Rachel's Choice Read online

  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.

  Chapter 12

  “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.

  Heaven help her, she wanted him with a fire that would not be banked down or smothered under the ashes of her responsibilities.

  If she allowed Chance to make love to her, it would be she who faced an illegitimate pregnancy, not he. He’d be gone, leaving her to face the shame. Not that she was totally ignorant of ways to prevent conceiving an unwanted child, but the aids in her father’s medical chest had been known to fail.

  She should never have let things progress so far between them. He was here to bring in her crop—nothing more. And if he didn’t like it, that was his concern.

  Rachel was still on edge hours later when she bid Chance good night and locked her kitchen door. More perturbed at her own foolishness than his, she climbed the stairs and flung herself facedown on her bed.

  Davy was fed and sleeping; the two dogs sprawled on the floor at the foot of the steps. They slept, but she couldn’t. She lay awake listening to the wind rattling the loose shutter on the back of the house.

  The day, which had begun with such promise, had given way to scattered rain and impending thunderstorms. Branches growing from the big yellow poplar scraped against one chimney, and patters of rain beat an uneven tattoo against the windowpanes.

  Restlessly Rachel pounded her pillow into shape and then tossed it to the far corner of the old-fashioned high bed. “I probably wouldn’t have become pregnant,” she muttered. The women in her family found it difficult to conceive. Both she and her mother were only children, and she hadn’t taken any precautions before Davy was born, years into her marriage with James.

  She wondered if she’d avoided certain unhappiness by rejecting Chance’s offer, or insured it. He’d made no promises. And if he had, what did she really know of him besides what he had told her?

  There were depths of sorrow in Chance Chancellor that his laughing manner could not hide. He might not hide his pain in a bottle as James had done, but Chance was weighed down by a troubled soul.

  Far off, beyond the Murderkill, lightning illuminated the sky, and a rolling cascade of thunder rumbled ominously. Rachel raised her head and glanced toward the cherry wood cradle where Davy slept soundly.

  “Why can’t I be content with what I have?” she whispered more to herself than to her little son.

  The only answer was the gathering force of the wind-driven rain and the slow, measured tick of her china wedding clock on the mantel.

  Rising from the bed, Rachel went to her dressing table and began to remove her hairpins, one by one. The shadowed face looking back at her from her mirror seemed too full, too vulnerable to be her own reflection, but the eyes were hers and they could not hide the truth.

  She wanted Chance.

  Slowly, stunned, she sank into a chair and let the implications of this decision sink in.

  Not for a few moments of pleasure, not even for a secret affair of passion; she wanted him as she had once wanted James … with wedding vows and gold rings and promises of growing old together. Forever.

  She did. And she was willing to risk everything to have him.

  The thunderstorm rolled over the farm and faded in the east. Davy woke, and Rachel fed him again and rocked him back to sleep before blowing out the candle, donning a clean linen nightgown, and climbing between the sheets herself. As she drifted off to sleep, she heard the first echoes of a second storm approaching.

  Sometime later she was awakened by a loud banging on the kitchen door and Bear’s deep-throated bark interspersed with Lady’s incessant one.

  Rachel scrambled out of bed, still half-asleep, and made her way to the landing of the front staircase without lighting a candle. Outside, wind and rain beat against the house, and a dull boom of thunder added to the reverberating discord. She’d been yanked from a dream of the kiss she’d shared with Chance. Her pulse raced as she hurried downstairs to let him in.

  Had he changed his mind? Decided that he couldn’t bear another moment apart? Or had lightning struck the barn? she wondered as she crossed the sitting room to the kitchen.

  “What is it, Chance?” she called out. “Quiet! Quiet!” she ordered the dogs. A brilliant flash momentarily blinded her as she yanked the bolt and swung open the back door.

  A tall, bulky figure filled the doorway. Lady charged past Rachel and out into the yard.

  “Chance, I—”

  The collie’s bark deepened to a threatening growl.

  Bear’s angry snarl raised the hair on the back of Rachel’s neck. Sensing that something was wrong, she tried to close the door.

  A man’s yell was followed by a heavy thud. Lady yipped once and then squealed in pain.

  A heavy weight slammed the door back, catching Rachel and flinging her against the wall as Bear lunged at the intruder.

  A split second later, a pistol blast rattled the kitchen windows. Bear’s roar twisted to an agonized yelp before he slumped to the floor and his whining ceased.

  Head ringing, Rachel gasped for breath.

  “Get up, woman! Ye ain’t hurt.”

  The stranger’s slurred words were so heavily accented that Rachel had difficulty understanding him.

  “Ya kilt her, Cleve,” declared another man. “Ya promised me ya wouldn’t do that this time.” His was a youth’s voice, awkward and unlettered, but just as chilling.

  Rachel crouched motionless as the pain in her head receded to a dull ache. Two of them, she thought. Two rebs had forced their way into her house. She didn’t need to see them; she could smell their unwashed bodies, the oily hair, and rotting wool uniforms. And above all that she caught a scent of putrid flesh and raw whiskey.

  “Ye alone here, woman?” Cleve demanded.

  “Yes.” She thought she heard Lady whine outside the door, but the fury of wind and rain made it impossible to tell. Bear lay motionless. “You killed my dog, you bastard.”

  “Shut yer trap or you’ll be next,” the boy threatened. “That beast bit me clean to the bone.”

  “You sure there ain’t nobody else here?”

  That was the one called Cleve, the bigger man, the one giving the orders. “Just me,” she said.

  A wail from upstairs proved her a liar. And the fear welling inside Rachel turned to icy hatred. They might have gotten Bear, but she’d see them in hell before they’d harm her son.

  “No one’s here but me and my baby,” she covered q
uickly.

  “Lie to us, Yankee woman, and we’ll kill ya certain,” Cleve threatened.

  The boy laughed. “Kill you certain,” he repeated. “Maybe kill you certain anyway.”

  “Shut up, Harley.”

  “Ya heard him. Cleve’ll shoot you like he shot that damned devil dog of yourn.”

  Another flash of lightning showed a man’s outline near the stove. She heard the scrape of an iron stove plate and then saw a faint glow of coals. The scent of a cheap cigar drifted toward her.

  “Ye got a lamp, Yankee woman?”

  “I do.” Her head hurt so badly that it was hard to think.

  “Light it,” he ordered.

  Rachel pushed her way up the wall and moved cautiously toward the table. Davy’s frantic cries stiffened her resolve. No matter what happened to her, Davy mattered most—Davy and Chance. She couldn’t let herself fall to pieces.

  “Be quick about it,” Harley said.

  Rachel’s searching fingers found the edge of the tablecloth. Forcing her hands to remain steady, she located the oil lamp and her blue glass bottle of matches. In seconds a yellow light flared, illuminating the kitchen.

  The hulking brute by the stove leaned on a rifle and leered at her with hooded eyes. His tattered shirt hung open to the waist; his trousers ended in rags that left both scabbed knees exposed. The crown of his head was bald, but tangled gray locks straggled down over his shoulders from a monk’s fringe above his ears. His nose had been broken more than once; it ran crookedly down his face to end in a ragged red scar and shattered, green-furred teeth.

  “Well, well, Harley, lookee here. We found us a pretty one, ain’t we?”

  “Looks like,” his scarecrow companion agreed.

  Rachel spared him a glance, taking in his knife-blade face, pasty skin, and thickly bandaged hand. Seventeen, she thought, not a day older. And not likely to see eighteen if the hand wasn’t tended to. He was the source of the foul stench of putrefaction. By the looks of the stained cloth wrapped around his fist, he had a raging infection.

  In his good hand the boy held an old rusty pistol, barrel pointing in her direction. But she refused to allow terror to make her stupid. Armed or not, this overgrown child with the wounded wing could be dealt with. It was Cleve who worried her.