Rachel's Choice

by Judith French

  “You think that I don’t want to stay here because of who you are and who you think I am. But that’s not what’s important. I’m just a man, Rachel, a man who might have been happier if he’d grown up here on the banks of Indian Creek with grandparents who loved him than born a Chancellor. You’re richer than you know. You’ve always been. You’ll be fine here. You and Davy will live through this war, and you’ll go on to have a good life.”

  Rachel laid her hand on his arm. “But not with you?”

  “It’s not our differences that keep us apart, it’s what I have—”

  “The noble soldier,” she said. “The battle to keep people like your Aunt Milly in chains.”

  “Haven’t we gone over this same argument before? The fight between the North and South isn’t about slavery. It’s over the price of cotton. Slavery would have withered under its own weight. Another generation and we would have seen the end of it without a bloodbath that will haunt America for a hundred years to come.”

  Rachel shook her head. “I can’t win against you and your fancy lawyer’s arguments. Like I said, Chance, we’re too different to understand each other. Farmers have better sense than to breed plow horses with blooded stock.”

  “You compare yourself with a mare?” he teased. “It’s not our differences that keep us apart, Rach; it’s this damned war. Another time, another place …”

  He broke off before he said something that would tie him even more to this place, and this woman. Why did a man find what he’d spent a lifetime searching for and then be unable to reach out and seize it?

  God, but he liked the feel of this child in his arms. Davy was soft and warm, and he smelled like a fluffy baby chick. James will never know what he’s missed in this boy, he thought.

  Chance tried not to let the notion that he could make Davy his own son settle in his mind. It was hard refusing the life that Rachel held out with both hands. But he had other obligations that came before his own happiness.

  He had to kill a man, he reminded himself. Even if Travis was already dead, he had to put Daniel Coblentz in his grave.

  “You like the killing?” she demanded.

  Rachel’s sudden change of tactics startled him and made him wonder if she could read his mind.

  “You like putting a bullet through a man?” She twisted around to glare at him, oblivious to her dishcloth dripping soapy water onto the floor.

  Damn woman’s intuition. His mother had been the same way. She’d had the uncanny knack of knowing what mischief he was going to get into before he did. He wondered what she would think of Rachel Irons, and he had a suspicion that despite their differences, they would have gotten along just fine.

  “I hate the killing,” he replied. “I never much cared for shooting anything, not even game.”

  Rachel dropped the cloth into the wash pan and came toward him. “I’d shoot you again if I thought it would keep you here.”

  “That’s a comforting thought.” He rose and laid Davy on the daybed. Then he pulled her against him as she sobbed softly. “Didn’t you just tell me to leave?” he whispered into her hair.

  “I didn’t mean it,” she answered raggedly. “You know I didn’t mean it.”

  “Oh, Rachel, Rachel. What’s to become of us?” He hugged her even tighter.

  If he could have Rachel and Davy for a little while, he’d accept that blessing as a gift from the Almighty. With luck, he could store up enough happiness to last him for the rest of his life.

  “Oh, Chance, haven’t I given enough to this war?” she pleaded, clinging to him. “I loved James since I was four years old, and he never lived to see his son’s face. If you go, I know I’ll lose you as well.”

  He couldn’t answer. His own gut feeling was that he couldn’t murder a sergeant and come off Pea Patch alive. And even if he did survive the island, the war might stretch on for years. So he just held her, and after a few minutes she straightened and stepped away.

  “I’m sorry to make such a fool of myself,” she said.

  He brushed a tear from her cheek. “It was special for you—when we made love—wasn’t it?”

  Her eyes widened and a faint blush tinted her high cheekbones. “Yes,” she answered. “It was.” Then she averted her eyes. “The best.”

  He grinned. “Me, too.”

  “Reb’s honor?” A sparkle of mischief danced in her eyes.

  “Absolutely.”

  She swallowed, and her voice took on a rich, whiskey timbre. “You never told me what unit you served with.”

  He tried to ignore the knotting in his gut. “Fourth Virginia, Powhatan Guards.”

  She exhaled slowly. “I thought from the first you must be cavalry. You have a horseman’s hands.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “Since you’re not a farmer, they’ll have to do.” She glanced around the kitchen. “Thank you for cleaning this. I was dreading it.”

  “You did your share to make it that way,” he said.

  “I did, didn’t I?”

  She smiled at him, and he felt a flush of warmth under his skin. The knots in his belly tightened to an aching. He yearned to lay her back against the kitchen table and find out how easily those little pearl buttons at her throat came undone.

  “I don’t want you to go, Chance,” she continued. “Not now, not in the fall.”

  “But you understand why I have to.” When he’d suckled at her breasts in the creek, he’d tasted her sweet mother’s milk. Now he wanted to taste it again.

  “I understand why you think you have to.”

  “You’re a rare woman, Rachel, but you’re as stubborn and illogical as every other woman.” His heart was racing. Surely she could see how much he wanted her. She’d have to be blind to miss the bulge in his trousers.

  “There’d be fewer wars if illogical women had their way.”

  “You may be right,” he agreed. “But I still think you’d make a hell of a lawyer.” He opened his arms, and she came into them. And for the better part of an hour, neither thought of war, or danger, or tomorrow.

  “Miss Rachel! Miss Rachel!” Pharaoh’s shout dragged Rachel from Chance’s arms. They lay entwined on the daybed with Davy tucked between them. As she struggled to rise, the baby started to cry.

  Bear barked and pushed open the kitchen door with his head.

  “Get upstairs,” Rachel said urgently. “Hide and don’t come out, no matter what happens. That’s Pharaoh. He’ll kill you if he finds you here.”

  Putting a pillow between the baby and the edge of the bed so that he wouldn’t fall off, she struggled to close the front of her dress and pull down her rumpled skirts. She shoved the wooden kitchen door nearly shut and peered out, hoping her disarray wouldn’t show. “Pharaoh! I’ll be right out.”

  “You all right, Miss Rachel?”

  “I’m fine. Just a minute,” she called as she tried to pin up her hair.

  The big black man slid down from a stocky gray horse and strode toward the house. Cradled in one arm, Pharaoh held a .50 caliber Hawken rifle, and thrust through his belt was a wicked-looking corn knife.

  Bear had left off barking and was wagging his tail, but Pharaoh didn’t stop to rub the dog’s head as he normally did.

  Rachel’s stomach knotted, and she smiled to cover her discomposure. “Good morning.”

  “What happened to Bear?” Pharaoh asked as she stepped out the door. “That a baby I hear crying?”

  “Yes, my baby.”

  “Mother was worried about you. She was down in Lewes looking after her sick aunty, or she would have been over here to see how you were. Garden looks good.”

  Two more men rode up behind Pharaoh’s horse. Rachel recognized Jack and Gideon Freeman; both carried firearms. “I’m good,” she answered Pharaoh. “Tell Cora that I had a boy. I call him Davy.” She greeted the Freemans by name, and they nodded in reply.

  Pharaoh looked around suspiciously. “You certain you’ve had no trouble?”

 
; “I haven’t,” she lied. “But somebody clubbed my collie to death and shot Bear.”

  “When?” Pharaoh’s ebony eyes gleamed fiercely. Sweat ran down his face and glistened on his bare shoulders and forearms.

  “I’m not sure. They ran off after a rabbit before dinner last night. Bear was at the back door this morning, and we found Lady in the meadow.”

  “Who’s we?” Rachel knew that Chance wouldn’t last two minutes against these three. She had to keep them from seeing the broken windows and get them away from Rachel’s Choice. “Abner and me. You know, Abner’s the hired man my cousin sent down from New Castle.”

  “Where is he?” Pharaoh demanded.

  “Fishing by the creek, I think. He’s not real smart, and he can’t speak a word. Is something wrong? Are the soldiers coming again?”

  “Gideon said they took his wife’s pigs yesterday, but we didn’t see any troops on the road. The county’s up in arms over another prisoner escape. They say fifteen rebs overpowered a patrol boat and got away from Fort Delaware three nights ago. Two women were murdered near Taylor’s Bridge.”

  “You think it could have been them that killed Lady?”

  “See any tracks around the body?”

  Rachel shook her head. “No, but all that rain could have washed them away.”

  “And you didn’t hear nothin’?”

  “No. Not until Bear came whining to the house.”

  “We’ll look for signs just the same. Mind if we have some water?”

  “Help yourself,” she offered. “And I could find you something to eat, if you’d like.”

  Pharaoh motioned to the other two men. They dismounted and one lowered the bucket into the well. “Just water for us and the horses,” he said.

  Rachel noticed that there was a fresh bloodstain on his pants leg. “And none of the rebs has been caught?” she asked.

  “Didn’t say that, Miss Rachel.”

  Gideon carried a gourd of water to Pharaoh. He drank half and poured the rest over his close-cropped hair. “Obliged, Miss Rachel,” Gideon said.

  “I’m obliged to you for helping get my crops in.” The more she looked at Pharaoh’s corn knife, the more certain she was that the blade was smeared with blood. She gazed directly into the black man’s eyes. “Did you find them?”

  Pharaoh smiled. “Whatever give you that idea, Miss Rachel?” he asked in the false ingratiating tone she’d heard him use around white strangers. “We sees ’em, we fetches the sheriff, we does. What us negra boys gonna do wit’ reb soldiers?”

  Rachel nodded. “And how many didn’t you see?” She wondered if Chance had released the men who’d invaded her house, and Pharaoh had found them.

  The Freeman brothers exchanged nervous looks.

  “One, for sure, we didn’t see,” Pharaoh answered softly. “And two more never saw us.” He tapped the barrel of his rifle.

  “Should I be afraid?” she asked. “Do you think any of them are hiding around here?”

  “We’ll give your farm a good look-see,” Pharaoh assured her. “I want to talk to that man of yours. He can hear, can’t he?”

  “Oh, yes, he hears fine,” Rachel said, “but he’s not real bright. Try not to scare him.”

  “I’ll tell my mother your babe is here. She may want to ride over.”

  “Tell her that I’ll be glad to see her anytime. And I hope Aunty Eunice is feeling better.”

  “She’s passable for ninety-one,” Pharaoh replied.

  Rachel and Pharaoh made small talk while the horses were watered. She didn’t go back into the house until the three rode out of the yard. Then she sat in the rocker and nursed Davy, waiting a good third of an hour before she called to Chance.

  “I think they’re gone,” she said from the foot of the stairs. “You can come down.”

  “Mean-looking neighbors you have,” he said as he descended the steps. “Is the custom here for them to carry rifles?”

  “Blacks, you mean?”

  He shrugged.

  “Pharaoh makes his own customs.” She fixed him with a suspicious gaze. “You looked out the window?”

  “How else could I be sure you were safe?”

  “Pharaoh wouldn’t hurt me. He’s been a good friend. You’re the one who has to worry about him. They said they were hunting some runaway rebs. I think they killed three of them.”

  Chance’s mouth hardened.

  “Maybe they caught up with the two who were here.”

  “No, they didn’t find them.”

  “So this was three more prisoners?”

  Chance shrugged. “Appears so. If your friends were telling the truth.”

  “I’ve never known Pharaoh to lie to me.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it, then.”

  “After what those rebs did here?” Her temper flared. “They deserved killing.”

  “Those two were vermin, but most Southerners are no better and no worse than the people around here. Not one man in ten would raise a hand to a defenseless woman.”

  “One in ten.” She scowled at him. “I don’t think much of those odds.”

  “You haven’t seen what Union soldiers have done in the South. You’ve been spared the most of it, living here. But Southern women and children have suffered. If I had my way, anyone who lifted a hand to a civilian would be hung.”

  “At least we’re agreed on something,” she said. “Let me put Davy upstairs, and then I want to cut your hair. Pharaoh may come back. And if he does, he’ll expect to see Abner. If not him, his mother or more Union troops. It’s time you started playing your part, Chance.”

  “You want me to act up a storm?”

  She nodded. “Yes, I do. Either that or risk hanging. Take your choice.”

  “The way you put it, you give a man few options, woman.”

  She smiled at him. “I’d say I’ve given you far more than you deserve.”

  Chapter 16

  Rachel watched from the garden as Chance lifted a sagging board in the pound fence and drove a nail through it into the post. Not even the loose tattered clothing and ragged haircut could still the butterfly wings in her stomach or calm her rapid pulse whenever she looked at him.

  He turned toward her and grinned boyishly. Chance had let his beard grow to a sparse stubble and topped his absurd appearance with a moldy straw hat that he’d let the cow chew on. Now he swept the hat off his head and bowed in an exaggerated flourish.

  She giggled and stuck out her tongue at him.

  “Is that any way to treat your hired hand?” he demanded in a mock offended tone.

  “Quiet.” Teasing, she raised a finger to her lips. “You can’t talk. Not a word.”

  She hoped that others wouldn’t see through his disguise as easily as she did. It was a dangerous game of masquerade they played, but Chance couldn’t work her fields if he remained in hiding.

  Was it possible that shrewd Cora Wright would fail to recognize the intelligence in Chance’s eyes? Would patrolling Union troops be fooled and not notice the patrician lines of Chance’s face or his military-school polish?

  Each day Rachel watched and listened for the sound of horses or the squeak of carriage wheels on the farmland. And every night she thanked God that they had escaped discovery once more.

  After the rain the weather turned baking hot and dry. Together she and Chance cultivated the corn and hoed and weeded the garden. He waded chest-deep in the creek to net fish for salting, and used the rowboat to pull her crab traps while she churned butter and began to put up vegetables for the winter.

  The angry words the two had exchanged the day Pharaoh and the Freeman brothers had come had been quickly lost in the sheets of Rachel’s tall four-poster bed. It was impossible for her to remain angry with Chance when desire sizzled and crackled between them like summer lightning.

  Between searing kisses, he’d repeated his promise to stay until fall, and she had vowed to keep their differences from ruining this precious time together.


  Strangely, now that they were intimate, Rachel had come to accept that these weeks together were all that they would ever have. Chance would go back to the war and die in some senseless battle or survive and return to his life of wealth and privilege. Either way, she knew that she would never see him again.

  Her place was here on Rachel’s Choice with little Davy, and the sweet passion she shared with Chance now was a once-in-a-lifetime gift … one she feared would end all too soon.

  Be happy with what you have, she told herself. Save the tears for later; there will be years and years for weeping over what can never be.

  The day before, when a week had passed without Pharaoh’s return, Rachel had hitched the horse and driven to the crossroads to sell her crab soup and eggs. She took Davy with her and left Chance behind on the farm with strict orders to hide if anyone came.

  At the store she’d checked her mail for James’s death benefits but found nothing except a terse reminder of her overdue taxes.

  “I don’t understand,” she’d told Chance that morning at breakfast. “James was due military back pay when he died. And now I’m supposed to get a widow’s pension.”

  “It’s good to know that Lincoln’s government is as slow in paying as ours,” Chance replied wryly as he cleared both plates from the table.

  “It’s no joke,” she’d said. “I need the money. James’s father will expect a payment in August, and I’ve nowhere to raise it. I must find something to pay my taxes and to satisfy the Ironses, or I’ll have no home for Davy.”

  Chance slid into the chair across from her and pushed his coffee cup closer so that she could refill it. “Can’t you sell some of your land?”

  Rachel shook her head. “James signed a note, giving his father a lien against the property.”

  Jiggling Davy on his lap, Chance had carefully cut himself a slice of rhubarb pie. “You’d love some of this, wouldn’t you?” he murmured to the baby.

  “Don’t you dare give Davy pie. He’s much too little to eat solid food.”

  “Poor little man. You don’t know what you’re missing,” Chance murmured as he dipped the tip of his finger in the pie and touched it to the infant’s rosebud mouth.