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

he had helped her already, he needed to continue believing he had a vested interest in her assignment. “I’ll find you. In the meantime, keep an eye on the prisoners in solitary. They need to walk out of here tonight. They don’t need to be interrogated again beforehand.”

The private saluted. “I’ll do what I can, sir.”

“I’m sure I can count on you, son,” she said.

Jack opened the carriage door and scooted over to make room. “I’ve been waiting for over an hour.” The edge to his voice had been honed and stropped to a fine point.

She stretched out her leg, resting it on the opposite bench seat. “I can’t tell from your tone if you’re relieved or angry.”

“Both.” His eyes remained on her, steady and unblinking. “You look horrible.”

“Gee, thanks.” Her voice wobbled a bit, but the tone echoed the intensity of his emotion.

He stretched out his arms and cracked all his knuckles simultaneously, something she’d only seen him do a couple of times, when his anger got out of control. The months he spent at the monastery had taught him how to manage his emotions.

“What happened? You’re not hurt, are you?”

She shook head and steeled herself against the riptide of godawful memories. “They didn’t hurt me.”

A hot blast of relief gusted out of Jack’s pinched mouth, and he relaxed his arms. “Did you find someone to get a message to Braham?”

Recalling the face of Private Jeff Dougherty, she moaned softly then said, “No.”

In the split second, it took Jack to close his eyes and shudder, the red color of anger faded from his cheeks.

“I saw him.”

“Sweet Jesus. He’s in solitary. Don’t tell me you went there.”

“I had no choice,” she said quickly before he started popping knuckles again. “The men in sick bay are dying from untreated illnesses, in atrocious conditions. They couldn’t get a message out of their mouths, much less out of the room.”

A drop of sweat ran down the side of Jack’s face. He didn’t wipe it away. His hands lay folded in his lap. His breathing was easy and deep as he moved into the special trance state where he could find mental and physical calm. She’d let him remain there a few minutes.

As the carriage drove off, Charlotte glared at the prison until it was out of sight. The air was filled with a cloying mixture of magnolias, gunpowder, and stale sweat, yet she was able to breathe a bit more easily. The crowds in the street had grown larger as more of the city’s population evacuated, clogging the roads and creating impassible conditions.

Jack’s breathing returned to normal. He opened his eyes, a glint of dark blue in them, and he kept them steady on hers. “Tell me what you saw.”

She could do this two ways: dispassionately, as an objective observer, or passionately, as a woman and a member of the human race. She rested her forearms on her legs, held her hands out in front of her with palms up, and stared at them, amazed to see, even after a day like today, they weren’t shaking.

“Indescribable atrocities. Every man I saw was mired in hunger and despair, and most had bodies ravaged by disease. Wherever I turned, I faced hollowed, sepulchral eyes, and almost inaudible voices. There were dozens of suffering or tortured men, and I couldn’t do one thing to help them. Not even offer a cup of clean water.”

“Are you sorry you went in there?”

She shook her head. “I’ll be forever changed by the experience, but I don’t regret going.” She paused a moment to take a long breath and let it out slowly. “Braham’s had a rough time of it.”

“How rough?”

“It could be worse. He could be dead.”

“Is he in worse shape than the last time?”

“From what I could see, no. Give him a bath, decent food, patch up his cuts and flayed skin, and his body will recover. Processing and coming to grips with the dehumanizing experience will take longer. Braham can tolerate a broken body better than he can live with a broken spirit. He has stamina and resilience. He drove my car hundreds of miles, an astonishing accomplishment for someone who never had a driving lesson. He’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and will stand up to whatever challenge he’s given, but the loss of dignity and pride he clearly endured will not easily be overcome.”

“You should have given him a gun instead of pills.”

“So he could kill himself?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. A gun would have empowered him.”

She held up her hands in defense of her actions. “It wasn’t in the script you gave me.”

“If Warner Brothers played as fast and loose with my scripts as you did, I’d never sell them another one.”

He reached for her hand, but she jerked it back. “Don’t touch me. I’m crawling with germs. I need a hot bath with strong soap, and then I’ll fully debrief you and Elizabeth.”

The driver drove toward the city center, passing columns of refugees strung out along the canal towpath toward Lynchburg, a shifting mass of humanity.

“They have no idea where safety lies, do they?” she asked.

“No,” Jack said. “They’ll keep running, hoping they can find it. The Union troops won’t hurt them, but they’ll never believe it. So they’ll run in fear, believing Yankees are fiends with horns and hoofs.”

“Yankees aren’t devils,” she said with a grin. “The worst you can say is they have terrible accents and bad manners.”

“Ah, spoken like a true Southerner.”

57

Richmond, Virginia, April 1, 1865

Charlotte had stripped in the kitchen and taken a bath in a washtub at the back of the room. She asked the servants to burn the uniform. She never wanted to wear the damn thing again. The women had hovered over her, scrubbed her clean, dried, and dressed her. While they took extraordinary care to put her right again, the excruciating pain lodged in her heart couldn’t be washed clean. The death and dying at the Battle of Cedar