Walker nestled closer to Cora, trying to hold tight to his dream of sunshine and orioles. But an incessant tapping pulled him toward wakefulness.
“You gonna see who’s at the door, honey?”
“Hmm?” Walker blinked his eyes open to darkness and groaned. “No. Let ’em come back in the morning.”
“Walk.”
“I know, I know.” He pushed himself up, careful to avoid putting any pressure on the growing mound of babe his hand had been resting upon, pausing only long enough to press a kiss to Cora’s sleep-warm cheek. Clumsy fingers fumbling with clothes already set out, he hissed at the unceasing knocking.
Probably Hez. The man was a night owl. Walker didn’t know how Paulina tolerated him. Or maybe Mr. Lane, who, the whole family knew, would chase a whim any time of day or night. Or…he wrenched open the door and frowned. “Osborne?”
He’d scarcely seen the detective in the last two weeks since Hughes returned from his trip. Seemed he always had Osborne off on some errand or another, or else he was in the big house where Walker wasn’t welcome. He leaned into the doorframe. “This had better be good.”
Osborne glanced at the darkened interior of Walker’s home. “I need your help.”
He grabbed his coat, stepped out, and closed the door behind him. “It can’t wait until daylight?”
“Come morning, Hughes will have me busy again.” He turned and headed down the stairs, motioning for Walker to follow.
He did, but with a laborious sigh. When they gained the stables, though, the sweet smell of hay wrapped around him and eased his grumpiness. “All right. What is it?”
Osborne stepped close, no doubt so he could pitch his voice low. “The Knights are planning to kidnap Lincoln today.”
Well, that woke him up in a hurry. Walker muttered a “Thunder and turf!” and rubbed a hand over his face. “I thought when the inauguration passed without incident…”
“No opportunity opened up beforehand, but today the president is conducting a review of the troops, and he’ll be unprotected.”
Of all the stupid… “Unprotected? Don’t your friends in Washington know he ain’t never safe?”
Osborne breathed a nearly silent laugh. “With all the turmoil of the war, I think Pinkerton has spread them thin. They’re even using off-duty police officers as guards.”
And the Knights were getting desperate, Walker knew. “What do you need me to do?”
“Get a note to my friend. He’s the only one who still…who I trust to listen to a warning.” In the darkness of the stables, Walker could barely make out Osborne reaching into his pocket and pulling out a thin square that rustled like paper. “I can’t risk a telegram, not with the wires originating at Hughes’s rail station.”
“Encode it.” The answer—an obvious one to him, given the Culpers’ history with codes—tripped off his tongue before he could think to stop it. Though he wished, when Osborne froze, he could take it back. He shouldn’t be allowed to speak before he had a stiff cup of coffee in the morning.
“We haven’t established a cipher.” At least he didn’t sound suspicious, just frustrated. “Should have, but…”
Walker reached out and took the paper. “Is this the message?”
“His address. Will you be able to read it?”
A perfectly valid question for someone to ask a Negro man, even a free one. But Walker couldn’t help but snort a laugh. “You do realize I was Stephen Arnaud’s best friend, right? Owner of all those books you’ve been reading?”
“Good. I can’t risk paying Herschel a visit today, not when I have to meet the others. If you could find him, though, and tell him to change Lincoln’s route at the last minute. That’s all it will take to foil them.”
“I can handle that.” Going to Washington hadn’t been in his plans for the day, but no doubt Marietta would agree that this was more important than the trip to the hospital the womenfolk had planned. “Gotta ask, though…you really trust me with this?”
Osborne shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’m short on allies, and I can’t ask Marietta to help here.”
Walker tucked the folded paper into his pocket to examine when he had light. Then he paused. “You trust her these days?”
A beat of silence was the only response he could discern in the low light. “Don’t you?”
“Yeah. But we’ve known each other all our lives.” He knew the old Yetta, not just the socialite. The woman so long slumbering under the mask of hurt—and the determination not to feel the hurt.
How much of her did Osborne know? He shouldn’t trust the mask…and if she’d lowered it, then they had some talking to do, him and her.
Osborne hummed, low and quick. “One minute I think I have her figured, and then the next…”
“It ain’t too hard.” He buttoned up his coat and fished thick gloves from his pockets. “The way she seems to be…well, that’s my fault.”
He could all but hear her screaming at him in his head, telling him he had no business letting Slade in on the secret no one else knew, aside from themselves and Cora. And maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was just the lack of sleep forcing the words past his lips.
But he couldn’t shake the feeling that this man would respect her the more if he knew all she’d been willing to give up, once, to follow her heart.
“Your fault.” The measured, flat tone of caution possessed Osborne’s voice. “How so?”
“I hurt her.” Walker tugged his gloves on, welcoming the insulation from the cold March air. “We’d been planning to run off together. Go north and get married.”
Though shadows cloaked Osborne’s face, they sure didn’t do anything to mute the surprised inhale.
Walker smiled into the darkness. “I know. Wouldn’t think it of her, would you? Fine, rich white girl like her willing to give up everything for a quadroon whose life goal was to work with horses.”
“No. I wouldn’t have.” Osborne’s voice was quiet as a thought.
“No one did. Look, I’ve been judged all my life for my mixed blood and the fact I ain’t got a father. Most folks don’t know my mama was attacked, and if they did, they wouldn’t care.” But it was something he’d never been able to get past. Something he sure couldn’t let Cora and her unrequested babe go through alone when he found her sobbing in a horse’s stall. “Yetta never judged. Never looked at me like I was less.”
The breath whispered back out. “What happened, then?”
“I told Stephen. He talked me out of it.” Though his companion wouldn’t be able to see, he shook his head. “Looking back, I know it was the right decision. But I didn’t handle it right. I was going to take off and not tell her, and when she caught me leaving—well, we both said things we shouldn’t have. I broke her heart, Oz, plain and simple.”
“You’re the one she was trying to hurt by marrying a slave owner.”
Sounded right, but not coming from him. “She told you that?”
“Yeah.” He turned but didn’t walk back through the door. “Why are you working here if it ended so badly?”
“Stephen. He made me promise when he signed up that I would watch out for her. He never trusted the Hugheses. He made her promise to provide me a job.”
“Right.” He laughed again, nearly silently. “Marietta and her unexpected good deeds. And here I was surprised she wanted to volunteer at the hospital today with Barbara.”
Walker’s quiet laugh joined Osborne’s. “Me too. Yetta and the sight of blood don’t mix, though I doubt she admitted that to Barbara.”
Osborne didn’t reply to that, but when he went to the door, he paused again, a silhouette against the scrap of moonlight seeping through the clouds. “I could use your prayers today.”
Walker aimed his feet toward the tack room, because he certainly wasn’t about to take one of Hughes’s trains to Washington. “You have them.”
A moment later the doorway was empty. Walker shook his head and fetched a saddle. It only took him a few minutes to rouse a horse, get her ready, and slip back upstairs to kiss Elsie’s slumbering cheek and whisper to Cora that he would be gone a few hours.
Rather than head straight out of Baltimore Walker headed for the familiar house he always associated with grandfathers—his own and the Arnauds’. Grandpa Henry and Gram Em would be warm in their bed above the Lane carriage house, but somehow he wasn’t surprised to see a light burning in the drawing room window of the main house. And he wouldn’t have come if he hadn’t mostly expected just that.
Thad Lane met him at the kitchen door with a cup of coffee. “I’ve been up praying. Where are you headed, Walk?”
“Washington, for Osborne. He says the KGC is planning to kidnap Lincoln today if they can.” He took a sip of the steaming coffee and breathed a happy inhale. “He wants me to let one of his friends know.”
Mr. Lane nodded and took a sip of his own coffee. “Better not linger too long here, then.”
Walker shifted from foot to foot. “I just wanted to make sure…do you want me to leave it to Pinkerton’s men? Or I could stick around the city for the day.”
“No.” As usual, Mr. Lane’s answer was quick as confidence but soft as wonderment. “This is their job, and they’re doing it. Ours is to help where we can quietly. If we get too involved, they’ll start asking questions we don’t want to answer.”
A sigh worked its way up and out. “But we could do more, Mr. Lane.”
“We always could do more. That doesn’t mean we always should.” His smile made wrinkles fan out. “Much as we all like to be the hero, this one isn’t for us.”
“But—”
“The Culpers saved a president once. We have prevented the Knights from their tasks many times over the last few years. But this…” He took a sip of his coffee, his gaze somewhere past Walker’s shoulder. “This one is for Oz to handle.”
Walker savored the warmth from the mug, though he was none too sure about the advice. “You’ve taken to him awful fast.”
Mr. Lane chuckled. “Maybe. But I have a feeling he will be around for a while, so why withhold my approval?”
Maybe he wasn’t fully awake yet. “How long you think this job will keep him here? I figured a few months at the most.”
“I’m not talking about the job.” Mr. Lane met his gaze and grinned. “You haven’t noticed the way they look at each other? Oz and Mari?”
Walker nearly choked on the sip of coffee he’d just taken. “I noticed how he looks at her. How has she been looking at him?”
Now his host’s gaze went soft, yet it focused on him like artillery. “The same way she used to look at you.”
He had known? Walker pinched the bridge of his nose. Of course he had known. Thaddeus Lane knew everything that went on in his family. “I guess we oughta pray this isn’t as big a mistake as that was, then.”
He wasn’t about to make a judgment as quickly as Mr. Lane did.
“You have a nice cold ride to fill with prayers.” The old man gripped Walker’s shoulder. “Take the coffee.”
“Thanks.” He slipped back outside and onto his horse, willing the sun to come up and warm him. Pointing the mare’s nose in the right direction, he set his thoughts toward prayer.
As dawn touched its rose-gold fingers to the horizon, he wished Stephen were here to talk to. If ever he needed his friend’s placid eyes and ready laugh, it was…always. Now, yes, but every other now between Gettysburg and today too. Some folks you just never stopped missing. Never stopped needing. Marietta was lucky to be able to call up his face, his words whenever she pleased. Walker’s memories were fuzzy around the edges, but still sharp enough to slice.
When the first buildings of Washington appeared in the distance, he took the slip of paper from his pocket and read the direction in the soft morning light. Then he just stared at the hand—quick and efficient, but with the flourish of an educated man. Walker could write like that too, having taken his lessons beside the Arnaud boys, but he never chose to. It didn’t make sense for him. He’d learned early on that a man with any black in him had better not put on airs, not in the South. That would get him nowhere but on the kitchen table, his anxious mother patching up his wounds.
Osborne didn’t put on airs either. Maybe his clothes were nice, but he only had a couple sets of them. Maybe he dined in the big house, but from what Cora said, he was careful to keep his distance from the masters. He was a hired man. One who lived on his wits, not on his daddy’s bank account.
Walker could respect that. It didn’t mean the man was right for Marietta, but…it wasn’t a mark against him, his common-stock origins. More one in his favor, to Walker’s way of thinking. She needed someone who could see beneath the pretty. He wasn’t sure Osborne could, but Mr. Lane was usually right about these things.
The streets of Washington soon surrounded him, and he put aside all thoughts but finding the right building. He eventually did, an aging boardinghouse near the Capitol, and by then enough people were out and about that his knock on the back door was quickly answered by a woman who looked as old as the building.
She motioned him into the warm kitchen. “Morning. What brings you here?”
Walker swept his hat off his head with a smile. “I’m looking for Fred Herschel, ma’am.”
“He just came down for breakfast. I’ll fetch him.”
No offer of coffee or food, but that was all right. Walker was grateful for the warmth from the stove and eager to be back on his way. So he was glad when a man sauntered into the kitchen, still wiping his mouth with a napkin. His stopped when he spotted Walker. “What can I do for you?”
He didn’t see anyone else lingering about, but wisdom dictated a quiet tone and vague words. “Your friend Oz sent me. Said to tell you to change the route today, and at the last minute. There’s trouble afoot.”
Herschel measured him for a long moment, though a brief smile at last touched the corner of his mouth. “I suppose I shouldn’t worry too much about your being on the other side.”
The very thought drew a breath of laughter from Walker’s lips. Even if his mind were twisted enough to want to join the Knights of the Golden Circle, they wouldn’t ever take anyone whose blood was part Negro. “No, sir.”
“Tell him to consider it done.” Without another word, the man pivoted and sauntered back out.
Walker had gotten up at four, in the black of a frigid night, for a thirty-second exchange?
It was easy to see where Herschel and Osborne would get along.