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  His head lifted. He pried himself up to his elbows carefully and reached for her hand. With his long fingers gripping her wrist he turned it over and examined the gold band Rachel wore on her ring finger. “Why are you still wearing this? Isn’t your husband dead?”

  She was seeing the return of his mocking self-assurance. When Rachel tried to pull her hand away quickly he grasped it tighter. “It doesn’t matter, he wouldn’t like what I’m doing to you anyway.” When Rachel stirred under him he said, “But the way I look at it, if not me, then somebody else. I’m not going to let all this go to waste.”

  She was not shocked. There had been only one other man in Rachel’s life, a loving husband, and she simply did not know deliberate cruelty. No matter what had happened here in her house, in the rush of his anger, Beau Tillson had committed himself to an intimacy that Rachel knew only as lovemaking. As she stared up at him she was remembering the choked, unguarded passion of his words just minutes ago. Was he pretending that he could not remember that he’d cried that he wanted her so much that he couldn’t bear it? Not knowing any better, she had to accept that honesty. And she was certain that what had happened had shaken him, arrogant, spoiled, beautiful male that he was, so secure in his practiced power with women.

  More, she thought with a sudden thrill of intuition, there was something behind that hard assurance that remained deeply hidden and painful. And that would be dangerous to know.

  “Let’s find a bed.” His tone was abrupt. Slowly unclenching his body, he withdrew from her. At her first involuntary quiver he slid one hand under her, gripping her soft, generous bottom to hold her still. “Easy does it.”

  He rolled to one side, uncoiling the length of his body, long legs still in jeans, muddy boots, still half dressed against Rachel’s thorough nakedness. Turning, he almost furtively closed and zipped up his fly. Before she could sit up he seized her under the arms, pulling her up with him.

  With sudden forceful warmth he clasped his arms around her and bent his head, his mouth nuzzling her throat, the side of her face, and the fall of her tangled red hair that drifted over them. “Want me?” he murmured.

  She knew that she should tell him that he could not stay in her house, that although she wanted him and could not deny what had happened, it was impossible. But she couldn’t speak. All that was real was that he held her in his arms. Quickly, almost shyly, she nodded.

  Her assent seemed to surprise him, but only for a second. Then he bent quickly—his body fluid and mesmerizing in its natural grace—put his hand behind her knees and scooped her into his arms. The movement was effortless; he looked perfectly normal doing the dramatic. As Rachel gazed up at him she saw that Beau Tillson’s hair was wildly mussed, falling down into his eyebrows in sweat-gilded strands, the straight line of his mouth as blurred with kissing as her own. Like this he was a fevered dream lover, handsome, unattainable, never expected to be encountered in any one woman’s lifetime. And she, Rachel Brinton, had blundered somehow into his path.

  “Yes,” she murmured, twining her arms around his neck. She laid her cheek against the smooth expanse of his chest, with its sparse tangle of golden hairs, and felt it warm and real, rising and falling with his slow, even breaths.

  “Yes,” she said again, knowing that with that one word she was throwing away her soul.

  Chapter Six

  Rachel woke to the heavy feel of disaster. Even before the fog of sleep dissipated, she knew something had gone very wrong, something she dreaded even to remember.

  The next thing that penetrated her consciousness was a hard rapping somewhere, apparently on the outside of the house. And a woman’s high, fluting voice calling her name over and over: Rachel Brinton? Rachel Brinton? Are you there?

  Rachel lifted her hands to her face. Under her fingers her puffed mouth was tender and sore. One cheek felt as though it had been sandpapered from contact with beard stubble. Her eyes flew wide open.

  She jerked bolt upright in bed, memory crashing down on her as she stared numbly at the familiar things on the dresser opposite, her feminine possessions laid out on its surface with her typical orderliness—brush, comb, hand lotion, and a box of facial tissues in a rather fussy pink crocheted cover one of the co-op wives had given her. The closet door next to the dresser was ajar where she’d grabbed her terry-cloth robe for her shower last night. The sun poured through the ruffled white muslin curtains at the window, and lay in a pool of brightness against the old-fashioned braided rag rug. The world was still in place.

  And yet it wasn’t.

  She had slept in her bed in Beau Tillson’s arms, her legs threaded with the long, corded length of his, her body pulled tightly against him and his face, his mouth, buried in the red mass of her tangled hair. They’d woken fitfully from time to time to make love. She could still smell the musky male scent of his body on her skin. Had it really happened? Her answer was the evidence of the disordered bed, the rumpled sheets around her, and the incredible ache of her entire body.

  He was gone. She hadn’t even heard him leave. On the pillow beside her, still dented with the impression of his head, lay a white folded envelope. Rachel reached for it and with clumsy fingers slowly opened it. A piece of paper fell out. With it came a wad of bills in large denominations. The money drifted over the sheet.

  Rachel held the paper shakily up before her eyes. With desperate slowness it dawned on her that she was trying to read a typewritten agreement between the Ashepoo River Farmers Cooperative, Inc., and one Beaumont Lee Tillson, allowing that all use of a field road from the designated Eloree Point on the property of the aforesaid Beaumont Lee Tillson, owner, up and to Old Beaumont Docks on the Ashepoo River, and including access to the property of John J. Monck, now being rented to. Wesley James Faligant for agricultural purposes, be waived by the members of the Ashepoo River Farmers Cooperative, Inc., its members and officers and employees, in consideration of the sum of five hundred ($500.00) dollars.

  There was a dotted line below, and her name, Rachel G. Brinton, and under that, Executive Secretary for the Ashepoo River Farmers Cooperative, Inc., Draytonville, S.C.

  At the very bottom of the page a heavy masculine scrawl read: Sign and return to me.

  The woman’s voice had passed around to the back of the house and now seemed to be at the backdoor. “Yoo-hoo, Rachel Brinton,” it called. “You in there?”

  Rachel, staring stupidly at the paper in her hand, couldn’t move. If she had any justification for what had happened last night, it was that despite the terrible way it had begun, there had been a sweetness, a vast and wild tenderness that had enveloped them both. She’d found a mysterious need in this beautiful, enigmatic man who had slept with her in his arms. Now with this paper in her hand, that dream fled forever. Quite simply, he had used her. To make sure she knew the completeness of her humiliation and her defeat, he’d left the money and the paper for her to sign. And that paper would give him everything, every last scrap of what he wanted.

  The noises around the back of the house grew louder.

  She couldn’t stay where she was. She stumbled from the bed, scattering the money, the paper, bedclothes, and lurched into the living room for her bathrobe. The room was a disaster. The robe had been there, once, on the floor. Her throat muscles would not work; she could not call out to the person at the back door.

  She found her bathrobe and was jerking it around her as the voice entered the kitchen.

  “Rachel? Honey, I’m inside—your back door was standing wide open.”

  So that was the way he had left.

  She was hurriedly smoothing back the tangled wildness of her hair when a young woman almost six feet tall with a delicately thin body appeared at the entrance to the living room. She wore an expensive beige silk knit dress and matching wool jacket, and a sheath of beautifully straight-cut, flowing blond hair swept about her heart-shaped face to her shoulders. Under a thick fringe of bangs a pair of gentian blue eyes surveyed Rachel with surprise, then somethin
g like polite shock. The eyes widened. The pretty face assumed a quick expression of gaiety.

  “Goodness gracious, you are a sound sleeper!” The high, silvery southern voice rippled with nervous laughter. “I just hated to wake you up, honey, but with your car parked right there in the yard, I just knew you were here.” The blond vision looked around, making another polite adjustment to the room’s disorder. “Do you have your cute little house all to yourself? It must be”—she hesitated for a properly descriptive word, eyelashes fluttering—”real cosy out here this far from town.”

  Rachel stared at her, miserably aware that in her old bathrobe, with her feet bare and her hair disheveled, she looked like either a madwoman or a drunk with a hangover. Her eyes went to the wall clock just inside the kitchen. It was nine o’clock in the morning. She never slept this late. Never in her whole orderly life.

  “Oh, Lordy, don’t let me interrupt you,” the woman cried.

  “Go right on and get dressed, why don’t you? I’ll sit down here.” She stared down at the now partly dried gummy substance underfoot, which was the remains of spilled tomato soup. “And, uh, make myself comfortable.”

  Rachel shut her eyes for a brief second. When she opened them the tall woman was moving books from the sofa to sit down.

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice was a dry croak. The feeling that all this was some sort of nightmare persisted. “I’m sorry, did I forget you were coming?”

  “Oh, sugar,” the fragile blonde cried, “you don’t even know who I am, do you? You must think I’m an awful clod! But you know, your mother said you had a little old Toyota station wagon, and I saw it in the yard and knew you were home, and Sissy said you must be there, maybe you were sleeping late. So I just kept on knocking and hollering and then I thought, My goodness, suppose she’s sick with the flu or something and can’t get out of bed—” She stopped abruptly. “Oh, honey, what did I say?”

  Rachel felt as though blow after blow were falling on her flinching consciousness. If this woman would just say who she was—

  “Rachel, honey, I’m D’Arcy Butler from Charleston. My mama and your mama went to Wesleyan together, remember?”

  No, Rachel didn’t. She sank down in the nearest chair. The surreal quality of this morning wouldn’t stop. She’d spent the night with a man in her bed. To eyes with any sort of experience she was sure that the way she looked told the story. She didn’t remember anything about her mother’s having gone to Wesleyan University with someone from Charleston.

  “Well, your mama wrote a letter to my mama,” the silvery voice went on. “Lordy, I’ve been running around like a chicken with its head cut off these past few weeks, or I’d have been down here sooner. Daddy’s got his fleet in Manila and Mama’s gone out to meet him and then go on her Chinese art tour starting in Hong Kong, and I’m the only one looking after my brat sister right now.” She looked around brightly. “I’m here to kidnap you, honey, and take you back to Charleston with me. For as long as you can get away. There’s one thing about Draytonville—you can just get bored out of your mind, but I guess you know that by now. There simply isn’t a particle of excitement in this little town at all.”

  Rachel could hardly follow the beautiful woman’s rapid flow of words, accented with the distinctive Charlestonian version of American English. “Flee-yut,” meant ships. Mind was “mah-yund,” and here sounded like “hair.” Her mother, with an almost telepathic sense of her daughter’s needfulness, had written a letter to an old college chum to tell her that Rachel would be working in a small town south of Charleston.

  “Honey, you don’t feel sick, do you?” the other woman asked. “Look, why don’t you go take a nice hot soaky bath, and I’ll lay out your clothes. You’ll feel better when you get dressed.”

  Rachel’s mind considered the idea of anyone laying out her wardrobe, and in her bedroom where the disordered bed was faintly scented with the virile perfume of Beau Tillson’s lovemaking. “No I’ve ... I’m all right, I’m not sick,” she said quickly and unconvincingly. “I just overslept.”

  “Well, don’t you want me at least to fix you a cup of coffee or something?” D’Arcy Butler said, looking around her with a determinedly cheerful air, “I feel terrible getting you right out of bed. I bet I’m keeping you from having your breakfast,” She bent to pick up a damp man’s denim jacket from the floor. “Cute,” she murmured. She laid it carefully over the arm of the couch.

  Rachel shuddered. Her head was pounding, her body was aching with guilty reminders; she didn’t feel she could go on with this, and yet there was no way, apparently, to get rid of this lovely, cheerful young woman who wanted to take her to Charleston.

  D’Arcy went on, “Look, you just go take your bath and let me pack some of your things. I sort of promised your mama we’d take you back to Charleston—drag you by the hair of your head if we have to. From what I hear, you’ve been running yourself ragged. You do sorta look like death warmed over,” she observed. The penetrating look from under D’Arcy’s fluttering lashes suddenly revealed a woman both kind and warm. “That’s nothing that a few days away won’t fix,” she said more gently.

  D’Arcy wasn’t going to ask questions, Rachel realized with a sense of numb gratitude; she wanted to help. “I don’t think I can go,” Rachel protested weakly.

  “Oh, yes, you can.” Under the golden butterfly exterior there was steely determination. “Get on the telephone and tell anybody you have to. Honey, I know people down here. I used to spend my summers around here, and I know just about everybody in DeRenne County. You tell them you’re going to spend a weekend in Charleston with D’Arcy Butler, and that will take care of it.” With an abrupt, lissome grace she jumped up and headed for the bedroom door. “Now don’t argue, I’m going to pack a suitcase for you and kidnap you. It’s for your own good.”

  Before Rachel could stop her she had disappeared into the bedroom. A moment later there was the distinct sound of a gasp.

  D’Arcy reappeared at the doorway holding a wad of bills in her hand. “My God, did you rob a bank? Don’t you want to come in here and find a nice, safe place to put all this money?”

  Incredibly, in forty-five minutes they were ready. D’Arcy, like a slightly distracted Good Angel, swept through the little house putting everything in order, even mopping up the remains of the spilled soup on the kitchen floor and placing Rachel’s research books back on the bookcase shelves. A few telephone calls, as D’Arcy had said, were all that were needed. Rachel left a message with Billy Yonge and then made a call to Jim Claxton. To her surprise the county agent gave his enthusiastic approval, and added good-humoredly that he was looking up some good movies to tempt her with when she returned. A sudden pang of unexpected embarrassment attacked Rachel, and she stuttered her good-byes and quickly hung up. She was running away, she thought, staring at the telephone. But she felt that if she didn’t get out of Draytonville, even for a few hours, she would go mad.

  That money Beau Tillson had left behind was a problem. She couldn’t put it in the bank—in her account or that of the Ashepoo River Farmers Cooperative—and give the appearance of having accepted his offer. Nor did she want to put five hundred dollars cash in the mail to him. Worriedly, she considered turning it over to the lawyer, but rejected that when she thought of the questions he would ask. She couldn’t face Pembroke Screven, of all people, not when he’d expressly asked her not to see the man. The only thing she could think of was to deliver it to Belle Haven, and she wasn’t even certain where it was. For a moment Rachel wanted more than anything else to have D’Arcy Butler as her friend so that she could blurt out the whole miserable story.

  “I have to return the ... the money before I can go, Rachel said. “It doesn’t belong to the co-op.” An explanation was necessary, she knew; finding five hundred dollars scattered over a bedroom seemed to demand it. “Someone made us an offer and I refused it. I really can’t leave without returning it.”

  “Why sure, honey,” D’Arcy said easily. �
��You just tell me where you want to go and we’ll drop it off. I know every place around here. I used to spend my summers with my poor old Aunt Clarissa, until she got so crazy my mama wouldn’t have anything more to do with her.” D’Arcy picked up Rachel’s suitcase and started for the front door. “And my lunatic cousin Beau Tillson, who’s just as bad.”

  “Who?” Rachel stopped, blocking the way.

  “Who—Clarissa, or Beau? My Aunt Clarissa’s dead, poor old thing. And I thought every female under the age of ninety knew about Beau. He’s gorgeous—and sexy—honey, you just haven’t lived until you’ve seen a man that good-looking! He should have been a movie star. But then they said that about poor old crazy Clarissa too.” She shrugged. “All she ever had was her looks.” She pushed Rachel through the doorway and outside.

  “Beaumont Tillson is your cousin?” Rachel could hardly get the words out.

  D’Arcy set the lock and shut the door behind them. She guided Rachel toward the enormous silver-painted Lincoln Contintental parked under the trees. “Second cousin. Mean as hell—he broke his nose fighting when he was seventeen, beating up on some redneck over a trashy girl, and poor Clarissa had a fit thinking her precious brat had ruined his gorgeous face. Beau wouldn’t even let Clarissa drive him up to Hazel Gardens to the hospital to get it fixed—there’s still a teeny-weeny bump in it. But I just love him to death because when Beau wants to be sweet, he can charm the birds out of the trees. If you haven’t met him—” At the stricken look on Rachel’s face she stopped. “I’ll introduce you,” she ended quickly. “Well, never mind, I can see you don’t want to. Now, where do we take that old money?”

  “To your cousin,’ Rachel whispered, staring. “To Beaumont Tillson.”

  D’Arcy Butler’s younger sister had gotten out of the automobile and now stood waiting for them, squinting slightly in the bright morning sunshine.