The Crescent Spy Read Online Free PDF

the opposite shore to convince me.”
    “You want me to explain now? You’ve wasted my entire afternoon, refused to let me speak, but now that we’re rowing across the confounded river, you want me to make my case?”
    “It’s up to you. If you’d rather go back to your Confederate lover, that’s your prerogative.”
    This insinuation disgusted her so much that she at first turned away and refused to look at this man. But she’d be a fool to let him best her through her sheer stubbornness, so she relented.
    “I only crossed into rebel lines to get a good story. I was nobody’s lover, and I told the Confederates nothing they couldn’t have read in the papers.”
    “The blooming fools of the press are all too happy to report every regiment who marches in and out of the city,” Gray agreed. “But when enemy reinforcements arrived all the way from the Shenandoah just in time to turn McDowell’s attack, we knew they’d received advance warning. There’s a spy in Washington, someone who can speak to our generals.”
    “I’m aware of that,” she said. “There have been hints before.”
    “And we believe she’s a woman.”
    “I know that, too. I’ve given the matter much thought.”
    His eyes narrowed. “You have?”
    She glared back at him, unwilling to say more. Information was not free, and in this case, she wanted him to think she had more than she possessed.
    Gray stopped and took off his jacket. He rolled up his shirtsleeves to reveal powerful forearms. They’d drifted a greater distance downstream than the distance he’d rowed toward the far shore, but his slow, powerful strokes had still carried them right into the middle of the river.
    “We’re halfway across,” he said. “I’m not convinced.”
    “What do you want me to say? I’m a writer, not a spy. How am I supposed to prove that?”
    “Why did you enter Washington wearing nothing but your bloomers?”
    “I dismounted my horse to give water to a dying Confederate soldier,” she said. “But I couldn’t regain the saddle because of the crinoline. The Union soldiers were in a panic—nobody would help me. So I cut off the dress and the underwire.”
    “Why not just take it off?”
    She gave him a sharp look. “You’ve never put on a dress and hoops or you wouldn’t ask that. There was gunfire, I was afraid of getting killed. I needed to get back on that horse.”
    “You weren’t mounted when you approached the bridge.”
    “A Union officer commandeered my horse and left me to be mocked by foot soldiers. Mrs. Stanley Lamont took pity on me and carried me into Washington.”
    Gray was silent for a few minutes, his brow furrowed in thought as he rowed. “And how did you gain access to General Beauregard’s camp? You simply walked in with your pen and paper and started asking questions?”
    “Of course not. Two days before the battle I approached the Confederate camp posing as a secessionist Marylander.” Josephine changed her accent to someone from the Chesapeake: “ ‘General, I’ve brought a few things to raise your spirits and help you whip them Yankees and abolitionists. Twenty pounds of coffee, fifty pounds of chewing tobacco. Barrels of flour and salted pork. And these home-baked huckleberry pies for you and your staff. ’ ”
    Gray raised his eyebrows. “Impressive accent.”
    “My mother was an actress and dancer on a Mississippi steamboat. She taught me the tricks of the trade. And I’ve heard all sorts of accents in my life.” Now she turned to Pinkerton’s Scottish burr: “And believe me when I say that I can mimic them at will.”
    “Hmm,” Gray said, seemingly less impressed this time. “The suspicious part is that the newspaper would pay for all those goods that you gave to the enemy. Why, to get one story? An important story, yes, but you couldn’t know that at the time. Not for sure.”
    “I didn’t ask Mr. Barnhart to buy the supplies. And he wouldn’t have paid if I had. I have my own funds.