River Magic Read Online Free PDF

circumstances would Major Connor O’Brien tempt trouble with yet another commanding officer by allowing big ears and eyes into the camp.
    Trying to figure out the identity beneath her disguise, he asked audaciously, “How old are you, Miss Marshall?”
    â€œSixty.”
    â€œI’ve got aunts almost a decade under that, and they looked older than you.” Furthermore, as many times as the youthful Connor had massaged his grandfather’s rheumatism-ridden shoulders, he had a working knowledge of how shoulder muscles deteriorated with age. More likely, India Marshall was one-third of sixty. Which meant she masqueraded as an older woman.
    Why? These were times of civil war. The Confederates being desperate, now that they had lost their strongholds along the Mississippi River, India Marshall might be a spy.
    Or she might have something else in mind, like hatching a prison escape. Let her try. He had another thought, a crazed one. If she causes trouble, I’ll see more action, of a sort.
    After Gettysburg, though, he wasn’t looking for trouble. He looked to stop it. Inhaling the scent of lavender that came softly from the fraudulent nurse-sanitarian, Connor said, “If you’re sixty, I’m one of Julius Caesar’s lieutenants.”
    She scratched a finger into her hair. The kerchief moved, as did the entirety of that gray-flecked mop. Mop? Wig!
    â€œTell me, Miss Marshall. What business do you have with my prisoners? I was under the impression your organization looked out for Union soldiers, not the enemy.”
    She drilled her gaze into his. And he got a look at the eyes behind those square spectacles. Despite the smudge-black rings of fatigue rimming their bases, they were wonderful. Blue. Dark blue. As dark as the devil’s ink.
    â€œScared of my question?” he taunted.
    â€œI can’t understand one word you two have said.” Poor Opal Lawrence set the ear trumpet on her lap.
    Defiance shooting from the indigo depths of those eyes, India Marshall announced, “My business is compassion. All that illness—those men aren’t accustomed to Illinois winters. Have you not the charity one should have for a captured foe?”
    â€œNone whatsoever.” His charity had vanished in the aftermath of Gettysburg.
    â€œI pity your stingy heart, Major O’Brien.”
    She sounded very like a Southern troublemaker. A true spy would take more care with commiseration, he reasoned. “Use your sympathy on our men. We’ve got guards living in vacant stores and hallways, over in Rock Island town. They’re old men in need of comforts, too.”
    â€œIs yours a southern accent? From where do you hail?”
    â€œMemphis, Tennessee, ma’am. Where’re you from?”
    â€œCairo, Illinois.” Her voice held an accent not unusual in the southernmost town in Illinois, but her inflection gave it the same sound as that faraway city in the Arabic world.
    â€œKay-roh. It’s Kay-roh, Miss Marshall. Your name is Marshall, isn’t it?”
    â€œIt most certainly is. If I choose to say Cairo, you shouldn’t show the ill breeding to correct me. You did know—”
    â€œWhy are you arguing?” Opal scrunched up her eyes, as if the action would aid in hearing the verbal exchange.
    â€œâ€”it’s quite common, and very rude, to correct someone.” India Marshall took on an expression of repugnance, as if Connor were something slimy and long-dead, just washed up in the juncture of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers at Cairo.
    â€œIs it that you don’t know better? Did your upbringing not lend itself to the fabled Southern gentleman? Perhaps yours is more the white-trash variety.”
    White trash. As a youth, he’d overheard Aunt Phoebe unfairly call his mother that, often. He loathed that in an aunt otherwise adored.
    â€œMrs. Lawrence . . .”
    The youthful orderly assigned to the mansion entered the dining