Swan's Way (25 page)

Silence fell between the two women. Elspeth seemed deep in thought, while Pansy worried the embroidered violets on her lace handkerchief.

All of a sudden, Pansy sniffed and dabbed at her nose.

Elspeth gave her a sharp look. “Now don’t you start that!”

“I can’t help it. I always figured it was my fault, what happened to my daughter. If I’d only known I was carrying her, I’d have married her daddy, before he went off to fight in the Pacific.”

“If you’d had a brain under all that fluff, you’d have told him to keep his damn pants zipped!
That
was your one and only mistake, old girl.”

Pansy turned teary, pleading eyes on Elspeth. “But we were
so
in love. How could I refuse him, when he was going off to war? He begged so sweetlike—said he might never come back, that we might never have another chance.” Her voice broke. “And he didn’t, and we didn’t.”

“I know, I know.” Elspeth patted Pansy’s trembling hand, in rough compassion. “A lot of nice girls fell for that line and wound up just like you did, Pansy. But what your daughter did wasn’t your fault. You can’t go on blaming yourself forever. What did happen to her man anyway? You never told me.”

“I never knew, exactly. She said he died.”

“And you believed that?”

Pansy shook her head and dabbed at her eyes again. “I never knew what to believe. Then she went away. I haven’t heard from her since.”

Elspeth knew she had to change the subject fast. Pansy was on the verge of all-out hysterics. “Well, you found Ginna. That’s something to be thankful for. And right now, she and Neal are in the greenhouse, about to go back and make everything all right.”

“Oh, I pray so!”

The dinner bell put an end to their conversation. Patients who normally shuffled about Swan’s Quarter, seeming to have difficulty putting one foot in front of the next, were up and hustling to get the choicest seats in the dining room. Elspeth and Pansy joined them.

The sun touched the glass plate negative in the greenhouse wall, just as Elspeth was taking her first bite of juicy country ham. The salty, smoky flavor tingled her taste buds for only an instant, before time stopped at Swan’s Quarter.

No one was there to see the flash in the greenhouse or the sudden disappearance of Ginna and Neal. Their transformation was swift and silent.

When Ginna woke up, back in time, she wasn’t surprised to find that she and Neal had once more been separated. She found herself—or rather Virginia—in her bedroom at Swan’s Quarter, her bandanna knapsack stuffed and ready. All she had to do now was wait for dawn and the departure of her father and brothers. She felt restless, too nervous to sleep. Where could Channing be? How long would it take her to find him?

Her thoughts turned suddenly to her brother’s words about shooting a Yankee, out back in the woods. He had gotten away, Hollis said, but he was definitely wounded. Virginia wondered if the poor man had a sweetheart somewhere waiting for him. Her heart twisted at the thought. If Channing were shot, would some Rebel woman take pity on an enemy soldier and tend his wound?

“Please, God, I pray so.”

At that moment, she decided what she had to do. Quickly, she pulled on her brother’s trousers and shirt. It was dark outside and raining. That poor soldier could die of exposure, if he were badly hurt. She had to find him and do what she could to help.

Neal woke up moaning, after the flash in the greenhouse. His right arm was burning like hell. He was cold and wet and shivering. He had been through this before. He remembered it, all too well.

“Come on, Big George,” he groaned. “Come get me. Bring some blankets.”

He drifted off briefly into unconsciousness. When he roused again, the pain and the cold were still there, but he was no longer Neal Frazier. Channing McNeal remembered sneaking through the woods behind Swan’s Quarter. He had to make sure it was safe, that there were no Rebs about, before he approached the house. But he had gotten careless in his eagerness to see Virginia. He had let a Confederate patrol sneak up on him. The man who had shot him hadn’t recognized Channing in the darkness. He knew these soldiers, though. He knew their voices before he saw them. It was Hollis’s face he had seen in the flash from his pistol, a moment before the Minie ball tore into his arm.

Ironic
, he thought. Colonel Swan had been afraid they might meet on the field of battle. Instead, the confrontation had taken place right here at Swan’s Quarter, when all of them had been seeking a brief respite from the war.

Channing heard the bushes rustling near him. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he struggled to drag himself farther back, under a bush. If they found him, he would surely be sent to one of the notorious prison camps farther south, where he would spend the rest of the war rotting and starving.

“Hello?” came the soft call. “Are you here? I know you’re hurt.”

He was drifting off again, losing consciousness. In his present state, Channing could almost imagine that the voice calling out to him was Virginia’s.

“Please, I want to help you. Where are you?”

“Virginia.” Her name from his lips was more a moan than a word, but she hurried quickly toward the sound.

As she neared his hiding place, she spied the shine of rain-slick boots sticking out from under a large bush. She dropped to the ground beside him.

“Don’t be afraid,” she whispered. “My brother shot you, but I’m here to help. Come out from under there. Give me your hand. We have to get you to shelter right now.”

“Virginia!” This time his voice was stronger, and he distinctively spoke
her
name.

“Channing?”
she cried. “Dear God! It
is
you! Oh, my darling, what has Hollis done?”

“Just a flesh wound,” he murmured. “Nothing to worry about. Kiss me, so I’ll know I’m not dreaming—that it’s really you.”

Virginia leaned down, shielding his face, as she covered his cold lips with hers. Tears mingled with the raindrops—Virginia’s tears, Channing’s tears. But to be in each other’s arms again washed away all their pain and loneliness.

“I was coming to see you. Couldn’t stand it any longer. Had to hold you, to tell you I still love you …” Channing’s words drifted off.

“Don’t try to talk, my love. Let me help you to the barn. Father and the boys are still at the house. I’ll hide you, until they leave in the morning.”

Struggling through the darkness and the heavy rain, they finally made it to the barn—a warm, dry place that smelled of horses and clean hay. Ginna wondered if she had made the right decision. All the Swan men’s mounts were stabled here for the night. They might find Channing, when they came for their horses in a few hours. If they did, they would have to shoot her to get at him, she decided. Besides, one of the stable boys would saddle the horses. She hoped so, anyway.

In the very back of the barn, where broken harnesses and tools were stored for repair, she made a bed of straw for Channing and put a blanket over it, then found another blanket to cover him. He sank gratefully onto the soft, warm pile and offered her a weak smile.

“Come lie with me, darlin’. Warm me. I’m so cold.”

“I need to see to your wound first. Let me have a look at that arm.”

She was relieved to find that it wasn’t too bad. Painful, certainly, but not life-threatening, unless it wasn’t tended and went septic. She found a crockery jug of com whiskey, where one of the stablehands kept it hidden. Strong drink was strictly forbidden among the Swan slaves, but she knew they kept a bit on hand for special occasions—births and deaths. First, she gave Channing a few good swigs, then, when he was looking happily glassy-eyed, she poured some of the whiskey over his arm. He winced.

“I’m sorry, darling,” she said, “but it will clean out the wound.”

He gave her a goofy grin. “Pain from the woman I love is better than a kiss from any other woman.”

“Oh?” she said archly. “And just what other women have you been kissing that you can make such a comparison?”

He chuckled. “Only my mother and sisters. Rest easy, girl. You’re the only one I want to kiss. The only one I want to love.”

The whiskey had not only eased his pain, but stripped away his inhibitions and made him amorous. He grabbed Virginia with his good arm and drew her close, kissing her so deeply that the whiskey-taste of his mouth made her feel quite lightheaded.

“Come lie with me,” he begged. “Make me warm, Virginia.”

She hesitated. What if someone found them together this way? But it was still a good two hours until dawn. No one in the house would be up yet. Any slave who might happen in could either be bribed or threatened into silence.

Virginia lifted the blanket and slipped underneath, next to Channing. She closed her eyes, savoring this long-awaited feeling of his nearness. But when his hand slipped beneath her shirt, she stiffened. That reaction lasted only for a moment. He was doing wonderful things to her breasts—teasing, stroking, kneading. If Channing wanted heat, he was certainly getting it. His touch was burning her alive.

“Are you still going to marry me, Virginia?” he asked, between fevered kisses.

“Except for the final promises of the ceremony, I’m your wife already. I have been, since the night you rode away, darling.” Her voice was breathless, her words trembling with emotion.

“Then why don’t we finish what was so rudely interrupted that night at the parsonage? Right here, right now, just the two of us? Do you, Virginia, take me to be your lawful wedded husband?”

“Oh, yes,
I do!”

“Now, you ask me.” As he spoke, his hand was easing down toward the belt of her brother’s trousers.

“Do you, Channing, take me for you lawful wedded wife?”

“Yes, darlin’, I most certainly do! To have and to hold from this day forward. So, I now pronounce us man and wife. And I mean to kiss my bride.”

He drew her close, so close that their bodies were touching, from their lips down. Her breasts quivered against his hard chest. Through her brother’s pants, she could feel Channing’s heat and hardness.

“We’re married now, Virginia,” he said, pointedly.

“Yes,” she breathed, “forever and ever.”

He waited a moment more, before he finished his thought. “I want to make love to my wife.”

A thrill of excitement and fear rippled through her. “But you’re injured.”

“That
part of me isn’t. It’s alive and well and throbbing for you, darlin’.”

Virginia said nothing; she couldn’t speak. She held perfectly still, as Charming eased her shirt up, until she felt the chill of the night air and the scratch of the rough blanket against her bare breasts. But most of all, she felt Channing’s touch on her flesh, a thousand times over, like tiny, licking flames of pleasure. He shifted a bit. A moment later, she moaned, as his lips touched her nipple. When he dragged his tongue over her tender flesh, she squirmed in his arms.

“This isn’t much of a honeymoon,” he said with a nervous laugh, “but it’s wartime, after all.”

His mention of the war broke down her final barrier. Channing was right. He would soon go back into the thick of the battle. Could she let him go without having known his love?
No!

“Any honeymoon with you is more than I could ever have hoped for, Channing. I love you. I’ve grieved for you, since the night you left. I’ve been so worried. I have a bag packed up in my room this very minute. I had planned to leave here in the morning to find you. Now—wonder of wonders—I have you. I know you must go away again, but not before this.”

She undid his shirt and began kissing his chest. Light little feather-kisses that made him arch his back and moan with pleasure.

“God, Virginia, what are you doing to me?”

“Making you
mine!”
she said, without hesitation or any second thoughts. “I want you, Channing! I want you to be my husband and the father of my children.”

It took a bit of doing for the both of them to get out of their trousers under the blanket. The work, however, proved worth the effort.

In Virginia’s mind, the pile of hay and scratchy blankets seemed as wonderfully soft and inviting as lavender-scented sheets against her bare skin. Actually, she felt nothing other than the slide of Channing’s flesh over hers. Forever, it seemed, he kissed her, caressed her, told her all that was in his heart, and that his heart belonged only to her.

“Remember how you cried that day the old swan disappeared?”

She nodded and smiled. “That was the first time you ever kissed me, darling. How could I forget?”

He nibbled at her shoulder, and she could feel a smile curve his lips. “How, indeed? You were so sweet and innocent, so very precious to me. Almost as precious as you are now. But my point is that I want you always to remember that the old cob came home to his mate. That’s the swans’ way, and that’s my way. I’ll always come back to you, darlin’, no matter what separates us, or for how long. We both know that I’ll have to leave soon. But, Virginia, while I’m gone, I want you to think about me everytime you look at the swans. I want you to recall, not that I’m gone, but that I’m coming back to you.”

A wayward tear slipped down her cheek. “Please don’t talk of leaving, Charming. Hold me. Love me!”

When finally the loving thrust came that made them one for all time, Virginia could no longer hold back her tears. She cried silently, joyfully, knowing that at last the dream of a lifetime had come true. No matter how far away the war might take Channing, a part of him would always be with her.

The perfect moment they shared, a short time later, was her proof that the two of them were meant to be husband and wife. She prayed silently, as her exquisite passion ebbed, that Channing had given her a child.

Spent and exhausted, her lover rested his head on her shoulder and drifted off, still smiling, still whispering her name, even in his dreams.

Until the first gray-pearl light of dawn crept in through the cracks in the barn, Virginia lay with Channing, watching his dear face in sleep. Her heart was so filled with love for him that she thought it might burst inside her breast.

“Damn this war!” she murmured. It means
nothing!
Love means
everything!”