Against the Edge (The Raines of Wind Can - By Kat Martin Page 0,120
She ain’t used to the way we do things here. Aggie’ll talk to her, get her straightened out. Woman needs a man to take care a her. A couple of days, she’ll come around.”
“What if she don’t?” Pete asked. He looked like all the other Braggs, not unattractive if it weren’t for his shaggy hair and ugly brown beard.
“You can wait till hell freezes over,” Claire said. “I still won’t marry you.”
Mace drilled her with a glare that sent a shiver down her spine. “Fine, you don’t want to be a wife, you can be Pete’s whore. Service a few of the others, too. Choice is yours.”
All the blood drained from her face. She would have to marry one of them, or all of them would take her. For a moment, she thought she might faint.
Aggie’s arm settled around her shoulders, steadying her. Claire took a deep breath as the woman led her off toward the cabin she was staying in with Aggie and Sam.
“Don’t you pay no mind to Mace. We got good Christian values here. I’ll see to it you get yourself a husband of your choosin’. Don’t you worry about that.”
Her stomach rolled. Oh, God, what if Ben didn’t find them in time? Claire moistened her trembling lips. So far Aggie had been an ally. She couldn’t afford to lose her. “Thank you.”
Aggie patted Claire’s back as they walked up on the porch of the one-room shack, and Sam ran up to her.
“You didn’t say you’d marry him, did you, Claire? You’re still gonna marry Ben?”
Sam had asked her about it that morning, told her he had overheard them talking. He had asked if it was true and looked up at her with so much hope in those pale eyes so like his father’s it made her heart hurt. It made her glad she had said yes to Ben. It wouldn’t be the kind of marriage she had always dreamed of, the kind based on love, but there would be caring and it would be enough.
Aggie shooed Sam away before she had time to answer. “You go on now, this is grown-up business. You go check on the chickens, make sure they’re in for the night and the henhouse door is closed. We don’t want some fox getting into the coop.”
They went to bed early in the swamp, a little after the sun went down, which this time of year was right after supper. Lamps provided the only light and oil was costly.
“Go on,” Claire said softly. “Everything’s going to be okay.” But her hope was rapidly fading. She had learned this was not the same place the men had taken Sam before. It was deeper in the bayou and nearly impossible to find.
On top of that, Mace Bragg had sentries guarding the compound, two men on each shift now instead of just one. They were heavily armed and ready for trouble.
Claire thought of Ben and her heart squeezed. Dear God, even if he found them, she wasn’t sure he would be able to get them out without getting killed.
She turned and forced her feet to move through the door. The cabin was the largest of those built around the clearing, with a kitchen equipped with a wood-burning stove and a long table and benches where Aggie fed the men.
The place was so crudely constructed that in the daytime she could see light coming in through the cracks in the rough board walls. At night, she slept on a pallet on the floor while Sam slept on the rope bed next to Aggie.
The cabin was steamy with the smell of pork and vegetable stew. Biscuits were baking in the oven. She helped Aggie serve the men, then washed the tin plates in a big pot of boiling water heated on the stove.
Earlier, Aggie had put her to work washing the men’s laundry. It was done the old-fashioned way, immersing the clothes in a huge cauldron of boiling water, scrubbing the garments with homemade lye soap, then running them through the wringer of an old-style washing machine with a hand crank and hanging them up to dry.
It was a hot, brutal job that left her back aching and her hands red and rough, but at least it had kept her busy.
The dishes were done, darkness had settled in and the lamps were being snuffed. As she lay on her pallet, she heard Aggie speaking softly to Sam, settling him in bed beside her for the night.