Beguiled (11 page)

Granny’s house boasted a long, shaded veranda in back, and I knew that was where she’d be, probably shelling purple-hull peas or drying speckled butter beans for the winter.

I wasn’t surprised to find her setting aside a big bowl of shelled peas as we came around back. She, however, looked very surprised to see Alice sitting atop the goat cart.

Alice tipped her hat. “Ma’am.”

“Land o’ Goshen!” Granny exclaimed, wiping her indigo-stained fingers on her apron. “But I’ll never get used to seeing a woman got up in a pair of breeches.”

I hopped down from the cart. “The bushwhackers were at Rattle and Snap this morning.”

Granny’s mouth dropped open. “Heavens. Was anyone hurt?”

“Just two of those brigands,” Alice chimed in.

Pride swelled in my breast. “Alice shot two of them. We’re sure one is dead.”

“And I bet that other one wishes he was. I got him in the spine,” Alice added with a triumphant smile.

“I take it they haven’t been here,” I said.

Granny shook her head. Her bright eyes grew dark. “But Tommy’s back home.”

Chills ran up and down my arms. Tommy had been in Cobb’s Legion with Dalton. He’d lost both legs and, through their family connections, obtained permission to be shipped home.

Granny’s gaze leveled on mine. She squeezed my shoulder. “He wants to talk to you.”

* * *

We rode home in silence. I hadn’t said a word to either Granny or Alice about my conversation with Tommy. In fact, I hadn’t even shed a tear.

Tommy had clutched my hand while he blubbered like a baby as he related the details of Dalton’s death to me. He’d apologized profusely for using Dalton’s corpse as a shield and thought the loss of his legs was somehow his payment for such a cowardly act. But I reassured Tommy that Dalton would have wanted it that way and that he ought not to regret surviving.

Even as I comforted Tommy, my own voice sounded strange to me. Foreign. As if this were happening to someone else. I realized I’d known the last time I laid eyes on Dalton as he rode down the drive at Rattle and Snap that I’d never see him again.

At the time, I’d been terrified. But now that my fears had come true, I felt strangely hollow inside. In a way, relieved. It was as I’d already grieved his loss.

Not knowing had been worse.

After losing Pa, Grayson, and Dalton and most of our servants, I realized I’d become hardened. And yet some deep part of me yearned—needed—to love and be loved.

Alice…

For the first time, I considered it as a real possibility. Alice and me.

Stunned at the news and my revelation about Alice, I’d bid Tommy farewell and then joined Alice, who still sat with Granny on the porch.

Sensing I’d learned something significant, Alice said nothing as we said our good-byes to Granny and piled into the cart. Instead, she wrapped Jeff Davis’s reins around one wrist and laced the fingers of her other hand with mine.

Once we’d unhitched the cart and released Jeff back to the herd, Alice announced it was time for me to learn to shoot a gun. Pa had been adamant that I not be taught to handle weaponry, but he hadn’t foreseen the threat of gangs and foreign invaders.

After this morning, I was more than willing to divert my maudlin thoughts.

We trekked to the back side of the property where Alice transformed our scarecrow into my first target. Once she had the scarecrow sufficiently attached to a tree, she wiped the perspiration from her brow with the back of her sleeve. “In the army, they told us not to bother aiming, but you can’t shoot at someone without at least pointing the gun at them.” She dusted the hay off her breeches and walked back to where I waited a few yards from the target.

Nerves knotted my stomach, and I couldn’t explain why. Neither of us had spoken about what happened with the bushwhackers, at Granny’s—or what happened between us the night before. Any tension mysteriously vanished the minute Alice chased away what was left of those marauders.

But now, it was different. At least for me. Dalton was dead. There no longer existed a barrier between Alice and me. That realization stunned me more than hearing the words from Tommy that Dalton had been killed. I’d already known he was dead in my heart. I’d grieved for him those first nights after he’d marched away when he was still alive.

“Firing a pistol is simple.” Alice dragged me from my reverie when she put the weapon in my hand.

My eyes widened at the revolver’s weight. I wondered how she’d carried a pistol and a rifle in addition to all the other accouterments soldiers wagged around.

“It holds six shots,” Alice told me as she stepped in behind me.

Her body molded to mine as she reached around me to lift my arms. “Use both hands.” Her breath feathered my ear, and I tilted my face just slightly into hers.

Despite everything, my body softened to hers. Her thumb nudged mine onto the hammer, and she pressed down until it cocked. I wondered if I’d ever be able to do this without her help and her strength.

“Brace your legs.” She patted my thigh.

I widened my stance. My pulse accelerated. My brother had regaled us with stories about how guns “kicked like a mule,” and although I’d never been kicked by one of the beasts, I could imagine the brute force one of the rugged hooves could inflict upon an intended target.

“That’s it,” Alice whispered. Her fingers trailed up my arms to the elbows where she barely lifted my arms higher. Her body countered mine. “Now squeeze back the trigger,” she told me.

I swallowed and pulled on the trigger. Drawing that little slice of metal was lots harder than I thought it’d be. Gritting my teeth, I wrapped both index fingers around the trigger and squeezed.

Pow!

My arms flew upward. My body slammed into hers. I shrieked.

Alice laughed. She laughed hard.

Ears still ringing from the blast, I whirled on her. Anger flared, but the sight of her grinning from ear to ear and holding her hands over her abdomen while she staggered and laughed melted my hot temper.

“You shot…you shot—” she attempted but ended up only pointing at the scarecrow because she couldn’t stop guffawing. Finally she dragged in a deep breath. “You shot him in the…in the damned crotch!”

I looked.

Sure enough. A gaping hole split the vee of the scarecrow’s breeches. Succumbing to a fit of laughter, I dropped to my knees on the ground and laid the pistol in the grass. Humor felt good and…strange. How long had it been since I’d had a good laugh? My sides hurt, and my face ached from smiling.

Alice rolled into the grass beside me. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen,” she chortled.

“It’s not to me.” I tried to feign seriousness. “I meant to shoot him in the head.”

“I think perhaps you succeeded,” she said and winked. “It was just a head of a different kind.”

My gaze linked with hers, and her smile faded. My heart turned over hard. I bit my bottom lip and cupped her cheek in my hand. All at once, awareness rippled over and through me. I breathed in the scent of the late summer grass, of the damp earth, and the bitter reek of gunpowder. The sun’s warmth permeated my black day dress until a bead of perspiration rolled down between my shoulder blades. Alice’s velvet skin grew hot in my palm.

I shut my eyes as a single tear seeped through my lashes and coursed down my cheek.

“What’s wrong, Belle?” She scooted closer and took my hand in hers, lacing her fingers with mine.

I blinked. “I don’t want to pretend anymore.”

“Pretend?”

Fighting back tears, I took a deep gulp of air and blew it out. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t admit it. If I did, it would make all this real, and up until now, I hadn’t wanted to face it.

“Pretend what, Belle?”

I shook. Alice put her arm around me. “Talk to me,” she urged. “What’s the matter? Have I done something to upset you?”

“No,” I confessed. “It’s not you.”

“Then what?” Her blue eyes darkened to the gray of a storm cloud.

“Dalton’s not coming home.” I said the words I’d been unable to admit since I’d seen his name listed as missing on the casualty report from the battle at Cold Harbor.

Her forehead furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Dalton’s not coming home.” Saying the words again cemented them in my soul. “He was listed as missing in Virginia. And today, Tommy told me he’d been there when…when Dalton was killed.”

Alice didn’t say anything. Instead, she cradled my head to her bosom and held me while I finally allowed myself to grieve. It was suddenly real in an awful, sickening way. I’d thought when he died, the body would be returned. I’d see something firm, something solid to let me know that he’d really been killed. Instead, I’d discovered his name on a list of the missing and then had heard the account secondhand from a neighbor.

Dalton Holloway, Cobb’s Legion
. I wanted to believe it had been a mistake. He was surely wounded or missing in action. He’d been taken prisoner. Anything. I just hadn’t wanted to accept that he was dead and I’d never see him again.

I couldn’t even remember the last words I’d said to him. I could barely remember what he looked like or remember what it had been like to see him on a daily basis. That part of my life seemed so far away now, as if someone else had lived in my body during that time.

“Does Uncle Hewlett know?” Alice asked after I finally stopped crying.

“Not yet.” I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. “First Dalton, then Pa.” I shook my head. “I can’t bear another death, Alice. I can’t stand another loss in my life.”

She listened.

I continued. “It’s not just the loss of my loved ones. My home. The cotton. The servants. God, Alice, I don’t know who I am anymore.”

Alice brushed one of my tears away with her thumb. “I’m not sorry, Belle.”

Shocked, I stared.

“I can’t pretend to be,” she confessed. “I don’t want to see you upset. Not at all. But I can’t pretend that I don’t want more from you.”

I shook. “What are you saying?”

Tears rimmed her eyes. “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I don’t know, Belle.”

Her sincerity touched me. I knew what she’d left unsaid. I sighed.

She reclined on her elbows and made a stab at steering the conversation off course. “I don’t suppose I’ve made figuring this shit out easier for you.”

At that, I let out a wry chuckle. “Well, no. Because now…”

Blinking back another barrage of tears, I tilted my head back and looked at the turquoise sky. “I don’t know what I feel,” I said honestly. “The only real thing in my life right now is…you.”

“Me?” She poked herself in the chest for emphasis.

I nodded. “All I know is that when I touch you, I don’t ever want to stop. I don’t understand this.”

My gaze found hers again. “I don’t understand these feelings I have for you. At first, I thought I was merely seeking comfort and…and release. But now…”

“Now what?” She sat once more and leaned slightly toward me. “Now what, Belle?”

“I-I…don’t know.” My pulse pounded.

Her eyes dropped to my lips, and I shifted toward her, wanting, needing her to kiss me. My heart fluttered like a wild bird in my chest. My stomach tensed.
Please kiss me. Just once
. But I couldn’t summon the courage to utter the request aloud.

“I want you the way I wanted Dalton,” I said, instantly regretting confessing such a thing.

For a moment, her face tightened as if she was in pain. An odd grief glimmered in her eyes. Just as I started to voice an apology, her fingers seized my wrist. Stunned, I glanced down at her hand and then I lifted my gaze to hers again.

“I love you, Belle,” she blurted.

Even though I’d secretly longed to hear those very words, I gaped. I suddenly felt as if I’d been sucked inside myself and I was looking out through a long, long tunnel.

“I’m
in
love with you,” she reiterated.

Somehow, I’d realized this. I’d known it all along, but like Dalton’s death, I’d refused to believe it. And yet I couldn’t accept it. The idea of her being in love with me terrified me. “How…how can you be in love with me?” I asked, wanting desperately to understand my own roiling emotions. “We’re both women.”

“I don’t know.” Her hand tightened around my arm. She curled her knees underneath her. “I don’t know. I just know it’s true. I know that you’re beautiful and caring and that this morning, I would have killed that man with my bare hands to keep him from hurting you.”

“But—” I began, but her mouth on mine prevented me from saying anything else. My heart reeled as her kiss seemed to draw me out of myself and into her. Insistent fingers threaded into my chignon. At that moment, I knew I belonged completely to her. The realization shook me to the core. All at once, feelings of fear and love and excitement and wonder flooded me until I couldn’t sort the emotions apart. Her lips plied mine until I opened for her and all coherent thought fled. Yielding, I returned her soft kiss, admitting her tongue as she teased through the opening I left for her.

She moaned into my mouth, and then cupping my face in her palms, she deepened the kiss. Something changed. My world altered. A cord fused between my mouth and my sex, and I wanted her. Beyond caring about anything or anyone else in the world, I wanted her.

I gripped her shoulders and dragged her down as I reclined in the grass. With furious intent, I ruched up my skirts while she continued to plunder my mouth. I caught her hand in mine and pushed it down. Her fingers fought through the layers of fabric, and then…

“Oh, Alice!” I cried as her finger slid through my folds and then inside me. My body shuddered around her touch, but I wanted more. I wanted her mouth on me there. “Taste me. Please. Taste me,” I begged as I pushed her head down.

A second later, her warm tongue teased and tormented me while her finger explored my channel. I’d never felt anything so wonderful, so all-consuming. Her lips ravaged me, plucking at my clitoris and urging me to rock against her mouth. Her finger slid through my slippery crevice, prodding me, only to withdraw and stab into me again. I spiraled inward, inundated with sensation after sensation.

Nothing in my well-ordered life had prepared me for this moment. Not one damn thing. But something inside me yearned to reach out and grab happiness with both hands, the consequences be damned.