Circle of Spies by Roseanna M. White Page B

Washington? My mother runs a boardinghouse there if you are in need of new rooms.”
    He certainly hadn’t gone back to his old ones, not since that night. “Hughes invited me to be his guest for a while.”
    Another look between the two. Serious and sober, but then Boothgrinned. “Lucky you. You will get to spend time in the company of his lady, then. Have you seen her?”
    Surratt sent his gaze to the ceiling. “Forgive him. He has a weakness for anything in a skirt.”
    â€œAnd you a prejudice against them.”
    â€œBecause,” Surratt said in an even tone, “they are faithless, fickle, and false.”
    Booth shook his head, exaggerated disappointment upon his countenance. “You are too determined to remain unattached, John. How you can be unmoved when a pretty girl bats her lashes at you I will never understand.”
    â€œYou would do well to try, as often as they have led you into trouble. And as for Hughes’s molly…” he turned back to Slade and used his mug to point at him. “Steer clear. He has killed men before over her.”
    Booth grunted. “Too true.”
    Slade gazed first at one John and then at the other. “How long have they had an understanding?”
    Surratt snorted. “Since the day Lucien died, he has made it quite clear she was his. Makes one wonder if she had been all along, and the poor sap of a brother just didn’t know it.”
    Lucien Hughes, from what Slade had gleaned, had been no sap. “I’ve heard about the late Mr. Hughes.”
    â€œHe was a strong leader, a good captain. We were all sorry when he fell to the streets.” Booth edged a bit closer. “But Devereaux has a sharper approach that we need now. We have had too many failures.”
    â€œJust don’t anger him,” Surratt said. “A quicker man to issue a challenge I have never met, nor a better shot.”
    Slade took another sip of coffee. “Why does anyone accept his challenges then? Or choose pistols?”
    â€œHe knows how to put a man’s pride against the wall.” Surratt leaned against the planking behind him. “And he’s as proficient with a blade as a gun. At this point, everyone knows it and does their best to remain on his good side. Which means, to circle back to the point, avoid anything more than polite flirtation with the widowed-and-soon-to-be-anew Mrs. Hughes.”
    Advice Slade certainly didn’t require. Marietta Hughes may bebeautiful and charming—and perhaps mysterious—but Hughes had no more than to crook a finger to bring her flying to him.
    Did she know what he was? Part of him wanted to think not, given the Unionist family from which she hailed, the brother she had lost at Gettysburg. But how could she not, if she were as close to him as she seemed?
    And how dangerous did that make her, if she did? The daughter of a commodore in league with the captain of a KGC castle. One alluring enough that she could no doubt smile at many a man and get whatever information from him Hughes wanted.
    A cunning enemy indeed. He took another drink of his coffee and held his tongue. But the rust-red gash across the printed face of Lincoln said plenty.
    These were men out for blood. And very little stood between them and it.

    Marietta eased the door closed, silent but for the faintest of clicks. Behind her, the soft glow of the banked fire lit her chamber, its warmth scarcely making a dent in the January chill.
    But that was nothing. Nothing compared to the chill in her core.
    Her hand still touching the place where door and jamb met, she rested her forehead against the solid wood. Tears burned.
    She shouldn’t have gone. Shouldn’t have crept from her room after she dismissed Cora for the night, shouldn’t have snuck out the back door and over to the carriage house. She shouldn’t have returned to that tunnel of nightmares and shattered dreams.
    Shouldn’t have