Chris took in her blue dress that matched her hazy eyes and held out his hand. “Come here. I want to hold you before I go back to the ship.”
She paused as if debating whether she should tempt the fates, but joined him anyway, sitting carefully and smoothing out her skirts.
He snaked his arm behind her and enclosed her warmth with a sigh. He rubbed her arm through her linen sleeve before placing a soft kiss on her forehead. “I know this is a sham engagement, but you should know you’ve given me some of the happiest moments of my life in the last few weeks. You make me happy, Rachel Berry.”
She straightened with a jerk. “Oh—I nearly forgot something.” She reached into her reticule lying beside her on the settee and withdrew a small soft pouch from within. “This is for you. No matter what happens, you’ll have something to remember me by.” She pulled out the braided ring of her hair and placed it on one of his fingers.
He placed his hand out in front of him and splayed his fingers wide to look at the ring. When he pulled her close again, he covered her lips with his and kissed her as if his heart and body hadn’t gotten the message that they were only pretending.
He started out carefully tasting her lips and warming himself with the nectar that he know knew was all Rachel. When he moved closer into the kiss, thrusting his tongue more deeply into her mouth, she tangled her tongue with his, eagerly opening herself to whatever came next.
14
Rachel and Tenneh drank their early morning tea before the sun rose and shared a melon from the orchard. It was Thursday morning, one of the twice-monthly laundry days for the vicarage and any mission students who wanted to come along to help wash clothing, bed linens, and wound dressings in the river.
Tenneh always carried layers of baskets filled with laundry on her head which she made look effortless, but which made Rachel’s head hurt just watching her. Rachel chose a slightly easier method. She borrowed a donkey from one of the farmers who shared the mission gardens and orchards, and filled a cart with the vicarage laundry. A few students fell in behind them with their own bags of laundry, including Mingo and Eli.
When they’d finally gathered all the soiled items, they started on the half-mile walk up the hill above the vicarage to the river and waterfall where nearly everyone in Freetown gathered to wash their clothes.
In addition to balancing a teetering load on her head, Tenneh loved to gossip while they climbed the mountain path to the falls. “How late did the captain stay last night after your father and I went to our rooms?”
“I gave him the ring I wove, and he returned to his ship right after that.”
“That’s not what I heard.” Her voice was light, lilting, and teasing. “Hours passed before I heard his boots crunch in the gravel in the chicken yard.”
Rachel shot her a peeved look. “You would have been asleep by then. You always fall directly to sleep, drive hogs a little bit, and then you are in the land of Nod.”
“So you admit he left late enough that I would have been asleep?”
Rachel didn’t answer her jibe, but waved a hand in dismissal. “I suppose you’ll be telling that bouncer today at the kissing rock with the other gossips, no matter what I say.”
Rachel wished she hadn’t had to spend this morning of all mornings with the crowd of Freetown women who spent a monthly, communal laundry day sharing all the latest, juicy flam.
She would have preferred to linger over a cup of tea at the vicarage and recall the night before with Christopher.
Instead, she took her place on one of the higher ledges of the waterfall and soaked the linens in cold, cascading water before turning them over to Tenneh on the lower level to use their soap made from ashes, chicken fat and beeswax in a communal tub of water set over a fire.
After their laundry underwent the hot, soapy soak, they used long wooden rods to prod the heavier clothing clean in large wooden tubs. Fragile dresses were soaped by hand. A final rinse at the bottom ledge of the falls emptying into the river was followed by the women spreading larger linens over rocks to dry and bleach out under the sun. Tenneh and Rachel would take the finer dresses and shirts back to the vicarage to dry on hooks throughout the house.
In between laundry days, they had to tend to stains and do small batches of hand-washing at the vicarage.
The “kissing rock” was an odd shaped outcropping at the side of the falls which looked like a crude sculpture of a couple kissing. That was where the laundresses gathered to share a mid-day nuncheon and rest. And that was the center of news for the town.
When Tenneh and the other students stopped to go to the gathering, Rachel said she’d stay and keep the final rinsing going so that they could leave early. Whatever linens had not dried out on the rocks by then, they’d take them home to finish drying hung over ropes strung between trees at the vicarage.
After the others left, Rachel took off her slippers and set them out on a sunny rock to keep them from getting wet. She gripped the sides of the rocks with her bare toes and climbed with an armload of soapy sheets, crouching low to maintain her balance.
She stubbed a toe and nearly tripped at a shout from below. “Miss Berry—. Is that you?”
Christopher. Why was he here? Now the tongues would be set wagging for sure. Out of the corner of her eye she spied at least four or five women staring her way from the kissing rock.
She set down the baskets of wet linens and raced back down to meet him.
“What are you doing?” She hissed at him, like one of her angry geese whenever a bush snake dared slither past the gate. And then she softened. He was wearing the ring she’d woven for him from her hair.
Chris yearnedfor a sketchbook to capture the indignant frown on Rachel’s face. He had no inkling as to what rule he’d broken now, but he loved the way she looked in high dudgeon. He also longed to sketch the skillful way she’d negotiated the slippery rocks lining the side of the steep waterfall.
If she were a boy, she’d make a great midshipman with that kind of sure-footedness at heights. He shook his head hard at that stupid observation. Thank God she wasn’t a boy.
