Rachel's Choice Read online

  Chance was in trouble and he knew it. He’d been ready to leave the night that Davy was born. In spite of the strong feelings he’d come to have for Rachel, his duty had called him. But now … now everything was different.

  Before the baby came, Rachel was a married woman. Now he knew for certain that she was free. If he hadn’t given his word to Travis or if he hadn’t drawn the short straw so that he was committed to killing Coblentz …

  Chance paused to wipe the sweat out of his eyes. There was no maybe for the two of them, and he was lying to himself if he tried to think otherwise. He’d sworn to uphold the Confederacy, and the war was far from over. If he survived Pea Patch and what he had to do there, he still had to go back to killing men he didn’t hate.

  He gritted his teeth. His world was the law, politics, and for now, a war that couldn’t be won by either side, a war that he wasn’t certain he’d survive.

  He’d gone into the Fourth Virginia with his eyes open. Let other men whoop and yell about the superiority of Southern marksmanship and courage. He’d never kidded himself that it was money and factories that won wars. Lincoln’s armies would succeed despite the ineptitude of some of his generals. And when it was over and America had torn out her own gut, most people would forget why the hostilities had begun. All the economic reasons for secession would vanish but one—the existence of slavery.

  Men and women had to give themselves high-sounding reasons for committing the most foolish of acts, and nothing Americans had ever done was as stupid as making war against their own brothers. This political struggle had begun over the price of cotton and the need for New England mills to have it. Throw in a dubious election of a pro-Yankee president, add a few hotheads on both sides, and a lot of teachers, farmers, and lawyers like him found themselves hip-deep in Armageddon.

  “I’m no good for Rachel or the boy,” he murmured too low for even Blackie to hear. “I’m burned out and burned up.” He was better suited to laying waste to farms like this one than he was to raising crops.

  He leaned into the wooden handles of the cultivator and clicked to the horse. “Walk on,” he said.

  The iron teeth turned the surface of the earth as the animal plodded on, and Chance tried to keep his eyes and mind on the task at hand and away from the hopelessness of loving Rachel Irons.

  “Rein him tighter!” Rachel called. Her hands itched to put little Davy in a safe spot and take the reins herself. Cultivating was easier than plowing, and she’d done her share. But it was too soon after Davy’s birth for her to attempt heavy work, and she’d never shame Chance by showing him what a novice he was.

  Whatever hatred and fear she held toward Chance Chancellor had vanished the night he’d delivered her of a healthy son. Southern rebel or devil’s brother-in-law, it didn’t matter to her. Chance had shown once and for all what kind of man he was, and she’d never forget it.

  She’d had no illusions when she’d come to him in the barn. Most men would have run and left her. And Davy would have died without him. Chance had been terrified, but he hadn’t deserted her, and when Davy was limp and dying, Chance had found a way to breathe life into him.

  She and Chance were bound forever through Davy, and if she had her way, they’d be bound in other ways.

  What had happened before she’d gone into labor—when she’d nearly allowed Chance to make love to her—that had been real. “I wonder if you know how much I want you, Chance Chancellor?” she murmured as she draped a blanket over her shoulder and tucked a nipple between Davy’s small pink lips. “He doesn’t know, does he?” she whispered to the baby. “No, he doesn’t, but he will. You lost one daddy, but we’re not letting this one get away.”

  Davy’s mouth closed hard on her nipple, and she winced. She was still tender, but other women had told her that this soreness would pass. Her body would adjust to Davy’s demands, giving him the exact amount of milk he needed.

  She raised her gaze from her small son and studied the man working her garden. He’d improved greatly since she’d caught him in her crab trap; the matted yellow beard was gone, and his finely hewn face had filled out. Even his eyes seemed bluer, less haunted.

  He’d rolled his shirtsleeves up above his elbows, but he was sweating so much that the thin linen clung to his arms and shoulders like a second skin. Corded muscles flexed taut from the breadth of his broad shoulders to his long, sinewy thighs.

  Horseman’s legs, Rachel decided. He was more at home on a horse’s back than behind a plow. No infantryman or artillery soldier—she’d wager Chance Chancellor was a cavalryman and an officer.

  But Johnny Reb or not, he was a prize figure of a man. And that sweet way of talking he had was enough to send shivers down a decent widow’s spine.

  “Some folks would say that we’re harboring a traitor, Davy,” she whispered to the baby. “But that’s not so, is it? As long as we keep him here on Rachel’s Choice, he’s not shooting at any Union men, is he?”

  She chuckled and kissed dark wispy curls on the crown of Davy’s head. The baby gave a squeak and sucked even harder. “Patience, love,” she said as she switched him from one breast to the other. “It’s not easy doing our patriotic duty, is it?”

  “Finished!” Chance shouted as he lifted the cultivator teeth and guided the horse around the end of the last row. “We’re done!”

  “Not by a long sight,” Rachel whispered to the baby. “Not yet, we’re not.” She waved and threw Chance her sweetest smile. “Wonderful!” she cried. “And now that you’ve got the hang of it, you can start on the cornfield right after dinner.”

  Chapter 11

  Nearly three weeks later, early one sunny morning, Rachel took Chance to the creek to show him how to put out her crab traps. Since Davy’s birth she’d been unable to set her snares, and she was afraid that if she didn’t prepare her crab soup and take it to the crossroads for sale, someone else would steal away her business.

  Rachel had brought the baby, intending to take him in the rowboat with her, but Chance had protested so strongly that she’d ended up hanging Davy’s sling from a tree limb, Indian fashion.

  “Taking an infant in a boat. I never heard of such nonsense,” Chance grumbled as Rachel dug an oar into the water and turned the bow of the small, flat-bottomed rowboat left and parallel to the creek bank. The boat was crafted of white cedar, light as cork, and weathered to the color of poplar bark.

  “This is hardly Delaware Bay,” Rachel replied wryly. “We’re only a few yards from shore. If the boat sank, I could wade to shore with Davy.”

  “Maybe,” he conceded. “But a tiny baby like that. If you slipped—if his head went underwater—he could easily drown. And you’re only five weeks from childbed. You should not be rowing a boat. I could—”

  She cut him off with a wave. “You know as much of boats as I know of Latin. I come of hardy stock, Mister Chancellor. Having babies is natural. If I lay abed, who would care for my farm?”

  “A lady would never—”

  “But I’m no lady, am I?” She laughed at his disapproving expression. “Drop the trap here,” she ordered. “I’ll not let you spoil this beautiful day with your griping.” In truth, she did move a little more slowly than normal, but she was more than capable of maneuvering this little dory.

  The flowing water was clear enough to see the sandy bottom. Between the shadow of the boat and a clump of cattails, Rachel caught sight of a sunfish darting silently past to hide in the cool depths.

  She’d loved this creek since she was a small child. The natural beauty and ever-changing sounds of the water filled her with an inner peace.

  She felt closer to God here than she ever had amid the hymn-singing in her church, and today was particularly soothing. Sunlight sparkled through the canopy of trees, tinting the surface of the water a hundred shades of blue-green, and the air was filled with birdsong and the soft rustle of tree boughs creaking in the wind.

  Being here with Chance felt so right. For a little while, she prom
ised herself, she’d forget who he was and the impossibility of loving him. Instead, she’d just enjoy this sweet time and this precious sense of well-being.

  On shore Davy’s sling swayed slightly, and she could hear him cooing contentedly. Bear lay beside Lady under the tree. The black mastiff’s eyes were closed, but Rachel knew that neither animal nor human would get near the baby without a fight. She wasn’t sure if the two dogs knew that Davy was a child, not a puppy, but regardless, they’d adopted him as their own. Lady would bare her teeth and Bear’s hackles would raise if Chance came too close to Davy without Rachel being in the immediate vicinity.

  “Is this where you want this to go?” Chance asked as he balanced a wood-framed wire crab trap on the side of the boat.

  She nodded.

  Obediently Chance lowered the first of three weighted traps that she’d baited with fish heads into the water.

  “Fish isn’t the best bait,” she explained. “Chicken necks are better, but my hens are all using theirs at the moment.”

  Chance’s face creased in a boyish grin, and Rachel felt a sudden rush of affection for him. He’d caught his slightly curly yellow hair back at the nape of his neck with a leather thong, but it still gleamed like ripe wheat in the bright sunshine.

  A pity I had to cut it so irregularly, Rachel thought. She imagined that Chance was as vain as a woman about his looks. For an instant she allowed herself to wonder what he’d looked like in his military uniform.

  All spit and polish and sweet Southern charm, she suspected. No doubt he’d set many a poor girl’s heart fluttering with that heart-tugging smile that started at the corners of his lips and spread to a dancing twinkle in those startlingly vivid blue eyes.

  Rachel waited until the current carried the boat about ten feet away from the first trap, then lowered the tip of her oar to turn the vessel. “Put the next one here,” she said.

  “This close?”

  “I’ve been catching crabs here since you were in short pants. I guess I know where the good spots are.”

  She trailed one hand over the side of the boat as he dropped the second trap. She’d bathed this morning in her room, but the creek water felt warm and inviting. She wondered if it was long enough after Davy’s birth to safely swim. “One more,” she said. “We’ll put that last trap in the center of the course, near that cedar stake.”

  “There’s no float for this trap,” he replied.

  “You don’t need one. We’ll tie it to the stake.”

  “You did this by yourself every day—before I came, I mean?”

  She looked at him in surprise. Did he think she was as helpless as a Richmond belle? “I didn’t move the traps every day, but yes—I did tend them. I told you, I make crab soup and sell it at the store between Frederica and Milford, not far from Barrett’s Chapel.”

  He looked at her again, and this time his blue eyes clouded with compassion. “That’s where … where Davy’s father is buried, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “James is there in the Irons family plot.”

  “He died at Gettysburg?”

  Rachel exhaled softly. She didn’t want to talk about James. It was too pleasant a morning to dredge up those memories. The good times and the early joy of her marriage were all mixed up with what happened after the war came, but she felt she owed Chance an answer. “Gettysburg killed him, but he didn’t die there.”

  A great blue-gray heron glided over the creek as Chance secured the final trap to the pole and settled on the wooden seat, facing her. Rachel kept her gaze on the graceful bird. She knew that Chance was waiting for her to say more, but the words lodged in her throat like dry gravel.

  Hesitantly she moistened her dry lips.

  She’d loved James so much for so long, and then he’d changed … or she had. It went against her grain to say bad things about the dead, but it was suddenly important to her that Chance know how things had been between her and James before he died.

  Slowly the constriction in Rachel’s chest eased, and she began to explain.

  “I didn’t see much of James after he enlisted.” She curled her hands tighter around the weathered handles of the oars. The worn cedar had long before lost even a trace of paint, but the nicks and cracks were old, familiar friends.

  Water trickled through a seam in the bottom of the boat, wetting her bare feet, and absently she made a mental note to tar the bottom soon.

  “Lots of good men had to go to war, Rachel,” Chance said quietly.

  She nodded, trying not to admit how much she appreciated his attempt to defend her dead husband—his enemy. “But …” Rachel inhaled slowly, hoping the tears wouldn’t come to shame her. “James took to war as if he’d been born to it.”

  “Men react in different ways,” Chance said. “It’s hard for a woman to understand—”

  “No.” She shook her head. “You asked me, now be still and listen. James did love war. God help him, I think he even liked the killing.”

  Chance didn’t answer, but his jawline hardened.

  “Once James marched off,” Rachel continued, “I never saw much of him again. A week here, a few days there, in three long years. We’d been married two years before he joined up, but after that—until he was wounded at Gettysburg—I don’t believe we spent above three weeks’ time in each other’s company.”

  “It must have been lonely for you,” Chance said.

  “Sometimes.” She closed her eyes for just an instant, trying to remember what it had been like when James had gone away and she was left to cope with the long hard days and longer nights in an empty house. How many times had she awakened in the night and lain in her bed weeping for the missing of him?

  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.