“Don’t be afraid,” she whispered. “My brother shot you, but I’m here to help. Come out from under there. Give me your hand. We have to get you to shelter right now.”
“Virginia!” This time his voice was stronger, and he distinctively spoke her name.
“Channing?” she cried. “Dear God! It is you! Oh, my darling, what has Hollis done?”
“Just a flesh wound,” he murmured. “Nothing to worry about. Kiss me, so I’ll know I’m not dreaming—that it’s really you.”
Virginia leaned down, shielding his face, as she covered his cold lips with hers. Tears mingled with the raindrops—Virginia’s tears, Channing’s tears. But to be in each other’s arms again washed away all their pain and loneliness.
“I was coming to see you. Couldn’t stand it any longer. Had to hold you, to tell you I still love you …” Channing’s words drifted off.
“Don’t try to talk, my love. Let me help you to the barn. Father and the boys are still at the house. I’ll hide you, until they leave in the morning.”
Struggling through the darkness and the heavy rain, they finally made it to the barn—a warm, dry place that smelled of horses and clean hay. Ginna wondered if she had made the right decision. All the Swan men’s mounts were stabled here for the night. They might find Channing, when they came for their horses in a few hours. If they did, they would have to shoot her to get at him, she decided. Besides, one of the stable boys would saddle the horses. She hoped so, anyway.
In the very back of the barn, where broken harnesses and tools were stored for repair, she made a bed of straw for Channing and put a blanket over it, then found another blanket to cover him. He sank gratefully onto the soft, warm pile and offered her a weak smile.
“Come lie with me, darlin’. Warm me. I’m so cold.”
“I need to see to your wound first. Let me have a look at that arm.”
She was relieved to find that it wasn’t too bad. Painful, certainly, but not life-threatening, unless it wasn’t tended and went septic. She found a crockery jug of com whiskey, where one of the stablehands kept it hidden. Strong drink was strictly forbidden among the Swan slaves, but she knew they kept a bit on hand for special occasions—births and deaths. First, she gave Channing a few good swigs, then, when he was looking happily glassy-eyed, she poured some of the whiskey over his arm. He winced.
“I’m sorry, darling,” she said, “but it will clean out the wound.”
He gave her a goofy grin. “Pain from the woman I love is better than a kiss from any other woman.”
“Oh?” she said archly. “And just what other women have you been kissing that you can make such a comparison?”
He chuckled. “Only my mother and sisters. Rest easy, girl. You’re the only one I want to kiss. The only one I want to love.”
The whiskey had not only eased his pain, but stripped away his inhibitions and made him amorous. He grabbed Virginia with his good arm and drew her close, kissing her so deeply that the whiskey-taste of his mouth made her feel quite lightheaded.
“Come lie with me,” he begged. “Make me warm, Virginia.”
She hesitated. What if someone found them together this way? But it was still a good two hours until dawn. No one in the house would be up yet. Any slave who might happen in could either be bribed or threatened into silence.
Virginia lifted the blanket and slipped underneath, next to Channing. She closed her eyes, savoring this long-awaited feeling of his nearness. But when his hand slipped beneath her shirt, she stiffened. That reaction lasted only for a moment. He was doing wonderful things to her breasts—teasing, stroking, kneading. If Channing wanted heat, he was certainly getting it. His touch was burning her alive.
“Are you still going to marry me, Virginia?” he asked, between fevered kisses.
“Except for the final promises of the ceremony, I’m your wife already. I have been, since the night you rode away, darling.” Her voice was breathless, her words trembling with emotion.
“Then why don’t we finish what was so rudely interrupted that night at the parsonage? Right here, right now, just the two of us? Do you, Virginia, take me to be your lawful wedded husband?”
“Oh, yes, I do!”
“Now, you ask me.” As he spoke, his hand was easing down toward the belt of her brother’s trousers.
“Do you, Channing, take me for you lawful wedded wife?”
“Yes, darlin’, I most certainly do! To have and to hold from this day forward. So, I now pronounce us man and wife. And I mean to kiss my bride.”
He drew her close, so close that their bodies were touching, from their lips down. Her breasts quivered against his hard chest. Through her brother’s pants, she could feel Channing’s heat and hardness.
“We’re married now, Virginia,” he said, pointedly.
“Yes,” she breathed, “forever and ever.”
He waited a moment more, before he finished his thought. “I want to make love to my wife.”
A thrill of excitement and fear rippled through her. “But you’re injured.”
“That part of me isn’t. It’s alive and well and throbbing for you, darlin’.”
Virginia said nothing; she couldn’t speak. She held perfectly still, as Charming eased her shirt up, until she felt the chill of the night air and the scratch of the rough blanket against her bare breasts. But most of all, she felt Channing’s touch on her flesh, a thousand times over, like tiny, licking flames of pleasure. He shifted a bit. A moment later, she moaned, as his lips touched her nipple. When he dragged his tongue over her tender flesh, she squirmed in his arms.
“This isn’t much of a honeymoon,” he said with a nervous laugh, “but it’s wartime, after all.”
His mention of the war broke down her final barrier. Channing was right. He would soon go back into the thick of the battle. Could she let him go without having known his love? No!
“Any honeymoon with you is more than I could ever have hoped for, Channing. I love you. I’ve grieved for you, since the night you left. I’ve been so worried. I have a bag packed up in my room this very minute. I had planned to leave here in the morning to find you. Now—wonder of wonders—I have you. I know you must go away again, but not before this.”
She undid his shirt and began kissing his chest. Light little feather-kisses that made him arch his back and moan with pleasure.
“God, Virginia, what are you doing to me?”
“Making you mine!” she said, without hesitation or any second thoughts. “I want you, Channing! I want you to be my husband and the father of my children.”
It took a bit of doing for the both of them to get out of their trousers under the blanket. The work, however, proved worth the effort.
In Virginia’s mind, the pile of hay and scratchy blankets seemed as wonderfully soft and inviting as lavender-scented sheets against her bare skin. Actually, she felt nothing other than the slide of Channing’s flesh over hers. Forever, it seemed, he kissed her, caressed her, told her all that was in his heart, and that his heart belonged only to her.
“Remember how you cried that day the old swan disappeared?”
She nodded and smiled. “That was the first time you ever kissed me, darling. How could I forget?”
He nibbled at her shoulder, and she could feel a smile curve his lips. “How, indeed? You were so sweet and innocent, so very precious to me. Almost as precious as you are now. But my point is that I want you always to remember that the old cob came home to his mate. That’s the swans’ way, and that’s my way. I’ll always come back to you, darlin’, no matter what separates us, or for how long. We both know that I’ll have to leave soon. But, Virginia, while I’m gone, I want you to think about me everytime you look at the swans. I want you to recall, not that I’m gone, but that I’m coming back to you.”
A wayward tear slipped down her cheek. “Please don’t talk of leaving, Charming. Hold me. Love me!”
When finally
the loving thrust came that made them one for all time, Virginia could no longer hold back her tears. She cried silently, joyfully, knowing that at last the dream of a lifetime had come true. No matter how far away the war might take Channing, a part of him would always be with her.
The perfect moment they shared, a short time later, was her proof that the two of them were meant to be husband and wife. She prayed silently, as her exquisite passion ebbed, that Channing had given her a child.
Spent and exhausted, her lover rested his head on her shoulder and drifted off, still smiling, still whispering her name, even in his dreams.
Until the first gray-pearl light of dawn crept in through the cracks in the barn, Virginia lay with Channing, watching his dear face in sleep. Her heart was so filled with love for him that she thought it might burst inside her breast.
“Damn this war!” she murmured. It means nothing! Love means everything!”
With a deep sigh of regret, Virginia kissed Channing’s lips softly, then eased his head from her shoulder. She tucked the blanket snugly around him. “I love you,” she whispered, just before she slipped out of the barn.
It would never do to have her father and brothers catch her sneaking back into the house at this hour. She must go to her room, compose herself, and appear at breakfast looking like the same innocent sister and daughter she had been the night before.
If only they knew how much I have changed, she thought, as she hurried up the stairs and into her room.
She was too excited to sleep, too filled with love and hope and yearning for the future—her future with Channing. For a long time, she stood in front of her mirror, staring at her own image by the first rays of the rising sun. Had making love with Channing changed her? She looked the same, but there was something about her eyes. They glittered a bit more brightly. And wasn’t the curve of her lips slightly fuller? Virginia suddenly realized what the change was. She was looking at herself as a woman, now, instead of as a child. And she was observing everything through a woman’s lovestruck gaze.
A soft knock at her door made her jump. Who would be up and about at this hour?
Quickly she pulled on her long nightgown over her brother’s clothes. “Yes?” she called, trying to sound as if the knock had roused her from sleep. “Who is it?”
“Your father, baby girl. We’ll be leaving soon. I’d like a word with you, if I may.”
Virginia was about to open the door, when she spied the knapsack on her bed. She grabbed it and stuffed it in the armoire.
“Come in, Father.”
He found her perched on the side of her bed, looking as if she had just come out of a lovely dream—a little girl’s dream of candy and fairies and pretty party dresses. The thought brought a smile to his rugged, tanned face.
“I’m sorry I woke you, Virginia, but our discussion last night has been troubling me.”
Virginia had to think for a moment to recall what he was talking about. Her plea for a pass and her disappointment at her father’s rejection of the notion now seemed insignificant, after what had happened to her since.
“I want your solemn promise, Virginia, that you won’t do anything foolish and bullheaded, like running off to find Channing. It’s not safe out there. And I can’t leave with an easy mind until I am assured that you will stay right here at Swan’s Quarter with your mother, where you belong.”
Virginia nodded. “I promise, Father.”
Colonel Swan narrowed his eyes. He had prepared a whole battery of arguments to convince her. This was too easy. The daughter he knew never gave up without a fight.
“You’ll stay put?”
“I will. You have my solemn promise on it. In return—” Aha! Swan mused. He had been sure there must be a catch to her submissiveness. “In return, what?”
“I want you to promise me that the minute this war is over nothing and no one will stand in the way of my being with Channing. There’ll be bitterness and hard feelings. Yankees aren’t likely to be accepted with good grace around here. Channing and I might even have to move away to have any peace. If that’s the way things are, so be it. I will go anywhere to be with him!”
Jedediah Swan caressed his daughter’s cheek with one big hand, clumsy in his attempt at tenderness. “You’re your mother’s daughter, that you are. I swear, Melora would fight the whole Union army to be with me. She as much as told me so last night. You have my promise, Virginia. Once the war’s over, it’s over. Channing McNeal will be one more son in the Swan family. There’ll be no hard feelings, no grudges at Swan’s Quarter.”
“Thank you, Father.” Virginia whispered the words, her voice choked with emotion.
“Well, now that all that’s settled, why don’t you pull on your brother’s britches and come to the barn with me to saddle my horse?”
“The barn?” Virginia gasped.
He nodded. “I’ve become quite attached to that beast over the past months. Can’t abide anyone else handling him. I mean to saddle him this morning, just like I do every day in the field.”
He turned, ready to leave so Virginia could get dressed.
“Father, wait!”
He paused at the door and looked back at her.
“Let me do that for you. Please! It will send you off with luck on your side to let me perform the task for you.”
Had any other woman proposed such a thing, Colonel Swan would have laughed in her face. A woman saddling his mount, indeed! But Virginia had been riding almost before she could walk. She was a better horseman than most of the soldiers in his cavalry unit.
“Very well!” He gave her a crisp nod. “Then see to it immediately, daughter. We ride out soon.”
When Colonel Swan closed the door behind him, Virginia sank down to her bed, trembling all over. That had been a close one. Her father might have promised to hold no grudges after the war, but if he found Channing in the barn now, there was no telling what he might do to him.
Hastily, she tossed off her nightgown, pulled on her boots, and headed for the barn. She would have that horse saddled and out of there before a ghost could say “Boo!” For good measure, she would see to her brothers’ horses, as well. As much as she loved the men of her family, she wouldn’t draw an easy breath until she saw them ride away from Swan’s Quarter.
“Channing, please be all right!” she murmured, as she ran for the barn.
She froze when she spied Hollis coming out of the barn. Her heart all but stopped when their eyes met. It seemed her worst fears had been realized.
Chapter Fourteen
“Hollis! What are you doing out here so early?”
He gave Virginia a lopsided grin. “I might ask you the same thing, sister-gal. I figured you’d still be in bed, working at getting your beauty sleep.”
Virginia’s skin felt too tight for her body, suddenly. She went hot and cold, in disconcerting flashes. Her breath seemed to seize in her throat. Of all her brothers, Hollis was the only one she could never read. He managed to look cool and casual, even when he was mad enough to chew nails. When the twins were kids, it was always Hampton who got into trouble for Hollis’s transgressions. Hollis always looked too innocent to be guilty of anything. For this very reason, the cherubic expression on his face at the moment chilled Virginia’s blood.
What had he been doing in the barn? In the barn with Channing!
“Are you fixing to leave already?” Virginia’s voice quivered dangerously, but she hoped Hollis would translate the tremor in her words as emotion at the thought of the men of the family going back to the war.
Hollis laughed. “Not before breakfast. Hell, if the Yankees surrendered this morning, I’d skip the ceremony for a stack of Polly’s pancakes and a side of bacon.”
Virginia asked no more questions, but the puzzlement on her face begged for an explanation.
“It’s like this, Sis, I got to thinking soon as I woke up about that Yankee I shot. Where’d he crawl off to? I kept wonde
ring. Then it hit me right between the eye. The barn! Had to be. It’s close enough to the woods, so he could drag himself, if need be. All those nice dry stalls. All that fresh hay. Perfect place for one of those bad boys in blue to hide and lick his wounds.”
Hollis paused and smiled. It was a smile that shriveled Virginia’s heart. What if she were too late? What if Hollis had already found Channing and tied him up to take with them as his prisoner? Worse yet, what if Hollis had finished the job he’d started last night? Virginia swallowed a sob in a feigned cough.
“You coming down with something, Sis? You don’t look so pert.”
She shook her head and gasped, “I’m fine.” Her glance toward the partially open barn door served to ask the question she could not put into words.
“He was in there all right.”
Going weak all over, when she heard this from Hollis, Virginia gripped a fence post to keep herself erect. She clamped her jaw tightly to hold in a scream of pure anguish.
“Yep, he was right there where I figured he’d be. I followed his trail in the bloody straw right to where he lay down. Come look.”
Virginia wanted to turn and flee back to the house, screaming for help, screaming for Channing—her husband, her love. But Hollis clamped a hand on her arm and all but dragged her into the gloomy barn, where she had known such joy only a short while before. Now it seemed a place of horror and pain.
Hollis, with Virginia in tow, went straight to the back of the barn, to the very stall where she and Channing had shared their love and sealed their future together. She closed her eyes, afraid of what she would see when she reached the spot.
“See there!” Hollis said. “Right there’s the big old bloody spot where he was lying in the hay. Damn, I wish I’d come out here sooner.”
Virginia opened her eyes when she heard Hollis’s statement. Her heart sang with relief and joy. Channing’s blood might have stained the place, but Channing himself was gone. At that moment she could have hugged Hollis, she was that happy.
Swan's Way Page 23
