The boat, built of nearly indestructible cypress wood, was heavy and unwieldly out of the water, though easy enough to handle when afloat. Its pole lay in the bottom along with a short-handled paddle. Lettie did not trust the currents of the river’s channel with only herself to guide the thing, however, so made no move to get into it. She only put her foot with its mud-caked shoe on the low gunwale and set the boat rocking.
“Climb in,” Martin Eden said behind her. “I’ll be your boatman.”
She turned to smile at him. “Would you?”
He gave her a small bow. “It would be my privilege.”
The consummate Southern gentleman, always ready to be of service. She was charmed, as she was supposed to be. The gallantry and the coquettish response was, she had discovered, almost like a game, a kind of half-humorous ritual between a man and a woman. The more appreciative a lady was, the more gallant the gentleman became, but the sparkle in their eyes as they moved through the ancient game was, she also realized, only partly for the parody.
She stepped into the boat and moved to seat herself on the crosspiece in the prow. Martin shoved off and, as the craft glided into the water, leaped aboard.
The rocking of the boat was an inescapable reminder of another craft, another time on the river, another man. Or was it the same one? Martin did not seem to notice the sudden tautness of her face and body, but gave her a wide smile as he took up the paddle and began to pull upstream against the current.
“You’re different from when you first came here, you know.”
“Am I?” She forced herself to relax, though she leaned to trail her fingers in the water as an excuse not to look at him.
“Not nearly as distant or as proper.”
“Dear me,” she said, her tone mocking, “is that good?”
“There, you see what I mean? Not so long ago you would have pokered up and said something freezing like ‘Indeed.’”
“I expect you’re right, and I probably should now.”
“No, no, it’s too dampening. A man must have encouragement.”
“Must he? Now why?”
The sun was hot on the water and so glaring she could hardly see. She was sunburned already, she was afraid, and tomorrow there would be a harvest of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She didn’t really care, but sunstroke she could do without. The top of her head was blistering to the touch as she reached up to lay her hand on it.
Abandoning flirtation, Martin said, “You should have brought a hat or a parasol.”
“Now you tell me.”
“There’s a bit of shade under that tree down there. We’ll make for it.”
It was a tree whose roots had been loosened so that it leaned out over the water. Martin dug in his paddle, and they were soon gliding into the dark patch. Lettie, a laugh in her voice, said, “Watch out for snakes.”
“And spiders,” Martin agreed, and used his paddle to brace the boat against the overhanging tree trunk, slowing and finally halting their progress. The boat thumped against the tree roots as it rocked in the current.
The sun was still hot, the water still blindingly bright, but at least the top of her head did not feel as if it might catch fire at any moment. Lettie also had had time to collect herself.
“I suppose you know,” she said, “that you have left the field with Sally Anne to the colonel.”
“Ward overplayed his hand at the auction. He should have known better.”
“So you aren’t worried? But he seems intent on making a recovery.”
“He’s welcome to try.”
“Would you mind?”
But he was giving nothing away. “It would be most indiscreet of me to say in my present company. A gentleman doesn’t talk about one lady to another.”
“Who told you that, your mother?”
“A lady friend,” he admitted with a wry laugh that tilted his mustache upward at the ends.
“And, anyway, you have known Sally Anne all your life and I’m a virtual stranger. I am properly chastened.”
“I somehow doubt it,” he said. “There are depths to you I never expected. Tell me about this midnight ride with the Thorn.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” she protested. “It’s all a silly mistake.”
“Is it? Then why are you blushing?”
It was not hard to summon indignation. “I didn’t care for Mr. O’Connor’s insinuations. And it’s extremely hot!”
“You forget that I also saw you kissing Ranny. I don’t remember, somehow, my teacher ever kissing me even when I was a boy. And Ranny is not, despite circumstances, a boy.”
“It … was just an impulse. He can be very sweet.”
“So can I,” he said, “with the proper, or improper, encouragement.”
He put down his paddle and eased off the seat, moving toward her, going down on one knee in the middle of the boat. He took her hand and pulled, drawing her toward him. The boat, released from its temporary mooring, began to drift downstream again.
She could have resisted, could have said something brittle and amusing or else something cold that would have stopped him. Her gaze, however, was on the glint of brown in his dark mustache. Closer she came to him, closer. There was satisfaction in his eyes, eyes that were brown, not hazel.
The mustache was real, each individual wiry hair growing from the skin. It was carefully waxed and combed and slightly curled at the corners. His lips below it were firm, ready. They touched hers.
She set her hands on his chest and gave him a hard push. He overbalanced, teetered, then went over the side with a splash that sent cascades of water in every direction and set the boat to bobbing. He went under, then surfaced thrashing and spluttering as he tread water.
“What did you do that for?” he yelled after her as the current carried her away.
“Ask your lady friend!”
“I doubt she could tell me about you!”
The implication was obvious. “Yes, and you’re not much of a gentleman, either!”
He was swimming with easy strokes now. Let him swim, then; she would be damned before she would make any attempt to pick him up in the boat. She would get herself back to the bank without his help. She reached for the paddle and, regaining her seat, dug it into the water. Bending into it, using the strength of her anger, she sent the boat heading for the tree line. As she looked at it, however, she saw that they had drifted nearly back to where they had started. Ranny was there on the bank. Waiting.
When she was a few feet from the sandy shelf on which he stood, Lettie gave a last, hard pull with the paddle. The front end grounded on the sand. Ranny reached and dragged the heavy craft higher, beaching it. Without a word, he steadied it while she stood up, then put his hands on her waist and lifted her out.
Her voice was curiously subdued when she finally spoke.
“Thank you.”
He looked down at her, a hard light in his eyes and his hands on his hips. “Tell me something,” he said. “Do you kiss all the men?”
She felt as if he had slapped her. “Good gracious, no,” she cried, borrowing one of Aunt Em’s exclamations though she gave it a scathing ring, “only the handsome ones!”
She gathered up her skirts and stamped away with her head high. Ransom, staring after her, knew with rueful certainty that he deserved just what he had got. It had been too tempting to use the license allowed to Ranny to say precisely what he thought. He would not do it again.
Swinging away, he shoved the boat off and leaped into it, pulling toward where Martin was splashing and cursing in the river channel.
14
THE ROOSTER WAS YOUNG AND proud and somewhat confused. He began crowing at a little after ten o’clock in the evening and did not stop for four hours, until he was so hoarse he sounded like a creaking gate. Then he began again at five in the morning. It would not have been so bad except that he had chosen the magnolia tree not far from Lettie’s bedroom window for his combination roost and perch. She endured th
e crowing the first night and the second. On the third night she lay listening and wincing and wondering how Aunt Em could sleep through such a racket. After two hours, Lettie could stand it no longer.
She got out of bed and put on her dressing gown, impatiently dragging the long braid of her hair from inside the collar and throwing it back over her shoulder before jerking the belt into a slip knot at the waist. She pushed her feet into her slippers and strode from the room with very little attempt to be quiet. If everyone in the house wasn’t still awake, the little noise she made wasn’t going to rouse them.
Halfway down the hall, her conscience pricked her and she began to tiptoe. There was no sign of Lionel outside of Ranny’s door. That did not mean that Ranny was free of his headache tonight and was resting without laudanum, but rather that Lionel’s father, Bradley, had been due for supper with Mama Tass. There had been some mention of him staying the night, as he had done several times in the past few weeks when he visited his mother and his son.
She eased out of the house and down the back steps. She thought longingly of a good supply of bricks to throw at the rooster, but such a thing was not to be had. There was, however, a bucket of cucumbers sitting at the door of the kitchen. These were so big and shaded with yellow that just that afternoon Mama Tass had culled them before slicing the rest for pickles. Lionel had been told to take them to the hog pen, but he had been distracted from the task by Peter, who had been dropped off to play while Sally Anne and Colonel Ward went for a drive in the cool of the evening.
It was a night of bright moonlight. Lettie could see perfectly well as she carried the bucket of cucumbers around the end of the house and let herself in at the side gate of the picket fence encircling the front yard, heading toward the magnolia tree. The rooster stopped crowing and began to cluck with a slightly worried sound as he saw her coming. Lettie set the bucket down and chose a cucumber. It was darker under the dense shade of the thick-leaved magnolia. Locating the rooster by the sound he was making, she shied the cucumber in his direction.
The missile sailed through the branches with a mighty clattering before falling with a thud to the ground. The rooster squawked and shifted his position but would not be dislodged. Lettie picked up another cucumber. The rooster had fallen absolutely silent. She thought she saw his shape against the moonlight sifting through the leaves. She drew her arm back to throw.
Something in the quietness of the rooster and of the night, or perhaps it was the faint sound of hoofbeats carried on the still night air, arrested her movements. Still holding the cucumber, she turned toward the road before the house.
She saw the light, like a red eye, of the torch first. It came nearer, burning brighter as the sullen throb of hoof-beats became a muffled thunder. The moonlight poured down relentlessly, gleaming on the white sheets that lifted and flapped in the wind of the passage of the night riders, the Knights of the White Camellia. It caught the hoods with the holes cut for eyes, giving them the sepulchral look of apparitions from hell. That the effect was deliberate did not make it less terrifying.
Where were they going? What was their purpose?
The answer was not long in coming. The riders turned in at the drive of Splendora. They slowed to a trot as they came toward the house, swinging into single file as they passed the front gate. The torch sent showers of sparks floating back over their heads. It illuminated the band, so they could be counted off one by one to the number five. The costumed men did not stop but continued on along the track that passed around the house and led toward the old slave quarters.
Lettie watched them disappear from sight, then dropped the cucumber she held and picked up her skirts. Breathless with fear and an odd possessive anger that these men should dare to trespass on Splendora, she ran toward the corner of the house, whirled through the gate, and sped past the kitchen building along the path that also led toward the quarters.
She could see the torchlight ahead of her, floating, dancing in the air as it was carried. It was a beacon. Tripping over tufts of grass, blundering into spiderwebs wet with dew, she followed it.
It stopped in front of the cabin that belonged to Mama Tass. There came a harsh call.
“Bradley Lincoln! Come out of there!”
The men sat fanned out in front of the house with a view of the side windows. Lettie, half hidden behind a fig tree, saw a shadow at one window that she thought was Lionel. She did not wait for more, but turned and ran back toward the main house.
She plunged along the path, heedless in the darkness, trying to be quiet, holding her skirts well above her knees with one hand while the other was clenched into a fist. Her one thought was of Aunt Em and her brisk common sense. The older woman would know what to do, would know how to stop what Lettie feared was about to happen. She could reason with the men, use her authority and the weight of her years to force them to leave the property.
A faint shadow moved at the side of the kitchen. Lettie’s heart leaped with a sickening jolt. She crashed into a solid, iron-hard surface. Bonds, strong and unbreakable, closed around her. A hand clamped across her mouth. She was assailed by familiar and terrible sensations, a sense of recognition. Then a voice whispered in her ear.
“Be still. It’s only me.”
Ranny.
A violent shudder rippled through her. She was quiescent. She nodded. Slowly, carefully, the hand was removed. Ranny’s arms loosened. He stepped back.
Lettie felt suddenly chilled, confused, as if a protective shield had been removed. She gave herself another small shake and wrapped her arms around her chest. She swallowed. Her voice so low it barely stirred the air, she said, “It’s Bradley. The Knights are after him.”
“I know.”
“We have to get Aunt Em.”
“No. You go into the house.”
“What? No! We have to do something.”
“I’ll do it.”
“You can’t!”
“Don’t be silly. I can.” He shifted, and the moonlight caught blue gleams from the double barrels of the shotgun he held in his hand.
“You’ll get hurt.”
“I won’t. Go into the house.”
“I can’t let you go alone. I’ll come with you.”
There was never, Ransom thought with bitter admiration, a more meddlesome, exasperating female. It was dangerous for her to see him take action as Ranny, but it was equally dangerous for him to use the strength and force of will that it would take to put her in the house where he longed for her to be. There was also scant time for persuasion, even if he could arrange reasons for it in Ranny’s simple speech. Never before had his role been such a handicap.
“All right,” he said without expression. “Come on, then.”
Lettie longed to be able to rouse Aunt Em. She would know how to deal with Ranny as well as the situation. Or would she? She might also be flustered and distraught. In any case, there was no time. If she left Ranny and went back to the house, he would run into danger before she could return with his aunt.
What was he going to do? The question beat in Lettie’s brain, turning her mouth dry and her limbs stiff as she followed him. She could not remember when she had been so apprehensive or felt so helpless. Not even when she had faced the Thorn for the first time had she been so afraid. There had been only herself at risk then. This was different.
Ranny’s movements were sure and quiet and amazingly swift. He had the advantage of knowing every inch of the way, and he had as good as told her he knew what to do. Still, she had not expected such decisiveness. It was difficult to keep up with him as he circled the quarters, coming up on the back side of the dilapidated cabin across the dirt lane from that of Mama Tass. It almost seemed as if he wanted to leave her behind.
They stopped in the deep shadow of a tangle of Virginia creeper and honeysuckle that had grown up into a huge old cape jasmine shrub. The jasmine was in bloom, the flowers carrying a scent so heavy that combined with the honeysuckle it was nearly overwhelming. Aunt Em would n
ot allow the plant near the house because its scent reminded her of funerals. It surrounded them, heavy, stirring, with an undertone of death in the scent of the decaying yellow blooms still clinging among the dark green leaves.
Lettie pulled aside a dangling length of vine and looked across the way. At first she saw only moving forms and the flare of the torchlight, and, incongruously, the white gleams of the moonflower vine at the end of Mama Tass’s porch. Then, as her eyes adjusted, the breath stopped in her throat. She felt Ranny grow rigid beside her.
Bradley had been dragged from the cabin and was stripped to the waist. There was a red sheen of wetness on his cheek. Mama Tass, in a long white nightgown, was kneeling in the doorway, pleading over and over with agony in her voice. Lionel hovered behind her, his eyes wide with terror but his hands knotted into fists at his sides.
The Negro man was hustled down the steps and shoved against the porch near one of the posts that supported the roof. He was pushed against the post and his hands were fastened together at the wrists. The men who had tied him stepped back. The leader of the night riders got down from the saddle with slow deliberation. He took a bullwhip, long and black and lashed at the end, from his saddle horn and began to flip it out so that it uncoiled on the ground.
The man behind the mask lifted his voice. It was neither rough nor harsh, but sounded instead cultured, tight with distaste, resigned. Vaguely familiar.
“This is in the way of a warning. It’s nothing personal, understand; we just can’t have you setting yourself up as a mouthpiece of the damned carpetbaggers. You don’t want to be any representative. Believe me, you don’t.”
The men in sheets moved back. Their leader swung the whip behind him with his hand low so that the snaking length stretched out straight along the ground. He took a deep breath, moved his shoulders to loosen his coat, and began to bring his arm up and forward in a great swing.
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