Lucas turned down the lantern, extinguishing them in darkness. “I’ll sleep on the floor. You take the bed. When we get to Washington, we’ll figure the mess out.” He grabbed the other quilt and pillow and fell back on the hard floor.
Mess?Unmistakable regret was his bulwark. Rachel cringed.
She crawled beneath the blankets on the bed, Lucas’ back to her. She focused on the shadows dancing on the ceiling from the flickering flames of the fire. A log crashed, sputtering and sparking. In the waning light, Lucas’ hair shone with a soft sheen of black satin and she could stretch her fingers out to feel the silkiness. Hot and humiliating tears flowed down her cheeks and onto the pillow.
They were unwillingly joined together by marriage. And like a rock in a stream, the North and South swirled around them, trapping them in a place neither wanted to be. Through a blur of tears, Rachel watched the last remnants of the yellow glow of firelight sputter once; a log slowly fell over into the last mound of embers, glowing briefly, and died, leaving the room with the smell of smoke and bitter chestnuts. What occurred between them washed over her and forever irreparable, left her with feelings of loneliness and isolation more intense than anything she’d ever experienced.
They slept for a time, each cocooned under their own quilt and apart from each other’s warmth. She rolled her head to gaze at Lucas and swallowed a lump. For in her heart she had found something. Something she couldn’t allow to happen…something forbidden and dangerous…something she must never allow to exist.
In the wee hours of the morning, Father O’Connor arrived with another basket of food and bad news. “You must leave while it is still dark. You have acquired the interest of high-level people in Richmond greatly interested in your return from the dead. Many soldiers scour the countryside looking for a man and woman…spies. My advice is to head south to General Grant’s lines. May God be with you.”
Chapter Fifteen
He stuffed the food in a travel bag. Ice raged through his veins. The thought of another man touching her? He’d dismember any man, Saint or otherwise. For weeks, he fought a maddening possessiveness and jealousy. He’d never admit it to her. No. He’d not put that weapon in her hands.
For many hours of the night, he remained rock hard, her soft body for the taking inches away. But he didn’t want her like that.
Did he love her?He wanted a marriage like his parents where love and sacrifice and total devotion to the other lay paramount. He had strong feelings for Rachel, he most certainly did. Without question, he remained responsible for her, more so now that he had married her. The mystery of her affection for the Saint left little doubt in his mind where her loyalties were.
Rachel yanked the curtain back, closing him out, pretending he didn’t exist. He preferred the argumentative Rachel who taunted him, not the cold atmosphere pervading the cabin. He remembered too well her hair fanned out like dark shimmering waves across the pillows, the creaminess of her skin, and her vulnerability. The softness of her full breasts in his hands, how he fanned the flames, and how his tongue urged to take the pinkened tip into his mouth and tease it. She had risen like Botticelli’sVenus, a goddess rising, water sluicing down her lush curves. The heavy chestnut hair from her head lay in wet ropes, covering her feminine secrets, allowing a hint of dark curls between her—
A dishonorable man would have swept her slick body into his arms and carried her to the bed, sinking into her softness before the moisture on her skin had time to dry. Fully aroused, desire pulsed, his cock hard.
He chaffed like a penned bull, gazed out the window at the clouds gathering overhead until they blurred into one. Good cover for their travel, veiling them in darkness.
Just then, Rachel opened the curtain again. Seeing her, his lungs emptied. “Rachel?”
Gone was the beautiful woman and in her place stood a slave boy. She had bound her breasts beneath an over-fitted jacket, topped her crown with a wig of negro wool and cap and hid the curves of her hips with baggy trousers. She had finished her costume by layering silver nitrate over her face, hand, and arms.
“What do you think, Colonel Rourke?” She twirled for him. “They’ll be looking for a man and woman—not a slave and his master.”
No evidence remained that marked her femaleness and with that, his constant state of arousal dropped south. He gritted his teeth. The minx stood a genius in disguise. Her ridiculous get-up and chameleon-like change would fool him if he was not aware, and his temper abated with her practicality.
* * *
For two nights and two days they made their way unchallenged. From time to time, Rachel inquired of their whereabouts from the local slave population and proved a good source of information especially when she invoked the name of the dratted Saint. Skirting the eastern border of Petersburg, gunfire dueled over distant hills. Lucas had no way of knowing if the shots came from Rebel or Northern pickets. Grant had his noose on tight. It would be heaven sent to fall in with northern pickets. Luckier yet, if they didn’t get shot.
“Is there a risk?” Rachel asked, eyeing an open field.
“Of course, there’s a risk. There’s a war going on.” He held no illusions and pushed her within the woodland’s boundary.
Her proficiency irked him. She had mastered an art that meant a great deal to her as it did other spies—that of swift, silent movement. Validating her Indian training was her fortitude, survival skills, and unparalleled sense of direction. When there existed a hint of being followed, she had him trace her path on stones to leave no trail. At any whiff of unusual movement, they hid in underbrush to avoid all men. They would emerge at a creek for a drink, and then melt into the forests.
Her talent for obtaining food, he grudgingly allowed, was inspired. Hickory nuts crushed by stones remained time consuming for the little meat they offered. Here and there, she found thickets of chokecherries, but the fruits were so thin around the pits that it offered little except the tart sweetness to appease his hunger. She dug cattail roots and presented them to him as a substitute for bread.
“I’d rather drink vinegar,” Lucas mumbled. His stomach had contracted into a hard, little fist.
“At least it will give the illusion of eating something worthwhile,” she said, and then slapped his hand when he reached for a cluster of grapes. “Pokeweed. Coma, then death.”
They passed through a ragged corn patch; its haunted remains scored by encroaching armies. He glanced up. The heavens roiled heavy with tumbling vapors to the west, muting tracts of blue sky. From its ragged edge, a purple-hued veil of rain approached with the wind.
“It seems like it has rained a lot this season.”
“Only twice a year—October to May, and June to September.”
Lucas laughed, thankful for her humor. “Well, at least it’s easy to predict the weather.”
Beyond a stand of birches, the woodlands thickened. They came upon a yellow-haired, Pennsylvania Bucktail. He lay against verdant ferns with a smile on his face. The dead soldier’s eyes were open, his hair ruffled in the wind, and his hands curled up to the heavens. A Monarch butterfly landed on his forehead then flitted away.
