In a Stranger's Arms (16 page)

As he tiptoed past the children’s room, Manning almost gave in to the temptation to push their door ajar and... do what? Stand beside their beds, feasting his hungry eyes on Tem and Varina while they slept? He’d barely have enough light to make out their shapes under the quilts. Blow a kiss or whisper a word of goodbye they might hear in their dreams? The dog would probably start barking and wake everyone.

With only a slight hesitation in his step, Manning kept going down the stairs and out the door. Across the newly repaired porch and back to the stable, where he harnessed his gelding and Caddie’s old mare to the buckboard.

Birds piped and trilled in the cool half-light and beads of dew glistened on the grass as Manning drove around to the mill. There he loaded samples of cut lumber and furniture, then headed east to peddle his wares.

How often, Manning asked himself as he drove toward Washington, did two of the best and worst moments of a person’s life crowd together in the space of a minute?

When Varina had called him Papa, pride and happiness had swelled so rapidly in his heart it had pained him. In those few sweet seconds, he’d guessed how a fledgling bird must feel the first time it abandoned its safe, dull perch and soared skyward.

Then Caddie had taken aim and shot him down. His spirits had plummeted back to the hard ground of real life. If his body had done the same, breaking every single bone, he doubted it could have hurt worse.

Ever since he’d come to Sabbath Hollow, he’d been able to distract himself from unwelcome thoughts and feelings by keeping busy. Concentrating on practical matters over which he exercised some control. Fixing up the house, restoring the old mill, hiring workers, supervising the day-to-day operations. On a long wagon ride like the one he was taking this morning, what could a fellow do but think?

All the secrets, fears, regrets, doubts and yearnings he’d been running from caught up with him on the road to Washington that day. Perhaps the chase had made them stronger, or the energy he’d spent trying to outrun them had exhausted his defenses. Either way, he was no match for them.

He’d been a damned fool, he decided, to let himself get so intimately mixed up in the lives of Caddie Marsh and her children. It had been such a long time since he’d cared about another person that he hadn’t been prepared for Tem and Varina to take immediate possession of his heart.

And their mother? She excited such a seething stew of emotions within him. Some good, some bad, but all far too intense for his liking.

Long ago he’d learned that caring about folks gave them the power to hurt him. In the long, empty years since his boyhood, he’d forgotten that harsh lesson. Until yesterday, when Caddie had given him a remedial course.

Promise or no promise, he wondered if they all might be better off if he didn’t return to Sabbath Hollow.

Himself most of all.

“Face facts, Caddie-girl. You’ve seen the last of that carpetbagger.” Lon Marsh looked over the bustling mill and woodwright’s shop with the air of a fond parent indulging his children in a game far beyond their ability. “What a shame you didn’t heed my warning about him.”

Caddie’s fingers tingled, wanting to slap the gloating grin off her brother-in-law’s face. Perhaps his words wouldn’t have aggravated her to the same degree if they hadn’t so closely mirrored her own worst fears.

Not for an instant would she give Lon the satisfaction of knowing it, though. “I declare, I don’t know who you’re talking about. We don’t have any dealings with carpetbaggers around here.”

“I’d say marrying one is pretty good dealing.” Flicking the ashes from his cigar, Lon called out, “Wouldn’t you say so, Bobbie?”

Bobbie Stevens walked toward Lon and Caddie. “I’d be obliged if you’d put that cigar out, sir. Sawmills and fire don’t mix real well.”

For an instant, Lon’s mask of affability slipped. The mocking twinkle in his blue eyes hardened, like the surface of a pond in January. If Lon had his way, it proclaimed, Bobbie Stevens would regret that polite but firm request and all it implied about the young man’s loyalties.

Caddie suppressed a shudder. Her instincts about Lon had been right on the mark. What would happen to her and the children if Manning didn’t return, and she had to stand against this man on her own?

In less time than he needed to take a deep draw on his cigar, Lon Marsh became his old too-charming self. “Trouble with sawmills and fire, Bobbie—” He chuckled and let the smoking brown cylinder fall to the ground, where it set a few blades of grass alight “—they mix too dang well.”

Stamping out the tiny blaze with fierce vigor, Caddie couldn’t decide if she was glad or sorry not to have a gun in her hand. “Bobbie, could I trouble you to fetch a little water and douse this bit of ground?”

“Surely, Miz Caddie.”

She held Lon’s gaze as she listened to the retreat of Bobbie’s uneven gait. When she decided the young man was no longer within earshot, she pointed to Lon’s horse. “If you’ve got nothing better to do than stir up trouble, I suggest you go do it somewhere else. Folks here are busy preparing to fill the orders my husband will bring back from his travels.”

Her brother-in-law smirked as if she’d just told him a particularly amusing joke. “As a matter of fact I came by to offer you and the young’uns my advice and support. Seemed the least I could do, as head of the family. We both know that Yankee’s skedaddled right back where he belongs, once he found out this place wasn’t goin’ to make him a millionaire overnight.”

Caddie didn’t dare let herself believe that “I—I know no such—”

His smirk became an outright leer as Lon’s gaze roved over her. “Or maybe he found out a good-lookin’ woman can still be cold as creek water when you get her in bed?”

If he’d struck her hard across the face, the man could not have shaken her worse. All Caddie’s bewildering feelings about Manning and Del threatened to overwhelm her, along with her crippling doubts about herself as a woman and a wife.

She countered with the only ammunition she possessed.

“You’ve got no right to Sabbath Hollow, Lon Marsh, and you’re never going to get it.”

As Caddie turned to stalk away, she nearly barreled into Bobbie Stevens, returning with a pail of water. Snatching it from his hands, she pitched its contents over the small circle of blackened grass. And Lon’s handsomely buffed boots.

He jumped back, cussing.

Caddie passed the bucket back to Bobbie. “If Mr. Marsh doesn’t leave peaceably, send a couple of boys to escort him off the property. At the point of a pitchfork if need be.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I can find my way,” Lon growled. “You’re making a big mistake, Caddie. Don’t say I never gave you the chance to mend fences. You’re soon going to need a friend like me, but I won’t be there.”

She walked away without another word. Head held high and back straight in the regal bearing her mother had taught her.

Let Lon taunt and threaten. Even if Manning didn’t come back, she’d be able to hold on to Sabbath Hollow now that the mill was operating.

And the children? she asked herself that evening as the three of them ate supper in silence. Again.

Tem and Varina would manage just fine without a Yankee stepfather, her pride insisted. He’d kept so busy at the mill and making repairs to the house, they would hardly notice his absence.

Her son soon disabused her of that hopeful notion.

“When’s Manning coming home, Mama?’’ asked Templeton, as Caddie tucked him in for the night.

“I can’t say for certain, dearest.” She tried to sound matter-of-fact, and more confident than she felt. “It all depends on how long it takes him to find folks willing to buy our wood and furniture. No telling how long that might be.”

“A week?” It wasn’t like Tem to persist in questioning once she’d given him an answer, no matter how vague. “Two?”

Caddie sensed a vigilant attention from the unmoving form beneath the quilt on Varina’s bed. Her daughter hadn’t spoken a word to her all day.

“It could easily take as much as two weeks, if he has to go on to Baltimore.” She ran a hand over her son’s hair and pressed a kiss on his puckered forehead. “I know you’ll miss Sergeant sleeping at the foot of your bed, but while Manning’s gone we need the dog to keep watch outside. You’re old enough to understand that, aren’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The boy’s words didn’t carry much conviction.

“Good.” She didn’t need enthusiasm—just obedience. “Good night, dear.”

Caddie planted a kiss on Varina’s forehead, too, while the child squeezed her eyes shut tight in an unconvincing pretense of sleep.

Closing the nursery door behind her, Caddie wandered to the end of the hall and hovered outside Manning’s room.

Since the early hours of that morning, when she’d woken to find him gone, a bilious ache had lodged in her stomach. In spite of her defiant words to Lon, nothing she’d done all day had been able to ease that nagging uneasiness.

Now, with the house quiet and nothing else to occupy her, it intensified. Would Manning return to Virginia, as she’d assured the children and insisted to their uncle? Or would he keep right on riding north and never come back—driven away by her suspicion and ingratitude?

With the heightened caution of a spy venturing into enemy territory, she stole through the open doorway and stood by Manning’s bed.

Some unspoken compact had kept her from entering this room since the day he’d taken possession of it. He made his own bed every morning, depositing clothes and linen outside the door on laundry day. Perhaps she should give the place a thorough dusting and airing before he came back.

If he came back.

The possibility seemed less and less likely as Caddie stared at the empty coat hooks beside the door, slid open the bureau drawers and peeked beneath Manning’s bed. He’d taken every blessed thing he owned.

With no brother-in-law around to oppose and no children to reassure, Caddie sank onto the bed, feeling more empty and forlorn than when she’d heard the news of General Lee’s surrender. More twisted with guilt than when she’d seen Del’s name on the list of casualties after his last battle.

As she rested her head on Manning’s pillow, inhaling the faint aroma of his shaving soap, Caddie acknowledged that she’d felt more guilt than grief on learning of her husband’s death. Del had joined the Army of Northern Virginia to escape the unspoken hostilities of their marriage. She had driven him to take up arms, which made her as responsible for his death as the faceless soldier who’d killed him in combat.

Had she nursed her deep bitterness against the Yankees because she couldn’t bear to lay the blame at her own doorstep, where it belonged?

Caddie wasn’t sure she had the courage to answer that question honestly.

One possibility she could not escape. In her guilt and misplaced spite, she had driven a far better man out of her children’s lives. If some miracle should bring Manning Forbes back to Sabbath Hollow, Caddie vowed, she’d find a way to keep him there.

“A man came by today and left this for you, Mrs. Forbes.” Dora handed Caddie an envelope when she returned from the mill at suppertime. “Yankee fellow, by the sound of him.”

Manning? The name whipped through Caddie’s thoughts as she tore open the envelope. Of course it couldn’t be, she realized, even before she had time to unfold the paper inside. Dora knew Manning by sight. The girl would have said it had been him.

Perhaps he’d sent a message by way of a friend, though.

Caddie wished she’d been at home, to invite the stranger in. Over a cup of coffee or a drop of spirits, she might have learned a little more about her husband’s past than he’d been willing to divulge.

Expecting some account of Manning’s trip or a message to say when he’d be returning, she had to read the words on the paper several times before she could make sense of them.

“Bad news, ma’am?” Dora turned from the stove, a big wooden spoon in her hand.

“It—” Caddie shook her head, holding out the document “It’s a bill for back taxes on Sabbath Hollow.”

Sinking onto the nearest available kitchen chair, she reread the sum demanded. “We can’t pay this. And we have more resources than most folks hereabouts. Are they fixing to evict the whole county?”