In a Stranger's Arms Page 17

  “I swear to you, Caddie, I am not Del Marsh. What do I have to do to prove it?”

  Thank goodness he hadn’t yielded to the temptation to pretend he was Del. That would have meant a lifetime of lies compounding his other sins.

  Caddie’s hard stare bored into him, drilling for the truth. “If you aren’t Del, then who are you, Manning Forbes? And what have you got in that box you don’t want me to see?”

  He’d sooner she’d ordered him to strip naked and march through Mercer’s Corner. For a mad instant, he considered showing her Del’s letter and concocting some story about getting it from Del before he died. But Manning knew his guilt would blaze from his face and scream from the tone of his voice. Then Caddie would know... and hate him. His fingers tightened convulsively around the box.

  Then it came to him.

  Could he offer another secret, a smaller shame to divert her attention from the big one? Knowing Caddie’s proud nature and unblemished pedigree, even this might cause her to rethink their paper marriage, now that Sabbath Hollow was no longer in peril.

  It was a risk he had to take.

  “Very well.” He lifted the lid and sifted through the papers inside, making certain to leave Caddie’s own letter undisturbed at the bottom.

  He handed hear a stiff, yellowed document. “This should provide the answers to both your questions.”

  Caddie willed her hand not to tremble as she reached for the paper. But how could she hold it steady when the rest of her body quivered like it had the palsy?

  Finally she was about to discover what Manning had been hiding. Perhaps what had been standing between them like a thick, transparent wall of ice. Would the information in this document break that invisible barrier? Or would it destroy the fragile, precious understanding between them?

  For a mad instant, she wanted to shove the paper back at him without looking at it. If she did, perhaps Manning might look at her the way he’d looked when she trusted him to take the Marsh silver away for sale. But trust had to run both ways to be worth anything. If Manning had trusted her, he would have shared his secret with her before she forced him to.

  She snatched the piece of paper from him and wilted back onto the bed as her quaking knees gave way. After carefully unfolding it, she began to read.

  From what she could make out it was a baptismal certificate issued by a church in southern Pennsylvania. For the adopted infant son of a couple named Prudence and Jeremiah Forbes, natural child of an unnamed mother, deceased. The date on the document tallied with her own estimate of Manning’s age, about a year younger than Del would have been.

  So Manning Forbes was a Yankee, after all. Then Del must really be dead. She would have no magical second chance to mend what had gone wrong between them. No chance to forgive and to beg forgiveness.

  “This is what you’ve been hiding?” Compared to her imaginings, it seemed pretty tame. “The fact that you were born on the wrong side of the blanket, as my late mother would so delicately have put it?”

  Manning nodded, and Caddie had no doubt he was telling the truth. The man’s face had paled to the color of putty.

  “Maybe it was different here in the South when you grew up.” He stared resolutely at the floor as he spoke in a tone as bitter as wild chicory. “Where I come from, that kind of thing’s a stain you carry with you your whole life.”

  An enormous lump rose in Caddie’s gullet. Where she came from, bastardy was like a dead horse in the middle of your great-aunt’s parlor—folks would choke to death on the stench before they’d speak of it. Up until her marriage to Del had started to sour, the worst moment of her life had been discovering one of the house slaves was her natural half-sister.

  She’d never met a white person of illegitimate birth. “I reckon you have a point.”

  No wonder Manning had come South after the war—for a chance to escape his tainted birth and enjoy a position of relative power.

  “Would you have accepted my offer of marriage if you’d known about this from the start?” He glanced up, pinning her with his gaze.

  She could lie, of course, but he’d know it in a minute. She’d come within a hairbreadth of rejecting his proposal, anyhow. If she’d known about his parentage, or the lack of it, she would have refused him for sure.

  Before she could speak or shake her head, Manning divined her answer. “I thought not.”

  He sounded like a man who had spent his life trying to push a heavy rock up a hill, only to have it roll back over him and all the way down again.

  “Those Forbes people, were they good to you?” Caddie wasn’t sure what made her ask. Perhaps she still needed some intangible proof that tied this man to this document and this identity. Once and for all.

  “They meant to be, I think.” Manning stared at the pattern of inlay on the top of his wooden box. “At least my pa did. Looking back, I don’t suppose they should have taken me. They’d had a son who died, see? Pru took it hard—pined for him. I didn’t find that out until after she passed on. Pa must’ve figured another child would help her get over it. Maybe it was too soon or maybe it wouldn’t have mattered.”

  The wistfulness she’d sensed in Manning from the first moment they’d met suddenly took on form and shape. Somehow Caddie felt guiltier about prompting this confession than she had about looking through his papers.

  “Pru might have looked on loving another child as disloyal to the memory of her own boy.” Manning shrugged. “When I was small I figured it was because I didn’t behave well enough. Later, when I found out about my real ma not being married, I wondered if that was what kept Pru from caring for me.”

  The hurt in his voice was so raw and rough, it rasped on Caddie’s motherly heart. When she tried to tell Manning he needn’t say anything more, her throat was too constricted to speak.

  For a moment he fell silent, as though he had read her intention. Then he passed his hand over the lid of the box in a kind of awkward caress.

  “Things were a lot better with my pa. The best times I recollect as a boy were working beside him in the wood shop or once in a while going fishing. He was careful not to make too much of me around Pru, though. We both knew she wouldn’t like that. Pa passed on the year I turned fourteen and Pru died a month or so after the war started.”

  Suddenly Caddie realized how wealthy her childhood had been. Not just in money and the things it could buy, but in the company of her brothers and sisters, the love of parents so constant she could take it for granted. Even Mammy Dulcie and Uncle William had loved her. Now that she’d begun to realize how much they must have longed to be free all those years, Caddie marveled at their bountiful affection.

  Manning sighed. “That’s all there is to tell, really. Pa and Pru saw to it I ate well and had decent clothes and a pretty fair education. Pa gave me a start on learning a trade. I owe them a lot and I never really got the chance to pay them back.”

  As she struggled to frame some kind of reply, Caddie heard footsteps pounding up the stairs, accompanied by loud barking.

  “Mama!” Varina hollered at the top of her capable young voice. “Come quick!”

  She hardly needed to add the latter, since Manning and Caddie came running almost before she got the words out

  Manning scooped the child up in his arms. As Caddie shushed the dog, she remembered all too vividly the comfort and protection she’d found in Manning’s embrace. Could he have held her with any more compassion or tenderness if he’d been a lawful heir of the old Southern aristocracy? On the contrary, a lifetime spent on the fringes of polite society had better equipped him to offer a sympathetic hand to anyone who needed it

  “What’s the matter, precious?” Caddie checked Varina for blood or obvious bruises. “Are you hurt?”

  “Smoke,” Varina gasped “up on the ridge!”

  “The mill!” Manning thrust the little girl into Caddie’s arms. Then he barreled down the stairs, his feet striking every third or fourth step. The dog shot after him.

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sp; A queer, bottomless feeling lodged in Caddie’s stomach. What if they were to lose in minutes what Manning had spent months working so hard to build? Would he vanish from their lives just as quickly? Or would her shameless prying drive him away?

  Setting Varina on her feet, Caddie took the child’s hand and started down the stairs. “Come on, dear. Let’s see what we can do to help. You were a real smart little mite to come find us.”

  Drawn by the commotion, Dora came running from the kitchen.

  “It looks like there may be a fire up at the mill.” Caddie nudged her daughter toward Dora. “You two go call for Templeton, then you all come back to the house. Don’t stray too close to the ridge, now.”

  She headed for the door.

  “Where are you going, Mama?”

  “To ride around and call the neighbors for help. We’ll have that little spark out in no time—you’ll see.” Caddie could tell by their faces neither the young woman nor the little girl were fooled by her false optimism.

  She’d never saddled a horse by herself, but thoughts of Manning battling the fire on his own spurred her. If only she hadn’t relied all her life on strong, able black hands to do such tasks for her, she wouldn’t be losing precious minutes now. Fortunately, the gray gelding was a patient animal, or the whole plantation might have burned before Caddie was ready to ride.

  At last she set off cross-country, praying Manning’s horse could jump a fence if necessary. She tried to ignore the plume of dark smoke drifting skyward from the top of the ridge. Her alarm eased a little after she called at Gordon Manor and the Stevens place to find that neither Bobbie nor Alice had returned home yet. Caddie settled for borrowing several tin pails and riding off to the mill with them.

  When she arrived, the mill yard was boiling with activity that put her in mind of an anthill kicked open. Alice Gordon and another girl scurried back and forth from the wood shop ferrying containers of varnish and oil to Bobbie Stevens’ wagon, while Jeff Pratt held the skittish horse still.

  Flames crackled and a pall of smoke hung in the air, haunting Caddie with images of that harrowing night Richmond had burned. At least the fire had not yet spread from the nearby trees to the piled lumber or the buildings. It would only take one shift of the fickle wind to change that.

  “More buckets!” Bobbie Stevens lurched toward Caddie and relieved her of her burden. “Bless your quick thinking, ma’am.”

  She peered around through the haze of smoke, but saw no sign of Manning. “How can I help?”

  “Go fetch Doc Mercer. We don’t need him yet, but we may before this is over.”

  Part of Caddie longed to put as much distance as possible between her and the fire that stirred so many terrifying memories. Yet something inside her recoiled from the prospect of leaving when she might finally help Manning. A token repayment for all the help he’d given her since coming to Sabbath Hollow.

  She slid from the gelding’s back, fanning the smoke away from her face. “Doc Mercer isn’t likely to come on my say-so. Alice, can you ride?”

  The girl nodded.

  Caddie handed her the horse’s reins. “Then go into town and fetch the doctor. After that, could you stop at Sabbath Hollow and make sure Dora and the children are all right?”

  Alice glanced at Bobbie, who nodded.

  As the girl rode off, Bobbie handed Caddie back the last of her pails. “Fetch water from the millpond and wet down anything that looks likely to bum.” He glanced up at the sky. “And pray those clouds do something more than hang there looking black.”

  It took over an hour for the storm clouds to carry out their threat. Once they made up their minds, however, the rain quickly gathered momentum.

  With her aching arms as limp as a couple of wet rags, Caddie blessed every drop of water from heaven. Even when they sent sodden locks of hair straggling over her forehead, and cold droplets slithered down her back.

  The business was safe...for now, at least.

  “Looks like we can stand down, folks,” someone called.

  Caddie and the others staggered from the millpond back to the yard. Two horses, one of them Manning’s, stood hitched to a post near the wood shop. Dr. Mercer’s resonant tones carried from inside. He must have commandeered the place for a makeshift surgery, she decided, mildly surprised that the doctor had heeded their summons.

  After confirming with Alice Gordon that all was well with the children, Caddie once again looked around for Manning. She hadn’t laid eyes on him since he’d dashed out of the house. A fresh chill snaked down her spine, and this time the rain was not to blame.

  She caught the eye of Joe McGrath—at least that’s who she thought it was beneath the soot “Have you seen Mr. Forbes?”

  The boy bobbed his head and pointed toward the woods. “Saw him head that way with an ax a while ago, ma’am.”

  “An ax? Are you sure?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Reckoned he was fixing to cut a firebreak. Keep it from coining back this way if the wind shifted.” Joe squinted at something over Caddie’s shoulder. “Reckon that might be him coming now, ma’am.”

  Caddie spun around.

  It was him, all right. His shoulders bowed with exhaustion. A layer of soot on his face so dark the whites of his eyes seemed to glow in contrast. Hair bristling like broom corn. Not since her return from Richmond to find the plantation house still standing had Caddie beheld a more welcome sight.

  Forgetting the harsh words they’d exchanged such a short time ago and the lack of enthusiasm with which he’d greeted her last embrace, she launched herself at him.

  “Manning, thank God you’re all right!” Circling his neck with her arms, she drew his face down to hers. At the last instant, mindful of the young folks who might be watching, she kissed him on the cheek instead of on the mouth. A faint bristle of whiskers rasped her lips and she tasted smoke, seasoned with sweat.

  She couldn’t begin to make sense of the outlandish patchwork of feelings this man provoked in her, so much of it hopelessly tangled with her unresolved feelings for Del. Only one thing she knew for certain. Every time she faced the threat of losing him from her life, it frightened and grieved her as the loss of her first husband never had.

  Manning accepted her embrace passively. The poor man was probably too tired to raise his arms.

  “Let’s go home, wash up and get something to eat.” She reached for his hand.

  A sharp cry broke from his lips.

  “Manning?” She turned his hand palm-up. “Dear Lord!”

  The sight of raw, burned flesh made her gorge rise. She examined his other hand and found it almost as bad.

  “Doctor! Somebody get Doc Mercer. My husband’s hurt.”

  What if the doctor refused to treat him? Doc Mercer hadn’t made any secret of his contempt for her new husband and his outrage over their hasty marriage. She hadn’t done much to win him over, sassing him that day at Gordon Manor. If it would persuade him to use his medical skills on Manning now, she’d beg Doc Mercer’s pardon on her knees.

  “What have we got here?” The doctor emerged from the wood shop and strode toward them.

  “My husband’s burned his hands while fighting the fire.”

  “Let’s have a look then.” The doctor’s tone sounded brusque, but he examined Manning’s scorched palms with an uncommonly gentle touch.

  Manning kept his mouth tightly clamped and his strangely vacant gaze averted from his injuries. Caddie’s own palms tingled with a faint echo of the pain he must be suffering.

  “Could be worse,” pronounced the doctor. “I can clean and bandage them. Apply some salve. They’re going to hurt like hell for a while, though, worse than if the burn had been deeper. Let’s get this man back to Sabbath Hollow, where I’ll have better light to work and a dry roof over my head.”

  Caddie nodded, and after a brief exchange with Bobbie, she and Manning squeezed onto his wagon with Jeff, Alice and the others for a ride home, while Joe McGrath rode Manning’s horse.

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sp; As they drove off, the weathered shingles of the buildings faded into the gray downpour. In the distance, charred tree trunks spiked the air like the jagged black tines of the devil’s own pitchfork. Reminding them how close they’d come to losing their precarious foothold on the future.

  To Manning, it felt as if that short wagon ride back to Sabbath Hollow would never end. The rest of his body might have turned to stone for all the sensation he felt in it. Only his hands were alive, quivering with pain beyond anything he’d ever known. It took every scrap of will to keep from crying out.

  In a futile effort to distract himself, he thought about Caddie throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him. For a magical instant he’d forgotten he had hands... or feet, or most anything but a heart. Then she’d clutched his hand, firing the pain to a whole new level of intensity.

  Perhaps he should have expected that. From the moment he’d met Caddie, she had lofted him to heaven one minute, then hurled him to hell the next. Not that she meant to most of the time, he conceded, his sense of fairness rising to the fore. She no more guessed his feelings for her than she’d known his hand was burned when she grasped it. That was just the way Manning planned to keep it.

  He was vaguely aware of the wagon pulling up outside the plantation house and Caddie ushering him into the kitchen. After checking with Miss Gordon that the children were safely tucked in bed, Caddie sent the girl to catch a ride home with the others.

  Collapsing onto a chair, Manning sprawled forward with his arms stretched out on the table before him. He heard the doctor murmur something to Caddie about warm water and a clean cloth. The next thing he knew fresh barbs of pain raked his right palm.

  Roaring the foulest curse he could think of, Manning tried to wrench his hand back. The leathery old physician held on with a strength of grip that surprised him.