Rachel's Choice Page 5

  “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.”

  Chapter 5

  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.r />
  “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.

  “Her name is Susan,” Rachel said. “Don’t walk behind her. She kicks.”

  Chance opened the stall door and sauntered in.

  “I usually feed her before I milk,” Rachel observed.

  “I knew that.” He set down the bucket and looked around.

  “Hay is in the hayloft. I’m out of grain.”

  “Just give her hay?”

  “Put it in the manger in front of her. The feed will keep her occupied while you do the milking.”

  Chance climbed the ladder awkwardly and kicked down some loose salt-grass hay. “Enough?”

  “Yes.”

  He gathered up an armload and carried it to the cow’s manger. Susan began to eat the hay.

  Rachel pointed to a three-legged stool that hung on the wall. “I use that.”

  “All right,” he agreed. He wished Rachel Irons wouldn’t talk to him as though he were the village half-wit. “I told you, I’ve never milked a cow before, but I’m willing to learn. How hard can it be? You squeeze the tits and—”

  “Teats,” she corrected him. “They’re called teats.”

  Chance gritted his teeth and concentrated on the animal in front of him. He was still half asleep and needed his morning coffee. After drinking chicory with mosquitoes floating in it, he’d come to appreciate Rachel’s real coffee.

  He wanted a full top-to-toe bath as well this morning. He’d been called fastidious, even a dandy by his friends, and it was true he took pride in how he looked. Until he’d been captured by the Yankees, he’d always gone against fashion and been clean shaven. A bath, a shave, and a decent haircut were long overdue.

  The last thing he wanted to do on this rainy morning was yank on a cow’s udder. His arm was starting to hurt again, and he’d nearly put his foot down in the patty of foul-smelling stuff in the straw.

  “Do you want me to teach you how to milk her?” Rachel asked.

  “Just go and do whatever you usually do before the sun comes up. Susan and I will manage without you.”

  She laughed. “All right, but I’m counting on that milk to make butter.”

  He glanced over his shoulder to make sure that she was really gone, and then looked back at the cow. The beast was staring at him again and chewing steadily. She did look fairly peaceful.

  His parents hadn’t kept cows. They’d purchased their milk from a free black woman who kept a dairy out of town. Maude delivered to the house. She’d come in the back door and leave eggs, butter, milk—whatever Miss Julie, the cook, needed for the kitchen. Chance was used to reaching across the dining-room table for his milk, not extracting it from the animal himself.

  “Nice cow,” he murmured. “Good cow.” He set the stool in the straw and perched on it. He stuck the bucket under the pertinent part and inspected the creature’s bag.

  Her udder was pink, speckled with little black dots. It looked clean enough, but there was an immediate choice to be made. After a minute’s hesitation, he opted for the one closest to him and grabbed hold.

  Susan bellowed as though he’d just sliced off her teat with a bayonet. She threw both hind legs into the air, and Chance leaped backward. He moved fast, but not fast enough to miss the stinging blow across his cheek from her dung-laden tail.

  Chance’s feet tangled with the bucket. He tried to catch his balance against the wall with his bad arm, but it folded under his weight. He struggled to keep from falling, but it was useless. He ended up flat on his back in the soiled straw. One leg of the stool ground into his hip, the bucket handle was still hooked over his left foot, and the cow’s wicked-looking hind quarters were only inches away from his head.

  “Whoa, steady, Susan. Good cow.”

  “What are you going down there?”

  Chance looked up to see Rachel peering over the top of the stall.

  “It isn’t funny,” he fumed. “If you value this beast, you’ll get her away from me before I—”

  “Before you do what?” Rachel snickered.

  The cow mooed loudly, and Chance looked back just as she raised her tail.

  Rachel flung the door open, slapped the animal on a bony hip, and turned her away seconds before the cow let fly with a yellow stream.

  Chance got to his feet. He wasn’t sure who he was less happy with, the cow or the woman. “Susan is obviously a woman’s cow,” he muttered between clenched teeth. “She isn’t trained to allow a man to milk her.”

  “Nonsense. James milked her all the time. And when I go into town, Cora Wright’s grandson tends her and he’s only twelve. You squeezed too hard, that’s all. A cow’s teats are tender. You have to handle her gently, talk to her so she isn’t nervous.”

  “She’s nervous?”

  “Let me show you.” Rachel retrieved the bucket and the stool and took her place beside the cow. “You do it like this,” she explained. “Squeeze and pull, squeeze and pull.” Two streams of milk hissed against the sides of the pail, filling the air with a comforting scent.

  A black cat with a white spot on his face appeared out of nowhere and rubbed against Chance’s leg and began to purr loudly.

  Rachel pressed her head against the cow’s belly and continued to produce a steady flow of milk. Then she rose and motioned to the stool. “Now you try.”

  Chance sat down, extending his hand, and Rachel positioned it on a warm teat. He applied pressure.

  Not a drop came out.

  “Squeeze and pull at the same time,” Rachel said. “If you just pinch it shut, it doesn’t work.”

  A crude remark rose in Chance’s mind, but he kept silent. Rachel Irons might be an exasperating female, but she was a respectable woman, and he’d not insult her with crass behavior.

  He tried again, remembering to tug downward as he tightened his fingers. This time milk dribbled out, not so freely as when Rachel did it, but something.

  “Good,” she said. “Another thirty minutes, and you’ll have this licked. I’m making sausage and biscuits for breakfast. I expect at least a third of a bucket of milk this morning. Don’t stop until every teat is dry, and don’t let her ki
ck over the bucket before you’re done. Understand?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “She likes it if you sing to her.”

  “I’m not singing to a da—to a dumb cow.”

  Rachel shrugged. “Suit yourself. But you can’t come to the table smelling like that. I’ll leave some clean clothing, a towel, and a bar of soap by the back door. Go down to the creek and have a bath before you come into my house.”

  “I want a razor.”

  “Planning on cutting your throat, Reb?”

  He knew she was laughing at him, but he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing that she was annoying him. “I want to shave.”

  “What? Give up that handsome beard of yours?”

  Chance gritted his teeth. His beard was scraggly, thin in some spots, and dark in others. He looked like Zacky McCoy, who’d come down out of hills to join the Fourth Virginia Cavalry riding a raw-boned mule and carrying an old wheel-lock musket. “I need a razor.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” She paused a few steps from the gate. “And try to stay on the stool and not under it. I’d hate to go to the trouble of patching you up again.”

  Susan shifted her front feet, and Chance grabbed the bucket and prepared to retreat if she became violent again. Instead she gazed at him, blinked her eyes, and belched.

  “Good cow,” he murmured, reaching for the far left teat. “Good Susan.”

  She moved slightly so that her belly lay against his cheek. Her odor was strong but not unpleasant. He could hear a multitude of rumblings from inside her body, but the milk continued to come down. Already his fingers were cramping.

  Thirty minutes, Rachel had said. He couldn’t imagine lasting thirty moments. It was easier for her; she had two good hands. He was doing the milking one-armed.

  “Good cow,” he repeated.

  Talking to a cow. Travis would have loved to see this. He’d never let Chance live it down.

  If Travis was still alive.

  He had to be.

  Travis was the brother Chance had never had, and the bond between them was closer than blood. He’d stay here until Rachel had the baby, rescue Travis if it wasn’t too late, and dispose of the Dutchman. Then if he survived, he’d come back and get Rachel’s crops in.