From This Day Forward (12 page)

The bloodcurdling shriek rent the air, and Nathan nearly dropped the crate he had taken from the cart. He shoved it back in place and raced toward the house. His heartbeat galloped as though it were a runaway horse. He barely saw Maddy standing off to the side outside the entrance with Faith in her arms. All he could focus on was Rachel’s scream and then dead quiet.

Bursting into the house, he saw her standing as though she were preserved in a block of ice brought down from the mountains. Then suddenly she whirled about and flew out of the bedchamber and straight into his embrace. Her body quaked against his.

“Rachel, what’s wrong?”

She shook even harder, wrapping her arms around him while she buried her face against his chest.

The aroma of death invaded the house. “Rachel? Is there a dead animal in there?” He wanted to go look, but she clutched him with such fierceness he was reluctant to leave her.

Finally she leaned back to look up at him. Fright glazed her eyes. All color was faded from her features, her bonnet askew from pressing herself into him. She opened her mouth to say something but no words came out.

“Let me go look.” Nathan tried to step away, but her fingers dug into his upper arms.

“No. Don’t leave me. Dead”—she waved her hand toward the room—“man.”

“Dead man?”

She nodded. “He is…” She squeezed her eyes closed and shuddered.

“Stay here. I will take care of it.” At the doorway, he glanced back at her. “Better yet, go outside with Maddy.”

After she hastened out of the house, he went into the room. No matter how many times he smelled a dead body, the odor nauseated him. He covered his nose and mouth and stepped closer to the man lying on the floor with a gunshot wound to his chest and his face badly beaten. He lifted the arm nearest him and estimated by the condition of the body the man had died a day or so before. Studying the craggy face, weathered by the hot South Carolina sun, Nathan didn’t know who the person was, but he had seen him before in Charleston. The fact he was found on Rachel’s land did not bode well for them, especially since it was obvious the man had been murdered.

“A dead man, Mrs. Gordon!” Maddy rocked back on her heels then forward. “ ’Tis not good, not good at all.”

Rachel sat on a log and clutched her daughter to her in case whoever killed that man came back. She scouted the area for a place she could hide with Faith. Perhaps the barn. It wasn’t too far away. Then she spied its roof with big holes in it and boards missing on the sides.

“What are we going to do?” Maddy wailed, startling Rachel and interrupting her plans to hide.

“I don’t know. He looked mean. He looked…” A picture of the dead man overtook her thoughts. A black beard, straggly, oily black hair, beaten, pock-marked face, clothes of a laborer, dirty, torn, with patches on them, no shoes, his feet clad in stockings. But the worst part was the large blood-crusted hole in his chest. She had never seen a man dead from a gunshot. She balled her hands to keep them from trembling, but that did little to stop the tremors from taking over her body.

When Nathan appeared in the doorway, a grim expression on his face, she stared at him. She gulped and tried to form a coherent question, but her thoughts jumbled together.

“I saw this man in Charleston once a few weeks back, but I don’t know his name,” he said, stepping down from the house and covering the short distance to Rachel. “He got into a fist fight with another man. It started in the tavern and spilled over into the street.”

“Do you think that man killed him? Why did he leave him here? What are we going to do with the body?” Questions tumbled from Rachel in a breathless rush.

“I will need to contact the constable about this.”

“You cannot leave me alone with that body. Please.”

“No. No.” He squatted in front of her, his gaze beseeching her to look at him. “I will remove the body to the barn. I will not leave you alone with him.”

“Then how are you going to get the constable?”

“Sarah and John are coming today.”

Rachel shot to her feet, still holding Faith against her. “I cannot receive guests. Look at the house. There is a dead man inside. I—”

Silencing her words with a light press of his forefinger to her lips, Nathan grinned. “They are coming to help. And to bring the ox.”

Rachel glanced at the cart being pulled by Nathan’s horse then back at him. “Oh. To help? I cannot ask them to do that. I think a whole army might not be able to make this place…” She swallowed the rest of the words. She was admitting defeat before she even tried, but how could she stay when a dead man had been in her house?

“Are you ready then to leave and go to Charleston? Wait for the next ship to England?”

“No.”

His intense scrutiny bore into her as if he were trying to discern her thoughts. “I will rid the house of the corpse. But that does not change the fact someone was killed here.” He marched back inside.

Maddy hurried to her side. “Ma’am, I am for leaving before we get killed.”

“Hush. Let me think.” Rachel paced from the cart to a large live oak, holding Faith against her chest, patting her back gently.

Perhaps the man wandered into her house to die but was shot somewhere else. Or it was a hunting accident. She could remember something like that had happened on a hunt her father had participated in. A man had been mistaken for a deer and killed.

Under the shade of the tree she spun around and stared at her house. Up until today this place had been deserted for years. Now that it was occupied, surely anyone who thought they could dump dead bodies here would not use her farm. If it was dumped here, then it was a one-time occurrence. She hadn’t seen any other dead bodies or bones around. Yes, it was most unusual. Not something that would be repeated.

Rachel returned to the log and sank onto it, looking at Faith, whose eyes were wide open. “Hi, little one. I dare say you are hungry.” But her baby didn’t cry. Instead she kept her gaze fixed on Rachel as though studying her. “We are in a pickle. I have nowhere to go in England. Papa is really angry with me, and no one crosses him.”

Looking up, she spied Nathan dragging the man toward the barn while Maddy hid behind the cart. When she peeped at the dead man, she screamed and ducked back behind the wagon. The hard planes of Nathan’s face sent a shiver down Rachel’s spine. He was not happy. He wanted her to return to England. But she couldn’t leave and stay with him or Sarah while she waited to go back home.

Lord, what do You want me to do? I need a sign that You want me to stay. That this is what I should do
.

She stared at Faith’s beautiful face. “The Lord will protect us. You are here because He sent Nathan to help with your delivery.”

“Have you come to your senses?” Nathan said as he strode through the tall grass toward her.

“Yes.” She rose. “I am much better now. You need not worry about me. We have a lot to do to make this place habitable, but it can be done.”

“Woman, are you going to stay after finding the dead man?”

“Of course. It would have been far worse if I had found a man alive in my home bent on doing me harm. What can a dead man do to me?”

“I’m not worried about him but the one who killed him.”

“I have no quarrel with whoever did the deed. He should not bother me.”

Nathan sighed. “You just don’t understand the dangers.”

She crossed the few feet to him. “Whatever I do will be dangerous. Traveling by myself back to England. Finding a place to live there. With no money by that time.”

He cut the distance between them. “Contact your family. Throw yourself on their mercy.”

She had to tilt her head back to look into his face because of his nearness. “It worked well for you.”

A lethal look targeted her, going straight to her heart. She had overstepped her boundaries. Moving back, she murmured, “I should not have said that.”

“Our situations are different.”

“Are they?”

He glared at her then turned on his heel and stomped back toward the cart. For one wild moment she feared he would leave her alone with the dead man in the barn. She started forward. Perhaps she could throw herself on
his
mercy. But when he unhitched his horse from the cart and tied the reins to a nearby branch, some of her anxiety dissipated.

Rachel headed to Maddy and gave the young woman her sleeping child. “Put Faith in the cradle over there.” She waved her hand toward a shady place next to the house. “Then we can unload the cart.”

“We are staying?”

“Yes.”

After Maddy settled Faith in the cradle, Rachel worked with her to empty the cart while Nathan took in the heavier items like the few pieces of furniture Rachel had that survived the wreck. On her third trip back outside, she saw two wagons coming toward the house. Sitting on the first one were Sarah and John. Yesterday Nathan’s sister had spoken about how neighbors helped neighbors when a barn or a house had to be raised. But how would she ever be able to return such kindness?

Rachel stood at her cart and greeted her visitors with a smile. “It is good to see you all again.”

Nathan came to the first wagon, which was full of supplies, and assisted his sister to the ground, kissing her cheek. Then he rotated toward John and said, “There has been a complication. Rachel found a man in one of the bedchambers, shot in the chest. I moved the body to the barn. I need one of your men to bring the constable here.”

“Do you know who the man was?”

“Not his name, but I saw him in town once. Fighting. He gouged his opponent’s eye out.”

“That could prompt someone to pay him back.” John walked to the second wagon and spoke to the driver. When the young man left on the horse tied to the back of the wagon, John returned to Nathan. “ ’Tis done.”

Standing in the middle of the barn with the double doors wide open, Nathan stared up at the roof. “That should keep the rain out, which will make my life more comfortable.”

John rolled his shoulders and arched his back. “We will come back tomorrow and finish the most pressing repairs. The house was not in as bad a shape as I thought it would be. I’m wondering if that dead stranger the constable took away was living here for a while before someone shot him.”

“A squatter? Possibly. The bedding on the floor in the bedchamber suggests that at least he was staying here temporarily. But he could have been passing through.”

“What will you do if her family does not come for her?”

Nathan hoped his words were persuasive enough. “I’m not going to think about that. I have to believe they will not leave her here. I made it clear she was in danger and ill-equipped to deal with life here.” Was Rachel’s father as heartless as she thought? It was one thing for his grandfather to disown him. He could take care of himself. But Rachel was a woman, brought up for a different lifestyle than what she would face here.

A white-and-brown cat that John had brought to keep the mice population under control moseyed into the barn and weaved in between John’s legs. “I don’t want to be around when she finds out you wrote her mother.”

“That is why I’m not going to say anything to her until someone from her family shows up.”

John chuckled. “Afraid she will kick you off her land.”

“She might just do that, and someone has to be here to take care of her until she is rescued by her family.”

“Why do you think ’tis your duty? This does not sound like a man who declared he’d had his fill of people.”

Nathan stooped and petted the cat. “Faith wouldn’t be here if it were not for me. Rachel has her daughter to protect, which means I have that too. I am responsible. I brought Faith into this world.”

“You sound like a father.”

Although John’s tone held a teasing ring to it, his words stunned Nathan. A father? No. He would see to Rachel and Faith’s safety, but the moment her family came for them he would reclaim his life. “I am thinking after she returns to England that I will head west.”

“Have you said anything to your sister about this?”

“No, and I would ask you not to either. I have not made up my mind yet, and she does not need to worry needlessly.”