route caching

For the networking internals people out there, hope someone can answer the
question. What I would like to know is if Linux will cache routes used to
send previous packets? My problem is this.

A packet (packet A) is sent over a specific route (not the default). Between
packet A and the following one (packet B), the specfic route used to send
packet A is deleted/removed. Packet B is then sent over the default route
as that's the most specific route still valid for the particular
destination. A new route is then added to the table to provide a new
specific route to said packets destination. Packet C, the third packet,
would ideally use the newly added specific route rather than the default. I
believe BSD (or some offshoots thereof) cache the previously used route and
will continue to use the default route (it's cached and valid, why not,
right?) even after the new route is established. In my application, this is
the wrong behavior and I would like to know if Linux will behave like this
(use the default even if a more specific route is added). Basically, what
I'm doing is a failover scheme, where we lose one route for some reason,
and recreate the route to the existing destination using some other
hardware. In this application, using the most specific route is very
important.

Hoping someone knows the answer to this. Thanks in advance for any help
given.
--
Pete Buelow
replace nospam with putzin to reply to me