White Doves at Morning

"No, no, not at all, sir. You've been very kind. Thank you also for ensuring that your employee did not harm Flower again," she said.

There was a brief silence. For a moment she thought he had not heard her above the throb of the boat's engines.

"Oh yes, certainly. Well, let's get our pilot to turn around and we'll dine another evening. It's been a trying day for you," he said.

She felt his hand touch her lightly between the shoulder blades.

THE next morning she went to the small brick building on Main that served as stage station and telegraph and post office. Mr. LeBlanc sat behind the counter, his eyeshade fastened on his forehead, garters on his white sleeves, sorting newspapers from Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Atlanta that he would later place in the pigeonholes for the addressees.

He had married a much younger woman and their son had been born when Mr. LeBlanc was fifty-two. He was a religious man and had opposed Secession and had dearly loved his son. Abigail imagined that his struggle with bitterness and anger must have been almost intolerable. But he held himself erect and his clothes were freshly pressed, his steel-gray hair combed, his grief buried like a dead coal in his face.

"I'm sorry for your loss, Mr. LeBlanc," Abigail said.

"Thank you. May I get your mail for you?" he said, rising from his chair without waiting for an answer.

"Have you heard anything else about casualties among the 8th Louisiana Volunteers?" she said.

"There's been no other news. The Yankees were chased into Washington. That brings joy to some." Then he seemed to lose his train of thought. "Are you a subscriber to one of the papers? I can't remember."

He hunted through the pile of newspapers on his desk, his concentration gone.

"It's all right, Mr. LeBlanc. I'll come back later. Sir? Please, it's all right," she said.

She went back outside and walked up the street toward her house, staying in the shade under the colonnade. Men tipped their hats to her and women stepped aside to let her pass, more deferentially and graciously than ordinary courtesy would have required of them. Her face burned and sweat rolled down her sides. Again she felt a sense of odium and duplicity about herself she had never experienced before and heard the word traitor inside her head, just as if someone had whispered the word close to her ear.

That evening Ira Jamison was at her door again, this time with a carriage parked in front. He was out of uniform, dressed in white pants and black boots and a green coat.

"I thought you might like to take a ride into the country," he said.

"Not this evening," she replied.

"I see." He looked wistfully down the street, his face melancholy in the twilight. A mule-drawn wagon, mounted with a perforated water tank, was sprinkling the dust in the street. "I worry about you, Miss Abigail. I've read a bit about what some physicians are now terming 'depression.' It's a bad business."

He looked at her in a concerned way.

"Come in, Mr. Jamison," she said.

After he was inside, she did not notice the glance he gave to his driver, who snapped the reins on the backs of his team and turned the carriage in the street and drove it back toward the business district.

He sat by her on the couch. The wind rustled the oak trees outside and blew the curtains on the windows. She saw heat lightning flicker in the yard, then heard raindrops begin ticking in the leaves and on the roof.

"I'll do whatever I can to help find the whereabouts of Robert Perry," he said.

"I'd appreciate it very much, Mr. Jamison."

"This may be an inappropriate time to say this, but I think you're a lady of virtue and principle, and also one who's incredibly beautiful. Whatever resources I have, they'll be made immediately available to you whenever you're in need, for whatever reason, regardless of the situation."

She was sitting on the edge of the couch, her shoulders slightly bent, her hands in her lap. She could feel the emotional fatigue of the last two days wash through her, almost like a drug. Her eyes started to film.

"It's all right," he said, his arm slipping around her.

He leaned across her and pulled her against him and spread his fingers on her back, pressing his cheek slightly to hers. Then she felt his lips touch her hair and his hand stroking her back, and she placed her hands on the firmness of his arms and let her forehead rest on his chest.

He tilted her face up and kissed her lightly on the mouth, then on the eyes and cheeks and the mouth again, and she put her arms around his neck and held him tighter than she should, letting go, surrendering to it, the heat and wetness in her own body now a balm to her soul rather than a threat, the wind blowing the curtains and filling the room with the smell of rain and flowers.

He extinguished the oil lamp and laid her back on the couch. He bent down over her and she felt his tongue enter her mouth, his hand cup one breast, then the other, and slide down her stomach toward her thighs. His breath was hoarse in his throat. He pressed her leg against the swelling hardness in his pants.

She twisted her face away from him and sat up, her hands clenched in her lap.