives?” he asked politely.
“Of course it is, but he’s gone out. Why don’t you come back later?”
“Are you by any chance his landlady?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I am an old friend of the commander. We went to school together.”
She regarded him suspiciously. “You don’t talk funny like him.”
“Oh, no, I don’t mean when we were children. At the Naval Academy. I just got in today and learned he was here. I would very much like to surprise him. Do you think that you could let me into his room?”
She stared at him, apparently judging him; at last, the solid, honest look about him decided her in his favor.
“All right,” she said, and went back to her room to fetch her keys.
In a moment she returned and let him in. William lit the kerosene lamp on the table and surveyed the room. It was a spare, barren room. No wonder. A spy did not carry memorabilia around with him. William pulled a chair directly across from the door and sat down. Perfect. Hampton would open the door and be directly in his line of fire. He pulled his gun, turned out the lamp, and settled down to wait.
Stealthily Matthew climbed over the high wire fence, the bag of explosives slapping ominously against his back. Crouching, he ran through the shadows on the dock toward the squat outline of the ironclad. He slowed as he neared the gangplank and pulled his knife. The guard at the end of the gangplank leaned drowsily on his rifle. Hampton hurled his knife; it whistled through the air and the guard went down without a sound.
Matthew crept on board and down into the bowels of the ship, scarcely daring to breathe, but he did not encounter another guard. When he judged himself to be below the waterline, he planted his charge against the metal wall of the ship’s hull. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he lit the fuse. Then he turned and sped up to the deck and back down the docks toward the fence. He sprang at the fence and scrambled up it.
“Hey! You! What are you doing? Stop right there!” an angry voice called, and Matthew heard running steps behind him. Cursing, he swung over the top of the fence. The man behind him fired and Matthew plummeted to the ground. With a great roar, the ironclad went up in a flash of light. A flying piece of metal caught Matthew’s pursuer in the head and he fell.
Hampton lay on the ground, the wind knocked out of him by his fall. He struggled to catch his breath; there was a searing pain in his head. He felt his head; it was sticky with blood. The bullet must have grazed him, knocking him out and sending him crashing to the ground. Painfully, he stood up and staggered away, driven by desperation. He must not be found here.
At last he reached the streets. Several times he almost lost consciousness. Someone hurrying toward the noise bumped into him and he almost cried out. His side was throbbing in pain, and he thought he must have broken a rib. Thank God it was so dark the stranger had not seen the blood streaming down his face. He had to keep wiping it out of his eyes. He forced himself forward; he would not be caught and hanged. At least he would make it to New Jersey and the little sailboat that awaited him there. Better to die at sea.
At last he reached his boardinghouse and stumbled up the stairs to his room. Fumbling, he managed to unlock the door and open it; he leaned briefly against the doorjamb.
“Come in, Captain Hampton.” Suddenly the room sprang to light. Dully Hampton stared at Perkins sitting across the room, holding a gun on him.
“Damn.”
Chapter 17
Katherine was torn from her sleep by the muffled boom. She sat straight up in bed, her heart pounding. She looked at the clock. Almost midnight. What had awakened her? She left her bed and went to her window, but she could see nothing but the oak tree. On tiptoe she went down the hall to a front window. In the distance, probably down by the Navy yards, a glow lit the sky. A fire?
Suddenly she was shaken by a wave of fear—it had something to do with Matthew; she knew it. She scurried back to her room and began to scramble into a dress. She shoved her feet into some slippers and snatched up a shawl against the cool night air. She started for the door, then stopped. If she left through the house, she might awaken Angela and the servants. Darting to her window, she pulled it open and reached out. She could just touch a limb of the tree. When she was a child, she had often escaped the house via the tree by the back hall window; she hoped she could still do it. Taking a deep breath, she grabbed the branch and swung out. Hand over hand she slid down the limb until she found footing. Holding her skirts up about her waist, she clambered down the tree and dropped to the ground. Then she took off at a run, driven by fear for Matthew.
Racing through the streets, she cursed herself for not seeing him the past two days. She had fled home in a rage and fallen on her bed in sobs. When she had finally pulled herself together, she realized that she could not trust herself around him; she could not hide the turbulent emotions he roused in her. It would be easier for both of them if they did not see each other. So she had refused his calls. But now she hated herself for her folly; if only she had more control over herself and had talked to him, maybe she could somehow have kept him from this.
Blindly she scurried along, finding herself part of a curious crowd rushing down to the docks to see what was going on. She pulled the shawl up over her head to hide her bright hair and shadow her face. She was not sure she was going the right way. Pegeen had wormed Matthew’s address from some poor naval clerk and they had ridden past it in a cab: she could not keep from seeing where he lived, like a tongue returning to a sore tooth. But on foot and in the dark, she was unsure of direction. Still she plunged on, not stopping to think what a silly, harebrained thing she was doing. The only thing in her mind was the terrible conviction that Matthew needed help.
Matthew stepped inside the door and closed it. He leaned back against it for support; his head was spinning and he felt weak; every breath hurt.
“So you recognized me,” he said.
“Not at first,” William said, “but later I remembered.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
“Not unless you force me to. I plan to take you to the authorities. You are an escaped prisoner and a spy.”
“Saboteur,” Matthew corrected, calmly wiping the blood from his forehead with one arm.
“Then that explosion I heard was your doing?”
Matthew smiled faintly. “Your new ironclad.”
“Captain Hampton, please unbuckle your gunbelt and drop it. And your knife, too; I have heard you carry a knife.”
“I am afraid I left my knife behind; I was rather in a hurry.” Matthew dropped his gunbelt as he studied the lieutenant’s grim face. No chance of mercy from that one. His only hope was to shake him up and make him drop his guard. He curled his lip in contempt. “You are a fool not to kill me. I would if the situation were reversed.”
“I am sure you would.” Perkins rose. “However, I plan to take you to headquarters.”
Matthew shrugged. “Have you seen Katherine today?”
For an instant fear flickered in Perkins’s eyes and Matthew smiled. “No, of course you haven’t. She is not at home, you see.” Casually he crossed the room and sat down at the table.
“What are you saying?” Perkins said grimly.
“Just that she is someplace else, waiting for me. I imagine she will get rather impatient when I don’t return, especially since she is tied to the bed.”
Matthew saw the hand holding the gun tremble a little. Good; he was hitting home. If he could just manage not to pass out before his chance came.
“Damn you, Hampton, if you have touched her, I will kill
you.”
“But then how would you know where to find her?” Matthew grinned mockingly. “I suggest a more reasonable approach to the problem: an exchange. I give you the girl, and you give me my freedom.”
William was silent, studying him.
“Of course, I shall be sorry not to have her on my trip home,” Matthew prodded. “She was an amusing little chit. Always gave you a nice little romp in bed.”
“Shut up.”
“Ah, but I forgot; you wouldn’t know about that, would you? You were always too much the gentleman, weren’t you? Shall I tell you what it is like?”
“Shut your filthy mouth, you son of a bitch!”
Matthew shrugged. He was afraid he could not even stand up, let alone overcome a man with a gun. His vision kept blurring and he felt on the verge of losing consciousness.
“All right,” Perkins said, more quietly. “Take me to her and I will let you go.”
Suddenly the door burst open and Katherine pelted into the room, crying, “Matthew, are you—”
She stopped dead at the sight of Perkins holding a gun on Matthew. “Oh, my God!”
“Katherine!” William looked at her. Normally Matthew would have seized the opportunity and gone for Perkins’s gun, but he had barely staggered to his feet before Perkins’s gaze was back on him.
“Matthew, what happened to your head? Are you all right?”
Hampton slumped back into his chair. “You chose a damned inopportune moment to show up, Katherine. I had just told your friend here that I had you tied up somewhere.”
“Katherine, you are all right?” William asked anxiously.
“Of course I am. Why shouldn’t I be?”
“He said—”
“Oh, he was lying to you; he is very good at that. William, what are you doing?”
“I am about to take him back to headquarters. Hampton, get up and turn around. Katherine, can you tie him up?”
Gregory, Lisa Page 32
