A Woman Clothed in Sun Read online

  She washed quickly, biting her lip as she cleansed herself of the blond man’s savagery, welcoming the pain as a sort of cauterization.

  Old Bess, as usual, was grazing near the house. Rachel saddled her and brought her to the back stairs, as near as possible to the kitchen. At first she tried to hoist Etienne on her back but though he was lean as a young hound, he was tall and his weight was more than she could manage. Getting a quilt, she rolled him on to it, pulled him through the kitchen and porch and onto the steps. At first she tried to handle him gently but in the end she had to drag and haul to get him across the saddle. Bess, at least, showed none of a horse’s reputed fear of a dead body, but stood patiently while Rachel settled Etienne face down across the saddle. Mounting so the body rested over her knees, Rachel started for town.

  It was drowsy early afternoon when she rode down Austin Street past several saloons and Freeman Hall which had served as a courthouse since Marion County was formed that year. She used the hickory switch she had broken off to keep Bess moving. There were few people about, but by the time she stopped in front of the jail at the end of Austin Street, a small whispering crowd had gathered.

  “What’s happened, ma’am?” drawled a rangy blackmustached man who appeared in the jailhouse door and wore a sheriff’s badge on his vest.

  She told him, describing the murderers but not admitting that one had ravished her. The sheriff came to examine Etienne, grunted as he glanced up from scrutinizing the wound.

  “Well, he’s dead, all right, and it looks like that blow on the head did it. But if you didn’t know the men or have any witnesses, there’s not much to go on, Miss—who’d you say you are?”

  “I’m Rachel Delys.”

  “Oh. The tutor’s daughter. Died last week, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  The sheriff’s black eyes touched her with more interest. “I’m mighty sorry, and sorry your—friend here is dead. Want I should get the undertaker for you?”

  “No! I want you to find the killers and I want to see them tried!”

  The growing knot of spectators was pressing closer. “Now, folks, go along with your business and let me take care of mine,” the sheriff urged. “Step back there, please!”

  As the bystanders retreated, the sheriff spoke in a softly confidential tone. “You’re a mighty fetching woman, Miss Delys. Easy to see how young sprouts could fall out over you, and accidents do happen.”

  Rachel couldn’t believe her ears. “They entered my home without knocking and were—impudent to me though they’d never seen me before! There’s no way you can make this into a light-hearted frolic that turned deadly, sheriff. Those three were drunk and set on trouble!”

  “That’s your side of it, Miss Delys.” His stare raked her in an appraising way that brought blood to her face. “But there’s no names, and I’m tellin’ you, as if you was my own daughter, to stop and think this through. Even if I chase down three men answering your description, it’s going to be your word against theirs. Lots of ugliness. Won’t do your reputation no good.” He rested his hand on the back of the saddle, his hairy arm brushing against her. “I’d like to help you, seein’ as how you’re alone. Let me get the undertaker, and then I’ll see you home.”

  He could say that, standing only a few feet away from Etienne’s drooping body. And his eyes, his manner, spoke more than words. Blinding white fury exploded in her. She slashed the green hickory switch fiercely across his smile.

  “Why, you damn vixen!” A weal stood out along his cheek. He grasped her wrist, set his other arm about her waist, wrenching her from the saddle. Etienne’s corpse spilled to the street. Rachel screamed at that, blindly fighting strange grappling male hands for the second time that day.

  “Carey! What is this?”

  The deep cultured voice made the sheriff’s hands fall as if he’d been scalded. Shuddering, Rachel gripped the saddle horn and looked into thoughtful hazel eyes in a face that bore small humor lines, though it was now grim and hard-jawed. But what she blessed him for, and what was characteristic of Harry Bourne, was that he knelt in the dust to lift the body of a man he didn’t know.

  “Selah!” he called.

  The tall black seemed to understand what was wanted. He took Etienne effortlessly in his arms and held him while his master bowed to Rachel.

  “Will you tell me, madam, how I may be of service?”

  His courtesy unnerved her as harshness could not. She tried to speak but words stuck in her throat; she gazed at her rescuer, shaking her head, hoping he wouldn’t think she was demented.

  Coming to stand by her, he turned to confront the sheriff, who loudly protested, “You must have seen her hit me with that switch, Mr. Bourne. I don’t bear her no ill will, broke up as she is about that young feller, but there’s no use stormin’ at me with a wild story and no names—”

  “I’ll see you presently, sheriff,” cut in the stranger. He offered his hand to Rachel. “May I take you into the inn for some refreshment, ma’am? I assure you that your requirements will be taken care of as speedily as you can apprise me of them.”

  “Etienne—”

  “Your friend is safe with my man. Come, my dear. After your cup of coffee, we’ll do everything necessary.” He helped her dismount, steadying her in her weariness. She realized as he took her arm in a firm, protective way that Bradford had been a scholar and Etienne a boy, but this was a man. A gentle man.

  He grew even gentler when he learned she was the daughter of his brothers’ old tutor. “Dr. Martin told me about Bradford’s early death,” Harry Bourne said as they sat over coffee and small buttered muffins which he spread with marmalade and encouraged her to taste. “I meant to ride out in a week or two and see if you wished to remain, for I knew he had a child.” Frankly admiring brown-green eyes studied her. “If I’d understood you were quite alone, Miss Rachel, I would have come at once. It’s out of the question, as today’s shocking events prove, for a beautiful young woman to live by herself in the bayous.”

  She hadn’t told him, either, that she’d been raped. Pride and a sense of self-protection had kept her from telling Sheriff Carey, but different feelings kept her from revealing it to this quiet, kind man with his old-fashioned gallantry. He would pity her, she was sure, and treat her with unfailing consideration, but she herself would feel ashamed, as if in some way she were to blame for what had happened.

  Was she, in fact, to blame? Her earthy common sense recoiled at the notion. Those men were bent on mischief. If her father had been with her, he might have been killed in Etienne’s place. Coming in upon Etienne’s forceful courtship of her would not have provoked such behavior in decent men. What had happened was the doing of trespassers, rapists, thugs.

  She couldn’t really, even in her grief, feel guilt for refusing to go to New Orleans with Etienne. A person’s choice about his own life couldn’t be made by trying to please others. Etienne had the right to ambition and the city, and she had the right to a simple life on the lake.

  Those three roistering men had ruined those natural dignities. She didn’t want to tell Harry Bourne the extent of that devastation because as long as she didn’t put it into words, as long as no one else knew, it seemed less true. It was Rachel’s first experience of the power of what other people thought about her, a humbling and humiliating one. Why should she care what Sheriff Carey thought when she had laughed at Etienne’s opinions?

  “You’ve described the intruders to the sheriff,” Harry said. “I’ll talk to him so you needn’t distress yourself with repeating the story. But should your young man be buried in town or has he a family that would desire otherwise?”

  How strange, how tragic, to tell this man who would surely have aided and befriended his bitter nephew that Etienne was the grandson of Harry’s own father, the grandson of lovely Désirée.

  “So he wanted to succeed out in the wide world,” Harry pondered after his first startled exclamations and questions. “And I never even knew he ex
isted! I rode over to locate my half-sister after Father died, see what I could do for her. But she was dead and her aunt, a formidable woman as I recall, didn’t even ask me inside. She certainly never mentioned the baby boy.”

  “Now he’s dead, too,” said Rachel. “Younger than Désirée or his mother.”

  Harry sighed. “I must take him to his aunt, I suppose, but if she’s willing, he can be buried in the family cemetery.”

  An ironic way to be acknowledged. Without a tear, Tante Aurore gave her consent, though she would not attend the funeral or accept anything from Harry.

  “Etienne didn’t belong here anymore,” she said with a hard stare at Rachel. “He was set on being rich and having a great name. It should content him best to share dust with that wicked man who ruined and betrayed my sister.”

  Harry whitened about the lips, but he controlled himself. “Your nephew will be buried with all dignity,” he told the stern old woman. “And I beseech you, madam, to call on me if ever I can serve you in any manner.”

  She gave him an implacable look and vanished inside her weathered gray cottage, so completely surrounded by vines and trees festooned with feathery Spanish moss it was easy to imagine that the wilderness, when Aurore died, would engulf the cottage to give private burial to this woman whose feelings, if she had any, were as hidden and difficult as the swamp’s.

  Etienne was buried in the Bourne lot, with old Matthew and his legal wife, a few stillborn babies, and several well-loved servants. Rachel felt isolated from it all, removed from this Etienne who had longed for wealth and respectability. The Etienne she loved had been part of her growing up, the wild mysterious beauty of lake and woods. She had lost that boy to the emerging man.

  Boy or man, she wanted his death avenged. Harry had broadsheets printed offering a reward for information about the killers, but there had been no response. When Harry took Rachel to town, she watched every youngish man they saw for some hint of gait or gesture that might give him away. She strained to listen to their voices, but she was beginning to think the three were wandering rogues from far away.

  After a week passed with no clues, Harry had the sheriff send handbills to every town and settlement in northeast Texas and western Louisiana. He counselled Rachel to be patient, that sooner or later such riffraff would boast of the murder to someone who would turn them in for money. As days passed, Rachel grew to accept that the criminals might not quickly, if ever, be brought to trial. In the meantime, she must decide where to live. Bradford had left his books and a few dollars. Bess and the cow would fetch a small sum. But then what?

  Panic clutched at Rachel as she faced her situation, penniless, without family or friends except for Harry, upon whom she could not continue to impose. She had no service to offer him in exchange for rent at Tristesse, but she might find a small hut or get one built in exchange for the cow and horse. She could raise most of her food and get the rest from the lake and woods, and she might sell enough hickory nuts and mayhaws and berries for the few things she’d have to get in town.

  But it wouldn’t be the same. Not ever.

  Etienne would laugh and love with her no more. Father would not look up from his books to read a paragraph, snort with disgust or nod with approval, and ask what she thought. Most chilling of all, now that she knew how men could force themselves into her home and into her body, she would never “walken in the wodes wilde” with the same gay confidence. She was not the same. She never could be again. This time she was afraid to live alone in the back country, even if she’d had the means.

  If only Papa had left her enough to live on for a while! This lamentation ceased with the dazzling recognition that he had supplied her with something far better than money. He’d given her an exceptional education! She, like he, could teach, perhaps in a school, perhaps at some remote plantation with several children. Much encouraged by this realization, she rose from the velvet chaise at the foot of the great four-poster, where she had been reading and brooding and went in search of Harry.

  Life at Gloryoak was tranquil and well-ordered under the firm hand of Tante Estelle, nurse to all the boys and now housekeeper, the tiny, golden-skinned woman whose hair was still coal black. Now in her middle years, her still seductive figure and slanting tawny eyes made it seem likely that she’d been more than a servant to old Matthew, but however that had been there was great affection between her and Harry. She had been wonderfully kind to Rachel, doing everything possible for her comfort, though accepting that she needed solitude. She’d made it clear that Rachel was welcome in her sitting room just off the kitchen, where she planned menus, did accounts, mended Harry’s clothes and sometimes played a graceful rosewood harp with a mermaid pedestal which Matt and Harry had given her for Christmas some years ago.

  If she loved Harry, she plainly adored Matt. On the occasions when Rachel joined her for tea, Tante Estelle spoke of Matt wistfully and invariably produced some letter of his. One of those letters told how an Apache chief, Cochise, had saved him from renegade Indians, and Rachel felt momentarily restless and bored with the tranquility of Gloryoak.

  No one seemed to know where Tom, the youngest brother was. From Tante Estelle’s expression and the few remarks Harry had let slip, Rachel guessed that Tom was headstrong and addicted to pleasures not easily found in Jefferson. He had studied for a while in Virginia but had last been heard from in New Orleans.

  Now, as Rachel inquired for Harry, Tante Estelle said she thought he was in the library. “You look happy, Miss Rachel.” Warmly interested honey-colored eyes searched her face. “Go right along to Master Harry while you’ve got that sparkle. It’ll do him a world of good. He’s been worried over you.”

  “I hope I haven’t been a burden, Tante Estelle.” Rachel looked anxiously at the white-aproned tinywaisted woman who reached only to her nose. “I wouldn’t have stayed so long except …”

  “Nonsense, child, we need somebody young and pretty around this big old house. And now you’ve got a smile again—well, you go right along to Master Harry!”

  Harry was at his desk in the big room that also served as his office. He rose quickly as she came in, and his eyes lit up at sight of her.

  “Why, Miss Rachel!” He came around to take her hands. “You look like a sunrise. And just when I was about to ask Dr. Martin to call on you!”

  “I’m sorry to have worried you, sir. You’ve been very kind. And part of my trouble has been not being able to think of how I could make a living. But I can teach!” At Harry’s amazed look, she plunged on. “Papa taught me well, sir. And if you could recommend me to a female institution or perhaps some remote plantation where there are children—”

  His long sensitive fingers tightened on hers. The gladness left his face. “Why, Miss Rachel, aren’t you comfortable with us?”

  “I can never thank you and Tante Estelle enough.” Bewildered, for she had certainly not wished to hurt him or seem ungrateful, Rachel floundered helplessly, increasingly aware of his closeness, the strength of his grasp. “But I can’t take advantage of your generosity much longer. I thought if you could help me find a place …”

  “A place!” The words seemed wrung from him. His gaze burned suddenly, frightening her. “Rachel, my dear, have you no idea of the place I long to make for you?”

  She stared at him mutely, the eager vulnerability of his usually controlled expression making her understand. Shrinking, feeling trapped and guilty, she hoped he would not go on, but his words came now as if a dam of restraint had burst.

  “I love you, Rachel. I’ve loved you since I saw you in the road, so frightened yet so brave. I knew and esteemed your father, and in you I recognize his qualities of thought and perception. It’s early to speak, and I’d think shame of taking advantage of your presence in my home, but when you talk of leaving, you give me no choice. Be my wife, Rachel. Do me that honor.”

  “Sir, I—I cannot.”

  He flinched. She echoed the pain in her own flesh. Why did she have to wound t
his man who had been so wonderfully good to her,

  “Why?” he asked after a long moment. “Do you find me distasteful? Too old?”

  “Oh, no! If I thought of marriage at all, sir, I can imagine no one with whom I’d more willingly assume that state. But I decided long ago I wasn’t suited for that condition.”

  He relaxed, his smile indulgent. “That’s whimsy bred of too much reading, growing up with no female influence child. You really are, you know, something of a young Amazon! But you must realize that a young woman cannot live alone, and you have no family. The powers of reasoning you inherited from your father will soon bring you to put aside your fancies.”

  If she’d rejected marriage before, how much more now, since the brutal attack, she detested and feared giving power over her body and life to a man. “No,” she said, shaking her head, trying to withdraw her hands. “It’s no fancy, Mr. Bourne. If I was of that mind as a child, I am doubly so as a woman.”

  She gazed up at him, strengthened by resentment of his patronizing attitude. What could he know of being held down, forcibly entered? And if he knew that she’d been raped, his enthusiasm for marriage would doubtless ebb immediately.

  “You loved that young man?” Harry asked slowly.

  “Yes. Always. Etienne was—he was part of the woods to me, the lake, the bayous.”

  “But he was going away.”

  “Yes. And he was angry because I wouldn’t marry him.”

  Harry gave a philosophic sigh. “It gives me hope that you rejected the proposal of someone you loved. At least it proves the notion of marriage is what dismays you, not me as a husband. Shall we let the matter drop for a time?”

  “Please, sir, I hope you’ll let it drop forever.”

  “You intend to mourn that boy?”

  Stung at that, she tried to free herself. A sound came from Harry’s throat. Drawing her to him, he kissed her mouth till she forgot he was Harry, knew only forcing hands gripping her. She writhed in panic, sobbing, gasping, coming back to her senses to find the kiss ended and Harry watching her with horrified shame.