How many times in a few short months could one un-wish a truth?
Leaning over her again, Slade hissed out a breath. “The task is going to be immense for them. Stockpiling all those weapons and supplies in so many places. And am I reading this right? It sounds as though they expect him to be the one to rouse the leaders of the next rebellion. I guess he is in the best position to do so, being so well respected by Union politicians.”
“I read it the same way.” She squeezed her eyes shut and took a moment to be thankful when no new images swarmed her. “But it sounds as though the other captains have not even begun yet. Why, then, is he so set on getting his cache in place by Easter?” She splayed her hand on the paper, just below those freshly penned words.
Slade’s silence held for only a moment. “Because that isn’t the only task this castle has been assigned.”
Very true. They had also the task of kidnapping Lincoln, and try as Devereaux might to stay out of it, he was still a part. If caught, the other Knights could implicate him. He would have to be in a position to escape to safety, from which he could still call those secret leaders to arms, his cache already in place.
But Easter was only five days away. That meant he would be leaving within days to take it… She pulled forward the maps Slade had set on the corner of the desk. “Western Maryland, it looks like. Perhaps West Virginia. But what is this?” She indicated a few dark spots on the map of the Appalachians, another that seemed to be little more than random lines.
“Mountainous out there. So perhaps caves?”
It made more sense than anything else. “When he went to Cumberland in February, he must have been finding his location.”
Silence greeted that logic, and when she looked up at Slade’s profile again, she found his jaw set, his eyes flinty. She settled her fingers on the hand he had braced on the desk. “You cannot stop them all, my love. You are but one man.”
“I know.” Heavy words that spoke a vast truth into that simple cliché. “I’ll get a message to Pinkerton, asking for help. But…”
She waited and then squeezed his hand. “But?”
Shaking his head, he straightened. “They won’t come. They don’t trust me enough.”
“We do.” She stood alongside him and kept her fingers clasped in his. “Use us. Walker, Granddad, my brothers. Me, if I can help.” He didn’t need to know their name to know the Culpers were ready.
Resistance gleamed in his eyes, and she could understand that. He wanted his brothers, the ones he had served beside for years. The ones lost to him through the treachery of the man who shared his blood but not his heart.
Still. “You cannot do this alone, Slade. You need us.”
“I need you safe.” He pulled her against him, so decisively that it might have been fierce if not for the fear in his eyes. “That’s what I need.”
She could understand that too. But that need was surely secondary.
He would see that when the time came.
Thirty
A knock sounded at the front door.
Slade looked up from the volume of Kierkegaard in his hands. Even with the Danish dictionary he had found, he hadn’t made it through the first sentence. He hadn’t really expected to, but Marietta had bet him his handkerchief for a kiss that she could translate it before he could, so what was a man to do?
Lose—obviously, what with her unfair advantage. Not that he minded in the least the payment she would demand. But since nothing else he read made any more sense to his preoccupied mind than the Danish, he might as well give it a few hours.
Another knock reminded him that Norris and Tandy had been given the afternoon off to attend a church service. Slade pushed himself up and strode from the library, opened the door to one of Hughes’s servants from across the street.
“There you is, Mr. Slade. This just come for you. Boy said it was real impo’tant.”
“Thanks, Eli.” Slade took the letter and closed the door.
The ladies’ voices from the main floor drawing room seeped into the hall, Barbara excusing herself to check on Cora, and then Mrs. Hughes’s laborious sigh. “I don’t know, dear,” the woman said. “It is such a very long performance.”
Marietta’s laughter soothed a few of his rough edges. “That is the idea, Mother Hughes. Bach wanted listeners to leave the St. Matthew’s Passion emotionally and physically exhausted. How better to contemplate all Christ did for us on this day?”
Slade smiled and carried the missive back into the library, not too upset over the thought of Mrs. Hughes not joining them at the church for the performance that afternoon. Granted, she had been far more palatable since the mugging, but he would already be dealing with the Arnaud brothers. That was quite enough for one Good Friday outing.