The Sapphire Brooch Katherine Logan (best beach reads TXT) 📖

Braham. He willed himself to his feet and lunged forward. The chain, anchored to the wall by unbendable pins, groaned under the force of his weight, but held tight. A volcanic burn of fear scorched through him, and he pulled on the chain again, ignoring the raw pain in his ankle. Chained to the wall, he couldn’t protect her. He couldn’t do a damn thing.

The sergeant growled again before stomping from the cell.

Charlotte took Braham’s hand and slipped something into his palm. “Rest up. You’ll need to be strong for tonight.”

God, he wanted to pull her into his arms, but he had to let her go without acknowledging her. She had entered his world of darkness and brought slivers of light.

She hobbled out, putting little weight on her right foot. She was hurt. He made a sudden move to follow, but the damn chain held his leg in place. Concern, not pain, had shown in her eyes. Was the limp a ruse? Maybe so. Maybe no.

The cell door slammed shut and the lonely darkness enveloped him once again, but he remained standing, listening. Bootheels scraping against the floor faded, but still he listened until the door at the top of the stairs closed and locked, and Charlotte’s whistle became little more than a memory.

Pain flooded in again. Now it rated a nine, maybe ten. The gain of one or two points on the pain scale was the result of his carefully sealed heart cracking open. If Charlotte could find the courage to risk her life for him again, could he find the courage to love her?

Loving her was the easy part. Living without her would keep his heart chained to the iron ball for the rest of his life.

Slowly, he gathered his thoughts, sorted through them, and then set aside the ones he could deal with later. He opened his fist, and his fingers explored the items she’d placed in his palm. Pills? She had given him pills? As Jack would say, “What the fuck?” Jack would have slipped him a gun or knife. Damn women. They were naturally inclined to comfort a man, not protect him. If Charlotte was going to dress like a man, she should damn well think like one.

He dipped the ladle into the pail of stagnant water and swallowed the tablets, which he hoped were pain pills. If they were, the pain would start to slip away within minutes, and he’d have a few moments of peace, the first he’d had since he’d been thrown into the cell.

Braham managed his first smile in days. Cracks rutted into his dry lips. Freedom was hours away. Jack would be waiting to rescue him. But another problem hovered in the distance. Charlotte would want him to return to her time so she could put him back together again. The thought created one of those odd moments when his brain seemed to stop working. He forgot about loving her and living without her, and for the briefest of seconds he wished she had only been a dream.

56

Richmond, Virginia, April 1, 1865

Charlotte limped out of Castle Thunder. Her grunts of pain harmonized with the guns stuttering in the background. Sweat soaked her shirt, her scalp itched under her wig, her foot hurt, her heart weighed a ton inside her chest, and she’d bet her brass buttons there were tooth marks on her boots. “Damn rats.” Her curse included not only the vermin, but the warden and guards, who were inhuman assholes.

She was spitting anger and frustration, and even shame for being part of a race which could birth such evil, vile people. Her lungs begged for a breath of unadulterated air. But the outside air was tainted, too. Not ripe with the stink of the prison, but with smoke from cannons and the sulfur byproduct of gunpowder. Bile churned in her stomach, inching up her esophagus. She couldn’t remember the last time she threw up, but it was about to happen. Fortunately, when she reached the street corner, a cool breeze coming off the river brought a reprieve. She gulped in fresh air, forcing her lungs to expel the prison poisons.

Braham was alive. Injured, yes, but from what she’d seen, his injuries, while not minor, weren’t as bad as she had feared. Concern for his emotional state, though, had her mind buzzing with speculations of all sorts. How much damage had the trauma of being locked in a claustrophobic, windowless hole and tortured for days done to his already troubled soul?

A hand tapped her on the back. Startled, a new surge of adrenaline pumped into her bloodstream. She grimaced and jerked her head to look over her shoulder.

The red-headed soldier jumped back, saluting.

Her nostrils flared with disdain for the prison and everyone associated with it, even the one person who had seemed almost humane. “What do you want?”

“Sorry, sir, but Libby Prison is the other way.” He pointed in the opposite direction. “I can get a wagon to carry you there. If’n your leg’s bothering you.”

Charlotte whirled around to face him, putting more of her weight on her bruised foot. The pain rocketed through her, and she wanted it to be visible in her face as a living, breathing thing. “It’ll have…to wait.” The words came out in a gasp. “Shouldn’t have…climbed the stairs. I have to rest.”

A closed carriage stopped on the street only a few feet away, and Jack leaned his head out. His face was white with worry and fatigue, and his features were drawn. While he didn’t have the carved-in-marble appearance, he was close. Both his hair and beard stubble appeared darker in the shadow of the carriage.

“I noticed you limping, Major. Can I give you a ride?” he asked.

Her lips tightened into a thin line, and she clasped the guard on the shoulder. “Thanks for your help, Private, but I’ll ride in this carriage.”

“If’n you need assistance later, I’ll be here to escort you.”

Charlotte gave him a tight smile. Since