Rafe Read Free Page A

face.
    â€œLady Clayton to you,” she said, her voice rasping viciously.
    Julie ignored the slap as best she could. For a moment her eyes burned darkly, but she nodded, curtsied again and corrected herself as befit her position. “Yes’m, Lady Clayton.”
    Slapping the young black girl didn’t help. The hurt was still there. Bitterness and burning rage and frustration shook Micara as she stared down at the top of the slave girl’s suitably bowed head. Hate her as she did, it wasn’t the girl’s fault. What fault there was lay with her. She alone had played the fool. Micara turned and fled down the hall and into her bedroom, where she slammed the door behind her and sat, panting, on the canopied bed Ezra had so pointedly avoided for the last two years. The decanter was in front of her on the night table. She stared at it. Could she have forgotten placing it there? Without thinking she reached for the warm red liquid and filled her glass to the brim.
    Outside in the hall, Julie rubbed her stinging cheek, then smiled at the thought of the secret that wasn’t a secret, the knowledge of which brought Micara Clayton more pain than a dozen slaps. The black girl straightened her dress, pressing the bodice tightly over firm young breasts, enjoying the pleasure of her own hands as they travelled down her stomach and to her thighs. She would remember the slap the next time she lay with Ezra Clayton and stole the power of his loins from the puffy-faced woman she served. She moved down the hall humming a little tune, underscored by the echoing distant shouts drifting through the hazy trees, coming from the direction of the pit.
    The braves split up immediately, one moving to the left, the other to the right. They stationed themselves across the pit from each other and stopped to stare at Rafe, to take the black man’s measure. Monsieur Bernard had taught them well—there was no way Rafe could keep all senses riveted to two spots thirty feet apart. He must see to it, then, that the preliminaries were kept to a minimum and dispensed with hastily. The more time he gave them, the greater their advantage. Hardly thinking, he chose the one to his left and moved toward him lazily, the machete still hanging loosely at his side. The Indian sprang away from him and crossed the pit to stand by his companion. The two conferred briefly in soft, barely heard whispers, giving Rafe the few extra seconds he needed for his appraisal. A few was all he wanted. Like sleek hunting animals they moved again, flowing to either side, stalking the black beast at bay.
    Rafe backed to the wall and waited, loose, ready for their next move. “Let the lion attack if he wants to,” his father had said. “You will learn much from this. Then you must threaten but not attack. From these actions you will know all you need to know, and it will be easy for you to kill him.” His father had been right.
    The Creeks moved like lightning, pouncing suddenly from both sides. Their tomahawks whistled through the air, one high and one low. But Rafe wasn’t there. As their shoulders moved in commitment to the throw, his foot went behind him and pushed him from the wall, sending him rolling over his shoulder to the middle of the pit where he sprang to his feet, knees slightly bent as the braves rushed to retrieve their weapons, a hint of embarrassment clouding their confidence. Their attack had given Rafe the information his father had promised. The one to the right would go high, the one to the left low. Monsieur’s trick hadn’t worked.
    He sprang at them before they could fully recover their poise, his machete whirling in front of him, cutting the humid air in humming chunks. The braves separated, spinning away from him gracefully, their knives flashing behind them as they spun. Rafe stopped before he hit the wall and twisted around to his right, in the direction of the faster of the two. Silence hung over the