Rachel's Choice

by Judith French

  “Yes … yes!” Emma panted.

  “Do you want it? Do you want all of it?”

  “Yes …” she answered. “Now! Now!”

  Chance jammed his thumb between his teeth and gave up all attempts to control his own response to the erotic lovemaking going on not three yards from where he lay. His throbbing sex pressed tightly against his trousers; his fingers knotted into fists.

  “Deeper! All of it—I want all of you!”

  Another minute and Chance would shame himself by staining the clothing Rachel had lent him. Desperately he tried again to think of burning houses, dead dogs, anything but the obvious.

  Another lost cause, he swore silently. First secession, and now this.

  War was hell.

  Chapter 8

  “Why are you swimming now?” Rachel called to Chance through the soft twilight. “And why in your trousers?” When the last of Preacher George’s congregation had departed, Rachel had gone to the barn in search of Chance and found him missing. Lady and Bear had tracked him to the creek, and she’d followed.

  He was bare to the waist, and the corded muscles of his arms and shoulders gleamed wet in the last of the fading light. His butter-yellow hair framed a square-jawed face with well-defined cheekbones and a classically straight nose.

  He’s a devilishly handsome man, Rachel thought, in spite of his healing wounds and the fact that he was still too thin. Chance was far too good-looking for any woman to trust—let alone one in her position. She pursed her lips firmly and tried to ignore the giddy butterfly-wing flutters in her chest.

  “Thank God you stayed in the barn,” she continued, struggling to keep her tone from revealing her reaction. “I was terrified that you’d come out of hiding. Pharaoh would have killed you if he’d found—”

  He grinned lazily. “I’m not as easily killed as you seem to think. Or as stupid.”

  “Well, actually.” She took a deep breath. “Actually, I told Cora Wright that you were stupid.”

  Chance stared at her. “Said I was what?”

  “Stupid.”

  “Woman, what the hell are you talking about?”

  She sat down on the bank and crossed her arms over her chest. “I had to think of something. Having you here was way too dangerous. So I told Cora that I was hiring a new farmhand. Cora is the black woman who—”

  “You told her about me?”

  “There’s no need to shout. If you stop interrupting me, I’ll explain. I couldn’t take the risk that Cora would send Pharaoh or one of her grandchildren over to see how I was doing. So I told her that my cousin Jane from New Castle was sending a man to help with the work.”

  He waded toward her. Water dripped from his hair and trickled down over his muscular shoulders. “I’m supposed to be a stupid hired hand?”

  She winced at the granite in his voice. He wasn’t accepting her idea as easily as she’d supposed he would. “Not stupid exactly. I knew that if you opened your mouth, your Virginia accent would give you away. And if you were seen, people would ask questions as to why you weren’t in one army or another. So I said you were dumb.”

  His features hardened. “An idiot.”

  “No, not that. Slow. And mute.”

  “Mute? I can’t talk and I can’t enlist. What can I do?”

  “Simple tasks. Milk the cow. Hoe the garden.”

  “You expect me to play the part of an afflicted—”

  “It’s not like we have a lot of other plans. You can’t work in the cornfield if you’re hiding in the hayloft.”

  His disapproving expression changed to one of amusement. “I don’t think much of this,” he admitted. “But it’s more than I’ve come up with.”

  She clapped her hands together. “I am brilliant.”

  He grimaced. “Devilishly inspired.”

  “Thank you.” She laughed. “Naturally, I’ll need to cut your hair.”

  “Cut my hair? The hell you will. I—”

  “No one who looked at you would believe that you’re not …” She struggled to find the right words. “You look too … too …”

  “Roguishly handsome?” He arched an eyebrow.

  She giggled. “Healthy,” she corrected. “You look too healthy.”

  “Hmmph,” he grumbled. “I suppose all mute men in this state have bad haircuts.”

  “Not all of them, Chance. Just this one.” She chuckled. “Be serious. I’m trying to save your neck. We need to find you some worn clothing or cut a few holes in what you’re wearing. And you’ll have to practice your walk.”

  “My walk? What’s wrong with my walk?” He moved closer to the shore, and the water level of the creek dropped to his hips.

  “It would be more realistic if you shuffle a little,” Rachel said. “Just when someone’s around. So long as you don’t talk, and you hang your head and—”

  “Bark like a dog?” he suggested.

  “Abner isn’t crazy. He’s just slow.”

  “Abner.”

  “Potts. Abner Potts.” She couldn’t resist a smile. “But Abner’s very obedient. Once you teach him how to do something, he can keep doing it.”

  “Oh, he can, can he?”

  She squirmed under his gaze and rushed to ease the tension between them. “Yes … yes. And did you see what Cora Wright and her friends did for me?” she blurted out. “They planted my crop and the garden. And they’ve loaned me a horse. We’ll be able to cultivate the fields, and I can ride him to town—so long as the soldiers don’t confiscate him.”

  He nodded, half turned, and dived under the water.

  She took a deep breath and rubbed the small of her back. All day she’d been troubled by an ache, but she’d been on her feet since dawn. It would never have done to sit and be waited on, not when some of the colored folk were so conscious of her white status.

  “Chance?” He hadn’t come up, and she felt a momentary unease. Then his head broke water, and he took several powerful strokes with his good arm. “Oh, I thought for a moment that I was going to have to come in and pull you out,” she said.

  “That will be the day.”

  “I’m sure you swim as well as you do everything else,” she replied, feeling suddenly weary.

  She sank onto the soft grass and let the scent of newly turned soil fill her head. For weeks—months even—she’d worried that she’d not be able to put in a crop this year. Now that awful weight was lifted from her shoulders, and she was weak with relief.

  “Are you coming out of there?” she demanded of Chance. “I won’t have to cook tonight. Cora left enough food to feed an army.” When he seemed to ignore her, she lost her patience and signaled to Bear. “Fetch!” she ordered her faithful giant. “Bring him in, boy.”

  Bear ambled down the bank and splashed into the water. Lady, who hated getting her feet wet, contented herself with racing up and down the bank and wagging her tail.

  “I’m coming,” Chance answered. “No need to set the hounds on me.” He grinned as he splashed toward her. “Don’t get all prickly with me. I’m slow, remember.”

  “But obedient.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He squeezed the water out of his hair. “It was hotter than Hades in that loft.”

  “Don’t blaspheme,” she admonished. “I’ll thank you to remember your manners, Abner Potts. I’m a Methodist, and I don’t approve of rough talk.”

  Chance laughed, and the deep, merry sound sent shivers down her spine.

  “You hide under the hay all day, and you’ll come down saying worse,” he replied. “And saying Hades is not blaspheming. It’s another word for hell.”

  “I know what it means. I may have only finished the eighth grade of a one-room country school, but I’m not stupid.”

  “I never thought you were.”

  Little sparks of excitement danced along the surface of her skin. That soft Richmond drawl of his was enough to make a saint doubt salvation, and Rachel knew she’d never been a saint.

  “So long as you�
��re already wet, fetch in my crab trap,” she hedged. “I didn’t check it today.”

  He stood knee-deep in the water, looking at her. “Isn’t it a little late in the day for crabbing? Unless you’re planning on steaming crabs tonight …”

  He was right, of course. The thought of cooking crabs and shelling them to make soup when she was already exhausted was too much.

  “It’s too warm for crabs to keep, alive or cooked,” he said. “But if you want—”

  “On second thought, we’ll leave them until tomorrow,” she agreed.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He nodded and touched an imaginary hat with two fingers.

  He was poking fun at her. Even when he wasn’t, Chancellor’s fine manners were sometimes disturbing. She felt her cheeks grow warm. “You can check the traps first thing in the morning, before you milk the cow,” she said a little sharply.

  “Whatever you say, ma’am.” He strode up the sandy bank and stopped a little ways from her. “Your friends,” he began, “they were all colored, weren’t they?”

  She nodded. “Free men and women of color, yes.”

  “I heard Lincoln freed the slaves.”

  “No, not these people. Well, you’re right, President Lincoln did free the slaves. But Pharaoh, Cora, Preacher George, and the others—they were free before the war, some for generations. It surprises you, doesn’t it, that colored folk would do for me what no one else would?”

  “No.” He wrung the water out of his pant legs and reached for the shirt he’d left hanging on a tree limb. “No, it doesn’t. I’ve known a lot of decent blacks, most of them, actually.”

  She shrugged in disbelief. “I wouldn’t expect one of your kind to understand.”

  “My kind?” He stepped nearer, his shirt draped carelessly over his muscular forearm. The light was fading fast; it was already too dark for her to see the startling blue of his eyes, but she could feel the force of them burning into her skin.

  “A man who can condone owning another human being—the kind of man I’ve always hated.” She drew in a ragged breath as shivers raised gooseflesh on her arms. She raised her chin, trying to brazen out the moment. “A man who’d go to war against his country to defend the despicable institution of slavery.”

  “You think that’s why I enlisted?”

  He was so close that she could smell the creek water in his hair, feel his breath on her face. She swallowed, trying to maintain her bravado. “What other reason could there be?”

  “Have you ever asked me if I owned slaves? Or if I enlisted to defend slavery? Personally, I abhor the practice that one human should own another. My mother was born in England. Her family considered slavery to be barbaric. Mother refused my father’s offer of marriage until he freed all his slaves and signed a legal contract with her that he would never buy another human.”

  “But you’re fighting to defend the institution.”

  “I’m not. I never was. Slavery’s a dying evil. It’s immoral and it’s impractical.”

  “Impractical?”

  “Yes. Few Americans possess the wealth to own slaves, and fewer still have the stomach for it. If this war hadn’t ignited, Congress would have eventually outlawed slavery as England has.”

  “You’ve never owned a slave?”

  “Never,” he replied.

  “Why then? Why are you fighting?”

  “Loyalty to my fellow Virginians, defending home and hearth against the War of Northern Aggression.”

  “Pretty words,” she mocked. “Can you look me in the eye and tell me that you believe them?” She shook her head. “You’re as bad as all the rest. You wanted to wear shiny buttons and follow the drum.”

  “Maybe … maybe you’re right.”

  Tightness in her chest made it hard to speak. The air around them seemed charged with the same invisible energy that she’d felt before a lightning strike. “I’ve no wish to argue with you. And if I wronged you by believing you worse than you are, I’m sorry. It’s only natural that I’d believe a Confederate …” She swallowed. “If you’re not a slaver, I’m glad.”

  “Neither me nor my parents.”

  “That’s that, then,” she murmured. He kept staring at her, making it difficult to think clearly. “The cow’s been milked, and the horse is stabled,” she managed. “If you’ll come to the house, Mr. Chancellor, I’ll give you something to eat. I want to change that bandage and see if …”

  “It’s Mr. Chancellor now, is it?” He stood there as if he expected something more of her.

  She was conscious of the chirp of crickets from the grass along the creek and the faint yellow blink of a lightning bug in the gathering dusk. The air felt soft on her cheeks, and the clover under her bare feet smelled as sweet as any store-bought perfume.

  “Rachel …”

  Chance was taller than James; she had to look up to meet his gaze. And woman’s instinct told her that she should run—that she was risking more than her farm and her physical safety. Instead, she moistened her lips and took a step toward him.

  His shirt fell soundlessly from his lean fingers and drifted to the grass. “Rachel,” he repeated huskily. “We shouldn’t …” She could hear the unspoken longing in his voice.

  “No, we can’t,” she agreed. If things were different, if it wasn’t for James and the war …

  Chance reached out and touched her cheek. “You’re shivering, Rachel. Don’t be afraid of me. I’d not hurt you for all the world.”

  But you will, she protested silently. Each time he said her name, something loosened deep inside her. She felt too weak to stand, helpless to do anything but lean ever so slowly into the circle of his arms.

  His lips brushed the line of her lower lip, softly, so softly that tears welled up in her eyes.

  “This is crazy,” he said. “I must be out of my head.”

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  “But I’ve never done anything more right in my life,” he continued, and the rich timbre of his voice made her tremble even more.

  She couldn’t summon the strength to say anything more, but she made no effort to escape. Instead, she tilted her head to meet his warm lips and sighed as his mouth fitted perfectly to hers. His breath was sweet and clean; he tasted faintly of mint.

  For long seconds he kissed her with exquisite tenderness, and she reveled in the joy of being held and cherished by a man. Sighing with contentment, lulled by the spirals of tingling sensation that ran through her veins, Rachel slipped her arms around his neck and pressed herself against the wide expanse of his bare chest. Then the simmering heat of their caress flared into a forest fire.

  And lightning struck.

  Not lightning from the sky, but the pent-up longing in her heart that Rachel had denied for so long. Heat flashed through her, and she parted her lips, desperately wanting more.

  Chance didn’t fail her.

  His tongue touched hers, retreated, and met her seeking one again. He groaned deep in his throat, and desire stripped her of caution. Her head fell back, and he kissed her throat and the soft hollow below her ear.

  “Rachel, Rachel,” he whispered.

  He kissed her eyelids and the corners of her mouth then and skimmed the surface of her upper lip with his tongue. And when their mouths molded to each other’s again, it was with greater passion.

  She wove her fingers into his hair and felt the swelling proof of his need by his ragged breathing and the force of his touch. Still she did not care.

  “It’s been so long,” he murmured. “So long since I’ve held a woman …”

  She could not get enough of his kisses or his touch. And when she twisted in his arms and felt him wince as she leaned her weight against his bad shoulder, it was Rachel who pulled him to the grass.

  “I’ve never met anyone like you,” he said as they parted long enough to draw breath. “Never.”

  “Shhh,” she murmured. “Don’t talk, don’t say anything.” She didn’t want to hear his lies, didn’t want to think where
this was leading. She only wanted him to go on kissing her.

  “I can’t …” she started to say, and then broke off. “I’m too far along with the baby to …”

  “It’s all right,” he answered hoarsely. “I just want to touch you. Will you let me touch you, Rachel?” He cupped the swell of her breast, and her breath caught in her throat.

  It was fully dark now, the night made even darker by the thick canopy of oak leaves overhead. She could no longer see Chance’s face or the color of his hair.

  And his kisses were no longer enough.…

  She wanted to feel his hands on her breasts, stroking her, caressing, easing the heavy ache that made her nipples hard and sensitive against the fabric of her worn linen shift.

  He kissed her again with exquisite tenderness and slowly, tantalizingly, began to undo the buttons at the nape of her neck. “Rachel, Rachel,” he whispered.

  She knew she had to stop this madness, but his scalding kiss made her giddy with wanting him, and she let their lovemaking go further.

  Chance unfastened her buttons, one by one, until she wanted to scream at him to hurry. Between kisses he pushed her dress off one shoulder. Finally there was nothing between his hand and her naked breast but a thin layer of linen.

  “So soft,” he murmured huskily. “So soft.”

  And to her surprise he lowered his head and brushed her nipple with his lips.

  “Oh,” she cried.

  His breath was warm against her flesh. He teased the nub of her breast with his callused thumb until her nipple tightened and throbbed, then used his hot tongue to caress it.

  She tugged at her shift and heard the cloth rip, but she didn’t care. All that mattered was the feel of his mouth on her breast, and the sweet ribbons of bright pleasure that shimmered inside her.

  She lay back in the thick clover and let him take freedoms that should have belonged only to a husband. And Chance proved that he was no stranger to the ways of a woman, teaching her things that James never had.

  “Darling Rachel,” Chance whispered. He drew first one nipple and then the other between his lips and suckled until she felt yearning curl in the apex of her thighs.