The Angel Of Devil's Camp. Lynna Banning

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      “…sing?” she supplied at last. “Perhaps a hymn?”

      He pinned her to the spot with those eyes, like two blue bolts of lightning. “No damned hymns.” His voice spit the words.

      Her frame stiffened from her toes to the top of her head. “Why not?”

      “Peabody was a good man. A bit soft, but no hypocrite. I won’t sully a decent burial by mangling some hymn none of us can remember.”

      She stared at him so long her eyes began to burn. And then, still holding his gaze, she opened her mouth and began to sing. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound….”

      The Swede chimed in, then another voice. Mr. O’Malley and two more joined in, and finally everyone was singing.

      Except for the tall man with the Bible.

      Defiantly, Meggy began the second stanza. “I once was lost, but now am found….”

      He stood rigid as a rifle barrel until the song ended, then stuffed the Bible in his belt and reached for the shovel stuck in the loosened earth. The Swede and another man with straight black hair that hung past his collar hefted the coffin into the waiting grave.

      A shovelful of dirt plopped onto the pine box, and Meggy’s heart constricted. North or South, the sound of earth on a coffin lid was the same. By the time the war ended, she’d attended enough burials to last a lifetime.

      She struggled to think clearly as the dirt clods rained down. Walter Peabody had been her last hope. With all the males in Seton Falls under the age of 16, or over 60 or dead, she’d come west out of desperation. She wanted a husband. Children.

      But now she was neither grieving sweetheart nor bereaved widow, but still plain Mary Margaret Hampton, oldest of six sisters and a spinster at twenty-five.

      Numb with disbelief, she bent her head, clasped her hands under her chin and closed her eyes. Lord, it’s me again. I entreat you to give this man, Walter Wade Peabody, a place in your kingdom where he may rest in peace. It isn’t his fault he left this world in an untimely manner. I assure you, his intentions were entirely honorable. Amen.

      When she opened her eyes, the tall man with the Bible was gone.

      “Miss Hampton?” A hand touched her elbow. “Colonel’d like to see you. First tent left of the cookhouse, yonder.” The red-haired sergeant pointed to an unpainted wood shack, twice as long as it was wide, on the other side of a clearing. Smoke poured out the chimney at one end.

      “The cookhouse, yes, I see it.” Her mind felt fuzzy, as if her head were stuffed with cotton bolls. She started up the hill behind Mr. O’Malley.

      When they reached the tent, her guide rapped twice on the support pole and pushed aside the flap. Through the opening she spied the tall man lounging on a tumbled cot, his feet propped on a makeshift plank desk, which rested on two thick log rounds.

      “Here she is, Colonel.”

      The tall man stood up, his dark hair brushing the canvas ceiling. Mr. O’Malley stepped away from Meggy and lowered his voice. “You read that letter yet, Tom?”

      “Not yet. Fetch us some coffee, will you?”

      “Colonel, I wish you’d read—”

      “Coffee, Mick. Pronto.”

      The sergeant gestured to the neatly made-up cot on the opposite side of the tent. “Have a seat, ma’am. Won’t be a minute.” The flap swished shut.

      Meggy remained standing. “I’m sure I should not be here, sir. This is a gentleman’s private quarters.” She stared at a coal-black raven in a cage hung from the tent pole.

      Tom chuckled. “Not private. And I’m not a…Anyway, sit down. This won’t take long.”

      With reluctance Meggy perched on the edge of the cot. The warm air inside the tent was thick with the smell of leather and sweat. Man smells. Not unpleasant, just…different. Strong. Pungent, her sister Charlotte would have said. Charlotte wrote poetry.

      Tom settled on the unmade cot opposite her, repropped his boots on the plank desk and looked her over with a penetrating gaze. “What do you plan to do, now that Peabody’s…gone?”

      Meggy’s mind went blank. “Do?”

      “Ma’am, you can’t marry a dead man.”

      The sergeant bustled in with two chipped mugs of something that looked dark and sludgy. He handed one to Meggy and set the other near the colonel’s crossed boots. “There’s no cream. Fong churned it all into butter.”

      Meggy removed her gloves and took a sip of the lukewarm brew. It tasted like the coffee she had concocted out of dried grain and sassafras root during the war. She sipped again and choked. Worse. This tasted like chopped-up walnut shells mixed with turpentine.

      O’Malley sidled closer to Tom and bent over the desk. “Read that letter yet?”

      Tom downed a double gulp of the coffee. “Nope.”

      “If I was you, Colonel, sir, I might do that right now.” He gestured at Tom’s shirt pocket.

      Meggy rose at once. “Forgive me, sir. I must not keep you from your business.”

      “Tom, for the love of God, read the damn letter! Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am.”

      Tom glared at his sergeant, then dug in his pocket and withdrew a folded paper. It crackled as he spread it flat. Meggy found herself watching. There was something odd about the way Mr. O’Malley danced near Tom’s shoulder, grinning at her.

      Tom scanned the words, then drew his black eyebrows into a frown. “That son of a gun,” he muttered. “I wonder when he found the time?”

      “Might explain why Peabody looked so peaked the last few months. Must’ve come off the peeling crew and worked half the night on his own, I’m thinkin’.”

      Meggy looked from one to the other. What were they talking about?

      Tom spun the paper under his thumb until the writing faced her. “This concerns you, Miss Hampton.”

      “Me? Why, how could it possibly?”

      “It’s Walt Peabody’s will.”

      Meggy lifted the paper with shaking hands.

      “…all my earthly possessions to Miss Mary Margaret Hampton, soon to be my wife.”

      “Possessions? Oh, you mean his law books?”

      “No, not his law books. Seems he built a cabin. For when his fiancée joined him.”

      Meggy stared at him. “You mean…you mean Mr. Peabody provided for me?” The knot in her stomach melted СКАЧАТЬ