Beaudry's Ghost Read online

“You took a chance back there, talking Harris down that way. He might hear about it.” Her impetuousness had come in handy before, when she’d stood between him and Harris’s wrath. But now it could put her in worse danger, and that he couldn’t tolerate. Not one other person should have to die because of—

  Sharp and painful, a memory snapped into place that had been long pushed aside by his unfocused rage over his own death. Ethan. His stomach turned over.

  My only brother, dead. If only I’d sold that damned horse like I’d planned…

  Suddenly the desire to regain his limbs and the remote possibility for exacting a little revenge died within him.

  He deserved neither.

  Taylor looked closely at Beaudry’s suddenly unreadable face, and reached for his hand. “What’s wrong?” she asked, but this time it was he who pulled away.

  “I may be a no-good, stinkin’ Bluebelly,” he said roughly, “and I may be more than a hundred years behind the times, but I’m sure there are still things a man doesn’t do in front of a woman.”

  Taylor jumped. “Oh. But I can’t…”

  “Sure you can.” He gestured with his bound hands. “Where in the hell am I going to go?” This time he didn’t bother to apologize for his language.

  That haunted look again darkened his face, and Taylor realized he was right. Even if he did manage to get away, this century had no place for him.

  “All right, I’ll turn my back. I assume you’ll need your hands free.” She untied his hands and let the ropes dangle. “I grew up with a brother and several male cousins, by the way, so I’m sure you haven’t got anything…” she swallowed and swiftly performed an about-face, “…I haven’t seen before,” she finished weakly.

  Beaudry chuckled as he shuffled behind a clump of yaupon shrubs. Meanwhile, Taylor wondered how this man so easily made her blush, and fought to control the heat in her face. When he returned, he sat down on the ground to empty his shoes of sand.

  “That was Gulley’s story I told you before,” said Taylor after a strained silence that left her wondering at his lightning change of mood. “I left out most of the more colorful parts. Leon was…is…a good storyteller. You can hand him a dirt clod and he’ll make up a convincing story about it. I thought he was just making this one up.”

  Beaudry nodded and stood up, holding his hands out to be retied. Their eyes met when she hesitated, but at his slight smile and nod she sighed and retied his bonds

  “Most of it is true. Only I wasn’t a lone scout, I was part of Burnside’s convoy of boats sailing down the coast to enter Pamlico Sound and take Roanoke Island. We had about two dozen cavalry and their horses on the Anna Jewel. There was a storm. My horse—Raven, I raised him from a colt—anyway, the ship was pitching and he was going wild down in the hold. Colonel Hardin ordered me to shoot him before he panicked all the other horses. I refused.”

  Taylor finished her task and made a show of checking the knots. She’d tied slipknots, but he wouldn’t know that until he needed to. She stood back and glanced up at him as his words sank in. “You refused a direct order? So then Hardin threw you overboard?”

  Beaudry allowed a small grin. “He wanted to, believe me. That wasn’t the first time we’d, ah, had words, you see.”

  “Which explains your rank, First Sergeant,” Taylor couldn’t resist.

  “For a soldier, you sure interrupt as well as any woman.”

  “Sorry. Go on.”

  He nodded. “The ship ran aground on a shoal and cracked wide open. The men were ordered to transfer by dinghy to another ship, but the horses…” He faltered. “I could hear them screaming. Just when I thought Hardin was going to skewer me with this sword, he practically shoved me down the hatch himself. Said to ‘go with God’.”

  The hair stood up on the back of her neck at the mental picture of Beaudry diving into the hold to save a ship full of horses.

  “I freed as many as I could but,” his jaw twitched, “I couldn’t get them all. In the end, all I could do was grab Raven’s tail and hang on.”

  “My God,” whispered Taylor, “you swam all the way to shore? It had to be a mile. More than a mile.” An Outer Banks nor’easter was nothing to be trifled with, even in this modern day.

  He shrugged. “I don’t remember anything else until I woke up on the beach with a Reb examining the inside of my mouth with the end of his bayonet. Probably looking for gold fillings.”

  “And he took you to his leader. Harris.”

  “Harris. I didn’t tell him about the fleet, and he assumed a cavalry brigade was coming overland from the north. He decided to beat them to Roanoke and have Wise’s troops ready for a surprise attack. He used me as…” Beaudry looked down as his hands, “…bait.”

  Taylor shuddered. The price he had paid for his silence! He had probably single-handedly assured a Union victory. “And Raven?”

  “He didn’t survive the swim. But after I, uh, passed over, he was there waiting for me.”

  Another chill chased down her spine as she remembered the apparition on the giant black horse. Raven had foregone horse heaven to remain by his master’s side.

  “So the rest of the legend is accurate, then? He took your hand and your leg…” She stared at him, debating whether to tell him her wild dream of the ghostly horseman. Would it give him hope to know that in her dreams, pieces of him were reappearing? She took a breath to tell him, but didn’t when she found him staring back at her, as if there were more to the story, something else that pressed just under the surface, needing to be told. She waited, but he dropped his gaze and looked away.

  “You’ve been roaming the Outer Banks as a ghost, all these years, waiting for the chance to get your revenge. And this is it, right?” she prompted. Again he gave her that inscrutable stare that fell away.

  “This re-enactment opened a window. A very small one, but If I can make it through the next few days with my limbs intact, even if I can’t keep from being shot in the back again and branded as a coward, I can…” his throat locked and his lips moved soundlessly for a moment. “… my soul can rest. Or face whatever’s next standing on two feet.”

  That look shadowed his face. The natural cockiness was gone, and in its place was a burning in his eyes that told her he would never find the rest he craved, even if he got through the next few days. Taylor wanted suddenly to reach out to him, but old habits held her back.

  “You,” she said, trying to touch him instead with words, “are anything but a coward, Jared Beaudry. Reckless, maybe, but no coward.” After all he’d sacrificed for the Union, how could he think it?

  Beaudry laughed without humor. “Try telling that to my mother, if they’d found my body and sent it home with a bullet in the back. My God, she would have been devastated.” His smile was icy. “And to think, I would have gotten to do it all over again, except for you.”

  Taylor twisted a uniform button with mindless fingers, frightened at what he implied. “Well, that’s very touching, but that first time was just a fluke. It isn’t as if I came along by choice. I was ready to leave at the first sign of trouble, but when you said my brother’s name, I thought…I don’t know what I thought. But these men, I know them. I know they’d never intentionally hurt another human being. But they’ve all gone crazy. They’re possessed.”

  Beaudry gave a slight smile. “That’s right. I know every soldier here, too. Except now, they just look different on the outside.” He jerked his head backward, training Taylor’s gaze toward the dunes. A dim lamp shone inside a canvas tent, the silhouette of a man sharply outlined on the fabric.

  “Lt. Zachariah Harris is here, Miss Taylor. As here as he was in 1862. I knew it the first time I saw his eyes, even though the face is different. And if it’s the last thing I do…”

  “Hold it right there, Beaudry,” Taylor sank her fingers into his collar, forgetting that she shouldn’t be touching anyone if she wanted to keep her wits about her. “This whole thing is scaring the bejesus out of me, and I understand
why you’re here and what you’re doing. But remember one thing—I’ll do what I can do help you, because I understand a thing or two about honor and peace of the soul. But if you hurt one hair on any of these men’s heads, Harris can watch while I take you apart myself.”

  She was practically spitting in his face, the flare of temper so quick and violent it surprised Jared nearly as much has it surprised her. Did she have any idea how beautiful, how passionate, she was in that moment? The urge to plant his mouth on hers froze him in place. In the next instant, she let go, took a step back, lifted her hat and ran quick, nervous fingers through her hair. Jared spent a few seconds of loaded silence remembering how to breathe.

  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I know that these men, these bodies the spirits are in, are innocent. I have no intention of hurting any of them. Not even…not even Harris.” He said it, but his gut taunted that given the chance, he wasn’t sure what he’d do if confronted with an opportunity to kill Zachariah Harris.

  “Stephen. It’s Stephen Powell. And Leon Gulley, and Rick and Bill Smart. And Stan…” Her voice rose on each name.

  “I know, I know,” he soothed as best he could, but her breathing remained quick and ragged as she worked to quell her panic and anger. “It’s simple, Miss Taylor. All I have to do is keep my mouth shut and do as I’m told. The last time, I let my impulsive nature ruin me. This time I’ll be gentle as a lamb. And when the time comes—”

  He heard her breathing stop as she turned toward him. In the dark, he felt her gaze upon him.

  “What do you mean, ‘when the time comes’?”

  He wondered, not for the first time, if she really didn’t understand what was going on.

  “When it comes time for me to die again. Don’t you—”

  “Die? Die? I thought you said you had to live though this battle!”

  “True, but the end result is going to be the same. It has to be.”

  He saw her face go paler in the darkness, and stepped toward her. She stepped back. He sighed sharply and wished his hands were free.

  “I don’t fear death, Miss Taylor. Death isn’t the problem, here. Death…” he laughed softly, “…I’ll welcome it. If I just keep my wits about me this time around, I can go to my reward, or punishment as the case may be, with my head high.”

  “Right,” she snorted. “A lamb to the slaughter. Look at him.” The silhouette in the tent ran a cloth over the length of a sword. “Do you honestly think it’ll work? You can’t change the past. Only the present and the future.”

  Jared set his jaw. “It has to work. The most important thing is for you to just stay out of the way. If something goes wrong, I don’t think a slip of a girl like you standing between us will stop him.”

  “But he doesn’t know I’m a woman,” she insisted. “In fact, I have a feeling I could parade around here naked and no one would notice.”

  He looked away, praying she would interpret his blush as embarrassment, not the lust her imagery brought to mind.

  “I’m sorry, that was rude. I should have paid closer attention to that lecture on Civil War etiquette at Murphreesboro last year. But it’s true. No one seems to see the houses, stores, cars and people we’ve passed. If they perceive me as a boy, I’m a boy. And Harris thinks I’m General Wise’s nephew. As long as he still believes that, I could help you…”

  “No. I don’t want you hurt again. I don’t want anyone hurt again. Just stay far away from me.” The last sentence took a lot of effort for him to say. His body wanted her close. His heart needed her close, he realized with shock. But his head told him it was wiser for her to stay away.

  She blew out a breath and stared at the ground, focusing on his feet and the ropes that still bound them. Suddenly she fell to her knees and yanked at the bonds.

  “What are you doing?” He caught his balance as the ropes slackened.

  “You said you just have to live through the next couple of days, right?” She kept her eyes on her hands as she worked, trying to keep them from shaking.

  “Yes, but…”

  “This is so easy. Why didn’t I think of it before?” Her breath came faster. “No one is watching us. All we have to do is walk out to the road, hitch a ride back up to Corolla and…”

  He let his fingers stroke the back of her head, gentle but firm. “No.”

  “No?” She jumped up so quickly she almost knocked into his chin. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

  He reached out and gripped her upper arms. “I cannot run away. I can’t even think about it. Don’t you understand? I have to face this. I have to go south with this unit, and end up at Cape Hatteras. Or nothing will have changed. I could be forced to roam these islands for, who knows, probably forever. If I can die without losing my limbs, and, on the outside chance, my honor, I will have appeased whatever gods laid this curse on me in the first place. I’ll be free to pass on to, I don’t know, heaven or hell, whichever I deserve. But at least it will be somewhere.”

  “But…”

  “Tie me back up,” he insisted.

  “I won’t let…”

  He cradled her jaw, knowing that if nothing else, his touch would shut her up.

  It worked.

  Caught unprepared, Taylor found herself dragged across a threshold she had consciously avoided until now. Her psychometric ability was only a pathway to a darker side. Of what, she wasn’t sure. Maybe the dark underworld. Maybe the darker side of herself. She lacked the courage to take that step and find out. She had always pulled back just in time.

  His touched deepened, then seemed to melt into her skin. She whimpered, and everything around her faded to black except his eyes. Eyes that swirled with shadows of their own. In her mind’s eye she saw a great, dark chasm opening under her feet, a great sucking hole. A black unknown, and his hands held her suspended above it.

  Yet the urge to break free of his hold lay dormant. For in his stormy eyes lay a promise—he would not let her fall.

  And, without words, without sound, she told him she understood.

  His hands moved, as if testing the fragility of her bones under her skin. Reality reasserted itself, and beach plants and dunes came back into focus. Taylor found tears slipping from the outside corners of her eyes, and her lips felt swollen. A sweet-salty taste, absent a moment before, now lay on her tongue. A taste like…peanuts and raisins.

  Beaudry blinked and let her go, and she saw him brush a knuckle over his own lower lip. He frowned and swallowed, and Taylor knew in that instant that he tasted something, too. Had they kissed? They had touched each other in some very deep, dark places, but she didn’t remember her lips touching his.

  “I can’t run away from this,” he said finally, holding her gaze and holding out his bound hands. She wanted more than anything to accept them into her own. She opted to wrap her hands around her Enfield. After a moment, his hands dropped, along with his voice. “Take me back to camp.”

  *

  Lt. Zachariah Harris was not a happy man.

  He had driven the unit all night to keep ahead of the Yankee cavalry he was sure sped down the coast toward an engagement on Roanoke Island. Now, under a watery mid-morning sun, the men lay exhausted and scattered on the ground like flotsam after a high tide. The horses stood caked with dried sweat, and bloody patches on their hides told where kicked-up sand rubbed under their harness. But the unit now rested on the sound side of the island, opposite Nag’s Head; and that was all that mattered.

  Something wasn’t right. Harris’s rear scouts, reporting periodically through the night, saw no sign of approaching troops from the north. None. Moreover, he found no sign of the small fleet of boats and flat, hand-poled barges that had brought his company across the channel. The forward scout he’d sent ahead to warn General Wise had been found here, seated forlornly on the swampy ground, tending a signal fire no one on Roanoke seemed to see. There was no indication of when the boats would return for them.

  Harris shifted his shoulders and ran a
gloved finger under his collar. He felt jumpy. Crawly. Uncomfortable in his own skin, as if it didn’t quite fit.

  He stood on a high point of ground and peered through a small brass telescope across the flat waters of the sound, toward Roanoke Island. Ballast Point was nearly deserted, with what appeared to be only a skeleton guard manning its two-gun battery. Where were all the troops? Why had General Wise moved them?

  Harris smacked his telescope closed and cursed. None of this made any sense. Even the weather was oddly warm. Too warm for early February. He looked for and found the main source of his irritation, one Jared Beaudry.

  During the night, someone had informed him that Beaudry had rested himself on the back of a wagon while his tired men marched. Harris had no doubt as to who’d let his happen. That little whelp claiming to be Wise’s relative.

  No brass-buckled general’s kin was going to get him sent back to duty at the Salisbury prison. No power on earth would force him back there. The only reason he allowed the Bluebelly to live at all was the fact that this was not the first Beaudry he’d encountered.

  Another Beaudry had made his life miserable at Salisbury, had nearly ruined his chances for reassignment by repeated attempts to escape. That one had been an even lower form of life than a Union soldier. That one had been a Union spy.

  It had been his pleasure to dump the spy’s still-warm body into a pit containing the bones of those who had gone before him.

  The chance to exact a little sweet revenge on his brother made this barely tolerable post on this god-forsaken sandspit almost bearable.

  But he needed no distractions. He would have no more of Private Taylor’s blatant insubordination. Harris brushed a speck of sand from his coat, laid his hand on the hilt of his sword, and strode in the Yankee’s direction.

  “Rest well, Mr. Beaudry?”

  Every muscle tensed and Jared twisted against the restraining pole under his knees to look up at Lt. Harris. An ominous ache sprouted and grew in his lower right leg, wrapping and tightening by the second. Jared braced himself and brutally crushed the natural inclination to open his mouth before his brain sent wiser messages. He squinted against the morning sun and placed what he hoped was a neutral expression on his face.