Chapter Four
872 Words
Chapter FourEpilogue
Two mornings later, Valerie walked down to the small collection of graves by the woods. She sat on a beech wood bench and read the names on the thick, wooden headstones that were worn and crumbling from a century and a half of wind and weather.
Abigail Hunter 1821 – 1864, Smallpox
Mariah Hunter 1845 – 1864, Smallpox
Ephraim Hunter 1814 – 1865, Dysentery
Grayson Hunter 1833 – 1865, Typhoid
A long shadow fell over her.
“My mother and my younger sister passed while I was at the Battle of Spotsylvania.”
She glanced up to see Grayson standing over her with two mugs of coffee in his hands. She accepted one of them, glad she’d taught him how to use her automatic coffee maker.
He joined her on the bench. He wore the jeans, boots, and denim shirt she’d purchased for him in town yesterday. He couldn’t very well run around dressed in only the trousers he’d been wearing when the dream catcher had transported them both from the past to the present on Valentine’s Day. Although neither of them had had the need for much clothing at all since then. She recalled their heated, s****l play of the past two days with a satisfied smirk. They couldn’t seem to ever get enough of one another. She had a feeling she’d be deliciously sore and walking kind of funny for the foreseeable future.
She had thought she was alone when she woke in the present. She’d never been so overjoyed as when she had rolled over to discover him sleeping next to her in the mahogany bed. Her crushing disappointment had turned to elation the moment he opened his eyes next to her in the twenty-first century.
When they weren’t getting busy between the sheets, the past two days had been filled with catching Grayson up with history and the progress of technology since 1865. He could now surf the internet easily without her help, and he was vastly interested in learning to drive her car as soon as possible. First, she’d have to figure out how to get him a driver’s license. It wasn’t like they could tell the Department of Motor Vehicles the reason Grayson Hunter didn’t have a birth certificate.
She gestured to the graves. “My belated condolences about your family, Grayson.”
He wrapped his strong fingers around hers. “Thank you, sweetheart.”
They were silent a moment. She couldn’t contain her curiosity one second longer. “You look pretty good for a man dead from typhoid fever these past hundred and fifty years. Are you ever going to tell me who is buried in your grave? That’s the one I saw you filling in during the storm, isn’t it?”
“No one is buried in it, honey. No one is buried here at all, actually. All my kin are resting in a churchyard not far from here.” Then he calmly took a sip of his coffee and gave her fingers a squeeze.
“What? Then why are there grave markers here?”
“Because anyone hunting for the Confederate gold that disappeared while in my care might have come searching for it at Hunter’s Chance, as Davis did, but they would not be eager to dig for it among graves, much less where victims of deadly disease lay.”
“The gold Davis was after is… here?” She pointed at the ground before them.
“What’s left of it is. When I freed my father’s slaves I gave them what they could carry for their journey north. I figured it was only fitting that the Confederacy help them on their way.”
She was stunned. “What do we do?”
“When you bought Hunter’s Chance, you also purchased the right of ownership to everything here. The gold’s theft from the Dixie treasury is past the statute of limitations and is now considered found treasure.”
“How do you know that?”
“I Googled it.”
She choked on her coffee.
“You’re a rich lady, Valerie Amy Heart,” he drawled with satisfaction.
She sputtered, “But this was your land first. It’s your gold.”
He pulled the hinged case containing his photograph from his hip pocket. “Speaking of gold, I have a little more I’d like you to accept. I included something else in the parlor wall besides the letter and my photograph.”
He gently pressed down on a small lever and the frame holding his image slid down to reveal a small compartment. An elegant band of gold lay inside of a size that would fit a woman’s finger. Her eyes widened as he held it out to her.
“It was my mother’s. I would very much like it to be yours.”
Tears pricked the back of her eyes. For a moment she couldn’t speak. “Yes,” she whispered finally.
He grinned and slid the band on the fourth finger of her left hand. “’Til time do us part, Valerie Amy Heart.” He sealed the vow with a long, deep kiss.
When he lifted her head she grinned up at him. “Should we go find some shovels?”
“Later. The gold’s not going anywhere.”
“So what happens next?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t lived that part yet.”
She laughed, recalling she once said the same words to him.
“But I do know that I have some important business with my Valentine right now that won’t wait.”
He set their mugs on the bench and rose, sweeping her up in his arms. The urgent desire she’d seen so frequently in his eyes the past two days was back and burning just as bright as ever.
“Sounds good to me, Rhett.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
“Frankly, my dear… I’ll tell you later.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck as he carried her to Hunter’s Chance and across the threshold of their home.
- Writer
