From This Day Forward (28 page)

He stalked away toward the open door. He'd just arrived, and already he was running away from her, and he hadn't even asked why she was still there or if she was pregnant.

"What are you going to do? You don't have a bookkeeper," she asked, even though it was the last thing she wanted to talk about.

"I'll send Ignacio to Manaus to find someone."

"And in the meantime?"

"That's not your concern. I'll deal with it."

"J
ason!" she called desperately.

"
What now?" he snapped, turning with a scowl of absolute
annoyance
.

Caroline opened her mouth, but the words wouldn't come out. Two simple words—
I'm pregnant
—two words that would alter their lives forever, and she couldn't say them.

"Nothing," she said, dropping her gaze to the desk before her.

J
ust go, she thought, run away again. Leave me alone.

She glanced up and her breath caught, her chest tightening. He was still there, staring at her with such an expression of longing and fear that she knew in that instant that somehow he'd guessed the truth.

His eyes met hers and her legs went weak before he disguised his yearning with anger and turned to go, slamming the door resoundingly behind him.

Sinking into the soft leather chair, Caroline buried her head in her hands and gave in to the torrent of tears she'd held at bay for so long.

* * *

Caroline
allowed the notes of the etude
she'd been playing
to float softly away until the parlor settled into silence. The sound of rain falling gently beyond the open window slowly insinuated itself into the stillness of the empty room.

She closed her eyes and her mind took her to the orchards where no doubt Jason worked alongside his men. Or perhaps they had taken refuge from the rain beneath the red-tiled roof of the
beneficio.
She couldn't help remembering the first time she'd seen it—Jason standing naked on one of the patios, water pummeling his body and running over his muscled torso in rivulets.

With a low growl, she came to her feet, walking angrily to the open door and peering out. He was back to his old games, avoiding her by staying away from the house. What was he waiting for? Was this a new tactic? If his strategy was to wear down her nerves, it was working brilliantly.

Five months! He'd been away for five months.

She'd made the trip from Manaus, and she knew how long it took. In good weather like they'd had lately, it took less than three weeks. Even allowing two weeks to transact business, he should have been back three months ago.

She almost wished she weren't carrying his child. Almost. In the beginning, she'd wished it fervently. She'd been violently ill every morning and queasy for the rest of the day. She'd actually lost weight. Her clothes had begun to hang on her. Only now was she beginning to fill them out again, and shortly they would be too small for her.

And she didn't even want to think about what waited for her at the end, the pain. Whenever she thought about her crude surroundings, her heart grew faint. There were no facilities, no help at all for a pregnant woman, not even a midwife. She tried to shore up her courage by reminding herself that women had children in the jungle every day.

How she needed Jason now. She needed the strength and comfort of his arms around her. She needed to feel that he wanted this child as much as she did, that it wasn't just her baby. She needed to talk to him about her anxiety and to hear him say that everything would be all right.

That was the root of the problem, she decided. She still cared for him. She still wanted him to love her, wanted it even more now. She didn't want to bring a child into a house where a constant state of open warfare existed. She wanted to be a family, the three of them.

But when she thought of the way Jason had been raised, the kind of family life he'd described in his letters, she wondered if he were capable of that kind of bond.

A terrible sickness settled in the pit of her stomach every time she allowed herself to think of the life he and his sister must have lived. Home was the one place in all the world where one should feel completely safe, especially a child. Jason had never experienced that kind of home. Perhaps he had no concept of it, but even so, she knew from his letters that his heart yearned for it.

Was he still angry at her over the stupid water pump? Despite his harsh words, she had continued to handle the plantation books and he'd left her alone to do so. Evidently she'd proven her competence, but he wasn't about to admit it. Instead he ignored her while Ignacio traveled to Manaus to hire a new bookkeeper.

But something more powerful, much deeper than anger kept him away from her. A huge chasm had opened between them, a wide emptiness that she wasn't sure could ever be spanned. Why? Why had he withdrawn from her completely? Surely it couldn't still be the letters. It was worse than with Wade. Never had she felt this way about Wade, or any other man, for that matter. She told herself it was because she could feel his child growing inside her day by day, but she suspected there was more to it than that.

She wanted desperately to recall the intimacy they'd shared so long ago at the slave village. She'd thought, hoped, that a closeness was beginning to form between them. Now that had been destroyed, perhaps forever.

Sensing someone behind her, Caroline turned to see Ines standing in the doorway, her expression as forlorn as Caroline's own heart.

"What am I to do, Ines?" she asked, turning to gaze into the impenetrable jungle once again.

"I am not knowing,
Senhora
.
It is as I said, you should not have kept the letters."

"I know!" Anger and impatience pushed Caroline toward an emotional explosion which she tried with all her might to curb. It wasn't Ines's fault, none of it. "I can't undo it and he won't forgive me."

"Be patient."

Caroline laughed mirthlessly. "Patient? It's been two weeks. Two weeks and he hasn't spoken a word to me. In the mornings, he rises early and he's gone by the time I arrive at the table for breakfast. In the evenings, he disappears completely."

"When he went after you to bring you back—"

"What do you mean?" Caroline asked, turning to face Ines again. "When he found me at the slave village? He came after me then to put me on the mail boat."

"Oh, no,
Senhora
,
he thinks you are on the mail boat and goes after you to take you off and bring you back."

"Are you sure?" Caroline asked, her heart soaring at the thought that he hadn't wanted her to leave, that there might be another reason for his allowing her to stay besides her pregnancy. Maybe he did care about her but was afraid to admit it, even to himself.

Even so, if he intended to ignore her and scorn her for the rest of her life, what had she really gained?

"I've been here nearly six months, and
I
don't even know where he sleeps," Caroline mused aloud, turning to face Ines, who came to stand close behind her. "But you do, don't you?"

Ines's eyes filled with terror. "Oh, no,
Senhora
,
I couldn't! He would be so angry if I told you."

"All right, fine," Caroline said with an exaggerated shrug. "I'll just open every door in the house until I find his rooms. I don't know why I didn't think of it before."

"Rooms,
Senhora
?"

Sudden insight illuminated Caroline's mind. "He doesn't sleep in the house, does he? Where then?" But a better question was why. Why had he gone to all the trouble to build this mansion and not even sleep in it?

"I—I can't,
Senhora
.
Please don't ask me to."

Caroline's shoulders sagged. "You're right. It wouldn't be fair of me to ask you to betray Jason that way. I'm sorry for trying to force you to defy him." Turning, she grasped Ines by the shoulders and hugged her, then said with all the emotion she could gather, "I suppose I should be packing."

Caroline walked past a dumbfounded Ines, taking her time in reaching the door, certain that Ines would stop her.

"Packing?"

Suppressing a smile at her own cleverness and at the ease with which Ines had fallen into her snare, Caroline turned to face Ines with a dejected expression. "I can't stay here. I can't live like this, with a husband who won't speak to me. If I can't even find him, how can I convince him to forgive me? The rain has stopped. I'm going to my room to start packing."

"No!" Ines called as Caroline reached the door.
"
Senhora
,
you cannot go. Master Jason, he cares for you. Once the baby is born, he will forget his anger. I know it."

"I'm not as certain as you are, Ines. I'd rather my baby be raised without a father than with one who resents him and his mother."

"Wait,
Senhora
!
"
Ines cried in panic. She took a deep breath, the struggle with her conscience and her loyalties apparent in her eyes. "When Master Jason is here first, he builds a hut in the jungle to live in until his house is finishing. There is where he sleeps now."

"The hut where I nursed the child with measles?"

"No, that is storehouse. Master Jason puts food and supply there for the runaways."

"What?" Caroline asked in stunned disbelief, remembering the blankets and barrels of supplies she'd noticed in the hut. "Jason provides supplies for the runaways?"

"He can do no more," Ines explained.

Tears formed in Caroline's eyes as she thought about Jason's generosity and sacrifice. The storehouse was on his property. If the slaves were discovered there, he could lose everything, including his freedom.

"Please,
Senhora
,"
Ines pleaded, "do not go there—to his place. He will be unpleased."

"I can't go there unless you tell me where it is."

"Master Jason, he comes to the house very lately, when you are in sleep. He will eat and then goes to his place in the jungle. If you waited for him...."

"Yes! Ines, why didn't you tell me this before?"

Ines hung her head. "He'll be even angry to me for this."

"He cares about you, Ines," Caroline assured her, gripping her by the shoulders again. "He will forgive you. Besides, he doesn't have to know you told me."

Chapter Fifteen

Jason ran
the
coarse brush
over the bay stallion's glossy coat, trying not to think of anything beyond the animal that nickered contentedly under his ministrations.

Bad blood,
his father's voice rang clearly in his ear.
Me da' passed it to me and I'm passing it to you. You'll never amount to nothing, you worthless, ungrateful wretch
!

Closing his eyes and his mind against the memory, he stroked the animal on the muzzle and moved to the stall door. The stallion tossed his head, snorting in protest that Jason had stopped the daily grooming ritual too soon.

"That's enough for tonight," Jason said with a half-smile. "You're spoiled, that's what's wrong with you."

Jason fastened the stall door as the stallion began to munch on his feed, once more content.
If only he were an animal.... If only he didn't have to think or remember or feel pain. His father's beatings hadn't been the worst of it. There were hundreds of more subtle injuries. Emotional wounds took far longer to heal and left much deeper scars.