Promise Me Forever Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Excerpt

  Other Books By

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  SURRENDER TO PASSION

  “Are you sure you want to do this, love?” Dan asked softly.

  Her voice was constricted by desire as she replied, “Yes, I want to experience everything with you.”

  “You will, Rachel, tonight and forever.”

  Tonight there would be no turning back. They would delve into the magic that enchanted and united them. They would be anchored together in heart and flesh.

  Rachel was nervous but Dan was so gentle and stirring that she responded to every kiss and caress, every unspoken promise of what was to come. Suddenly she knew why she had never felt this way before. Love made the difference. She loved Captain Daniel Slade! She could only pray that this special and powerful bond between them was strong enough to survive the secrets that lay ahead…

  Taylor-made Romance From Lebra Books

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  PASSIONS WILD AND FREE (3828, $4.99/$5.99)

  After seeing her family and home destroyed by the cruel and hateful Epson gang, Randee Hollis swore revenge. She knew she found the perfect man to help her—gunslinger Marsh Logan. Not only strong and brave, Marsh had the ebony hair and light blue eyes to make Randee forget her hate and seek the love and passion that only he could give her.

  Available wherever paperbacks are sold, or order direct from the Publisher. Send cover price plus 50¢ per copy for mailing and handling to Penguin USA, P.O. Box 999, c/o Dept. 17109, Bergenfield, NJ 07621.Residents of New York and Tennessee must include sales tax. DO NOT SEND CASH.

  Promise Me Forever

  Janelle Taylor

  DEDICATIONS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To Carin Cohen Ritter, the best editor and adviser an author can have.

  To Michael Taylor, the best husband and research assistant an author can have.

  To Randall Floyd, who gave me the idea for this “Black Widow” plot from one of his “Southern Mysteries” articles in an Augusta newspaper.

  To Sonia V. Migliore de Helfer, professor at Augusta College, for her translations into Spanish.

  To Linda Pritchard, who furnished me with many maps of historical Augusta, including an 1875 one with all the names of the original streets, businesses, sites, and residents of that time period.

  To the wonderful ladies in the Athens Welcome Center and Athens/ Clarke Historical Foundation, who provided me with 1875 data and period maps on Athens, my hometown.

  To the ever-patient and helpful staffs of the AugustaRichmond County Library and Evans/Gibbs Library for research assistance on all settings and topics used. My adopted towns of residence.

  To the nice ladies in the Savannah Welcome Center, the staffs of historical sites, and friendly residents of the lovely and gracious Savannah—one of my favorite Old South towns.

  To my Readers, with hopes you won’t think mistakes are made when I use the original names and locations of streets, sites, monuments, etc. All of these are accurate for 1875 in Athens, Augusta, and Savannah. I would also like to remind a few worried readers that characters’ unfavorable opinions of certain people and places do not reflect those of this author.

  Chapter 1

  “You sure it’s legal to buries Mr. Phillip in secret, Miss Rachel? Mercy, this be the third husband you done laid to rest in less than three years. All that nasty tawk about you is bound to start all over again.”

  “It can’t be helped, Lula Mae,” Rachel informed the housekeeper. “I don’t want trouble with the law or for more gossip to start and delay me before I can get away to take care of important business. This happened so fast. I need time to think and plan. You and Burke will have to keep silent until I figure out how to report this.”

  “You going to sells them gun and bullets cumpnies, soaz you’ll have money to leaves here afore the law comes chasing you again? What abouts that shipping cumpny here?”

  “I’m not going to get rid of any of them right now; I can’t, but I need to check over the two out-of-town companies immediately. I’ll tell Phillip’s three partners he’s away on business. I doubt they’ll become suspicious for a while. Later, I want to sell everything and leave Savannah. I can’t breathe anymore without creating gossip and dangerous suspicions.”

  “How you gonna hide this under the covers that long?”

  “If my claim he’s out of town doesn’t work, I don’t know yet. But I’ll find a way; I must!”

  Lula Mae clucked her tongue like a mother hen. “I kin jest hears them mean tongues wagging ‘bout the Black Widder and her new prey. My bones are aquivering in fear. This time, Miss Rachel, they’ll arrest you for sure, even if they don’t find nary proof you be guilty.”

  “I’ll check the house from bottom to top to make sure there isn’t any proof I caused Phillip’s death. The law didn’t find any evidence against me the other times, and they won’t find any this time. But before I get tangled up in another investigation, I need answers to some big questions. I have to go to Augusta and Athens to see George and Harry.”

  “What questions you need be answered, Miss Rachel?”

  “Nothing for you to worry about, my dear friend. When I get things settled, I’m gone from Savannah, probably from Georgia. Of course you’ll come with me, Lula Mae; I couldn’t do without you.” Rachel released a long, heavy sigh. She was so weary and scared. “The law has tried its damnedest to get me for three murders; I know how this fourth death will look to them and to the townfolk. This time they’ll be determined to slam a prison door behind me. I can’t make any mistakes, Lula Mae, so I’m going to handle this slowly and carefully.”

  Lula Mae patted the young woman’s shoulder. “You was too smarts for ‘em those other times.”

  “That isn’t how I would describe it, but cleve
r wits help when you’re under attack. For certain, the minute this news is out, Earl Starger will be slithering around like the snake he is. That man could really harm me. He’s the one who needs killing. If he doesn’t leave me alone, I might oblige him,” Rachel murmured, too exhausted and dazed to be aware of how what she was saying might sound to another person. She needed to get away from here so she could think clearly and make plans. She prayed for her husband’s troubled soul and for herself. “Good-bye, Phillip. If you’d been more careful, this wouldn’t have happened. It was too soon for you to die.”

  “Spring’s the most awfullest time to go adying.”

  “No time is any better or worse than another, Lula Mae,” she responded, though the spring of 1875 looked as if it was going to be the hardest time of her life, if she survived it. “I’ll get back to the house. Burke will finish up here. He sent Jim and Henry on errands so they wouldn’t be involved in this. I don’t want them getting scared and making a slip to someone. Burke will make certain this grave isn’t noticeable.”

  “Come along, Miss Rachel; I always takes good care of you after these things happen. You jest git weak as a kitten fresh from its ma when it’s over. Let’s git you in the house to rest up a spell whilst I tend my chores.”

  Rachel Anne Fleming Barlow Newman McCandless followed the trusted housekeeper to the lovely Georgian house. At twenty-one, Rachel was alone again. She envisioned what loomed ahead. The Savannah authorities would be all over her and their home as soon as she released this shocking news. She would tell the truth, but would she be believed, when even she suspected there was more to Phillip’s sudden and painful death than the cholera she was blaming? She recalled his last words, the strange and frightening mutterings only she had heard. The smartest and safest thing for her to do was investigate what Phillip had told her before she went to the law.

  At the front steps of the slate-blue wooden house with its rust-red trim, Rachel halted and instructed: “When Burke finishes with the burial, Lula Mae, bring him to me.”

  None of the three people saw the man who watched their actions and listened to their words. The tall, black-haired figure remained concealed behind a large live oak. His blue eyes, as dark and stormy as a violent ocean, exposed the mixture of anguish and fury he was experiencing. What Dan had learned about this sinister woman since docking last night and what he had just witnessed raced through his mind as he formed a grim opinion of his brother’s wife. No, he corrected in bitterness, his brother’s widow.

  When he and his first mate had visited a local tavern late last night, Dan hadn’t revealed who he was to the chatty bartender, a man who delighted in talking about the notorious and beautiful woman Phillip McCandless had married. He and his best friend had pretended they were sailors who were seeking work on Phillip’s ships and wanted to know everything about him before signing on with his Savannah firm. They had acted intrigued and appreciative.

  Dan squeezed some facts from all the enlightening rumors: at eighteen, Rachel Fleming had come to town and wed a rich older man; a month later Barlow’s son died from a suspicious fall; two months later, her first husband was dead under curious circumstances. The police had investigated her as the cause of both deaths, but couldn’t prove the men had been murdered. Gossip had begun, and the townspeople started calling her the Black Widow. She had waited only two months before preying on a rich but young man, then buried him in four months, a result of another dubious fall. That incident had evoked a second investigation—a longer and more persistent one—and had induced more gossip. Still, the authorities failed to find enough evidence to even arrest her.

  Following her second husband’s death, a local newspaper had carried a front-page article headlined “Beautiful Black Widow: She Mates and She Kills!” To protect itself from a lawsuit, it hadn’t used names or dates and had called the story a “fiction”; but everyone had known it referred to Rachel, and had believed it, including the bartender. The insidious vixen had then been cautious enough to sit in her golden web for a year before stalking her next victim. She had entangled his brother, who was dead now after spending eight months in her silky arms. Her motive for burying Phillip secretly escaped him, for she couldn’t claim her inheritance until she reported his death. All of her victims had been wealthy, and she was the only heir each time. Or so she believed. No one—including a desperate Phillip—knew for certain that Dan was still alive.

  Dan wanted to storm the house to drag the treacherous female to the law. Yet something halted him from taking swift and rash action. This clever female had gotten away with killing two previous husbands and, if he didn’t handle this matter with cunning, she might get away with Phillip’s death. He couldn’t permit that outrage.

  The hazy contents of Phillip’s last letter haunted him; it had been an urgent cry for help that had reached Dan too late. But he would see that justice was done. The information Rachel sought in Augusta and Athens must hold clues to her motives. Before he exposed this vixen’s foul deed, he wanted those answers, too, as evidence. He would return to town, take care of his cargo, seek more information about her, then come back later to meet his sister-in-law to study her for himself. This time, that little predator would pay, with or without the law’s help….

  “You sure we should burn all the eveedence, Miss Rachel?” the housekeeper asked. “How you gonna prove your story then?”

  Rachel glanced at Lula Mae and Burke. All three people were dressed in old clothes and gloves to prevent contact with the items they must handle. If they were contaminated with cholera as Phillip’s symptoms suggested, the disease could be spread by touch. “It has to be done for our protection, Lula Mae. I want everything Phillip touched last night and this morning burned or sterilized.”

  “I opened every winder, but it won’t be doing much good until we git rid of this mess.” Lula Mae looked at the rumpled bed with its stained and smelly covers.

  “Mr. Phillip shore wuz pow’ful sick las’ night,” Burke remarked. “Ah’ll see too it dese covers are burned good. We don’t wants no mo sickness here.”

  Rachel met the black plantation manager’s woeful gaze and replied, “Yes he was, Burke. Maybe a doctor could have saved him. I feel guilty about how he suffered and the attention he needed and never received.”

  “No, ma’am, he wuz too far gown down the heaven road, Miz Rachel. A man cain’t be called back onest he’s awalkin’ it with angels. Folk ‘round here gonna be pow’ful scared whenst they hears ‘bout dis sickness.”

  “That’s why I want it handled quickly and quietly, Burke. We don’t want to create a panic. If only I’d known Phillip was ill last night, I would have done something for him.”

  “No, ma’am, Miz Rachel. If’n you been in here whilst the fever wuz on him, you’d be ailin’ or be dead this mawnin’ yerself. Twernt nuttin’ you could do.”

  She knew Burke Wells was right, but it hurt nonetheless. When she had come to him early this morning, Phillip had appeared still drunk. The room had smelled horrible. She had opened the curtains, lifted a window for light and fresh air, then gone to check him. Phillip had rubbed an aching belly as he mumbled wild and crazy things in a desperate rush to warn her about some imminent peril. Then he had seemed to lapse into unconsciousness. She had felt his brow to find him cold, not burning with the fever she’d expected, and his skin had looked withered in the faint dawn light. She had lit the lamp nearby to examine him closer. His drawn face had been a strange color and his pulse had been so weak she could barely find it. Before Rachel could summon Lula Mae to fetch a doctor, Phillip had roused for a short time, mumbled more dire warnings, then died while she stood there helpless and in shock.

  Rachel eyed the bedside table where several whiskey bottles lay on their sides. “From the number of bottles he emptied, he was terribly thirsty,” she remarked. “Even drunk and ashamed, he should have called to me. He wanted to be left alone, so I obeyed. I shouldn’t have, because it was so unlike him to have behaved that way. I don’
t know why he did this to himself. We have to burn these garments and gloves and scrub our bodies. We can’t risk spreading this disease or catching it.”

  “Yessum, Miz Rachel, Ah un’erstan,” Burke agreed.

  “I’ll starts water boiling and warsh them dishes. You wants me to throw out the food left over? It might be gone to the bad.”

  “I don’t think tainted food was Phillip’s problem, Lula Mae, as you and I haven’t become ill after eating the same things, but, yes, do it just to be safe.”

  “When me ‘n’ Mr. Phillip went fishin’ day afore yesterday, I seed him drinkin’ dirty water from dat river ‘hind us. I tol’ him black water wuz bad.”

  Rachel knew cholera was said to come from eating contaminated food or from drinking contaminated water, but she didn’t think the contents of the Ogeechee River, which ran along the western boundary of the property, was the cause of Phillip’s death. “Many people drink and fish from the river, Burke. If there was a problem with its water, we would have heard about it. But it wouldn’t hurt to mention that to the law.”

  “It’s gonna be most awful when they comes.”

  “I know, but I’ll have to report it soon. Phillip’s gone, so it won’t matter if I wait a while before putting myself through another investigation. He insisted the business is urgent, so I’ll take care of that first. It’s certain the law won’t allow me to leave afterward.”

  “Dat law shouldn’t be so bad to you, Miz Rachel.”

  “We know I didn’t do anything wrong, Burke, but they won’t see it that way. You can bet your life they’ll give me trouble.”

  “You have witnesses dis time, Miz Rachel. Dey cain’t hurt you.”

  “They’ll only think you two are lying to protect me.”

  Burke Wells looked offended that anyone would dare question his word and honor. His dark eyes sparkled with anger and his fingers stroked his black mustache. “Deys bedder not go amessin’ with me ‘n’ mah friends.”