They rode away. The red eye of the torch grew smaller and finally disappeared along the road. Bradley, free of his bonds, stepped toward Ranny. His face was gray under the brown of his skin and yet it was transfigured by the dawning warmth of his smile. "I won't forget it, either."
Ranny held out his hand and they hugged each other in the sudden joy of relief. Ranny gave a soft laugh. "We saved our hides again."
"One more time," Bradley agreed, "especially mine."
Ranny sent Lettie a quick look. "Miss Lettie helped."
"So she did," Bradley agreed, turning to her. "I'm grateful, believe me."
"You're welcome." If her tone was ungracious, she could not help it. She could not forget the danger this man had brought down on them all. "Why do you think they waited until you came here?"
"It's quieter, more isolated, and, so they thought, less likely to be interrupted than in town."
"You take it easily."
The black man shook his head. "It wasn't unexpected."
"Then why aren't you armed?"
His mother came bustling up, her fear turned to anger. "Because he's stupid, that's why; stupid to get mixed up in this mess, stupid to come here, stupid to let them take him out without a fight."
Bradley shook his head. "If I let them teach me their lesson, they let me go. If I kill or even injure one of them, I'm a dead man. Dead men don't become representatives."
"Representative for who, son? Them carpetbaggers? They're the enemy. Don't you see that? They don't care about you; they don't know you and don't want to know you. They just want to use you, and then they'll throw you away like a rag too used up to wash."
"I still have to try. I can't not try."
It was the same quarrel and the same haunting fears. No one seemed to notice or care that Ranny had been drawn into it, that he had made enemies who could destroy him, enemies who could come again at any time, appearing out of the night. Lettie thought of that moment when she had been afraid he would be tricked, defeated, and an icy chill moved over her. She could not bear to stand there a moment longer being polite and calm. She had to get away.
"Excuse me," she said. "I'll see you in the morning."
Only Lionel murmured an answer as he clung to Bradley's coat and also to Ranny's hand, which he had taken as he moved to stand beside him. Lettie walked away, keeping her back stiff and straight. When she could no longer hear their voices, she increased her pace, taking long, quick strides. Faster and faster she went until she put her head down and began to run.
What she was running from, she did not know, unless it was from Ranny. Or herself. There was something wrong, terribly wrong inside her. She wanted to weep and could not, wanted to cry out with the pain of it and would not. All the old wives' tales about southern climes might be true after all, for there was something in her heart and mind that made her feel what she ought not feel, think what she should not think, want what she must not want. She thought she had conquered it, but she was wrong. It was even stronger now, possibly stronger than she was.
She had almost reached the bottom of the back steps when she heard the quick, soft footfalls. In a frenzy, she snatched up her skirts and began to leap up the wide treads. She reached the top and fled across the veranda.
She was caught just inside the dark hall. Ranny grasped her arm and whirled her around. She staggered, tripped, fell against him as her long braid whipped around to lash across his bare shoulders. His arms closed around her. She stood in the circle of his arms, her chest heaving and her breath coming in ragged gasps. She was aware with every ending of her nerves of her nakedness under her nightgown and dressing gown, of her soft curves just brushing the hard angles and planes of his body.
"What is it, Miss Lettie?"
It was the soft concern that broke her control. With a sound of anguish in her chest, she flung herself against him, going on tiptoe to clasp her arms around his neck and to press her forehead into the hollow of his collarbone. The sense of comfort and safety she felt was false, but for the moment it was enough.
Ransom held her close and felt the trembling, like the vibrating of a taut violin string, that shook her and the desperate tightness of her grasp upon him. He stroked her braided hair and murmured quietly he knew not what and cursed himself and wars and politicians. He was close, so close, to picking her up, taking her into his bed, which was so near, and letting her guess as he made love to her just who and what he was. His courage failed him, not because he feared what she would do, but because he could not stand to see her hate him.
And yet, she was a sensitive woman, his passionate prude, and he was beginning to think that her hate would be easier to bear than this tortured affection—he would not call it love—she had conceived for Ranny. He almost wished she would guess. There had been a time when he thought she had, but he had been too panicked by the idea to do anything other than to cover his tracks and bluff his way through. It had been too soon. Now, if she asked him, if she wanted to test him, he might find the strength to allow it and to give her whatever else she might possibly want of him.
He bent his head, brushing her forehead with his lips, pressing light kisses along her temple, her cheek. She lifted her chin to give him her lips, her fervor a delight and a promise that made his arms tighten involuntarily. The kiss deepened, a meshing of tongues in clash and play, a torment to strained senses, and a delight. He followed her lead, pressing as she retreated, tracing the edges of her teeth with his tongue. Entranced by her sweetness and the ravishing tenderness of her surrender, he lost touch with who he was and of his purpose. Until he tasted the salty wetness of her tears.
Gently, lingeringly, he ended the kiss, flicking the corners of her mouth, slanting a last, moist brush across the sensitive indentation of their perfect, generous bow. He sought Ranny's soft, lilting tones. Found them.
"Is there more you can teach me?"
She didn't laugh. She stared up at him, dazed, hardly aware of what he said or the hot tracks of wetness on her face. What occupied her senses, her mind, was the warm and firm pulsing of him against her in arousal. She had done this to him, had made him long for something more that he could not have. She had introduced him to the torture of desire, something not easily controlled, as she had learned to her cost. It could be she had infected him with her own malady of immoral longing, had given him something that would make it impossible for him to go on as he was, innocent, joyously childlike in his man's body. It was thoughtless and cruel of her, and quite possibly a greater threat to him than any gathering of night riders.
She must do what she could to mend matters. Her voice husky, almost breaking with the ache of tears, she said, "No. No, Ranny, there is nothing else."
"Are you mad at me?"
"How—how could I be? And are you annoyed with me anymore, as you were at the fish fry?"
"Not so long as you kiss me, too."
"I was wrong to do that. I shouldn't do it again."
"If it was wrong, nothing is right."
Sometimes he made such sense, even if what he said was quite unanswerable. She could not think, could not reason with him now. Perhaps another time, when she was calm and had thought in advance of what must be said.
"Let me go, please. It's right that I leave you here and go to my room."
"Why did you run away?"
"I was overwrought."
"What does over—"
"Afraid. It means afraid. I didn't know how much until it was over."
"Afraid for me?"
Sometimes he was too acute. She lowered her gaze and placed her hands on his chest, pressing until he let her go. She stepped back, breathing easier. "For all of us."
"Bradley and Lionel and Mama Tass—"
"And me."
"You don't ever have to be afraid with me."
There was something in his voice that brought the return of tears, so nearly conquered, to her voice. "I know," she whispered. "I know. It would be best if you were afraid with me."
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15
"I still can't believe it! Where in the world was the Thorn when we needed him? He would have sent those Knights in their silly white sheets about their business in short order!"
Aunt Em bent to give a hard yank to a handful of pea pods in her annoyance, stripping them from the waist-high vines and casting them into the pan she carried on her broad hip. Lettie, picking peas in the next row over in the vegetable garden, was not sure what to say to mollify the older woman. Some comment appeared to be required of her, however.
"Ranny handled it well enough without him."
"Bless his heart, he did, didn't he? I'm so proud of him. I just wish he had peppered a few backsides with his shotgun. To think of those high-and-mighty Knights actually daring to ride onto our land and tamper with our people. It makes me so mad I could jump up and down and scream."
Our people. It was a term often applied to the former slaves. It had a possessive ring, and at the same time there was something protective, almost familial about it. Lettie had come to see that the slave and master relationship was more complicated than she had ever dreamed. Nor had it been dissolved, not completely, by war and freedom. For good or ill, the majority of Negro men and women of the South were still dependent for the necessities of life on their former masters. Until they could provide for themselves, they would never be really free. For the time being, they were a burden that had to be carried without hope of return. And when it was lifted, if it was ever lifted, both races might well have lost as much as they had gained.
"At least Mama Tass's son was unharmed."
Lettie shifted the pan on her hip and bent to snatch a drooping stalk of peas in the hull. It was nearly too hot to breathe. The glare of the sun was blinding and the heat reflecting up from the sandy ground caused a trickle of stinging perspiration between her breasts and along her shoulder blades. Bees hummed and wasps danced over the new blooms on the pea vines. Now and then lizards, green chameleons and also gray-blotched ones with blue throats, darted here and there. The cloth sunbonnet on her head made her feel hotter, but it at least kept the top of her head and her nose from burning.
"Yes," Aunt Em agreed, her tone grim. "I don't know where it will all end, I really don't. I don't want the Knights coming after Bradley, but on the other hand, Bradley has no business getting mixed up with the Republicans. He'll wind up getting himself killed for nothing and leave Mama Tass and Lionel grieving. He thinks the riffraff at the state capital is going to give his people what they want, when he ought to know it's something that will take time and work. The Knights think they can scare people like him when they ought to know it will just make them more set on getting their way. The Republicans think they can keep us down now that they have their heel on our necks, when they should realize that it will cause our men to rise up in righteous wrath, even if it's in secret. It's enough to make a body wonder if men ever think what they're about."
"I expect that if everyone worried too much about other people and what they need and want, nothing much would get done."
"You're probably right." Aunt Em sighed, then repeated for the fourth time that morning, "But what I really can't understand is how I came to sleep through the excitement. I'm not that heavy a sleeper, not really."
Lettie, her voice soothing, said, "There wasn't that much noise."
"I didn't even hear the rooster that woke you up. We'll have to catch him and clip his wings. There's no other way he'll change his roost; that's the way they are, creatures of habit, like the rest of us. But," she went on in a sudden reversion to the previous topic, "you and Ranny could have waked me!"
The reasons why they had not done so were many, and Lettie had no wish to talk about them. She merely signified her agreement while keeping her head bent so that her sunbonnet hid her face as she continued to pick peas.
The colonel found them in the garden. They raised their bent backs and shielded their eyes with a hand against the sun as he rode around the end of the house and cantered down the track toward them. They were so nearly at the end of their rows that they were able to grab the last few peas and go to meet him.
"It's too hot for this kind of labor," he greeted them. "Two such lovely ladies should be lying in the shade with a book in one hand and a fan in the other."
"While the peas dry on the vine? A scandalous waste! But what brings you out in such weather?"
"If we can all go and sit on the veranda where it's cooler, I'll tell you about it."
"Just where we were heading," Aunt Em said, but though her tone was jovial, even welcoming, the look in her eyes was wary. Lettie was also less than easy. The colonel's words were pleasant enough, but his manner was more than a shade formal.
Ranny and Lionel, cutting palings at the edge of the woods to be used to repair the chicken yard, the better to pen the roosters and chickens, joined them on the veranda. Nothing was said, but it was apparent that they had seen the arrival of Thomas Ward and had come to see what was happening.
When they had all had a glass or two of cool fresh-drawn water from the well to allay the effects of the heat, they sat enjoying the vagrant breezes that crossed the veranda and talking of this and that. After a time, Aunt Em, growing impatient, brought the conversation to a head.
"I suppose you have heard about our excitement last night?"
The colonel lifted a brow in inquiry. "Can't say that I have. What took place?"
He was told in detail, with many exclamations and applications to Lettie and Ranny for corroboration. The officer was silent for long moments when Aunt Em was done, his green gaze considering. Finally he said, "I know the experience was upsetting, but it's getting to be a common occurrence. Unless you can supply the identities of the men under the sheets, I'm afraid there isn't a great deal the army can do."
"I wish I did know who they were! I'd go straight to them and give them a piece of my mind, that's what I'd do. The very idea!"
Thomas turned to Lettie. "You said they spoke of themselves as neighbors. Did you recognize any of their voices?"
She had thought that something in the voice of the leader reminded her of Samuel Tyler. It seemed so unlikely, however, that she could not say it. To bring the military down on Ranny's uncle for so small a cause would be unforgivable. "No, I'm afraid not. The sound was muffled by the sheets, you understand, and of course they didn't say a great deal."
"I suppose they didn't."
Lettie, glancing at Ranny in the chair beside her, found him looking at her. It happened so often she was not surprised. She smiled a little, but his gaze remained closed, without expression, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. It was disconcerting.
It was also reassuring since it seemed that she and the emotions she had aroused had not taken over his attention to the exclusion of all else. He leaned back in his chair, relaxed and yet alert, with his water glass resting on his knee. His shirt clung to his broad shoulders and his hair was damp around his hairline from the perspiration of his labors. The scar at his temple seemed darker and more noticeable this morning, perhaps because the blood was nearer to the surface from the heat and his exertions.
The colonel was speaking. "Of course, if Bradley wants to file a complaint and can give us something to go on, we will be glad to look into the incident. Is he here now?"
"He left for town early, just after breakfast." Aunt Em set aside her water glass and reached to pick up the enamelware pan of peas at her side. Settling the pan in her lap, she selected a pod and began to shell it in a motion so practiced it did not distract her from what she was saying. "I somehow doubt that he will be able to tell you any more than Lettie and Ranny, or that he would if he could. What he's doing is unhealthy enough as it is, but it would be even more dangerous for him to make a complai
nt."
"Yes, we've run into that before."
"It's a sad situation, but there it is."
There was a brief pause. Thomas left his chair and went to lean with his shoulder against one of the square columns and his hand resting on the railing behind him. It was a position that put his back to the bright light beyond the line of the roof while they all faced it. His face was grim as he looked at them in turn, and there was about him a sudden air of authority.
"The incident last night is not why I'm here, nor is this, unfortunately, a social call."
Aunt Em's hands stilled. Ranny turned to look at the colonel with a frown between his eyes. Lettie, for no reason that she could think of, felt a sudden dread, a need to prevent the man in blue from going on even as she waited for him to do so.
"I have to tell you that yesterday evening at dusk the body of a man was found in an abandoned well some miles from here. The body was identified this morning as that of Johnny Reeden."
The handful of pea hulls that Aunt Em held, about to drop them in a bucket placed for them, fell to the floor with a soft clattering. "Oh, dearest God, no!"
"He had been dead some time," Thomas went on, "as much as two weeks, possibly more, but identification was established by his clothing and the papers found on him." He took an envelope from his pocket and opened it to remove a small object, then held it out to them. "This was discovered inside his shirt."
The thing he held in his fingers was a crushed locust shell pierced by a needle-sharp thorn. It was stained a rusty red with what could only be dried blood. Johnny's blood.
Lettie felt sick, physically ill, with the images Thomas had conjured up, with the grief and rage rising white-hot and deadly inside her. Nothing, nothing she had ever endured in her life had prepared her for the rending horror of the knowledge of how she had been used and betrayed—and of why it mattered so terribly. She could not move, could not speak or breathe for it.
"Don't," Ranny said, the word compressed as he reached out to close his hand around her fingers where she gripped the chair arm. "Don't look like that."
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