Rachel's Choice (6 page)

“August,” Rachel flung back at him. “The price of the clock should compensate you until then. It is a good clock, and worth twice that amount. Surely by August James's army pay should be straightened out.”

“I warn you,” Ida said. “I'll not stand by and see James's child raised in poverty. Mr. Irons and I are fully prepared to—”

“To what? Care for me and my child? I think not. Rachel's Choice is my home, and shall be home to James's child. I need your patience until my financial matters are straightened out, nothing more.”

“Patience wears thin,” Isaac said. “Mrs. Irons?”

“Yes, Isaac. It's clear that we aren't welcome in our dear son's home. If he were here, it would be—”

“Where is this clock?” Isaac demanded, interrupting his wife.

“In the parlor.” Rachel hurried toward the open door. “I'll fetch it for you.”

“If you change your mind about the cow, let us know,” Isaac said. “I have a buyer who will pay cash.”

“My cow is not leaving this farm.”

“You're an obstinate young woman,” Ida declared. “Disrespectful to boot.”

“Am I?” Rachel asked. “Well, best you get back into your yellow-wheeled buggy and drive yourself off my farm—before I forget who you are and set my dogs on you both!”

“It may not be your farm long,” Isaac warned. “If you don't meet your payments, I will foreclose.”

“I'm sure you will,” Rachel replied. “But for now, this is still my property. There's the door. I'm sorry you can't stay longer, but if you do, I'll say something we'll all regret.”

Rachel stood outside until the buggy vanished down the lane, and then she went behind the house and was quietly sick.

“Damn them,” she whispered.

James's parents hadn't believed a part-Indian bastard good enough for their only child, but James had cared for that opinion as much as he'd cared for long Sunday sermons. He'd defied them and driven Rachel to Dover in a borrowed rig and married her the day he turned of age.

Rachel's eyes stung, but she blinked back the welling tears. She would not cry, and she'd not let her prisoner know that her in-laws' visit had upset her so.

She drew water from the well, washed the sour taste from her mouth, and then splashed water on her face.

“You can come out now,” she called to Chance as she entered the kitchen. “They're gone.” She opened the stair passage door.

“Nice people,” he said.

“My husband's parents are …” She looked into his clear blue eyes and searched for the right word. “Difficult.”

“I can see that.” Chance settled gingerly onto the lumpy mattress.

Rachel knew that he was still weak from loss of blood and his ordeal in the bay, but every day that he remained a patient was one day longer before she got her corn planted. Time was fast running out. Once, when the season was wet, she could remember her grandfather planting in mid-June, but they never harvested a full crop in the fall. The corn hadn't had time to mature, and they'd barely had enough fodder to last the winter. June would be too late for her, too late to make enough money to pay her father-in-law what she owed. And hiding Chance from the soldiers would have been a useless effort.

The wasp that had circled the room earlier lit on Chance's shoulder. He swung at it, and it stung him.

“Damn!” he shouted, knocking the insect to the floor and stomping on it. “I hate wasps.”

“They must be male,” Rachel replied, “since they're always looking for a fight.” She took down a container of baking soda from a shelf near the stove. “Let me put something on that to take away the sting.” Pouring a little into her hand, she mixed it with a dribble of water to make a paste. “It's only a wasp bite. No need to make a fuss over it.”

“I'm not making a fuss,” he protested.

“Hold still.” She pushed back his sleeve and saw a tiny black stinger embedded in the skin. “Stop wiggling.” She leaned down and drew out the remainder of the wasp and proceeded to apply the soothing paste to the swelling. “He got you good.”

“They always get me good,” he grumbled.

“Do they?” She couldn't keep from smiling. “It must
be a Union wasp, then. Funny, I've never been stung by a wasp or a bee. They say if a person is afraid of—”

“I'm not afraid of wasps. I just don't like them.”

“Oh.” She stepped back. “That should hold you.”

“Thank you, again.”

It was odd she should be so at ease tending a strange man, and she averted her eyes to keep him from guessing what she was thinking.

You've been too long alone, Rachel Irons, she chided herself. Shame on you, and in your condition.

“There was a mix-up with James's pay,” she blurted out in an effort to direct the subject away from personal subjects. That, at least, was the truth. “James borrowed money from his father to—”

“You don't have to explain to me.”

“It's no secret. Half the county knows. James wanted to buy mules … and other things,” she went on as if he hadn't heard all that had happened between her and the Ironses here in her kitchen. “My father-in-law is demanding that the loan payments be met. That's why I have to make a crop this fall. The government is desperate for supplies. I can pay back most of what I owe if I don't lose the season. It's why I need you.”

“And why you're willing to risk your life to hide me?”

She nodded. “And yours.”

“Surely your father-in-law wouldn't endanger his relationship with his son by taking his farm.”

“This wasn't James's farm. I inherited Rachel's Choice from my mother's father, my grandfather Moore. Of course, I did add James's name to the deed after we were married. And you don't know Isaac Irons a whit if you think he wouldn't sell us at sheriff's auction. He sent
his own eighty-year-old aunt to the almshouse. Isaac didn't get to be one of the largest land owners in Kent County by being charitable.”

“You value this farm highly.”

“I do. And I have no intentions of failing.”

“And neither do I,” Chance replied. “None at all.”

Rachel didn't break down until later that afternoon when she was alone in the barn. She'd pinched her thumb in the stall door, a minor hurt that ordinarily would not have bothered her, but she burst into tears. Sinking down in the clean straw, she trembled from head to foot and had a good old-fashioned cry.

Everything was wrong.

She was alone with no one to trust, and her baby would be coming soon. She couldn't get her corn crop in. She was hiding an escaped prisoner in her house … and now she had a blood blister rising on her thumb.

After several minutes of hard sobbing, the thought that her weeping spell had begun over a mashed finger sunk in. Gradually her emotional outburst lessened and then became embarrassment.

What would Grandfather Moore think if he knew she was wailing over so small an accident? She hadn't been raised to fall into a fit of weeping over a little hurt. He and her grandmother had taught her to be stoic, to laugh over ordinary trials and tough out the big ones.

She crossed her arms on her chest and took slow, deep breaths, trying to clear her head. What was wrong with her? She was over James; she'd shed all the tears for him
and their ruined marriage that she ever intended to. And surely having her baby in her arms to cuddle would be a blessing, not another burden.

She certainly wasn't crying over the pain of a pinched finger. So the only thing left was Chancellor.

“Think first, then act,” her grandfather had always said. “And once you make a decision, stick with it.”

Rachel wiped away her tears. She'd thought long and hard before she'd decided to help Chance. The decision hadn't been made lightly.

Harboring an escaped rebel was the most dangerous thing she'd ever done, but that didn't make it a wrong choice.

“Those who dance must pay the fiddler” had been another of her granddad's favorite truths.

She exhaled softly. If she wasn't willing to take the risk, she'd lose everything.

She'd been telling the truth when she'd warned Chance about her father-in-law. If Isaac didn't put a bullet through Chance, he'd see him hanged or sent back to the gray walls of Fort Delaware and cast into solitary confinement.

It was unwise to care so much what happened to Chancellor, she decided. She had to keep reminding herself that her very attractive prisoner was her enemy. Startling blue eyes, butter-yellow hair, and a boyish grin didn't measure the worth of a man. And neither did a warmhoney Virginia drawl and broad shoulders.

Since Chance had escaped from Pea Patch Island, he'd probably been one of the hundreds captured at Gettysburg. He might even have been the man who'd shot her James and cost him his leg. She shouldn't have pity to
spare for the likes of rebels. All of her concern should be for her own situation and for the child she carried.

If her treason was discovered, James's parents wouldn't hesitate to seize her farm and her child. That was a cold, hard fact.

Bear whined and Rachel straightened her shoulders. “But they didn't catch us, did they, boy?” she said to the dog.

She seldom had company at Rachel's Choice. The farm was too far from town to encourage casual visitors. Due to the war, women were afraid to travel alone, and most men had gone off to the fighting.

She accepted the solitude of Rachel's Choice as a natural part of life, and she'd never felt lonely.

Other than the Ironses, no one had come here since Christmas, when Cora Wright's grandson had broken his arm and needed her doctoring skills. Since her father had passed away, there was only one physician in the town. And Dr. Myers would never tend to a black child.

Her father might have had a sour disposition, but he'd always given care regardless of the race of the patient. It was one of his more admirable traits, and he had few enough, truth be told. If her father were alive, he would have treated Chance to the best of his ability. And then he would have summoned the Union soldiers and demanded a reward for capturing a prisoner.

Rachel dried her eyes and walked to the corner of the barn that her grandfather had partitioned off as sleeping quarters for laborers. The room was simple: wood floor, built-in beds along one wall, a single window near the ceiling to let in light. There was a table of sorts, a homemade bent-willow chair, and pegs along the wall for coats.

She found a clean mattress hanging on the wall. It had been emptied of corn husks, but Chance could stuff it himself with salt-marsh hay. A few blankets, a wash bowl and pitcher, and some fresh sheets would make the room habitable.

It was time Chancellor was out from under her roof, for more reasons than one, she mused. He was a dangerous man, and she was becoming all too concerned with his welfare. And if they were caught—she'd pretend complete ignorance of the reb hiding in her barn.

“Wake up!” Rachel stood in the barn walkway and rapped sharply on the door of the hired men's quarters. It was daybreak, and a soft rain was falling on the tin roof.

Chance jerked upright from a sound sleep so fast that he slammed his head against the upper bunk. “Son of a bitch!” he swore.

“Mind your tongue,” Rachel admonished, opening the door a crack. “It's time you started pulling your weight around here. I want you to milk the cow.”

“Milk the cow,” he muttered.

A milk pail clattered onto the plank floor.

“Much obliged,” he said. “What time is it, for God's sake?”

“No blasphemy either. It's morning. Time for chores.”

“It's still dark out,” Chance protested. He forced his stiff muscles to move, swinging out of the narrow bed, taking care to keep a quilt over his nakedness. “Don't I get coffee first?”

“Milking first, then breakfast.”

“I'm not a well man.”

She closed the door.

“But I've never milked a cow before,” he shouted after her.

“Then you can't learn any younger, can you?”

Chance fumbled for his socks in the semidarkness.

Cows. He'd never liked cows, and he'd never expected to have to extract milk from one.

His arm still hurt like hell, but he supposed that it was healing. He didn't wake with a fever in the night. Actually, his room in the barn wasn't bad. Other than the rustling of mice and an occasional cricket, the solitude had been welcome.

Being alone was one of the luxuries he'd had to give up in wartime. And a prisoner had to adjust to spending every hour—waking and sleeping—with the sounds and smells of hundreds of other men.

Nights were the worst. He'd lie on his back and shut his eyes, trying to close out the endless coughing, moaning, and cursing that threatened to smother him. Before he'd been dragged off the battlefield at Gettysburg, he'd never imagined trying to empty his bowels in a pit in the middle of an open field in plain view of anyone walking by. And he'd never dreamed how heavy stone walls would feel pressing in around him until he wondered if the cell was getting smaller or if he was losing his mind.

Officers were imprisoned inside the fort on Pea Patch Island; enlisted men were quartered outside in flimsy wooden barracks and rows of tents. It hadn't taken Chance too many months to realize that there could be no escape from inside the walls. And if only common soldiers were outside, he'd have to become one of them.

“Chancellor!” Rachel banged on the door again. “Did you crawl back into bed?”

“Coming.”

* * *

The red-and-white animal was tied in a stall at the far end of the barn. As he approached her, the cow stared at him with glassy brown eyes and mooed plaintively.

He studied her from nose to tail.

She wasn't large, as cows go, but she had two lethal-looking horns and a tail caked with that stuff he didn't care to step in.