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

must be thinking. He stopped at pew number sixty-three, halfway down on the right, and took a seat.

Charlotte couldn’t take her eyes off him. She’d had a bad case of idol worship in the presence of Abraham Lincoln, a man who would obtain mythic status. Jeff Davis, however, was an enigma, a man few in the future would want to acknowledge, much less celebrate.

Jack whispered into her ear. “Do you notice anything peculiar about the gathering?”

Charlotte perused the congregation, mentally making bullet points. “Most are women dressed in mourning clothes. Gaunt faces full of grief. A few men hobbling on crutches. The rest of the men look ill.”

“Anything else?”

“Inside this building there’s a pretense of peace and calm. Outside there’s chaos and death. Why?”

Jack wiped the corner of his eye with a knuckle. “They’re all Christians who went to war for the cause of slavery.”

She would always be a daughter of the South, a Virginian, but she would never have fought for the South’s cause. Why, then, had participating in reenactments been so important to her? Jack had asked her dozens of times, and she’d always shrugged and replied it was fun.

She had never opened up about the real reason: her grandfather. Reenacting had been his passion, and when she had been with him, she was embraced by his extended family of reenactors. It was all about belonging, about not being alone. Maybe it was why she had gravitated toward medicine—she was embraced and respected as part of the healing community.

The church sexton, a tall, portly man wearing a faded blue suit, marched down the center aisle. He stopped next to President Davis’s pew, tapped him on the shoulder, handed him a piece of paper, and left.

Davis glanced at the note, folded it, and tucked it into his pocket. A few seconds later, while everyone watched, he rose from his seat and, with his posture straight and stiff, his demeanor calm, Davis walked down the aisle and left the building.

Elizabeth cupped her mouth and whispered, “What do you suppose the note said?”

“Evacuate tonight,” Charlotte said.

“He’s known for months this day would come. He’ll probably send a message to Lee begging for more time,” Elizabeth said behind her open fan.

Charlotte’s mouth curled wryly. “You know him well.”

Elizabeth sat back and folded her fan. A small, wistful smile drifted across her face.

In the middle of the sermon, the sexton once again strutted down the aisle and whispered, this time to General Joseph Anderson, who immediately rose and strode out.

Elizabeth opened her fan and whispered again, “I suppose the general has been tasked with carrying Davis’s message to Lee.”

After the service they found Capitol Square swarming with people. In front of the government buildings, civil servants were throwing mounds of paper on a bonfire.

“They’re burning all the incriminating papers,” Elizabeth said.

Charlotte considered how she could douse the flames. Some of the papers might incriminate Davis in Booth’s plot to kidnap Lincoln. What a coup it would be to save those messages for posterity. She hunched her shoulders and pulled her shawl tighter to ward off the sudden chill in the air and her even colder thoughts. History would have changed drastically if Lincoln had been kidnapped instead of murdered. If he had been kidnapped, she and Jack never would have followed Braham back in time.

She could make excuses, of course, but she had not asked for what had happened to her since she came into contact with the brooch. Nor had she fought against it. She had searched for Ramseur, convinced her twenty-first century medical knowledge could save him. It didn’t. The repercussions of her single, selfish choice were spreading like a giant tsunami. How many lives would be swallowed? If she had returned home immediately, the story would have ended, but the story would continue now until she could convince Braham to leave history alone.

She might as well try to part the James River.

For now, she would stick to an achievable goal: by midnight she intended to have a recalcitrant patient firmly under her medical supervision.

She’d deal with tomorrow’s problems tomorrow.

53

Richmond, Virginia, April 1, 1865

A few hours later, Charlotte was in the guest room at the Van Lew mansion, dressing in her Confederate surgeon’s disguise. She hadn’t worn the gray wool garment since rescuing Braham last October, and now here she was, planning to rescue him once more.

She’d never be able to wear it again without thinking of him. What would she recall when she reminisced? The first time she saw him at Chimborazo? No. How about the bulge of his muscles in a tight-fitting T-shirt? That was a good one. But a better sensory jolt was the morning she caught him fresh out of the shower with drops from his shoulder-length hair glistening on his chest, and his long legs sheathed in a pair of faded denims. And she couldn’t forget the bare feet. She didn’t know what made naked toes sexy, but he had beautiful feet. She should know; she’d seen more than her share, checking for weak or absent ankle pulses in her patients. She had first noticed his feet in the emergency room. Matter of fact, she had noticed everything about him then. Every naked inch. Even with flaccid man-parts, it was obvious he was.

A knock snapped her out of her reverie. “Come in.”

Elizabeth swept in, carrying a small basket. “I brought you some pebbles.” She gasped and came to a sudden halt, almost tipping over. “Doctor Mallory? Gracious goodness. I never would have recognized you.” She slowly walked a full circle around Charlotte, assessing the view from all angles. “What have you done with your breasts? And what happened to your slim waist? The coat makes you look thick in the middle.”

“My breasts are bound, and the jacket is padded to give me extra bulk.” Charlotte twirled the beard’s long hairs at her chin. “The disguise fooled both Sheridan and Lincoln a few months ago, too, or at least I thought it