Patricia Rice (23 page)

Being your slave, what should I do but tend

Upon the hours and times of your desire?

~ Shakespeare,
Sonnets

Dora didn't know how long it took to settle Harriet down for the night. The old woman grumbled and complained the entire time she was undressed. She demanded her laudanum for the first time in weeks, and raised a scene when told they hadn't any. She chastised Annie for bringing water too cold to wash in.

Dora sighed when she finally escaped the room. She could endure the older woman's tantrums well enough, but the thought of Pace sitting in that empty farmhouse alone left her emotionally drained. She feared he would pack his bags and go before she could get there.

She didn't even take time to comb her hair or wash her face before rushing out of the house into the growing darkness. This late in July, daylight lingered still, but the huge old trees lining the drive had already plunged the path into darkness. Dora had no fear of the dark. Her only thoughts were of Pace. She couldn't let him leave yet.

She knew the night covered the acts of desperate men. Slaves escaping North from the chaos of the South fled along these roads. Despite the Emancipation Proclamation, Kentucky law still called them fugitives. If caught, they could be thrown in jail and sold to the highest bidder. Knowing that, the slaves fought viciously for their freedom. There were plenty of greedy white men ready to deny them that freedom, and they haunted these roads as well, looking for prey. Violence followed in their trail.

Confederate raiders seldom made it this far north any longer, but their supporters did, and the Yankees patrolled to prevent their depredations. Anyone could be suspected of anything at any given time. A lone woman caught between two such bands had little chance of escaping unscathed. But Dora didn't even consider the consequences as she ran the mile down the road from the big house to her own home.

She didn't need to heed the consequences. Pace came running down the road to greet her as if he had watched for her, uncertain if he should expect her, afraid for her safety if he didn't watch. She fell into his open arms with giddy joy, and he swung her off her feet and around in circles.

She knew he had feared she wouldn't come. She could feel it in the piercing desperation of his kiss, his bone-crushing hug. She clung to his neck and smothered him with reassurance. She knew he didn't believe what her kisses said, but it didn't matter. Nothing else mattered but that Pace Nicholls had actually waited for her, that at long last, he wanted her with him. For the first time in her life she knew the exhilaration of being needed, not just by anybody, but by this man she had adored since childhood.

The hunger she sensed in him was heady and terrifying at the same time. She didn't know if she had what it took to satisfy him. She was too young, too small, too inexperienced to be what he needed. But she allowed him to carry her into the house and into his bed without expressing any of those fears.

The fierceness of Pace's passion was equally terrifying, but Dora understood the bubbling rage inside him. It could easily spill over and burn her, but long ago she had given her trust to this man.

She cried out in surprise when he dispensed with her buttons by ripping them open, but her soul soared when he kneeled over her, and his mouth closed over her breast to suckle deeply. She fed his ravening hunger with her ardor, pulling at his shirt until she found his flesh, responding fiercely to the brutalizing passion of his kiss. Mindless now, she no longer considered right from wrong, peace versus violence. She only knew the heated brand of Pace's hands upon her, his mouth devouring her where his hands did not.

When Pace pulled up her skirt and ran his hands possessively over the curve of her buttocks, Dora knew this wouldn't be a gentle loving, but she had already given herself into his care and no longer concerned herself with how they got where they were going. She wanted him inside her again, pulsing with life, reaffirming their existence. She ached with the need for that consummation. She lifted herself eagerly from the mattress so he could remove her drawers, and she cried out with delight when he touched her there, sliding his fingers deep to prepare her.

When Pace opened her thighs wider and rammed into her with a passion bordering on violence, Dora’s body knew what she needed better than her mind. She responded to his fierceness, digging her fingers into his back, meeting his hips with hers in a furious battle for power and release. She screamed with frustration as he gripped her buttocks and held her still, then learned the exquisite pleasure of surrender as she wrapped her legs around him. His throaty cry of desire swept through her veins, and she succumbed to the waves of pleasure his possession induced, and then heady triumph when her contractions brought him to a shuddering release.

He didn't stop with just that one pleasuring. His kisses resumed more gently, and Dora accepted them with joy. She'd never truly known physical pleasure before. She had always thought of her body as a troublesome vessel prone to pain and best disguised and forgotten. But Pace taught her that this nuisance of a physical self could have its usefulness. Her arms could hold him. Her lips could kiss him. Her breasts could tingle with his caress. And her thighs could part in access to that safe haven where they could be as one.

She lost track of time. She lost count of their couplings. She no doubt lost possession of her mind while caught in the trap of her senses. She only knew the man beside her in the bed owned her, body and soul, and she would never be the same again.

That didn't bother her too greatly. She had never expected to find true love. David had been the only man she had ever considered marrying, and she knew now that he would never have offered her what Pace gave her tonight. She didn't expect to find this happiness again. In truth, she had very little in the way of expectations. She had already died once. She knew she would die again. She would take what little comfort offered in between times.

Dora turned and drew her hand down the solid wall of Pace's chest, kissing the rounded muscle of his shoulder. His arm around her tightened, crushing her breasts against his ribs. They were entirely naked, their limbs entwined in impossible knots. His hair-roughened leg rubbed the smooth satin of her inner thigh. Dora could almost imagine she had died and gone to heaven, but she heard the early song of the mockingbird outside and knew the idyll had ended.

She was sore in a thousand places. She ached deep inside, and her muscles felt as if she had walked carrying a heavy burden all night. Knowing the source of the ache made her feel only pleasure, however. She nipped lightly at Pace's chest, then began to untangle herself.

"Don't go," he murmured, catching her arm in his fist, his fierce eyes closed now with satiation and weariness.

"I must." She escaped his hold but lingered a moment longer to run her hand daringly down his powerful chest and across his flat belly. "Thou wilt stay?"

"A few days only. I'll go get Amy for you."

He hadn't forgotten. She breathed a sigh of relief. She had tried very hard not to fall for the child, but she had missed her desperately these last months. She would enjoy hearing a child's laughter again. "Do not strain thy arm," she warned prosaically, swinging her legs over the side of the bed.

Pace laughed and watched her pad naked in the gray dawn in search of her clothes. "I have told you before that I do not want a mother."

"I doubt thou knoweth what thou wants," Dora answered scornfully, wiggling into her chemise. "But I do not think I would make thee a good mother."

She would make him a good wife were the words that arose unspoken between them. But they were words of the moment, not of the future. Pace would have his elegantly gowned, beautiful hostess to further his political ambitions. Dora would stay to tend her meager fields. Their paths diverged too widely for them to ever meet like this again in the future.

Pace climbed from the bed and pulled her against him to kiss the nape of her neck. "I don't need a mother. I need you in my bed."

She pulled from his arms and reached for her gown. She didn't need reminding of what she already knew. All he needed from her was her body.

"I must return before someone sees me. Wilt thou stop for breakfast?"

"If thou wilt stop wearing that awful cap," Pace answered in amusement, eyes glittering in mockery as he watched her try to button a gown he'd fairly ripped from her the night before.

Dora shot him a look of disapproval. "Thou needs not mock. I may be a fallen woman now, but I needn't flaunt it."

Pace grabbed the cap from her hands and crushed it between his long fingers. "I warned you even angels can fall from trees. Now that you're down on the ground with the rest of us, you don't need wings or halo. Leave it off. Your hair is too pretty to cover up."

Dora's hand raked through her crumpled curls. "It is a mess. Mother Elizabeth would not approve. Give me the cap. Pace."

He surrendered it reluctantly, watching her through cautious green eyes. "Why do you always call her Mother Elizabeth instead of just mother? Is that part of your religion?"

She tucked her wayward curls inside the cap by sense of touch. She shook her head at his ignorance. "She and Papa John were my adopted parents. They took me in when I was eight. I could not call them mother and father, so we worked out a substitute."

He padded around the room, uncovering his own clothes. "Your accent is not the same as David's." As if just realizing what he'd said, Pace straightened and turned to her apologetically. "I heard about David. I'm sorry."

She dismissed his false sympathy for what it was and focused her attention on the less painful. "David was from North Carolina. His parents could not continue abiding in a state that allowed slavery, so they moved to Indiana when he was very young. My adopted parents brought me from England. I had hoped I'd lost most of the accent by now."

Pace grinned as he pulled on his trousers. "Not by half. I thought you were from another world that first time I heard you. Where in England do you come from?"

He was treading too near the personal again. Dora didn't believe her father still looked for her, but she wouldn't risk revealing too much. She shrugged and started for the door. "Does it matter? Will I see thee at breakfast?"

The distance between them became recognizable again: the lowly serving girl speaking to the master who had tumbled her. Pace gave a curt nod and turned away as she departed.

She had done it to herself. She had no reason to resent Pace for his attitude. It was better for both of them if it stayed that way. They would suffer no confusing sentiments, no inconvenient misapprehensions about her place in the scheme of things.

But Dora could appreciate the little things he did for her while he stayed around. When Pace drove up the drive later that day with Amy and Delia, she ran out to grab the little girl and give her a hug and kiss. Amy squealed with delight and babbled.

Pace grinned as Dora nodded and pretended to understand every single word. "I'm glad you understand her. I'd about decided she spoke Chinese."

Sticky fingers caught in her hair as Dora dared a glance at Pace. The lines of pain all but disappeared when he smiled. He was losing some of the craggy hollows of his illness, but she decided the newly-honed features that resulted were even more handsome than his boyish countenance of earlier.

"She is telling me her uncle is a terrible rascal who doesn't listen to a single word she says. The words are just as plain as can be. I don't know why thou canst not hear them."

Pace laughed as he helped Delia down from the carriage. The matronly black woman hurried to take her charge from Dora's hands, scolding the child for wetting her panties, and hurrying her into the house—leaving Dora and Pace to face each other alone.

"I told the Andrewses that we hoped Josie would come back here when she returns." The laughter had left his face.

Dora nodded, hiding the pain that struck. Pace had loved Josie once. He still might. He and Josie would have made a much better couple than Josie and Charlie. That knowledge created one more barrier between them.

"I would like having Josie here again. It's just..." He frowned at her hesitation, and she hurried her explanation. "The soldiers know she is the wife of a rebel. They harass thy father, and his temper is not of the best. It is a difficult situation."

Pace climbed back into the carriage so he could take the horses to the stable. "I'll talk to the commanding officer, see what I can do." He gave her a sharp look. "They leave you alone, don't they?"

Dora smiled at that. "They scarcely know I exist. Go on with thee now. Dinner will be served shortly."

Pace left her standing there, a slight figure against the forbidding backdrop of the magnificently columned veranda. He had no reason to feel uneasy about Dora's welfare. Like a cat, she no doubt had nine lives. Or perhaps she was immortal like the angels. There was something completely untouchable about Dora that set her off from the rest of the world's population. He didn't understand why he was the only one who could slip behind that formidable barrier.

Pace waited outside the house that evening, whittling at a poplar branch while she finished her chores. Occasionally, he could see her flitting past the upper-story windows, alternately appeasing his mother or dawdling in the nursery. For such a little mouse, she certainly stayed busy. He almost resented the right of everyone else to her time but him.

She slipped out just after dusk. Pace pulled her into the concealing shadows of the nearest tree, circled her with his arms, and demanded a kiss. It was the least she could do to reward him for his patience.

She responded as eagerly and lovingly as he remembered. He relaxed, not acknowledging the fear that the prior night had all been a dream.

"You smell like Amy," he murmured against her neck.

"Is that bad?"

"I suppose not. I'm just not used to having babies around. They make me nervous."

She laughed as if his words had no effect on her. Pace hurried her down the road, trying to run away from what he had just said.