Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 by Patricia Hagan

mansion stood on a hill above the, clearing, barely visible from the distance. A young black man came running from that direction, waving his arms frantically. “Don’t you hit her, Tate. You hit me instead…” He reached the clearing, face churning with fear and anger, chest heaving with exhaustion from the run. “I give her that meat. You cut off her food to punish her las’ week, and she an’ that baby were starvin’. I had to feed her, don’t you see? If you beat anybody, beat me.”
    Luke Tate turned. “I’ll beat the both of you,” he screamed, bringing the whip down with a crackling whistle through the air. The lash cut across the black man’s face, laying open the flesh. Covering his face with both hands and shrieking in pain, he slumped forward in the dirt.
    The black woman cried, struggled to her feet to reach the young man, but Luke’s whip slashed again—this time across her back. She was no match for the cutting leather, and she crumpled under the first blow—the blood already flowing from the slice that laid open her skin.
    Luke raised his arm again, but Kitty had managed to make her way out of the brambles by then and was running toward him, crying, “Stop! Stop that, you dirty bastard, Luke Tate!”
    He turned as she threw herself upon him, raking his face with her clawing hands, kicking at him, pummeling him with her fists in a rage of fury.
    For a moment, she’d caught him unaware, but he quickly recovered to fling her away effortlessly, throwing back his head to laugh and sneer at her, “You shoulda killed me when you had the chance, you little spitfire, because you’re going to get the beating you deserve.”
    He raised the whip high above his head once again, and Kitty threw up her arms to protect herself as best she could. Closing her eyes in anticipation of the cutting slice that would be crashing down upon her—she blinked them open again at the sound of his laughter—and saw that he was flinging the whip aside.
    “Naw, it’d be a shame to mess up anything that looks like you do.” He leaned over, and she could smell the redeye on his breath. Scooping her up as she hit at him uselessly, he roared, “A good fuckin’ is what you need to calm you down, and I’m the man whut can give it to you…”
    He started off with her slung over his shoulders, in the direction of one of the slave cabins. “Get the hell outta there!” he roared, and slaves scattered, emptying the shack.
    Stepping inside, he set her down and hooked the fingers of his left hand into her bodice and ripped it down, her breasts spilling out. “God…” he breathed, as she staggered backward, trying to cover herself.
    “Don’t you touch me!” she cried hoarsely, darting her eyes about for any kind of a weapon. “Nathan will kill you for this…”
    “I’m willin’ to take that chance…” He licked his puffy lips as he fumbled with his pants. “You just lay down on that cot yonder and it’ll be good for both of us. You need this, Kitty…you need tamin’…”
    “Not by you, Tate!”
    They looked to the doorway where Nathan Collins stood, fists clenched, legs apart, eyes boiling with the fury of his anger. In one of his clenched fists, he held the bullwhip Tate had discarded, and without warning, he brought it slashing down across the overseer’s shocked face.
    Tate fell to his knees as Nathan hit him again, and the sound of the leather slicing into flesh and muscle made bile rise in Kitty’s throat. She stumbled away from the shack and out into the cool November air, retching against the hands she pressed to her lips.
    The sounds of the whip stopped. She could hear Tate moaning. “You get off this land by sundown,” Nathan yelled. “If I ever lay eyes on you again, I’ll kill you. I swear it!”
    She shook herself back to reality, moving quickly from the porch across the clearing to where a crowd was gathering around the pregnant woman. They parted respectfully as she shoved her way