From This Day Forward (8 page)

"If I were only interested in financial security, I could have found that without traveling hundreds of miles!"

"It would have been better for both of us if you had."

"What are you saying?" she asked apprehensively. "Are you saying that because I'm not a—a—because I've been married, that you intend to...."

"The mail steamer will return in a month. What I am saying is that you will be aboard that boat when it returns to Manaus."

"But—but we're married!" Caroline sputtered.

"A condition easily remedied," he said, his manner indifferent. "An unconsummated marriage is easily dissolved. You can take care of it when you reach New Orleans."

"Annulment? What if I refuse?" She trembled with outrage and frustration. He was so cold, so unbending.

Jason shrugged. "Then I'll take care of it myself. You misrepresented yourself to me."

Caroline sucked in her breath as if she'd been hit in the stomach. "Don't you think your views are a little outdated? It is nearly the twentieth century, and we're a long way from Victorian England!"

"That is irrelevant."

He turned to leave again, and his apathy fueled her anger. Determined to elicit some kind of emotion from him, she shouted at his retreating back. "It was very wise of you not to consummate the marriage until you decided whether or not to keep me. It avoids the necessity for a nasty divorce. But if I should decide to oppose your suit, how would you prove your claims? A medical examination? I can't possibly profess to be untouched since I was married before, and for the same reason, you can't possibly hope to prove the marriage was not consummated!"

He turned to look at her, his face a pale shade of red that gave Caroline a small measure of gratification. "You are a very blunt woman!"

"Yes, I am," she admitted, tilting her chin proudly. "I am blunt and bold and daring and intelligent, all the qualities you must abhor in a mate!"

He impaled her with his gaze. "How could you possibly know what I abhor or desire?"

"You wanted a girl and you got a woman! You wanted someone you could bully and frighten with your blustering and your—your..."

Her words trailed off, and she backed away as he moved slowly toward her until her back was against the stone table. Standing close to her, their bodies nearly touching, he leaned over her menacingly, forcing her to bend backward to avoid contact with him.

"And I don't frighten you?"

"No." She averted her gaze from the violence in his blue eyes, gasping for breath as the very air turned thick with tension like the stillness before a violent thunderstorm.

"Not in the least?" Heat radiated from his body; his warm breath stirred the wayward tendrils of hair at her temple.

"No." Her trembling voice belied the word.

"Then perhaps you aren't as intelligent as I'd thought. You see, I know a great deal about inflicting pain." He touched a callused finger to her chin and she recoiled as if she'd been burned, her heart pounding ferociously.

He wouldn't really hurt her, she tried to assure herself, but the very threat was enough to fill her soul with fear.

"I learned from a master," he went on, his voice soft, mesmerizing. "I know your every vulnerability. I know how to make you beg for mercy. You have no idea—"

"Stop it." Her throat constricted around the words as a genuine fear shivered down her spine. He could easily hurt her. His size alone was daunting, even if she hadn't seen the corded muscles that rippled beneath his skin. He could crush the life from her with his bare hands.

"Pain is a different sensation for women than for men. Certain parts of the body and mind are more susceptible."

"Stop. Please." Tears threatened her control. A part of her, the small part not immersed in fear, almost pitied him. Had he survived the pain of his youth by hardening himself to suffering and learning to inflict pain himself? The thought terrified her. She was very much alone, very much at his mercy, cut off from civilization by a thousand miles of river.

"Have I managed to frighten you now?" he asked tautly.

"Yes. Are you happy? Does it make you feel more like a man?"

Panting with anger and excitement, he moved closer to her, barely brushing her body with his. She placed a hand behind her to brace herself against the table. The other hand she pressed against his chest, pushing against him with all her strength, but he refused to yield. Instead, he twined a hand in her upswept hair and wrapped his other arm around her narrow waist, crushing her roughly against him as his mouth possessed hers in a bruising kiss.

This time she did fight him. She wedged both arms between their bodies and pushed desperately against his hard, implacable chest. He deepened the kiss, forcing her lips apart and assaulting the inner softness of her mouth with the lash of his tongue. Desire began to creep insidiously into her flesh and she stopped struggling and let her body fall against his as his hands moved to her buttocks and he pressed her soft loins against his hardness.

"Are you always so easily aroused?" he asked, releasing her abruptly so that she settled ungently onto her feet.

Caroline tensed at the harsh cruelty in his tone. Anger drove her to recklessness. She reached up, swinging out wildly, feeling the satisfying sting of her hand against his cheek.

Jason chuckled. "Leave it to my cousin to send me a whore for a wife."

"How dare you!" She swung out again, but this time he caught her wrist and held it fast. She tried to pull free of his grip, but he refused to release her.

"Whore or not, you are my wife," he reminded her. "And like everything else in this house, you belong to me. And my word is final here. You will be on that steamer when it leaves for Manaus."

Chapter
Four

Jason stalked from
the
house
to the stable where he mounted his prized bay stallion and sent it flying over the twisting paths to the
beneficio.
The building and surrounding patios were silent and deserted, as he'd known they would be.

He unsaddled his horse and let it loose to graze and find shade from the blistering sun, then went to stand on the only empty patio, gazing out across the dark water to the jungle on the opposite side.

A widow.

Hadn't Derek even read his letter? Of all the people in the world, he would have expected Derek to understand his need to surround himself with purity.

He'd never been close to anyone, not really, but he and Derek had been friends during the three years he'd spent working at the Sinclair Coffee Company. And over the past year, Jason had revealed more about his past to Derek than he ever
had to any other living soul. Betrayal by the one person he'd thought he could trust cut deeply. He'd poured his guts out to Derek in his letters. Derek should have understood.

He'd wanted a woman without expectations, a woman without knowledge of the world, a woman who would fit easily into the place he'd created for her and not complicate his life with a lot of questions and demands.

All he required was a woman to give him an heir, to give him tenderness when he wanted it, on his terms and without asking for anything from him in return. But tenderness had never been a part of his life, at least not after Peggy. If not for his older sister, his life would have been a wasteland. He'd believed her to be the most beautiful, most loving creature in the world. Peggy had tried to make their pitiful shack habitable. She was always picking wildflowers from the field behind their house and bringing them home or making paper lanterns that their father would destroy in one of his drunken fits of violence. It had been a useless exercise, but Peggy had never given up—not until the end when life and reality had finally extinguished the tiny flame that had been her spirit.

He hadn't thought of Peggy in a long time. It was Caroline's fault. She and his sister weren't at all alike, except that they were both beautiful and they were both dreamers. Peggy might have done something as impetuous as hopping on a boat and traveling to an unknown fate in a savage country, but Peggy would have been doing so to escape. Was that what Caroline had done?

Damn her! He didn't need complications. And why did it matter? He'd already decided she had to go when the mail steamer returned. There was no other way.

He closed his eyes, allowing the pain in his soul to wash over him. To be honest, he'd been looking for something, some flaw in her apparent perfection, something he could use to justify rejecting her. He couldn't bear it, being near her, always wondering when the demon inside him would strike out. She'd pushed him to the very brink of his restraint twice already, and she hadn't been in his house a week. So far he'd channeled his frustration into the escalating desire within him.

She would be better off without him. She could go back to New Orleans and resume her life, forget about him.

He wasn't proud of his behavior, but it had been necessary. He'd succeeded. For the remainder of her stay, she would go out of her way to avoid him. It was a good thing. He didn't know how much longer he could resist her. After all, he wasn't made of stone. Just thinking about her set his blood on fire. The feel of her lips against his, the softness of her skin still lingered vividly in his mind.

He opened his eyes when, without warning, the heavens parted and a drenching rain beat down on the already sodden earth. A wall of water surrounded the
beneficio,
cutting him off from the rest of the world. He breathed deeply of the exhilarating, familiar scent of wet jungle and sultry heat, listening to the sound of the rain battering the red tiled roof.

Work, that was what he needed. The men would be waking from their siesta soon. He'd work himself to the point of exhaustion, leaving no energy for reflection or conjecture.

Caroline looked up from the book that lay open on her lap. Her spirit slumped in disappointment as the sound of rain filled the library. She'd mistaken the noise for approaching hoof
beats that would have heralded Jason's return.

It was no use trying to concentrate on anything. Her mind kept returning to the afternoon's battle. Like generals in a war, they seemed to gather their forces for each skirmish, inflict as much damage as possible on the other side, then retreat to count their losses and tend their wounds in order to regroup for the next battle. The problem was that he played the game much better than she did. His blows struck much deeper than hers.

"Damn him!" she said aloud to the empty room.

Coming to her feet, she began to pace the length of the room as a growing anger roiled in her breast. When she looked back on the history of their little war, she had to admit that she'd lost almost every battle, and it infuriated her. She'd never lost at anything, and the bitter taste of defeat nearly choked her.

Where was he weakest, most vulnerable? If she could analyze his defenses and exploit his Achilles' heel, she could....

What? She could win? At what cost? If she declared all-out war, would either of them be left standing when it was over?

Until now, he'd set the rules and he'd maintained the element of surprise. She'd never known when something she said would set him off. That still might be true, but the next time she would be prepared.

And there would be a next time. He'd said the mail boat wouldn't return for another month. That meant they'd be forced to share this house for a while longer. And then....

Caroline's heart constricted as she considered her options. She couldn't go back to New Orleans. She'd sold everything she owned, including her house, and Derek Sinclair would never rehire her after what she'd done.

Moving in with Aunt Sarah in Memphis was her only option, and the thought made her stomach knot and her heart sink.

Aunt Sarah wasn't unkind, just unbending. Pious to the point of absurdity, Sarah Powers, her mother's matronly sister, detested anything she considered worldly—newspapers, plays, music, paintings, anything more than somber, utilitarian dress.... It was a list without end. Once under Aunt Sarah's roof, all of Caroline's hard won independence would be stripped from her, along with her very spirit.

"And I wanted adventure," she said aloud with a snort.

"What is a'venture?"