From This Day Forward (24 page)

And then he broke the contact, turning to the window again with an air of indifference belied by the tremor that ran through his body. "I'll bet you were good at convincing them to lower their guard."

"That was petty and unfair, Jason," she said unsteadily. "I don't deserve that."

The quiet stretched interminably, accentuated by the pounding of rain on the roof of the small cabin. Finally she had to say something to keep from going mad.

"At first your letters were very businesslike and to the point. Once when your letter came, he was too busy to reply, so he gave it to me and told me what to tell you. I wrote the letter. He proofed it and signed it, and I posted it. Well, as time passed I answered more and more of your correspondence until he finally stopped proofing my replies and—"

"Damn!" Jason exploded, pounding his fist against the wall with enough force to rattle the shutters at the window and tear a cry of alarm from Caroline's throat.

"I said we would not speak of it ever and I meant it," he growled, the fury in his eyes destroying her composure.

"How can we not speak of it, Jason?" She tried to quell the fear that trembled through her body at the violence reflected clearly in his eyes. "It will always be between us."

"What will always be between us is your treachery!"

Caroline turned her head aside, unable to bear the intensity of his accusing, hate-filled glare.

"I never meant to deceive you. I wanted to tell you—"

"Then why didn't you? Why the hell didn't you?"

"Would it have made any difference? No. You wanted to send me back almost as soon as I arrived. What could I possibly have gained by telling you?"

"I don't know anything about you, Jason,"
he mocked her, flinging the words at her like stones.
"Tell me about yourself, Jason.
Playing me for a fool."

"No! No, I only wanted you to talk to me, to tell me who you are—inside."

"You already know who I am. Jesus, you know more about me than anyone on earth. What more do you want? My soul? Do you want my soul, Caroline?"

The words seemed ripped from deep inside him, and for the first time since he'd confronted her with the letters that morning, she sensed a softness in him. He was as frightened as he was angry—frightened of her.

Her throat tightened with compassion for this powerful man who could be reduced to terror by the thought of caring for someone or having someone care for him.

"I never meant to hurt you," she said, her voice soft and thin.

"Hurt me?" He laughed shortly. "You can't hurt me! I don't care enough about anything to be hurt!"

If only it were so, Jason,
she thought, realizing for the first time that the barriers he'd built to keep the world out had failed to do so. Instead, they had become a prison, trapping him in a world of isolation and pain.

"All I want is you, Jason, your love—"

"Maybe you don't know me as well as you think," he said bitterly, his gaze fixed on something beyond the window. "I am incapable of love. Love is just a word to me, a meaningless word."

"This morning and last night..."

A smile curved his lips as he turned to face her, his gaze traveling the length of her body in a slow caress that sent hot color up her throat to her face. "I loved your body, Caroline," he said, moving toward her, his eyes burning with a hunger she recognized all too readily.

She backed away, aware of her precarious position. She was alone in the jungle with a man who desired her despite the rage that still pulsed through him, a man against whom she was utterly defenseless.

"Surely you know the difference," he went on, advancing as she retreated, his tall, broad frame blocking the scant light from the window. "I love your body now. That kind of love I understand. Is that enough for you? Will you prostitute yourself to me? Will you share my bed whenever I want and leave me the hell alone?"

He touched her cheek, his fingers warm and gentle on her skin. Swallowing hard against the fear and desire inside her, she stepped back out of his reach, and his hand fell away.

"No," she said breathlessly.

"Well, it's all I have to offer," he said. "It's all I've ever had to offer. You just never understood that. The rain's letting up, let's go."

Caroline stood her ground, folding her arms in front of her. "I don't believe that you sent for a wife just for... for..."

"Sexual fulfillment? God, you are naive, aren't you? Believe whatever you like. I'm going back to the
fazenda
."

"I know I'm not exactly what you asked f
or, but—"

Turning abruptly, he glared at her, his face reflecting comprehension and fury. "Derek never saw my request for a wife, did he?"

"He—he was in Europe and I...."

Jason turned as if he couldn't stand the sight of her, walking through the door and leaving her to gape after him.

"Jason!" she called, running after him. This time her hand on his arm halted him, but he stared straight ahead, refusing to look at her.

"I'd like to strangle you right now," he said.

Caroline backed away from the threat in his voice.

"You disgust me with your righteous indignation and treachery, pretending to be wounded by my reaction when all the while you've lied—lied about everything!"

"Please, Jason." She spoke rapidly before he could interrupt her. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I'm sorry I continued to write as Derek. But I sensed your loneliness, your need for someone to talk to. If I had revealed my true identity—"

"I'd have known to whom I was writing and I would have told you what I wanted you to know, not what I wanted Derek to know. You took that choice away from me. Have you no shame?"

Tears streamed freely down her face now. "I'm sorry," she choked out.

"Stay away from me, Caroline," he warned. "You'll be leaving when the mail boat returns. This time I mean it. I'll put you on board personally. In fact, I may send Ignacio with you all the way to Belem. The marriage can't be annulled now, you saw to that!"

Caroline flushed indignantly. "What? Are you accusing me of seducing you? How dare—"

J
ason turned on her, grabbing her by the shoulders in a viselike grip that tore a cry of pain from her throat. She leaned away from him, trying to pull out of his hold, but her struggles were useless.

"The marriage can't be annulled," he ground out, shaking her violently, his face trembling with barely suppressed rage, "but I'll arrange for a divorce. By God, I'll be rid of you once and for all."

He released her abruptly and her own momentum propelled her backward. Surprise and horror flashed across Jason's face as he tried unsuccessfully to save her from falling, but she landed on her rump in the mud with a jarring thud. He extended a hand to her, but Caroline struggled to her feet unaided, not knowing whether she was angrier at herself or him.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, a frown of concern marring his brow.

Good, she thought, let him worry, the brute. A thought occurred to her and she smiled inwardly at her own cunning.

"What if I'm pregnant?" She lifted her chin with her last vestiges of pride and courage. "Did you think of that?"

His eyes widened and she knew he hadn't. Neither had she, to be honest, not until that moment. In three years of marriage to Wade, she'd failed to become pregnant. She'd suspected there might be something wrong with her, but Jason didn't have to know that.

"No," he said, "I didn't think of that, but I'm sure you did. I guess we'll know by the time the mail boat returns, won't we? In the meantime, I want you to stay away from the slave village."

Shock tore through Caroline. "But you said I could go back and—"

"That was before I realized that your condition might be so delicate. You're endangering your life, and perhaps my child's, to say nothing of my liberty. Aiding runaway slaves is punishable by imprisonment, and they won't care that you're a woman or that I forbade you to go there. Besides, I don't want my pregnant wife exposed to sickness."

"But I've already had the measles," she reasoned.

"My word is final, Caroline! For as long as you remain here, you will do exactly as I say or I swear I'll lock you in your room. Is that clear?"

Caroline jerked free of his hold and drew herself up to her full height, glaring at him. "Quite," she said, her heart in tatters as she watched him turn and walk away from her.

Chapter Thirteen

Jason sat at
the
bar in
the
small,
crowded
tavern
, nursing a glass of whiskey and lamenting his decision to come to Manaus. He hated the city, any city, but Manaus in particular. It reminded him of the Irish Channel and the life he'd been running from all these years.

So many things about Manaus touched the chord of memory inside him—the stench of the sewers, the sight of barefoot children playing in the streets, the sound of steam whistles from the river. He could imagine what life must be like for those barefoot children running back to their tenement homes in a part of Manaus that the city fathers tried with some success to hide behind a facade of prosperity. In his mind, he could see inside those unpainted eyesores to the sparse, crude interiors devoid of ornamentation, devoid of tenderness.

He'd been right about one thing. Manaus had
come of age since last he'd been here. The seedy underbelly still existed, but it had been carefully covered with a veneer of civilization. A city built on the blood and flesh of slave labor, Manaus, like New Orleans, possessed an inbred decadence that no amount of culture could disguise.

He coughed, squinting in the dark smoke-filled room. More than anything, he wanted to leave this place, to wash the dirt and corruption of Manaus from his soul.

For ten years, he'd been sending coffee to market in Manaus, and for ten years, he'd avoided the city by sending Ignacio to conduct his business—until now.

Jason closed his eyes and the vision of lush green vegetation and the scent of fertile earth filled his senses. He yearned to get back to the
fazenda
,
but he couldn't go back for the same reason he'd left in the first place. Caroline. Every time he thought of his home, there was Caroline to be reckoned with. What a coward he'd become, hiding from a woman. Her power and strength confounded him.

She'd disrupted his life, taken over his house, his last refuge, and now she'd forced him to flee to the city, the one place he'd been trying to escape for fifteen years. He couldn't bear to face her every day, to look into her eyes and know that she might discover the worst about him.

What he couldn't understand for the life of him was why she was still here, why she'd come at all, knowing what she did know about him.

That was the heart of his agony. She knew the very worst about him—the truth. He'd come to Brazil and built his own world, a world he controlled absolutely, from the orchards to the
beneficio
to the handpicked servants who ran his household. Nothing happened on
the
fazenda
without his approval.

A thousand miles of jungle and as much water separated him from anyone who might challenge his authority, from anyone who knew that he was Cullen Sinclair's son and what that meant. Caroline had changed that. Caroline challenged him at every turn.

He tried to close his mind to the surge of memories that crowded his consciousness—Caroline playing the grand piano with an abandon that made his blood run hot; Caroline working like a mad woman to save a wounded boy, unmindful of the mud and muck and blood; Caroline soft and alluring in a sarong, her toes peeking out from beneath the hem; Caroline holding an orchid bloom close and inhaling its essence as if it were the elixir of life; Caroline moaning, warm and yielding beneath him, her eyes half-closed in passion.