Rachel's Choice (10 page)

“Pharaoh … You stop that.”

Chance tensed. The couple had moved nearer to the ladder.

“Sweet molasses.”

The woman's sensual laughter rolled up through the floorboards of the loft. “We can't,” she protested.

“We can,” her lover coaxed. “Up there. In the loft. No one will know.”

Hair prickled at the back of Chance's neck.

“If Preacher finds out …”

Chance heard a deeper chuckle.

“I won't tell him.”

The ladder creaked.

“No, Pharaoh. Everybody's out there working. We should be … Mmmmm, darling, don't.”

“You like it, don't you, Emma girl. And you like this … and this.”

Chance swallowed the rising lump in his throat. They were coming up, and his odds of remaining undiscovered had just plummeted. It was too late to run.

“I need you,” the man pleaded. “Feel this big thing I got for you?”

Emma whispered something that Chance couldn't make out, and then he heard the tread of bare feet on the wooden planks.

“Pharaoh …” She groaned.

Clothing rustled and something small and hard that
might have been a button hit the floor and rolled off into the hay.

Sweat broke out on Chance's forehead as the embrace became more heated and the exchanged words turned to breathy moans and meaningful tussling in the hay.

Emma's eager whimpers made Chance's own loins tighten. How long had it been since he'd lain with a woman?

I can't think about that, he told himself.

But it was impossible. The musty odor of sex filled the air; he could feel the tension skimming the surface of his skin. His mouth was dry, not from fear but from an emotion just as primal.

Listening to the two was torture, but he couldn't risk the movement it would require to cover his ears.… And he couldn't stop picturing a woman in his mind, a woman with lighter skin than he supposed this Emma possessed, and dark, fathomless liquid eyes.

Rachel's image rose behind his clenched eyelids. He could taste her mouth on his … feel her ripe breast swollen by childbearing cupped in his hand. He could imagine stroking her naked belly and drawing a sweet nipple between his lips and suckling until she whimpered with pleasure.

“Yes … yes!” Emma panted.

“Do you want it? Do you want all of it?”

“Yes …” she answered. “Now! Now!”

Chance jammed his thumb between his teeth and gave up all attempts to control his own response to the erotic lovemaking going on not three yards from where he lay. His throbbing sex pressed tightly against his trousers; his fingers knotted into fists.

“Deeper! All of it—I want all of you!”

Another minute and Chance would shame himself by staining the clothing Rachel had lent him. Desperately he tried again to think of burning houses, dead dogs, anything but the obvious.

Another lost cause, he swore silently. First secession, and now this.

War was hell.

“Why are you swimming now?” Rachel called to Chance through the soft twilight. “And why in your trousers?” When the last of Preacher George's congregation had departed, Rachel had gone to the barn in search of Chance and found him missing. Lady and Bear had tracked him to the creek, and she'd followed.

He was bare to the waist, and the corded muscles of his arms and shoulders gleamed wet in the last of the fading light. His butter-yellow hair framed a square-jawed face with well-defined cheekbones and a classically straight nose.

He's a devilishly handsome man, Rachel thought, in spite of his healing wounds and the fact that he was still too thin. Chance was far too good-looking for any woman to trust—let alone one in her position. She pursed her lips firmly and tried to ignore the giddy butterfly-wing flutters in her chest.

“Thank God you stayed in the barn,” she continued, struggling to keep her tone from revealing her reaction. “I was terrified that you'd come out of hiding. Pharaoh would have killed you if he'd found—”

He grinned lazily. “I'm not as easily killed as you seem to think. Or as stupid.”

“Well, actually.” She took a deep breath. “Actually, I told Cora Wright that you were stupid.”

Chance stared at her. “Said I was what?”

“Stupid.”

“Woman, what the hell are you talking about?”

She sat down on the bank and crossed her arms over her chest. “I had to think of something. Having you here was way too dangerous. So I told Cora that I was hiring a new farmhand. Cora is the black woman who—”

“You told her about me?”

“There's no need to shout. If you stop interrupting me, I'll explain. I couldn't take the risk that Cora would send Pharaoh or one of her grandchildren over to see how I was doing. So I told her that my cousin Jane from New Castle was sending a man to help with the work.”

He waded toward her. Water dripped from his hair and trickled down over his muscular shoulders. “I'm supposed to be a stupid hired hand?”

She winced at the granite in his voice. He wasn't accepting her idea as easily as she'd supposed he would. “Not stupid exactly. I knew that if you opened your mouth, your Virginia accent would give you away. And if you were seen, people would ask questions as to why you weren't in one army or another. So I said you were dumb.”

His features hardened. “An idiot.”

“No, not that. Slow. And mute.”

“Mute? I can't talk and I can't enlist. What can I do?”

“Simple tasks. Milk the cow. Hoe the garden.”

“You expect me to play the part of an afflicted—”

“It's not like we have a lot of other plans. You can't work in the cornfield if you're hiding in the hayloft.”

His disapproving expression changed to one of amusement.
“I don't think much of this,” he admitted. “But it's more than I've come up with.”

She clapped her hands together. “I am brilliant.”

He grimaced. “Devilishly inspired.”

“Thank you.” She laughed. “Naturally, I'll need to cut your hair.”

“Cut my hair? The hell you will. I—”

“No one who looked at you would believe that you're not …” She struggled to find the right words. “You look too … too …”

“Roguishly handsome?” He arched an eyebrow.

She giggled. “Healthy,” she corrected. “You look too healthy.”

“Hmmph,” he grumbled. “I suppose all mute men in this state have bad haircuts.”

“Not all of them, Chance. Just this one.” She chuckled. “Be serious. I'm trying to save your neck. We need to find you some worn clothing or cut a few holes in what you're wearing. And you'll have to practice your walk.”

“My walk? What's wrong with my walk?” He moved closer to the shore, and the water level of the creek dropped to his hips.

“It would be more realistic if you shuffle a little,” Rachel said. “Just when someone's around. So long as you don't talk, and you hang your head and—”

“Bark like a dog?” he suggested.

“Abner isn't crazy. He's just slow.”

“Abner.”

“Potts. Abner Potts.” She couldn't resist a smile. “But Abner's very obedient. Once you teach him how to do something, he can keep doing it.”

“Oh, he can, can he?”

She squirmed under his gaze and rushed to ease the
tension between them. “Yes … yes. And did you see what Cora Wright and her friends did for me?” she blurted out. “They planted my crop and the garden. And they've loaned me a horse. We'll be able to cultivate the fields, and I can ride him to town—so long as the soldiers don't confiscate him.”

He nodded, half turned, and dived under the water.

She took a deep breath and rubbed the small of her back. All day she'd been troubled by an ache, but she'd been on her feet since dawn. It would never have done to sit and be waited on, not when some of the colored folk were so conscious of her white status.

“Chance?” He hadn't come up, and she felt a momentary unease. Then his head broke water, and he took several powerful strokes with his good arm. “Oh, I thought for a moment that I was going to have to come in and pull you out,” she said.

“That will be the day.”

“I'm sure you swim as well as you do everything else,” she replied, feeling suddenly weary.

She sank onto the soft grass and let the scent of newly turned soil fill her head. For weeks—months even—she'd worried that she'd not be able to put in a crop this year. Now that awful weight was lifted from her shoulders, and she was weak with relief.

“Are you coming out of there?” she demanded of Chance. “I won't have to cook tonight. Cora left enough food to feed an army.” When he seemed to ignore her, she lost her patience and signaled to Bear. “Fetch!” she ordered her faithful giant. “Bring him in, boy.”

Bear ambled down the bank and splashed into the water. Lady, who hated getting her feet wet, contented
herself with racing up and down the bank and wagging her tail.

“I'm coming,” Chance answered. “No need to set the hounds on me.” He grinned as he splashed toward her. “Don't get all prickly with me. I'm slow, remember.”

“But obedient.”

“Yes, ma'am.” He squeezed the water out of his hair. “It was hotter than Hades in that loft.”

“Don't blaspheme,” she admonished. “I'll thank you to remember your manners, Abner Potts. I'm a Methodist, and I don't approve of rough talk.”

Chance laughed, and the deep, merry sound sent shivers down her spine.

“You hide under the hay all day, and you'll come down saying worse,” he replied. “And saying
Hades
is not blaspheming. It's another word for hell.”

“I know what it means. I may have only finished the eighth grade of a one-room country school, but I'm not stupid.”

“I never thought you were.”

Little sparks of excitement danced along the surface of her skin. That soft Richmond drawl of his was enough to make a saint doubt salvation, and Rachel knew she'd never been a saint.

“So long as you're already wet, fetch in my crab trap,” she hedged. “I didn't check it today.”

He stood knee-deep in the water, looking at her. “Isn't it a little late in the day for crabbing? Unless you're planning on steaming crabs tonight …”

He was right, of course. The thought of cooking crabs and shelling them to make soup when she was already exhausted was too much.

“It's too warm for crabs to keep, alive or cooked,” he said. “But if you want—”

“On second thought, we'll leave them until tomorrow,” she agreed.

“Yes, ma'am.” He nodded and touched an imaginary hat with two fingers.

He was poking fun at her. Even when he wasn't, Chancellor's fine manners were sometimes disturbing. She felt her cheeks grow warm. “You can check the traps first thing in the morning, before you milk the cow,” she said a little sharply.

“Whatever you say, ma'am.” He strode up the sandy bank and stopped a little ways from her. “Your friends,” he began, “they were all colored, weren't they?”

She nodded. “Free men and women of color, yes.”

“I heard Lincoln freed the slaves.”

“No, not these people. Well, you're right, President Lincoln did free the slaves. But Pharaoh, Cora, Preacher George, and the others—they were free before the war, some for generations. It surprises you, doesn't it, that colored folk would do for me what no one else would?”

“No.” He wrung the water out of his pant legs and reached for the shirt he'd left hanging on a tree limb. “No, it doesn't. I've known a lot of decent blacks, most of them, actually.”

She shrugged in disbelief. “I wouldn't expect one of your kind to understand.”

“My kind?” He stepped nearer, his shirt draped carelessly over his muscular forearm. The light was fading fast; it was already too dark for her to see the startling blue of his eyes, but she could feel the force of them burning into her skin.

“A man who can condone owning another human
being—the kind of man I've always hated.” She drew in a ragged breath as shivers raised gooseflesh on her arms. She raised her chin, trying to brazen out the moment. “A man who'd go to war against his country to defend the despicable institution of slavery.”

“You think that's why I enlisted?”

He was so close that she could smell the creek water in his hair, feel his breath on her face. She swallowed, trying to maintain her bravado. “What other reason could there be?”

“Have you ever asked me if I owned slaves? Or if I enlisted to defend slavery? Personally, I abhor the practice that one human should own another. My mother was born in England. Her family considered slavery to be barbaric. Mother refused my father's offer of marriage until he freed all his slaves and signed a legal contract with her that he would never buy another human.”

“But you're fighting to defend the institution.”

“I'm not. I never was. Slavery's a dying evil. It's immoral and it's impractical.”

“Impractical?”

“Yes. Few Americans possess the wealth to own slaves, and fewer still have the stomach for it. If this war hadn't ignited, Congress would have eventually outlawed slavery as England has.”

“You've never owned a slave?”

“Never,” he replied.

“Why then? Why are you fighting?”

“Loyalty to my fellow Virginians, defending home and hearth against the
War of Northern Aggression.
”

“Pretty words,” she mocked. “Can you look me in the eye and tell me that you believe them?” She shook her
head. “You're as bad as all the rest. You wanted to wear shiny buttons and follow the drum.”

“Maybe … maybe you're right.”

Tightness in her chest made it hard to speak. The air around them seemed charged with the same invisible energy that she'd felt before a lightning strike. “I've no wish to argue with you. And if I wronged you by believing you worse than you are, I'm sorry. It's only natural that I'd believe a Confederate …” She swallowed. “If you're not a slaver, I'm glad.”