But not yet. Not until the goods were safely stored and the map to them established. Until then, only a select few of three hundred thousand brothers could know. This, above all, they must guard against the spies.
Perhaps there was little they could do about the present war at this point, but that made protecting their future hopes all the more vital. Devereaux took his private car back to Baltimore, but the ride did little for his mood. Because the closer he got to home, the more he thought of Marietta. And the more he thought of Marietta…
Denial achieved nothing. She was slipping through his fingers.
Fingers which tightened into a fist as he climbed into his waiting carriage at Camden Station and ordered his driver home. Never would he have thought that her family’s religious fervor would grip her. Yes, she had always idolized that do-good brother of hers, especially after Gettysburg. But Devereaux well remembered how ill they had often gotten along when Stephen was alive, how they had argued.
His fingers curled tighter. It was his own fault. He should have known, after her many refusals before, that he would pay for his seduction. That making her his would suffocate her in guilt. But he had hoped that once she had spent a night in his arms, she would forget the morals that had been more rote than belief and be happy as his mistress until they could marry.
A miscalculation. Four years of patience possibly ruined—but he hadn’t lost yet. She wanted to embrace her parents’ morality? Fine. Let it tell her she must marry him to be an honest woman again.
When he climbed from the carriage outside his house, the swish of her lavender skirt caught his eye as she sashayed around the corner of the family home. Osborne, keeping pace beside her, looked up, met Devereaux’s gaze from across the street, and nodded a greeting. He must have said something to Marietta, because she then looked up too, at him without meeting his gaze.
No doubt she thought he’d stride directly across the street to her as he always did, dismiss Osborne, and lead her on a walk himself.
Maybe that was part of the problem. He had done nothing but pursue her for years, devoting far too much attention to each look he could gain, each stray brush of a touch, each veiled word. Naturally, she thought she could string him along, knowing he would be waiting when she had worked through her foul humor.
Well, she was about to learn that she wasn’t the one setting the terms anymore. Let her, for once, miss him. With a move of his head to tell Osborne he needed to speak with him, he turned and strode into his own house.
Slade had battled off the tension for an hour now. He had bitten his tongue when Barbara left for the hospital, had forced a smile when Marietta insisted she wanted to enjoy the warmth of the day in her small backyard. He had done his best to remain pleasant while she and Elsie and Walker’s mother visited in the garden.
But something in the air made him edgy. It was too heavy. Too hot for the last week of March. And the clouds slicking their way across the horizon were too blasted dark for his peace of mind.
“Would you please stop scowling?” Marietta’s fingers barely brushed his arm, but it was enough. Enough to pull Slade’s gaze from the flash of lightning over the harbor to her smiling face.
By thunder, the tug got worse every day. Much worse in the last few since Hughes had kept his distance. Though he hadn’t said a word about it, Slade knew well what he was trying to do—make her miss him. And he sure wasn’t going to tell the man her smile grew more brilliant with his absence.
As for how Slade was going to leave her side when all this was over…
He didn’t bother summoning up a smile of his own. She knew by now he wasn’t one to force them. “I don’t like the looks of those clouds.”
“Hmm.” She turned toward the Chesapeake, standing a bit too close. Not so much that she couldn’t cover it up quick enough if someone came along, but enough that he was all too aware of how easy it would be to weave his fingers through hers. To lean over and feather a few kisses over the garish green bruises. That single red curl brushed her shoulder as she surveyed the horizon. “I daresay we are in for a storm.”
Worry flickered through her gaze, which made the tension wracking Slade redouble. That greenish cast to the clouds was too similar to the one he’d noted in Chicago five years ago.
The wind, having grown from breezy to steady through the day, loosed a gust strong enough to send Marietta back a step. “I hope Walker and Barbara make it home before it hits.”
Another jagged flash of lightning shot down from the heavens. Slade anchored his bowler against the next blast of wind. “If not, they will wait it out at the hospital. We, however, should get inside.”