“It seems you have earned the impressive trust of the Saint during your travels.” A frown furrowed across Dodge’s forehead. “Tell me, what does he look like?”
“I can’t say. I’ve never seen him.”
“Well, according to President Lincoln, the Saint holds you in high regard. Now tell me, how is it you get vouched for by a spy you’ve never met?” General Dodge then added, “I can’t complain. The Saint’s loyalty and information have been indispensable. We couldn’t have been as effective without it. Yet I still think it odd no one has ever seen him. I sometimes imagine he is a slave, yet other times, I entertain the possibility our Saint—” Dodge gave a sardonic laugh. “Might be a woman.”
Lucas’ heart stalled.Might be a woman?
“Damn.”
“Pardon me,” said General Dodge.
“Nothing, sir. Nothing at all.” His blood ran cold. His gut clenched.Damn you, Rachel. Damn you to hell a thousand times.
She’d made a fool of him…and he’d never seen it coming. Grant knew. He remembered the astonishment on Grant’s face when he had asked,“You don’t know the Saint’s identity?”Even President Lincoln knew.
Lucas had been with her for weeks, yet he’d never guessed. He gripped the arms of his chair, his knuckles whitening. Her disguises, her ability to move in all kinds of social circles, her resilience in getting out of the worst of trials. The South would never suspect. He never suspected. Her undying faith, loyalty, and complete trust in the Saint…it was all because…she was the Saint!
“Is something wrong?” General Dodge prompted.
Nothing except his damned stupidity. “No sir, nothing at all.” She had baited him countless times, his jealousy inflamed by a mythical lover.
The Saint may be closer than you think.
Lucas gritted his teeth and stood. The Saint…under his nose and he’d been a blind fool. It galled him…how cunning she was, and him so stupid. Oh, how he itched to get his hands on her.
“If you don’t mind, General, I’d like to go to my quarters and rest.”
“Somehow, Colonel Rourke, I have the distinct feeling that rest is the last thing on your mind.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“What we gonna do now, Miss Rachel?” whispered Simon. “There’s a whole passel of those Copperheads you been lookin’ for downstairs and they’s here on foul business. I can smell it as bad as privies ripe after a winter thaw.”
Rachel and Simon hugged the walls of the upstairs balcony mindful to stay in the shadows. For a whole week, they had been under steady employment at the 310 Elm Street house in Washington, the same address she had seen on the maps in Rutherford’s office in Richmond. Paid two gold coins for a contrived absence, the former maid had taken ill. In her place, Rachel had swept floors and cleaned until she was blue in the face.
The home was a huge rambling sooty brick structure, indefinable on an insignificant street with no traffic and too plain to gather any notice. A perfect place for those with nefarious purposes to meet.
There had been no activity other than the presence of an invalid and his doctor’s occasional visit. Their surveillance was about to be given up when a mysterious Mr. Walsh appeared. Then without warning, a whole horde of men appeared in the entrance hall.
She peered over the balcony and stepped back. John Jenkins, a neighboring slaveholder from next to her Richmond home greeted his companions. He’d remember her. The scar across his right eye gave him an eternal squint. She was the one who gave him that scar years ago. She had hit him with her father’s sword when he had beaten his loyal salve to death for a minor infraction.
Rachel grabbed Simon’s hand and yanked him in a storeroom. “We’ll hide in here.”
Except for the muted light frayed and thinned out from behind the chimney brick, they were engulfed in darkness.
Days ago, Rachel had surprised her servants at her home in Washington upon her abrupt arrival. They had been set into a flurry of activity to get the house in order, a modest home her father had procured for his visits to Washington. Before the war, her father had placed most of their remaining assets in northern banks and investments. Astounded, Rachel had learned his speculations had accumulated a considerable sum.
“What’s the worst that could happen today?” Simon stuck out his bottom lip in that same petulant way Rachel adored. She had missed Simon’s peculiar complaints.
“The worst,” she conceded, “is that we get caught and shot for our endeavors.” That would be hard to swallow since they’d not be able to find the real leader.
“But if you, the Saint, can’t do anything to stop that den of snakes, Miss Rachel, how’s the whole United States government gonna do it?”
Rachel smiled. Simon’s undying faith touched her heart. “It means we have to work harder and think better to beat them at their own game.”
The men filed into the library beneath them. Rachel and Simon placed their ears close to the back of the chimney flue, a perfect conduit for sound to travel. A half-hour passed with greetings and mundane cordiality and she allowed her mind to wander, thinking of Lucas.
Ever since she’d left Lucas at General Grant’s encampment, she had been desperately trying to keep busy to purge all thoughts of him. As time ticked by, thoughts of Lucas emerged with nothing fruitful for her efforts to forget him. She rubbed her temples. The image of him with his fiancée taunted her.
