Rachel's Choice (15 page)

But that had passed with time. And over the months, her longing for James had become a sinking feeling that he had ceased to love her.

“What hurt most was that I suspected that James didn't always take leave when he was given it. The farm … and me … We weren't exciting enough for him.”

Chance cleared his throat. “Getting leave can be difficult.”

Rachel shook her head. “I've a cousin that served in James's regiment. Tom came home on leave, but not my James. Like I said, I think he took to the excitement of war.”

“Until Gettysburg.”

“He was wounded bad there. As soon as we received word, his father and I took the wagon to a hospital east of there and brought him home more dead than alive. James caught a minié ball on his right shin, and the doctors took his leg off at the knee. They made a sloppy job of it, and it pained him a lot. He had to drink to kill the hurt, or maybe by then he just had to drink.”

“He died of infection from the amputation?”

“It never healed properly. I suppose the injury might
have brought about his death in time, if it hadn't been for the weakness in his chest and his thirst for rotgut whiskey. He seemed to get better for a few months.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “He died hard, Chance. He lasted into autumn; then his sickness returned. He went to skin and bone, and he coughed out his life in my arms.”

She passed a hand over her eyes and gazed at an oak leaf floating by on the surface of the water. But not before he left me Davy, she thought. She'd never tell Chance that her son was conceived on a night that James had come home drunk and fighting mean. Or that he'd forced her to have sex with him when he stank of another woman's cheap perfume …

“Davy is James's legitimate child,” she said aloud. “James was well enough for that between his bouts of fever. If you were thinking—”

“I wasn't thinking he wasn't,” Chance answered gruffly. “Why would you—”

“I won't have you think me cheap or Davy a bastard.” She let go of the left oar and raised her palm to silence him. “Let me say this. What I did—what we did—here on the creek bank the night Davy was born …” She took a breath and tried to make the words come out right. “There's not been another man in my life since James and I took our wedding vows. I came to him a virgin, and I never cheated on him while he was away at war—never wanted to.”

“He's dead, Rachel. You're a widow. What you do now—”

“What I do now is between me and my God,” she said, hoping that he couldn't hear her heart hammering inside
her chest. “I'm no whore, Chance Chancellor, but I want you to know that I'm not sorry for what we did.”

“I don't want you to be sorry. I want you to—”

Davy's wail cut through Chance's answer. Instantly Rachel twisted around to see what was wrong. At the same time, she spun the bow of the boat and leaned hard into the oars to push the small craft toward the bank.

A mockingbird flew up from the branch above the baby's head, and Davy's tiny fists flailed angrily. Neither dog had stirred from their spot on the grass.

“What's wrong, Davy?” Rachel called as the bird began to scold loudly from the safety of the treetop. “Did the mockingbird scare you?”

“No wonder he's frightened,” Chance said. “A tree is a damned odd place for a baby, if you ask me.”

Rachel scoffed. “You don't want me to take him in the rowboat or leave him on shore. Just what should I do with him?”

“Stay with him. Mothers shouldn't—”

“What mothers, Chance? Mothers who have slaves or nursemaids to care for their children? I'm a farmer's wife. I …” She broke off, realizing that she wasn't a farmer's wife anymore.

“I didn't mean—”

“What you know about babies I could heap in a nutshell,” she said. “How many times must I tell you? I'm a plain woman. I'm not wealthy enough to have servants. I'll tend my boy as I tend my farm. Don't worry on his account. I'll let no harm come to him. And so long as you keep your share of the bargain and help me get in this year's crop, you won't owe me or Davy anything.”

Chance's shoulders stiffened. “I meant no insult I could have put out the traps by myself. I've not done it
before, but I can learn.” The bow of the boat touched shore and Chance climbed out.

He strode to the tree and lifted Davy down despite Bear's warning growl. “Shh, shh, baby boy. It's all right,” he soothed as he shifted baby and sling onto his good shoulder and began to pat the infant's back gently. When Davy continued to flail his arms and legs and scream, Chance parted his shirt so that the baby could snuggle against his bare chest.

Davy's shrieks became sobs and then hiccups.

Rachel's pique dissolved in an instant. Not one male in a hundred had such an easy way with infants, she thought. James never would; he'd been terrified of small children.

Chance jiggled the baby and looked back at her. “Am I doing this right?”

“Davy seems to think so.” She averted her eyes and climbed carefully from the boat. Her breasts were full and tight, and whenever her son cried, they ached. She was beginning to leak milk onto the bodice of her blouse. “Give me the baby,” she said as she reached for him.

“He's fine,” Chance replied. “I've just got him settled.”

Rachel looked down at her chest. “I need him,” she said. She hoped that if Chance noticed her blouse, he'd think the dark spots nothing but water. “He's hungry.”

Frowning, he handed her the child.

Rachel cuddled Davy against her. God, but he smells sweet, she thought, sweeter than salvation. A sensible woman should be satisfied with such a little miracle as Davy and ask for nothing else of life.

She kissed the crown of his fuzzy head, and he uttered a contented sound that made her go all soft inside.

“Doubtless you can find more for me to do in the garden,” Chance said.

She glanced up at him. “The garden could probably use another turn. Unless you wanted to hoe the corn.”

“I've cultivated your damned cornfield until I've got blisters on my calluses. There's nothing left to—”

“Weeds grow, Chance.”

“You're awfully bossy today.”

“I gave you your choice, the garden or the corn.”

“Some choice.” He grinned at her. “You love this, don't you? You don't mind the long hours in the fields or the waiting to see if it will rain.”

“No, I don't mind the work.” She turned her back and tucked Davy under her oversize blouse so that he could nurse. “I do worry when the rain doesn't fall.”

Davy tugged vigorously at her nipple, and she smiled down at him. “Not so fast,” she cautioned. “You'll choke yourself.”

“Can't blame him,” Chance murmured.

“Mind your tongue, sir,” she warned. It was strange how a woman could feel so needed when a babe suckled at her breast. The sensation was nothing like what she experienced when a man did the same thing. Both were wonderful and miraculous, but nothing alike.

“My mother never did that.”

“What?”

“Nursed her children.”

“Oh.” She knew that well-to-do women gave their babies to hired girls to suckle, but she'd never been able to understand the practice.

“Mother is very proud of her figure,” Chance explained. “She would have feared to spoil it.”

“My grandmother fed me on goat's milk until I was
old enough to eat solid food. I can remember being very small and sitting on my grandfather's lap, drinking milk from a coffee cup. He never talked much, but he didn't have to. I always felt safe in my granddad's lap.” She switched Davy from one breast to the other. “There you go, you greedy little piggy,” she whispered.

“Your father didn't object to your grandparents keeping you?”

She laughed. “I didn't lay eyes on Father until my eighth birthday. He and my grandfather couldn't stand one another. I think Father was afraid of Granddad.”

“You had a strange childhood.”

“Not for me. It was the way things were.” She patted Davy's round little bottom and snuggled him against her. “Later, when I did come to know my father, I was fascinated by what he did. Grandmother taught me a lot of what I know about healing, but I wanted more. If Father hadn't been a doctor, I doubt I would ever have spent any time with him.”

Davy lost interest in the breast, and Rachel shifted him to her shoulder and burped him. “What of your own father, Chance? Did you love him?” She turned back to face Chance.

“Love my father? Of course.”

“You spent a lot of time with him? Did he take you fishing? Did he teach you to swim?”

Chance laughed. “My father was a very busy man, an important lawyer. He often traveled to Washington and Philadelphia to consult on other—”

“But what about you?” she demanded. “Did he teach you to ride a horse?”

“He paid for the finest instruction and an imported
Welsh pony. When I outgrew the pony, he bought me a thoroughbred—”

“Granddad taught me to ride on a workhorse,” Rachel said. “Bareback.”

“Barefoot as well, I suppose.”

“How did you guess? You're a snob,” she teased. “I'll wager I had as much fun riding the cows and the pigs as you did—”

“My fancy horses,” he finished for her. “I think you're the one who's the snob, Rachel Irons. And I believe I know just the right medicine for that.”

“Oh you do, do you?”

Chance took a step toward her. “Yes, ma'am.”

A warning twinge raised the hairs on the nape of Rachel's neck. “Chance … What are you—”

But she'd waited too long. His arms went around her and the baby, and his mouth came down on hers. This time she didn't struggle for more than a second.

She assumed he'd meant the kiss to be a teasing one, but in the heartbeat's space between the meeting of their lips and the heat that leaped between them, all that changed.

Rachel tumbled headlong into his caress as her knees turned to butter and her insides dissolved in a flurry of bird wings. He wasn't kissing her so much as devouring her, and she had no defense against him.

She was vaguely aware of Chance's fingers tugging at the ribbons of her bonnet while his other hand molded to the small of her back. She was trembling so that she was afraid she'd drop Davy.

Her wide-brimmed straw hat slid off her head. He pulled out her hairpins one after another until the heavy mass of her unbound tresses tumbled loosely around her
shoulders. And then his mouth left her throbbing one and kissed a fiery trail down her throat.

Rachel sucked in a ragged breath, and Davy began to scream at the top of his lungs. Chance released her so fast that she nearly lost her balance and fell.

“I'm sorry,” he managed. “The baby. I shouldn't—”

“He's all right. He's fine.” Rachel took another breath and shook her head. It was hard to think, impossible to reason.

“He's frightened.”

Davy's howls reached fever pitch, and she rocked him in her arms. “It's all right,” she repeated. The baby sniffed several times and began to hiccup loudly once more. Real tears were streaking his face.

“Is he hurt? I didn't—”

“Tears,” she said in astonishment. “His first tears.”

Davy's gaze met hers, and the pout became a beaming smile that started at the corners of his precious mouth and spread to every curve of his chubby little face.

“He's smiling,” Chance said. “Look at that. Isn't he too young to smile?”

Ignoring his question, she risked a glance into his face and saw to her satisfaction that Chance was as shaken as she was by the intensity of their heated kisses. His cheeks were flushed, and his blue eyes still smoldered with an inner fire that made her go all warm and shivery inside.

He wants me, she thought … as much as I want him.

She ached to have him touch her breasts, to have him kiss and lick them as he had on the night Davy was born. She could feel the growing need inside her, a yearning that made her skin feel too tight and her hands itch to touch his hair and skim her fingers over his lips and tangle in his yellow hair.

Just thinking about him made her damp and slick between her thighs. This was something she'd never known before, even though she'd been a wife for five years.

She had loved James, but he'd never sent sensations ripping through her body like this. James's lazy lovemaking had been warm and comfortable, an easy coming together that left her feeling satisfied and sleepy.

Not like this …

Nothing had prepared her for this wild urge to forget that it was midmorning and that she had a babe to tend … forget everything but pulling up her skirts and lying here with Chance in the thick green grass.

She wanted to know the feel of him inside her and arch to the thrust of his swollen shaft as he poured his hot seed into her womb.

Rachel swallowed, wondering if Chance could read her mind … almost hoping that he could.

“Rachel?”

“I think we all need cooling off,” she said, then turned and splashed waist-deep into the creek with Davy clasped tightly in her arms.

“Woman, you are impossible,” Chance declared after he'd followed her into the water.

“Because I think we're doing something we'll both regret?” She sank backward in the water until she was wet from the nape of her neck to the soles of her bare feet.

“Give me that baby,” he said. “There's no need to drown him because you've taken leave of your senses.”

She let go of Davy and watched from the corner of her eye as Chance carried him back to shore. The water felt good, but that wasn't why she'd plunged in. She'd taken the only escape route available before she'd done the unthinkable.