Rachel's Choice (27 page)

What would she do if Chance wasn't at the fence?
How long should she wait before deciding that he wasn't coming?

She shivered despite the temperature. She loved Chance fiercely, more than she'd ever thought any woman could love a man. And she didn't know if she could stand losing him.

But to her relief, as she approached the guard station, she saw him leaning on his crutch in the shadows. Her heart skipped a beat, and it was all she could do not to run to him and throw her arms around his neck.

“James,” she called. “Thou has wandered off again. I was afraid for thy safety.”

He hung his head.

“Come now,” she said. “We must go home.” The coins she'd received for the sale of her wares hung heavily in her pocket as they signaled for the sentries to let them out of the compound.

Chance shuffled after her, keeping close behind as she hurried out into the open space and took the road to the wharf. The thoroughfare was still crowded, but now most of the wagons were going in the opposite direction.

Rachel wanted to ask him if he'd found out anything about Travis, but was afraid to give him away. Both remained in character until they reached the sloop and pulled anchor.

As they slid away from the dock, Rachel took the tiller. Chance moved woodenly to raise the sail. The water between the fort and the small town of Delaware City was crowded with boats, and the outgoing tide ran swiftly. Guiding the
Windfeather
safely among the larger vessels was difficult.

Once they reached the channel, Rachel's heartbeat slowed to near normal. “It was awful in there—terrible,”
she said. “Heaven help those poor men.” She shuddered. “You couldn't pay me to go back in there. Thank God you escaped. It's a death house.”

Chance moved to the bow of the boat and gazed out at the Jersey tree line on the far side of the river.

“He's dead, isn't he?” Rachel asked. “I'm so sorry, Chance.”

He didn't answer.

She lashed the tiller and went to him. “You tried,” she murmured. “There's nothing more you could have done for Travis.”

Chance coughed, a deep racking hack that shook his whole body.

“Where did you get that?” she asked, laying her hand on his shoulder. “I'll make you a chest plaster when we get home.”

Chance's shoulders sagged. Another coughing spasm seized him, and he began to choke.

Rachel patted him hard on the back. “You can't blame yourself,” she said.

“Oh, but I can.”

Rachel snatched her hand away as though she'd been burned. “What in—”

He turned his head, and she gasped. The single eye staring out of Chance's bandaged face was brown.

“Who are you?” Rachel cried. “You're not Chance!”

“No, ma'am,” he replied. “I'm Lieutenant Travis Bowman. Did Chance mention my name to—”

“I know who you are!” Rachel backed away from him. Suddenly her chest felt constricted, and black spots drifted past her line of vision.

I'm going to faint, she thought as she slid down the gunnel to sit on the deck. She put her head down and fought the sickness that churned in her belly.

“Don't take on so, ma'am,” Travis said. “I assure you, you're in no danger from me. Chance said—”

She glared at him. “That son of a bitch said this would be all right with me? He told you that I'd volunteered to commit treason?”

“No, he …” Another fit of coughing prevented Travis from finishing.

“You're ill, aren't you?” Anger replaced her nausea, and she got to her feet.

Travis sucked in a rasping breath. “I took a bullet through the lung, ma'am. I was wounded when Chance and I tried to escape last spring.”

Rachel shook her head. “That's more than an injured lung. You sound consumptive to me.”

“And you're afraid of catching it.” His cultured speech was that of a gentleman. “That's understandable, ma'am. If you'll just put me ashore, preferably on the Delaware side of the river, I'll trouble you no more.”

Rachel gritted her teeth. If she opened her mouth, she'd shame a dockside strumpet with her language.

“Chance took my place,” Travis explained, “but he intends to make another escape attempt tonight, before he's recognized.” More coughing racked the lieutenant's body. “He wants you to return to your farm and wait for him,” he said. “He expects to be there in three days, perhaps four.”

Rachel returned to the tiller, but she couldn't tear her gaze away from Travis. Had she been blind that she didn't realize that someone other than Chance was wearing James's uniform?

James's pants seemed to fit this man better, so perhaps Travis was an inch or so shorter than Chance. He was definitely narrower across the shoulders, and his hands were smaller.

She moistened her numb lips and tried to comprehend how she'd been so completely deceived by the ruse.

A patrol boat crossed in front of the
Windfeather
, so close that she could have hit the soldier at the helm with a rock. Quickly Rachel glanced over her shoulder at the island fortress. Rows of gun ports lined the granite walls, artillery powerful enough to blow a warship out of the water, let alone her tiny sloop.

The reality of the situation shook her to the core. Travis was aboard the
Windfeather
, and Chance was a prisoner on Pea Patch Island. If she was caught, no amount of excuses would satisfy the authorities. For her
own safety, she had no time to argue with Travis. She needed to get as far from here as possible.

But how could she possibly run and leave the man she loved trapped in this living horror? If a few hours inside had sickened her, what must it have been like for Chance when he was locked up for so many months? And how had he found the raw courage to go in again?

“If you'd rather not put in on the beach,” Travis said, breaking into her reverie, “perhaps you could steer the sloop into shallow—”

“Shut up!” she snapped. “Shut up, sit there, and try to look like an injured Union soldier.” She forced back her nausea, and smiled and waved to the guards on a second patrol boat. “Nice day,” she called.

“Where you headed?” a soldier shouted.

“Duck Creek,” she lied. “I sold all my pies at the fort.”

The sergeant motioned for her to pass by.

Rachel's mind raced as she tried to think what to do with Travis that would keep them both out of prison. He was clearly too sick to turn loose. He'd be captured again in a matter of hours. That or die in the first ditch he came to.

Sweet hope of heaven! What had possessed Chance to go back into that place and allow those gates to close behind him? But that was a stupid question—he'd done it for Travis. He'd known that Travis couldn't survive long in his condition and that his friend hadn't the strength to swim the river.

“He'll die in there,” she said with awful certainty. “And if he doesn't, I'll kill him myself.”

It was long after dark when Rachel arrived at Cora Wright's cabin. “I'm sorry,” she said when the midwife opened the door. “I couldn't go the night without Davy.”

Rachel had left Travis Bowman in the marsh back where the creek angled off the main river, and come the rest of the way to Cora's alone. If she was lucky, she'd thought wryly, Travis would wander off, fall into a sinkhole in the marsh, and drown.

“Come in,” Cora said. “We're still awake.”

Rachel stepped under a ring of deer antlers into the circle of pale yellow lamplight. Immediately she was engulfed in the comforting scents of herbs and spices that filled Cora's tidy cabin.

A slab of smoked bacon, strings of beans, and circles of dried squash hung from the overhead beams among a score of hand-woven African-style baskets and mysterious leather pouches. The spotless wooden floor was strewn with colorful rag rugs, and the plastered walls gleamed white.

On the hearth a kettle of soup simmered merrily over a tiny bed of coals. Daisy rose from the rocking chair beside the fire with Davy in her arms. “He's sleepin', Miss Rachel,” the girl said shyly. “He sure did miss you.”

Rachel gathered Davy into her arms and tried to blink back the moisture that gathered in the corners of her eyes. “And I missed you,” she whispered into the curls at the nape of his neck.

Davy uttered a contented sigh and snuggled close. His rosebud mouth puckered into a pout, and he made tiny sucking noises.

Immediately milk began to dribble from her swollen breasts and soak through her bodice, but she was too happy to care. “Darling, darling,” she murmured.

“Let Miss Rachel sit there, girl,” Cora ordered. “You just hold him, just rock and hold him.”

How good Davy felt, how warm and sweet-smelling.
For several minutes Rachel blocked Travis and Chance from her mind and thought only of her baby.

“You finished your business up in Philadelphia?” Cora asked as she pushed open the door that led from the main room to her bedchamber. “You can go on to bed, Daisy. The little ones will be up early, and you'll need your rest.”

Daisy murmured softly and left the room.

“She's a good girl,” Cora said, “but what I have to say to you doesn't need witnesses.” The midwife settled into the chair by the table, pulled a basket of knitting into her lap, and looked at Rachel expectantly. “Now, what have you been up to?”

Rachel felt herself flush. “What do you mean?”

“None of that. We've been friends far too long for you to lie to me. Not much goes on in these parts that I don't know about. Who is that man you have living on Rachel's Choice, and why did you go to Philadelphia with him?”

Rachel swallowed. “Does Pharaoh know?”

Cora made a sound of derision. “He's suspicious, but he don't know all I know. My grandchildren gather huckleberries in your woods. They saw that blond-haired man of yours working the cornfield. The man they saw seemed too fit to be your cousin's hired hand come to help out.” She took an unfinished sweater from the basket and began to knit. “It's dangerous, what you're doing, Rachel. Best you tell me everything.”

“I can't,” Rachel whispered. “You won't understand.” She shivered. “Even I don't understand.”

“Your mother-in-law asked about the baby, if it was born yet. She said you'd run her off your place.”

“They want to take my farm.”

“Your cousin came with another woman who delivered your baby, and his own grandparents don't know he's alive. Have you been telling me the truth about Davy's birth? And if not, why would you lie to me?”

Rachel drew a long, slow breath. “I did lie, but I had a good reason. Swear you won't tell anyone?”

“A fool could see you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, girl. And no one's ever called me slow-witted. Out with it.”

“Can I trust you?”

“You left your son with me, didn't you?”

Rachel hugged Davy tighter. “His name is Chance,” she murmured softly, “and I caught him in my crab trap.…”

For nearly an hour Cora listened without saying anything. And finally, when Rachel had run out of words and there was no sound but the scraping of a tree branch against the cedar shake roof, Cora answered.

“You believe he's a good man?”

“I do. I know he's a Southerner and—”

“That's not what I asked you, girl.” Cora rose, rubbed her spine, and stirred the snapper soup. “I want to know if you think he'll do right by you.”

“He gave me the money to pay Isaac, and he made a will, leaving money for Davy if he should die. I never asked him for—”

“A man like that,” Cora cut in, “a gentleman lawyer, he could be using you, Rachel. Rich men think they can buy anything in this world.”

“No, not Chance. He cares for Davy, and he could have run away once his shoulder healed. He stayed to take care of us. And now he's gone back in there for love of his friend.”

Cora chuckled. “Pulled one over on you, didn't they? Fooled you something fierce.” She went to the cupboard and took down two cracked pottery bowls. “Take a little soup with me?”

Rachel nodded. “Yes, thank you. I haven't eaten since breakfast.”

“You need to eat, girl. You'll lose your milk if you don't eat.”

Davy stirred in Rachel's arms and began to fuss. Rachel undid her bodice and nursed him. She no longer wore the gray Quaker clothing. That dress she'd rolled into a ball and hidden under a loose board in the lower deck of the
Windfeather.

“So you've traded one prisoner for another,” Cora said. “And what do you mean to do with this one?”

“Take him home, I suppose.”

Cora frowned. “Keep this man away from Davy. Lung fever spreads. Davy could catch it.”

“You can't imagine what it's like … that place,” Rachel said. “You hear stories, but to actually see and smell it … to hear the groans of the sick and dying.”

“My people have groaned and died. How many had pity on them?” Cora asked. “When Emma was stripped to the waist and beaten like a dog, who wept for her? And who cared when her firstborn child wasted away from hunger because she didn't have enough milk to feed both her babe and her master's?”

“Evil is evil, Cora. I guess I'm not very good at hating, not even hating the enemy. I didn't want to fall in love with Chance Chancellor. I fought it with every ounce of my strength, but I lost. And if he dies on Pea Patch Island, it will break my heart.”

“Sounds to me as though you didn't use much judgment
in picking a man,” Cora admonished. “A reb, and a fancy, rich Virginia lawyer, at that.”

“This war can't last forever,” Rachel replied. “He won't always be a reb.”

“But you'll always be what you are. A woman with too much loving in her for her own good. Your own father done you wrong, girl. And your James as well. Don't let this one take advantage of you.”