"No, no, mine, only mine, for falling in love with a stubborn, opinionated, headstrong Yankee woman!"
"And I'll never change, either," she said against his shirt collar. "I'll never fit into your image of gentle Southern womanhood like Sally Anne."
"Sally Anne is a fine woman, for a cousin. I prefer someone with more spirit."
She gave an involuntary chuckle, scarcely noticing as she felt another layer of resistance and suspicion dissolving. "She would show you spirit if she heard you say that. She would scratch your eyes out."
"Very likely."
"In a very ladylike way, of course. She wouldn't be—wouldn't be shameless about it."
"You have my permission, even my encouragement, to be as shameless as you like," he said, his tone rich with amusement. "As a matter of fact, I have a great interest in the exploration of tingling secret places and gasps of fulfillment."
"Don't!" she cried in distress, pushing away from him. "Don't mock me."
Silently he cursed his uncontrollable tendency to tease. It was a part of the deep vein of loving affection for her that ran through him, though she was too suspicious, too highly strung at the moment to realize it.
"I would never do that. Never. I only meant that you are free to do as you like, be as you like, without fear of censure. I take no right for myself to judge you or anyone else. I enjoy what and who you are. I don't require that you change in any way to please me. I would not want you to be any other way than you are now."
She gave him a frowning glance. "You called me headstrong."
"Aren't you? How else am I to describe a woman who goes galloping off in my clothes stuffed with bed pillows and wearing my mustache? Except, of course, to say that she is also gallant and stout of heart?"
Her forehead smoothed. The corners of her mouth twitched, lifted. She made a small sound that might have been a breath of laughter. "You are really the most—"
"What?"
"Never mind. The mustache itched."
"I know." His face was solemn, though his eyes were not.
She looked at him, studying his features one by one as if to etch them on the walls of her memory. Compelled by something inside her, she reached out with tender fingertips to trace the new split place on his lip, the old bruise at the corner of his mouth and chin from his mishandling by the soldiers, the puffy place at the corner of his eye, the dark scar. Despite everything, he was still beautiful.
"Your poor face. Does it hurt?"
"Not now."
She sighed, letting her fingers fall. She met his gaze, her own serious, sad, but firm. "It wouldn't work, you know. We are too different. The worlds we live in, that we come from, are too different. There would always be misunderstandings, doubts, and fears, even if there wasn't this—this bad beginning between us."
"I don't call it bad."
"That's because you're as stubborn as I am, maybe more. Anyway, it isn't the normal beginning."
"We aren't normal, either of us." He would fight to the last against what he sensed was coming.
"That's why it won't work. One of us should be. I think it's best if I go. If you care for me in the least, you will help me do that. You will take me to Colfax now before we do something both of us will regret."
She moved away from him, walking with grace and steadiness toward the steps. He watched her go, admiring the turn and swing of her hips under her skirts with their small, ridiculous bustle even as his heart slowly swelled toward bursting inside him. She had reached the steps before he found the words he needed.
"I'll take you to hell itself if that's where you want to go. But don't patronize me, Lettie, not now, not ever again. And don't tell me what is best for me. I'm not Ranny. Once and for all, I am Ransom Tyler and I know what I want. I want to sleep beside you for the rest of my life, to hold you when you have my child inside you, to worry with you over the little hellions we will create, to sit with you on the veranda in the dusk of our lives, and to lie beside you in some churchyard through eternity. I want everything I own to smell and to taste of you. I want, damn you, to breathe the air you breathe, to rest where you rest, to eat what you eat. I want to drink from your glass."
There was a rending feeling inside her chest, as if the ice of eons was cracking, breaking away, dissolving. She turned to look at him with stark wonder in her eyes. Her voice hushed, shaking, she said, "You do love me."
"What in the name of all that's wonderful did you think I have been saying?"
"I thought it was another word for—"
He groaned, closing his eyes. "God preserve us, woman, you think too much."
In two strides he was upon her, catching her close and whirling her slowly round and round and round with his face buried in the swinging swath of her hair.
A long time later, they were sitting on the floor, Ransom with his back to a post and Lettie lying across his lap. Her head was resting on his chest as she leaned against him in the circle of his arms. For the sake of comfort, the revolver had been removed from his belt, and it lay beside them. The sun was slanting toward the west, but it was cool under the shade of the trees and a vagrant wind drifted down the porch, lifting the golden-brown tendrils of Lettie's hair. Drowsy and content, they sat and looked at the patterns the sun made through the leaves of the trees and the bright yellow-white ribbon of the road.
At last Lettie stirred. "Was I wrong or was that your Uncle Samuel with the Knights?"
"Shh," he said, kissing the top of her head.
"But wasn't it?"
"Yes, but it will be better if we don't talk about it."
She was silent for seconds only. "They may go after Bradley again. What will you do?"
"Stop them if I can. But if I can't, Bradley will take his punishment and do what he must. It's all any of us can do."
"What about Sally Anne and the colonel? Do you think they will marry?"
"Whenever Sally Anne is ready, which will be soon."
"She thought that he…"
"I know. That's their business," he said firmly.
She frowned a little. "Reconstruction can't last forever. The South will be free to go about its business in another year or two, free of the carpetbaggers like O'Connor, free to recover, finally, from the war. When it does, Splendora can be made to pay again, can't it?"
"I suppose so."
"You suppose? Aren't you dying to see?"
"Not," he said, taking the curling end of a long strand of her hair and brushing the curve of her cheek with it, "at the moment."
She moved her face slightly in enjoyment of the caress, but her mind was elsewhere, straining toward the future, their future. "What about the Thorn? It will be so dangerous to continue. I'm not sure Aunt Em will ever believe that he and her Ranny are the same, but other people will begin to put two and two together."
He sighed and dropped the curl. "I think he has made his last appearance since he's to become a wedded man."
"Do you regret it?"
When he did not answer immediately, she sent him a quick upward glance. He was engrossed in the way that the strand of hair, in falling, had made a mesh net to catch and hold the curve of her breast that was outlined under her shirtwaist. Catching her eye, he hastily shook his head. "Never."
"And Ranny?"
"What about him?"
"Will you go on pretending?"
"What would you prefer?"
She smiled a little. "I don't mind. He's rather dear to me."
"I'm jealous. But you needn't worry about being tied to him. I think he will be much more normal as a result of being hit on the head by the Federal army. They should be good for something."
"I wasn't worried! In fact, I'm going to miss him dreadfully."
He brushed his lips against her forehead. "If you want him, all you have to do is call."
"I'll remember. But I may do even better. I may make a Ranny of my own. It could take a little time, say ten or twelve years …"
"Witch," he said, lifting the
mesh net of hair over her breast and rubbing the peak with his fingertip. "Maybe I'll help you."
"Devil," she murmured.
He lifted his hand to her chin, urging her to look at him. His eyes bright with laughter and desire, he said, "When shall we start?"
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Author's Note
I am particularly indebted to Carol Wells of the Eugene P. Watson Memorial Library, Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, Louisiana, for her guidance in searching out source material and also for her help in procuring one of the last leather-bound copies of Cane River Country, an invaluable source of data, old maps, and photographs that she researched and edited. Among the many other books consulted that proved of special significance was Lost Louisiana, 100 Years of Photographs by Norman C. Ferachi. Without his photo of a hand-drawn ferry with horse, buggy, passengers, and operator, this book would not be the same. And, as always, I would like to recognize the staff of the Jackson Parish Library, Jonesboro, Louisiana, for their aid and comfort and ready answers to cries for help.
Historical romances often create their effect by blending fact and fiction. For those who enjoy separating the two, or who want to know what happened later, here are a few details.
The murder of a Union payroll officer by the West-Kimbrell outlaw gang, or clan, at the old springs near Goldonna, Louisiana, is an enduring local tradition. It is commemorated in the name of the church that was built close to the site in the late nineteenth century and is still in use today, the Yankee Springs Methodist Church. Richard Briley III, late Winn Parish historian and author of Nightriders, Inside Story of the West-Kimbrell Clan, gives the name and rank of the officer as Colonel Henry Butts, along with many details of the killing and its aftermath gleaned from oral accounts from old-timers in the area. Official documents supporting the stories are scant to nonexistent, however. There is a single reference to a Lieutenant Butts killed in the Natchitoches military district during the Reconstruction period, but without any indication of where, how, or why. Numerous researchers have attempted to make the connection but have failed. The legend does seem valid; there was apparently a payroll officer killed at the spring. Lacking proof of his identity, however, and having every intention of constructing a fictional background for him for Southern Rapture, it seemed best to give this fallen soldier a fictional name as well.
The West-Kimbrell outlaw gang operated under the confused and near-lawless conditions of the Reconstruction era much as indicated. Their depredations were ended in the spring of 1876 by a vigilante group made up of local citizens who rounded up and disposed of the leaders and known members by firing squad and hangman's noose. There was, to my knowledge, no involvement of the Knights of the White Camellia, a well-known organization of night riders of the time.
The Reconstruction period in Louisiana was more corrupt, venal, and violent than is possible to show within the scope of a single romance novel. It lasted for eleven long years, until 1876, when President Grant, fearing another civil war on top of other political disasters, finally lifted the military occupation. There was no rider of the night called the Thorn to right the wrongs and soothe the injustices that were perpetrated. In the best tradition of storytellers and their heroes from D'Artagnan to Luke Sky-walker, I feel there should have been.
The way of life, attitudes, and regional characteristics depicted in Southern Rapture are a part of my heritage. This, more than mythical mansions like Greek temples and fancy dress balls lighted by thousands of candles, is my South. It was, and still is, a place of hard work close to the earth, cherished family relationships, pride, and the joy of living. The view of the time period covered faithfully reflects what I have been taught over the years and what I have discovered for myself. Before you call it biased, remember that victors write the history books, and consider that among my ancestors I number not only three Confederate soldiers but also a Union sympathizer and a Yankee officer—and the lady who after being widowed during the war took that same Yankee officer as her second husband.
When Reconstruction was finally over, there appeared in the New Orleans Daily Picayune an exultant and prophetic editorial that ended: “The years may come and go, the woods decay and wither, but father shall hand the story down to son, how she struggled, suffered, and triumphed, poor, proud, heroic—Louisiana.”
The writer failed to acknowledge that mothers could hand the tale down to daughters. It was an oversight. Southern Rapture is, in a sense, a remedy.
Jennifer Blake
Sweet Brier
Quitman, Louisiana
April 1986
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