Tears stung her eyes. “Why is it the men I choose always leave me to pay their bills?”
He slipped an arm around her shoulder. “You’ll be well provided for, Rachel. You and Davy. The truth is, in spite of the war, I’m filthy rich.”
“You’re what?” She stared at him.
“No, not just comfortable. More than that. Benjamin told me, when I was closeted with him at the bank. It seems that Mother’s South African mining ventures have paid off. My share of the sale of a diamond mine is more than Davy is ever likely to spend. If … if anything happens to me, if you don’t hear from me when the war is over, you’re to contact Benjamin. The money’s in trust, for me as well as you and Davy. There’s American railroad stock, some South American cattle ranches—”
“No more,” she said. “I don’t want to know about it. I don’t care. I only want you, Chance. Just you, as I found you in my creek, stark naked and hungry.”
He hugged her, then chuckled. “You want me naked and hungry?” He caressed her throat and ran his fingers over her lips. “Do you know how beautiful you are to me? How you walk through my dreams at night? How hearing you laugh warms my soul?”
“Then how can you leave me? Leave us?” She’d not expected it to hurt so bad. She’d prepared herself for his going, told herself that she was too tough to break down when the time came. And now that it had, she felt like corn mush inside.
“No tears tonight,” he whispered, leaning close and kissing her eyebrows and each closed eyelid in turn. “Sweet, sweet Rachel. I kept my bargain. Now you must be strong for a few more hours. I can’t go away and leave you weeping.”
He stiffened and released her, and she heard the sound of a horse galloping across the meadow. She straightened, brushing the tears away. “Hide!” she urged him.
“No, no more,” he answered. “I’m at an end of hiding.”
The horse slowed and Pharaoh’s deep voice rang out. “Miss Rachel? Chance? Is that you? I brought Deacon, and that other thing you asked me for.”
Rachel saw that the blacksmith was carrying a large sack, but she was too upset to care what he’d brought. She murmured a greeting.
“He’s a good horse,” said Pharaoh. “Shame he’s not a stallion. He’d sire fine colts.”
“He’s got good blood in him,” Chance agreed. “I’ll be proud to ride him.”
“Into cannon fire?” Rachel cried.
“If I’m being shot at, I need a decent mount,” Chance said.
“Naturally you’d need a fine horse to get yourself killed on,” she answered. “So damned logical!” Without waiting for his reply, she ran back toward the house.
Upstairs, in her room, she paced the floor. She wanted to tear down the curtains, throw her jewelry box across the room, pitch Chance’s clothing out the window. But Davy was resting peacefully in his cradle, and this was the last night she could sleep in Chance’s arms, so she forced back her anger.
She removed her dress and underthings, let down her hair, and put on her best linen nightgown, the one with the Irish lace on the hem. She blew out all the lamps but one, then brushed her hair two hundred times and fortified herself with a glass of her grandmother’s dandelion wine.
After what seemed an eternity, she heard Chance coming up the stairs. She rose, pulled back the bedspread, and extinguished the final light.
It was dark in the room, but not so dark that she couldn’t make out his form in the doorway.
“I’m sorry, Rachel. Sorry we couldn’t be married by now. Sorry I’m going to hurt you tomorrow by going away.”
He waited.
“I’m sorry, too,” she murmured.
“I’ll go tonight if you want me to.”
“Not tonight,” she replied softly. “Tonight is mine.”
She ran into his arms and tilted her face up for his kiss. And for a few brief hours, she did not think of tomorrow, only the bittersweet rapture, the giving and taking, and the glory of being loved by such a man.
And in the morning, when she woke to find the place beside her empty, she left Davy wailing in his cradle and ran down to the kitchen. The smell of fresh coffee drifted from the pot on the stove; the back door stood ajar.
“Chance!” she screamed as she ran out to the barn. Bear lumbered after her. “Chance!”
Susan raised her head over the edge of the stall and mooed. Blackie nickered. But the third stall was as empty as her bed had been.
Deacon was gone, and Chance with him. While she’d slept, they’d ridden away into the morning mist.
“No!” she cried. “No.” Sobbing, she slipped to the floor and buried her face in her hands. “No, not yet,” she said brokenly. “Not yet.”
Bear uttered a strange woof. Something damp and scratchy brushed her bare ankle.
“Leave me alone.”
Bear whined, and the odd sensation came again.
Rachel raised her head. Bear was sitting a few feet away from her on the straw, but something … She reached down and touched a squirming ball of fur.
“What is—”
Small sharp teeth nipped her shin.
Scooping up the squirming bundle, she carried it out into the morning light and discovered that she was holding a fluffy brown-and-white collie pup with a black nose, red tongue, and cinnamon-brown eyes. Tied around the puppy’s neck was a red silk ribbon.
Her neck, Rachel corrected herself, and she tucked a hand under the warm, wiggling belly.
Tied to the ribbon was a note. Bear trotted after her as she took the puppy and the message into the kitchen. She poured a bowl of milk for the little collie, put her on the floor, and lit a lamp.
The note, written in bold, beautiful script, read
To keep you company until I come home.
Love,
Your devoted servant,
William James Chancellor III, Esquire
“William James Chancellor the Third!” she said in astonishment. “William James?” He hadn’t named Davy after James Irons at all. He’d given the baby his own name. “You bastard! You good-for-nothing, fast-talking Richmond lawyer.”
And then she laughed and hugged the puppy.
And then she cried.
Chapter 26
Rachel kept close to the farm as autumn leaves drifted down to skitter across the yard and gather into fragrant piles around the house. A fire crackled in the kitchen woodstove day and night, and by the time the first snowflakes frosted the landscape, Rachel was certain that her wish had come true. She was carrying Chance’s child.
Knowing that it was futile to expect him so soon, Rachel watched the lane for a fair-haired, soft-talking man on a gray horse. Davy and the new pup, Merry, filled her days, but her nights were long and lonely without Chance beside her.
Her arms ached to hold him again, and the house seemed empty without the sound of his laughter.
She told herself that it was foolish to look for him at Christmas, but she did. And when she heard no word from him by midday, she choked back her tears and accepted Cora’s invitation to join her family for the holiday dinner. Coming home through the twilight on horseback, Rachel fantasized that Chance would be sitting in her kitchen rocker waiting for her, but that, too, was only wishful thinking.
The house was dark and lifeless except for the two dogs. Merry and Bear barked and wagged their tails when she opened the back door, but even that warm welcome didn’t lift her spirits. And later, when Davy was tucked into his cradle, she wept as she packed away Chance’s Christmas gifts with her ornaments.
Money continued to arrive monthly from Philadelphia, for both her and Davy. She hired a German couple, Dan and Betty, to help with the farmwork. And as the weather worsened, it seemed sensible to install them in the hired men’s quarters in the barn. Rachel knew that when spring came, she would need full-time assistance on the farm if she hoped to get another year’s crop in the ground.
In early February Rachel left Davy with Betty one morning and rode to the general store t
o buy nutmeg. To her surprise she found a letter waiting. Too nervous to read it in front of witnesses, she hurried outside and turned it over. The return address was Santa Fe, New Mexico.
With trembling hands, Rachel tore it open. To her disappointment, the handwriting was feminine.
Dear Mrs. Irons,
Words cannot thank you for your kindness. The package you sent arrived in poor condition, but I have faith that it may soon be restored. My family is presently residing in the Southwest, where the dry air has done wonders for a certain troubling chest condition. Each day I see real improvement. My daughter, husband, and I never fail to remember you and your brave friends in our prayers. May the Lord bless and keep you.
Yours, most sincerely,
Mrs. Travis Bowman
Another piece of paper fell to the ground. When she picked it up, she found that it was a note made out to her for the amount of two hundred dollars.
Numbly Rachel mounted Blackie and kicked him into a canter. She was glad that Chance’s friend had made it home to his family, but it didn’t make her own fears any easier to bear. And she certainly didn’t want a reward for helping Travis escape. Her first thought was to return the money, but then she decided to cash it and give it to Cora. If anyone deserved to profit from the effort, it was the Wright family.
Rachel’s own troubles couldn’t be fixed with money. In weeks, perhaps two months at most, she would no longer be able to hide her advancing pregnancy. She knew she’d be able to support and care for both Davy and a new child, but her condition would place her outside the bounds of proper society. Who knew how long she would be welcome in the community? Worse, she wondered if James’s mother might petition the courts for little Davy, claiming that she, Rachel, was morally unfit to raise him.
The baby that she and Chance had conceived with so much love would find the world an unforgiving place as one born outside the convention of marriage. She wanted this child very much, but she wondered if she’d been selfish.
For herself Rachel did not care about the scandal. She was strong enough to ignore the whispers and sly glances of the good townsfolk, but her children would suffer. She didn’t regret what she and Chance had done, but for the first time she wondered if her decision not to marry him before he went away to war had been the right one.
February brought bitter cold and biting wind. And snuggled with Davy beneath the feather-tick comforter in her bed, Rachel wept for Chance and hoped that he was warm.
In March, Betty and Dan gave notice. “Poor, we may be,” her hired man said in his broken English. “But we are good God-fearing people, and we cannot work for a whore.”
Rachel sent them off down the lane with their belongings on their back, a week’s pay in their pockets, and the cutting edge of her tongue to speed their departure.
“Good riddance to you both!” she called after them. “But be certain you tell the town gossips your juicy news. If any wish to know more, send them here. I’ll give them a welcome they’ll well remember.”
In truth Rachel was happier to have the house to herself. Her morning sickness had passed and she felt good physically. Cora began to stop by every week and often sent her grandchildren with a loaf of fresh-baked bread or a jar of preserves. And when the ground was dry enough to plow, Pharaoh came to work up her garden plot.
“No word from your lawyer?” he asked.
Rachel shook her head. “No, but the war’s still going on. He could be thousands of miles away.” He could be dead, she thought, but she would not dwell on that possibility. She would only treasure her memories of Chance and hope that they might be together again someday.
“My mother gave Emma and me that two hundred dollars you gave her,” he said. “You could have kept it, and none of us would be the wiser.” He looked thoughtful. “You brought him out of the prison, Miss Rachel. Seems like that two hundred dollars should be yours.”
“I brought Travis here, but you and your mother got him home to Virginia. It’s yours, Pharaoh. Without you, Chance would probably be dead as well as Travis.”
“Don’t remind me of it. Emma says I’m crazy. I’ve spent a lifetime struggling against his kind. She says I should have left him to rot behind those walls.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Rachel said.
He grinned. “And I’m kind of glad I didn’t either.”
On the ninth of April, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia, and the newspapers were heady with predictions of peace after so long a struggle.
Men who had fought for the South began to drift home to Milford and Lewes and Duck Creek. Each morning Rachel rose at dawn to watch for Chance’s coming, and every night she hung a lit lantern by the well so that he could find the house if he came by night.
April days were filled with sunshine. Daffodils and tulips burst into blossom, the fruit trees flowered, and Carolina wrens began to build a nest in the eaves over the barn door. Rachel’s cow, Susan, gave birth to a black heifer calf with a white spot over one eye.
But still there was no letter from Chance, no hint that he had survived the war, and Rachel’s hopes faded.
One misty morning, early in May, she took Davy with her to the creek so that she could check her crab traps. Davy was a handful, constantly curious and willing to eat anything he could get into his mouth. Rachel knew she couldn’t take him out in the rowboat; he didn’t have the slightest fear of water and would be overboard in minutes.
Her only solution was to fasten a rope around the toddler’s waist and tie him to a tree, leaving enough length between boy and willow so that Davy wouldn’t feel confined. Bear remained on the bank to guard him, and Rachel took the collie in the boat. Leaving Davy and Merry together, unsupervised, was an invitation to disaster, and her ever-thickening waist made it difficult for her to move fast.
Even raising the crab traps seemed harder than when she had been pregnant with Davy. “I must be getting older,” she grumbled. She opened the hatch at one end of the dripping cage and dumped five fat jimmies into her basket. “Crabcakes for dinner,” she promised the pup. Maybe she’d give Davy a little. She’d begun to wean him when the calf was born, and Susan had plenty of milk to spare.
“Good morning, ma’am,” a familiar voice called from the creek bank.
Rachel looked up, and her heart skipped a beat. Was she dreaming? Or had she heard Chance’s voice?
The gray form of a rider sat motionless on a gray horse. Both were nearly concealed by a patch of fog lying in the hollow on the far side of the water.
“Chance?” she questioned. Was he ghost or solid flesh?
“Rachel?”
She leaped out of the boat into the water.
“Rachel!” Man and horse plunged into the shallows and splashed toward her.
“Chance!” she screamed. “Oh, Chance!”
And then he was pulling her up into his lap. His arms were around her, and he was kissing her. Both dogs were barking, and Davy was screaming, but Rachel had no thought for anything but the man who held her as if he would never let her go.
“Chance, Chance,” she sobbed between kisses. She locked her arms around his neck and squeezed him with all her might.
The big horse swam across the deepest part of the creek and waded out to the sandbar near the spot where Davy was tied. Somehow, without letting go of each other, both Rachel and Chance were out of the saddle and lifting the baby between them.
“You look different,” he said, then grinned as he laid a hand tenderly on her swelling belly. “But you still have the craziest ideas about raising this boy that I’ve ever seen. You let the dogs run loose and rope the baby.”
“You don’t know Davy,” she protested. “He’s so …” She trailed off and shifted Davy to her shoulder. “I’m getting you all wet,” she said.
“I don’t mind.”
He stared into her face, so intensely that she felt as if he meant to devour her with his eyes. “I’ve missed you, woman,” he m
urmured.
“You’ve grown a beard.” A small, neatly trimmed beard and mustache nearly hid a thin scar that ran from his lower lip across one cheek. Another healing wound showed at his wrist, just at the edge of his shirt cuff.
“You’ve gotten rounder.”
Suddenly shy, she pulled away, aware of how she must look to him; barefoot, soaked to the skin, wearing her oldest skirt and a shirt of her father’s.
This was her Chance, but not the ragged soldier she’d found here a year ago. This elegantly garbed gentleman wore boots that cost more than the price of an iron plow, and a fine gray frock coat with silver buttons.
“What’s wrong, darling?” he asked.
She pointed to his hat, a flat-crowned, gray felt derby adorned with a jaunty black plume. “You look like a Virginia lawyer,” she stammered.
He grinned. “I’m a Philadelphia lawyer now, but if it bothers you …” He plucked it off and flung it into the current.
“You went to Philadelphia when I thought you were dead?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t exactly go of my own choice. It was more in the line of duty. But it’s over now, Rachel. I’ve come home to you and Davy …” He smiled even wider. “And it looks as if I’ve made it just in time. When are we having this new addition to our family?”
“June or July.”
“The war’s over for me, Rachel. I’m here to stay, if you’ll have me.”
A sweet sensation spiraled up through her chest at the warm-honey tones of his voice, and she felt so happy that she thought she’d burst with all the joy bubbling up inside her.
Deacon wandered away, reins trailing, and began to crop grass. Bear whined and licked Chance’s hand, while Merry—soaking wet from swimming ashore—scampered round and round them, barking joyfully. Davy, in contrast, squirmed and hid his face.
“He’s forgotten me,” Chance said. “We can’t have that, can we?”
“He’ll come around soon. He needs a father, Chance. Can you be that father?”
“I brought him into the world, didn’t I?” he reminded her.
Rachel's Choice Page 27
