“Lady, you mean you came back?” he marveled. “You mean you waded through all that water and you’re pregnant with his kid? You’re pregnant with Beau Devil’s baby? You mean you’re sure?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, yes, of course I’m sure. He is still here, isn’t he?” she cried, suddenly anxious. She looked around at the slight rise of the mound with the beautiful old house crowning it and the hordes of cattle under the trees. “He didn’t go down to the pastures, or the fields or someplace? Oh, Til, I don’t think I’ve got the strength left to go look for him.”
“No, he’s here,” he told her quickly. He couldn’t seem to stop staring at her. “Rachel, if you’re sure...” He shook his head. “Oh, lady, the Force be with you, because you’re going to need it.” Chuckling, he bent down to pick up the two-by-four. “But take this with you, just in case. He’s out behind the house, shoveling mud to make up sandbags.”
“Til...” she began, and faltered. “I love him, Til, with all my heart. But I don’t think he ... he says he could never—”
“Honey, just let the good times roll,” he told her, grinning. “I think Beau’s going to get everything that’s coming to him, only he doesn’t know it. You just keep right on going straight ahead, you’ll find him.”
She left the board with him. But as, she started away, Til called after her, “Approach with caution, Rachel—he’s about out on his feet. He hasn’t had any sleep for about twenty-four hours and he’s mean as that bull that just left.”
The long, low horizon of the river beyond the house merged with the expanse of the sound to make a vast, silvery sea that steadily ate at the land. The old boat dock had disappeared, and water lapped halfway up the green back lawn to a stand of ancient magnolia trees that protected the walled terrace. Several Brahma cattle were grazing on the thick lush grass, ignoring the flood inching toward them. A line of sandbags, and logs that had been dragged up by a red-painted Massey-Ferguson tractor parked nearby, extended from a woods to the highest part of what had been the old Indian mound and to the partly drowned barbed wire fence of a pasture. A man was working with a shovel in the riverbank, locked in solitary battle with both sea and earth. He was stripped to the waist in the cold wind, and the muscles in his bare, tanned back and powerful shoulders coiled and slid under the satiny skin as he stuck the shovel into the black sandy loam, lifted it, and tossed earth up into a pile just above him. He moved in bleak solitude, rhythmically performing the same task over and over again—dig, lift, throw—with the dogged persistence of near exhaustion. It was doubtful that he felt anything. He looked as though he’d long since stopped thinking.
Rachel, coming across the grass swiftly, felt the ache in her heart rise up and almost choke her. He would never give up. Part of his uncompromising courage was that he could put all hope of love, of happiness, away from him and still go grimly on. She had never admired him more than in this moment.
He was seemingly so tired he was blind and deaf to the small noises she made sliding down into the excavation with him. His back was to her, and she saw his golden skin was covered with mud and fine beads of sweat in spite of the chill. The low moan of the wind in the trees covered the slight noise Rachel made when she scooped the black sandy dirt up with her hands into the first plastic bag to fill it.
The pit dug in the riverbank to make sandbags was protected from the wind, and Rachel was glad for the opportunity to keep moving. They worked together in silence for long minutes. Turning, he reached for a bag to fill and froze.
He was still so startlingly beautiful that Rachel sagged suddenly against the side of the hole, tilting her head back to see him. The same sun-streaked hair was disheveled and sweaty; the same perfect features with their symmetrical hardness, the weary slash of his wide, sensual mouth, and the brilliant golden fire of the unbelievable eyes were just as breathtaking. He was a wild, brilliant angel, too real, too fine, for what he had found on a very disillusioning planet.
“Rachel?” His tired voice was an animal growl. He lifted a muddy hand and touched her face. She saw his face register bewilderment, disbelief. “You’re not really here.”
“I love you,” she said simply.
He believed that. His face contorted quickly. “No,” he muttered. He looked around at the muddy pit, then at her plastic bag half filled with sand. “Why are you ... what do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m helping you.” She didn’t retreat, but held her ground, everything she felt in her eyes.
“No you’re not.” The gold-flecked look was slitted, not yet into reality. “You’re going to lose my baby.” He was talking from furious, clouded thoughts. “You’re trying to kill my kid, doing this. It’s too much. Where did you come from?”
She put her cold fingers on his bare arm hesitantly. He didn’t seem to feel them. She murmured only a word. “Beau.”
Rachel forgot everything she’d planned to say to him as he drew her into his arms slowly. She could never resist him, and didn’t resist him now. She felt him shake in a long, wracking shudder of yearning, of acknowledgment that she was there, which ran from his head to his feet.
“Are you real?” he said hoarsely.
“I love you,” she repeated. No matter what he said or did, she would keep on saying it. With her free hand she stroked the raw silk of his bare shoulder and then down the heavy cords: of his muscles to his elbow and forearm. Under her light caressing touch he shuddered again.
“Rachel, don’t go away.” His weary voice cracked. “I was coming to get you after we got through with all this, this damned flood. Even if I had to go all the way to Philadelphia. I need to talk to you.”
He paused and rubbed a dirty forearm over his face, trying to think. “I went to the VA hospital in Columbia. I wanted to prove that you were lying, Rachel. I had to know you were lying,” he repeated, closing his eyes. “It was all I had left. I told them I wanted the usual test and they thought I was crazy. I was crazy, I tore up the place when they wouldn’t listen. I broke some stuff,” he mumbled, “and a lab technician got a little hurt. But they gave me the test. The doctors told me it was a ‘medical anomaly.’ I didn’t know what the hell that meant, I had to go to the library to look it up. It means nobody knows.”
“You went to the hospital?” she asked, puzzled.
“Yes, dammit, don’t you understand? I can produce hundreds, thousands of kids.” The light came dazzlingly into his face, and he smiled. “My sperm count is normal. Actually, it’s more than that, it’s pretty damned good. It’s a one in a million chance after a vasectomy. The nurse called it a miracle.”
“It is a sort of a miracle!” Rachel cried. She wrapped her arms around his bare body and hugged him. “Oh, my darling.”
“Yes, well...” The smile faded from his face, and he groaned. “My God, Rachel, what am I going to do with a kid?” His arms went around her to hold her just as tightly. “I don’t know how to take care of anything. You’re going to have to help. Everything is hitting me at once after years of ... of nothing.” He stared down at her. “After years of living in hell. I’ve been living in hell, Rachel, you know that, don’t you?”
Wordlessly, she nodded. She waited for him to hold her close and kiss her, tell her that he loved her, but he looked around quickly. He let her go and stepped back. “Let’s get out of here,” he muttered. “None of this is going to make much difference now, and it’s getting dark. If the dikes are going to go, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
He pulled her toward the house, his arm around her waist.
“If the flood comes in,” Rachel tried to say against the wind, “will it reach up to Belle Haven?” When he shot her a quick look she went on, “In town they said if the Beaumont dikes go...” Her voice trailed away. “They said it was dangerous to come out here.”
“It’s dangerous,” he said tersely. “The damned developers brought in earthmovers and shored up all the old dikes on my property, but that’s because the dikes here are the onl
y thing holding the water out of their strip, along the river.” She heard him curse Harborside huskily under his breath. “I ought to make them pay me, the bastards. Except we’re all in the same miserable boat.” The dark brows drew together in a frown as he looked down at her, hurrying her along. “God, Rachel, I wish you hadn’t come out here. You and that damned wife of Til’s—you two women are crazy.”
“But the dikes will hold, won’t they?” she asked. Her teeth were chattering uncontrollably, even though he tried to walk and hold her close to him tightly, shielding her with his body from the damp, piercing wind that replaced the rain now that the storm was receding. “They’ve never broken in all these years.”
He looked down at her, the fine dark wings of his brows still drawn together in a frown. “That’s the big unknown, honey. The earthmovers reinforced them. About all we can do now is wait.
“I need to get you out of this wind,” he said suddenly. He took her by the hand to drag her faster. “Lord, woman, you’re turning blue. You didn’t wade those damned lakes, did you?” He scowled at her, hurrying her along. “Rachel, of all the fool stunts—I’ve got to get you out of those clothes. Why didn’t you say something? Hell, woman, you’re pregnant,” he fumed.
She was so tired she started giggling. “Yes, I know,” she said. “Let’s go into the house.”
“No, not the house,” he said sharply. He pulled her away as she started toward Belle Haven, its ancient pink brick facade glowing in the fading light. “Didn’t Til tell you?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Beau Beau dragged her down the driveway and then turned her around, his hands on her shoulders, so that she could see the full front view of Belle Haven. He jabbed his finger in the air, pointing it out to her. “Under the bedroom window on the right, upstairs.”
One could hardly miss it. The magnificent old manor house had begun settling, probably at the height of the storm. A large crack that opened as much as four inches or more ran from the corner of the window to the portico, like a craze in a dinner plate.
“It’s settling to one side, where the sills are rotted.” His husky voice was tired. “When it started sinking on that end the main uprights wouldn’t stand the strain, they gave way and opened up the walls. Then the horizontal beams went out of line. It’ll go sometime tonight, or it might stand like that for weeks.”
Rachel stood staring. Weariness was pulling at every inch of her body like a net; it was all she could do to stay on her feet. But she couldn’t believe what he was saying. It was impossible that the house that had stood for so long, that held so many ghosts and dreams, was doomed.
“It can be fixed, can’t it?” Her voice was only a whisper. “If you got some carpenters out here right away-tomorrow—or contractors, somebody, they could brace it, do something to it, surely!”
He shook his head. “Not when the foundations go. The ground water has been mining the house for years—it’s too close to the marsh. When they were building it some of the slaves tried to tell them it was a stupid idea to put it or unstable soil, but nobody listened. The damned grandiose bastards,” he growled with sudden feeling. “That’s the Beaumonts for you—once they got one of their pompous ideas in their heads nothing on this damned earth would make them listen to reason.” His hands tightened on her shoulders. “Besides, Rachel, I plain haven’t got the money, even if I could get contractors out here, which I can’t. They’re going to be at a premium after this storm. And even if they could fix it—which any one of them will tell you is impossible.”
“But all the beautiful things inside,” Rachel cried, straining against his grip. She looked around for Til and Loretha. “Some of them are priceless. We’re going to have to start taking them out!”
“Don’t even think of going in there, Rachel.” His voice was a hard rasp, warning her. “It’s worth your life—it could go any minute. And I’m sure as hell not going to risk you and my kid, or anybody, for a houseful of junk.”
“Junk?” She put her hand to her mouth. “What are you saying?” Belle Haven had stood for nearly three centuries; it was impossible for her to think of those exquisite rooms filled with museum pieces of eighteenth century Sheraton and Hepplewhite and their handcrafted American copies, or the Aubusson in the drawing room, the paneled library, the great crystal chandeliers, the English silver, the irreplaceable paintings, left to their fate.
“I couldn’t care less,” he told her. “What you’re looking at is an obsession passed down from generation to generation: My mother’s particular mania, her father’s damned demented dream of keeping southern aristocracy alive, his grandfather’s bankrupt legacy. The Beaumonts wanted to build a kingdom here. It never had anything to do with reality. They never asked me, or I would have told them to shove it. The land’s the only thing worth saving, and that’s because it’s the future.” He felt her shivering, and turned her to face him. “Rachel, honey, you’re freezing, and that’s the only thing that’s important to me right now. I don’t even have a shirt to put around you, it’s somewhere in the mud. Let’s go look in the jeep.”
He pulled her toward the battered vehicle parked under the trees. The great gray shapes of cattle rose up as they approached, but he shooed them away with an impatient flap of one bare, sleekly muscled arm. He rummaged around in the backseat of the jeep and could only find his full-skirted yellow horseman’s slicker.
“This will have to do,” he said, frowning.
Between them they managed to pull off her sodden sweatshirt and then her bra. Rachel stood shivering, her arms wrapped around her bare upper body, while Beau knelt to take off her old running shoes and then stripped off her jeans. He wrapped the cold, rubberized slicker around her quickly. She managed a grateful smile between chattering teeth.
“God, you’ll be lucky if you don’t get pneumonia,” he exclaimed, lifting her in his arms and lowering her into the front seat of the jeep. The plastic and canvas top had been put up during the rain, and it was like being in a close, humid box. “Remind me to beat you later for doing this whole damned thing, will you?”
“Yes,” Rachel murmured, burrowing into the depths of the raincoat and shivering as he got in beside her. But she smiled. “Shouldn’t we find Til and Loretha? It’s getting dark, they won’t know where we are.”
“They’ll get in Til’s car when they think about it. Right now I’ve got to get you warmed up.” He pulled her close to his half-naked torso, his work-roughened hands sliding under the old slicker to briskly chafe the smooth skin of her back and then of her hips and bottom. “Oh, Rachel,” he growled, his breath growing heavy against her ear as he nuzzled her hair and the side of her cheek, “I don’t need any company right now. I just want to hold you.” He tried to move closer, lifting one long leg to put over her knees in spite of the obstruction of the jeep’s gearshift. “Besides, Till and Loretha argue all the time, about going to Atlanta, about their kid, about making love—I don’t want to have to hear it. At the moment I’ve got other things on my mind. Like just putting my arms around you and forgetting how damned miserable I’ve been without you.
Rachel pushed him away slightly to look up into his face. She was already flushed, growing warm with what his caressing hands under the slicker were doing. “But Til and Loretha are back together again, aren’t they?” she asked with a troubled expression. “I thought when I left—”
“Will you stop worrying?” The virile heat of his bare chest and arms, and the pressure of his jeans-covered legs, soaked into her. “They’re happy as hell, they’re always going to fight as long as she’s got to push him to do anything, and he lets her. If that’s their life-style, they’ll work it out.” He pulled the front of the raincoat apart to hold her against him, and he groaned, his strength straining against her. “Do you know how much I’ve missed the feel of you? If I weren’t so stinking and dirty, I’d make love to you right here. Are you getting warmer?”
“Yes,” she murmured, the troubled look still in her eyes.
“However,” he muttered in her ear, “I’m not going to be able to hold you in my lap the way I want to, unless I can figure out a way to tear off this gearshift that’s keeping us apart.
As Rachel lifted her face to him, his firm, cool mouth took hers with all the hunger and yearning of weeks of separation, his half-naked body trembling with the sudden force of it. Rachel twined her fingers in his thick bright hair, drowning in his kiss as his hand pushed aside the raincoat to explore her taut silky breasts. He muttered something inaudible against her mouth, stroking her skin, defining her fullness gently.
He pushed the slicker down over her shoulders and then looked at her quickly, concerned. “Are you cold?”
“No.” She sighed. “Not now.”
“I just want to look at you, Rachel. I can’t seem to believe that you’re here. It’s going to take days. Wonderful days.” He pulled her closer with sudden urgency. “When we’re married I want a king-sized bed.” His lips were in her hair. “I’ve spent my whole life on army cots, hospital beds, and antiques made for midgets. I want a bed big enough to roll around in when I ravish you.”
“Did you say m-married?” she managed on an indrawn breath. “Did you say that?”
“Damn.” He suddenly pulled back to jerk the offending gearshift into fourth position, cursing under his breath. “Now,” he said, pulling her so that she half sprawled in his lap. He put his lips to her forehead. “Where were we?”
“I don’t know.” She shut her eyes and breathed a quick prayer. “You said you wanted a king-sized bed to ravish me in.
“When we’re married.” He looked down at her, his jeweled eyes questioning. “You will marry me, won’t you, Rachel? I have to make up for a lot of things I’ve said and done to you. I’m sorry as hell, but I’ll make it right, I promise. Just don’t pay any attention to me when I lose my damned foul temper—I’ll try to remember. I’ll be good to you and the baby. You don’t have to worry.”
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