Over and over, this mere slip of a girl had stood up to countless hurdles and survived. She overwhelmed him with her spirit and inventiveness. He shook his head, amazed at her ability to mourn a significant loss, yet have the poise and determination to put it in the back of her mind and move forward.
Lucasknewwhat she’d left in that fiery inferno. He recognized what had finally broken down her unfaltering confidence and made her cry. She didn’t really care about the home or its contents. Without her telling him what she wanted,he knew, and it surprised him, knowing how attuned to her feelings he’d become. His chest tightened. She’d risk her life for attaining the Bible her father had given her. Lucas vowed he’d make it up to her.
They had to get moving or risk discovery. Again, he saw a tear fall from her eye that she swatted away, turning her head so he wouldn’t see her. His gut clenched.
There was no logic in her proposal to move south. He’d allow her to make the decision…but it would be the last time.
“South,” he conceded. “What about Simon?”
“He will have seen the smoke and knows what to do. We have rehearsed our arrangements for the inevitable. I forgot to ask you one question, Colonel Rourke.”
“Ask away.”
“Can you ride?”
He stared at her, and then a sly, little smile returned to that lovely face of hers. She prodded her horse ahead of him in challenge. Lucas spurred his mount and, at breakneck speed, slipped over pasture fences like a fox hunter on a chase. She kept up, neck and neck, and he marveled at her ability to keep up with a southern boy born in the saddle.
After a while, they slowed their mounts to give them rest. For Lucas, their pace remained alarmingly slow. There was little time to waste. To get the critical information on the Copperhead activities to responsible authorities before their diabolical plot was hatched lay paramount. The Copperheads could change the outcome of the war.
In her bag, Rachel possessed forged passes to get them out of Richmond. Her forethought and planning, he held in esteem. They traveled thirty miles through a rain-drenched night, along broken roads, dodging prowling troops. They moved through Virginia towns, avoiding patrols with the skill of a chess players. They passed through harvested cornfields and plundered barns and orchards. They slipped by wagons full of dust-covered wounded and Union prisoners on their way to Libby.
The ragtag Southern forces marched in barefoot or in broken brogans, others with blood in their boots, gaunt, tired, and with very little food except for hard corn to break their teeth and less to fill their stomachs.
“This war must end soon,” he said. He pressed his horse in the tasseled corn, the dry leaves scraping against their clothes. The sun’s last crest lowered behind a hill to gild the field. Rachel slumped in her saddle. They had rested little. He was accustomed to hard rides from his days as a scout and still longer days in the cavalry. The journey stretched on. She never complained. The prospect of a good warm bed and night’s sleep was inviting, but Lucas dared not offer any respite due to constant danger.
He turned to the left, up a slope, leading to a road. Breezes shushed through the grass and an eagle cried overhead. The hairs on the back of his neck rose. Warning bells rang. He glanced around. Something was not right.
Ever wary, he stood up in his stirrups alert for any foreign sound. As a scout, the night had perfected his senses. His survival depended upon acuteness of eyesight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste as well as his power to reason. Then there was another sense. A sense that told him something was wrong before it happened, a nervous tingling that scraped beneath his scalp and tensed his muscles.
Suddenly, the pounding of a large assembly of horsemen boomed to their rear.
“Hide in the woods,” Lucas snapped. She dug her heels into her horse’s flanks and bolted headlong into the woods. Lucas stayed on the road, waiting for the Rebs to gallop up to him, and then rode straight at them. The startled patrol pulled up short.
“This way men,” Lucas shouted. “Spies have gone down the road! I think it is the Saint!” The magic name was enough to make the Confederate patrol spur their mounts forward.
Lucas waited until they’d disappeared around the bend, and then plunged his horse into the woods, through barrel-like boughs, tearing at massive vines, coming up short of Rachel. “We can’t afford to head south. The entire Confederacy is locked up around Petersburg.”
“We can’t afford not to. It’s not the intended direction our pursuers will think of,” she said with outrageous impertinence when he stared her down.
Was it possible the creator made someone as stubborn as him?
“As it is now, I daresay there are no pursuers. On the other hand, I don’t care for the eventuality that I may be recognized. North is the direction we will ride.”
He could see the wheels turning in her head, burning up gears and spitting out the practicality of his decision. But first, the machinery had to penetrate through that block of pig-headedness. He cleared his throat to hurry her to come to her senses.
She leaned back in her saddle, reached back and grabbed two apples, tossing one to him. “By continuing south, there is the strong chance we can cross the lines to General Grant’s forces on the other side of Petersburg.”
Good God. If she lifted her chin any higher, she’d paint the sky, and if he wasn’t so irked by her excellent logic, he might have laughed out loud. But he was not in the mood to hint at the possibility of her greater wisdom. “I’ll earn a bullet wearing this uniform for my troubles.” He kicked his mount into a canter, heading south. He didn’t have to look back. He knew Rachel followed.
Scarcely had the night arrived, the last glint of sun to fade like a still glowing coal in a fire, and on he pushed for hours in the darkness. Lucas glanced back to check on Rachel and found her nodding off in her saddle. He took her reins and pushed on some more, and then took heart and led the horses a safe distance off the road.
He lifted her off her horse, steadied her until she was able to stand. “We’ll rest for the duration of the night.” Over the mustiness of moss, he spread a blanket under a tree. She sighed as she lay on the ground. Autumn had made a graceless and premature debut, and she curled into a ball, shivering.
Lucas raked his fingers through his hair. The woman had gone on and on for two days without rest and never complained once. Men were conditioned to hardship and the elements. Rachel, despite her uncommon upbringing in the wilderness, was not. He’d been a blockhead, arguing with her at every turn when she was thinking of his well-being. He sat down and pulled her up into his arms, tugging his greatcoat around her, and cocooning her with his warmth.
He lay back against the tree and glanced up to where a bright moon illuminated a sky, where the stars were so clean and bright they appeared an omen of success. She burrowed deeper in his coat. He groaned.
“Lucas?” She popped her head out of his greatcoat.
