In a Stranger's Arms (5 page)

‘‘If there are, they’d be far smaller than you, dear.” Caddie struggled to keep a sober face. There was nothing amusing about her son’s timidity. Any eight-year-old who’d lived through as many frightening experiences as Templeton had a right to be cautious. “Quite a few of them are good eating, too. Roast quail—mmm.”

“Do you think Mr. Forbes would teach me how to fish and shoot a gun, Mama?” Tem looked up just then, with a pointed gaze that made Caddie flinch.

“I don’t believe Mr. Forbes will be staying around these parts much longer, Son.” Though she tried to pass the remark off in a casual tone, the thought provoked strong conflicting feelings within her.

“That’s too bad. He’s nice—for a Yankee.”

“I don’t b’lieve he is a Yankee,” declared Varina, as if that settled the matter.

“’Course he’s a Yankee, puddin’ head.” Tem made a face at his sister. “Just not like the Yankee soldiers from Richmond, smoking and cussing and ordering folks around. There must be
some
good Yankees, mustn’t there, Mama?”

A spiteful retort died on Caddie’s tongue. No matter what her own feelings, she would not raise her children to hate. Not because the Yankees didn’t deserve it, but because a mother’s intuition warned her it would damage Tem and Varina to harbor such corrosive emotions in their young hearts.

“You must recollect what I’ve always told you, Templeton. There’s good and bad in all of us, like vegetables and weeds in a garden. We need to tend to our virtues and root out our vices as best we can. Some folks let the weeds in their nature get away from them, until all the good is choked out.”

Catching her children in an exchange of meaningful glances, Caddie chuckled. The rusty sound surprised her. She could scarcely remember the last time she’d laughed.

“You didn’t think I could let our first morning back at Sabbath Hollow get by without a moral, did you? Besides, you brought it up, Tem. I can’t imagine why you two have taken such a shine to that carp—er, to Mr. Forbes.”

Why indeed? Could it be his likeness to their father? Caddie doubted it. Her one photograph of Del had disappeared forever in the flaming anarchy of Richmond’s fall. Varina had been just a baby on Del’s last leave. And Templeton had never been close to his father.

The boy shrugged. “I just wish he didn’t have to go away.”

Varina nodded in solemn agreement. “I like fish.”

It was going to take more than a mess of brook trout, a pot of coffee and the loan of a rifle to persuade Caddie Marsh he wasn’t some kind of monster. Manning wasn’t sure anything on earth could change that woman’s mind once she’d made it up. While he admired such stubborn strength, he had to find some means to win her over.

Last night, after she’d given him his marching orders, Manning had wandered back to his camp by the creek in a daze of relief and defeat. He’d asked the woman and she’d said no. He would simply have to find another avenue to fulfill his vow.

Protect and provide. He’d made a feeble stab at both commissions with the rifle and the fish. Yet his showdown with Alonzo Marsh had made Manning realize something. Unless he married Caddie, he would have no authority to intervene on her account.

Retrieving a blanket from his camp, he had trudged back up to the gentle rise overlooking the plantation. There he’d propped himself up against the trunk of an old poplar tree and watched the house until dawn. The long empty hours of his vigil had given him plenty of time to think.

Too much time.

Perhaps he could try furnishing money and other aid to them from a distance, Manning decided, staring up at the pale, haunting face of the full spring moon. The notion appealed to him. He could keep his promise without constant reminders of his transgression chafing his conscience.

The moon’s ghostly visage seemed to mock him. If only it could be that simple! What if the widow took it into her head to marry someone else, by and by? And what if that someone mistreated her or the children? Manning would have no right to take their part then, either. The thought of such helplessness tied his belly in knots.

Vivid recollections of Caddie Marsh bedeviled other parts of his body, much to Manning’s shame. The flickering caress of candlelight coaxing her hair to a coppery glow, softening the ravages of hardship from her features. The intensity of her gray-green gaze both times he’d caught her watching him. There had been a queer, mute intimacy in the looks they’d exchanged—almost like a touch.

No other woman had affected him so. That this one did made Manning want to fling himself in the saddle and ride north as if the three-headed hound of Hades was baying at his heels. But his pledge bound him to her, like it or not.

With dawn not far off, he’d brewed coffee to warm and wake himself. On a whim, he’d stolen down to the old mansion in the hollow and left a pot for Caddie Marsh to find. He’d half expected her to chase him off with his own rifle, but when he reached the back step unchallenged, worry snaked through his gut. He couldn’t stay awake every night to keep watch over them.

So Manning had saddled up his horse and ridden into the nearest settlement, Mercer’s Corner. Midmorning found him wending his way back down the lane to Sabbath Hollow, with his saddlebags bulging and a lean, ugly dog loping behind his horse on a tether. Sometime during the past restless night and fatigue-addled daybreak, he’d made up his mind to match the fair widow stubborn for stubborn until she agreed to his proposal.

She looked as intractable as ever when he first caught sight of her wrestling a big trunk out onto the verandah. She looked disturbingly fair, too, with rebellious tendrils of auburn hair escaping from their sedate, orderly arrangement to curl around her face. A face rosy from her exertions.

Manning braced himself to be ordered away and scolded for returning after last night.

Instead, Caddie Marsh approached him without a word, the pink hue of her face deepening. Hands fluttering as if she wasn’t sure what to do with them. Eyes downcast, unwilling to meet his gaze.

Emboldened, Manning swung out of his saddle and doffed his hat. “Morning, ma’am. I trust you and your children weren’t disturbed in the night.”

No matter how badly she might want him gone, Southern gentility prevailed. “We’re fine, Mr. Forbes, thank you. You’ve decided to move on, I see.”

Did she sound just the tiniest bit regretful?

“I expect you’ve come to collect your rifle,” she continued. “It was kind of you to give me the loan of it last night. I suppose I have you to thank for the coffee, as well.”

It stuck in her craw, being beholden to a former enemy; Manning sensed it as plainly as if she’d screamed the words in his face. Somehow he must convince her that a business and personal partnership between them would be a favor from her to him, not the other way around.

Before he could tell her she was welcome for the rifle and the coffee, Caddie Marsh looked up. The green blaze in her eyes belied her modestly composed features. “I won’t be bought.”

“Bought?” The word spewed out of him. “Of course not! How can you think such a thing?”

“After Richmond fell, I saw plenty of women sell themselves to the Yankees, Mr. Forbes. They’d have rather died first, but they did it to keep their children alive. I was lucky enough to have a house still standing. With shelter at a premium, I only had to board Yankee officers, not bed them.”

Was she trying to shock him into going away and leaving her alone? Manning felt the blood rise in his face until his cheeks tingled. God bless him, he must be the color of a pickled beet!

No wonder she’d turned down his marriage offer. He knew so clearly what he wanted from her that he’d assumed she must understand, too. Apparently she’d drawn different conclusions.

“I wasn’t making
that
kind of bargain when I asked you to marry me, Mrs. Marsh.” A quiver in his loins warned Manning that he wished he was.

“You weren’t?” Her face betrayed surprise and bewilderment.

“Not now.” He stifled a vision that rose in his mind of candlelight flickering over Caddie Marsh wearing only a lace-trimmed nightgown, her mahogany hair unbound in a cascade of curls down her back. “Not ever.”

“I...” She scanned the ground at his feet as if searching there for the words she needed.

Manning gave her the opportunity to collect herself. “I need to marry you for legal reasons, ma’am, to protect my interest in Sabbath Hollow. Once I start fixing it up, I’d have to spend long hours out here. I expect you know how folks talk. I wouldn’t want to compromise your reputation—especially now that I know all you had to do to preserve it.”

“I see. So you wouldn’t expect me to—”

“I wouldn’t.” He cut her off rather than risk hearing her say aloud what he proposed to deny himself. “I’ll take a bed wherever you can spare one in the house. It’ll just be like taking in another boarder.”

“And my children?”

“I won’t be a husband to you, Mrs. Marsh, but I
will
do my best to be a good stepfather to them, if you’ll give me leave.” He sensed a subtle shift in her bearing that might bode well.

Manning decided to press his advantage. “I mean to come asking every day until you say yes, ma’am. I hope your reason will get the best of your resentment against the Union. You need a man around the place, and unless you’ve changed your mind about your brother-in-law’s invitation, men aren’t in very abundant supply around here.”

“And whose fault is that?” Her abrupt question bit into him, like a willow switch.

Manning hung his head. “I didn’t kill all of ’em, ma’am.”

Was he voicing his protest to her, or to himself?

He heard her suck in a breath. “Of course you didn’t, Mr. Forbes. I can’t picture you doing anyone violence.” Manning flinched as though he’d taken a second strike directly on top of the first.

“What’s the fish man doing here?’’

Manning almost burst into giddy laughter at the child’s imperious query, for it extracted him from an unbearably awkward exchange with her mother.

“He’s come courting Mama,” replied her brother in a tentative tone that left Manning unsure whether the boy approved or not.

Caddy Marsh whirled around. “Templeton and Varina Marsh, how long have you been eavesdropping? Now that we’re back home, I’m going to have to polish your manners, I can see that”

“What’s courting?” demanded Varina.

Templeton nudged his sister to be quiet “We haven’t been here long, Mama, honest. I thought you’d hear us coming.”

“
What’s
courting?”

Mrs. Marsh relented in the face of her son’s chagrin. “Next time, make a noise or call out from a distance before you can hear what folks are saying. That’s what a gentleman would do.”

“What’s courting!”

Manning fought back a grin. Dropping to his haunches, he looked at the little mite eye-to-eye. Something about her steely gaze put him in mind of General Sherman. “Courting means I’ve asked your mama to marry me, Miss Varina.”

“What’s marry?”

Before Manning could reply, Templeton spoke. “Shucks, Rina, don’t be such a baby. Marry means he’d live with us and be our new pa.” The boy’s tone sounded anxious, but whether from fear or eagerness, Manning couldn’t tell for certain.

“And we’d have fish for supper every night?”

“Varina Virginia Marsh!” cried her mother.

Surrendering to his own amusement, Manning chuckled. By the sound of it, he had a potential ally in his campaign to make Caddie Marsh his wife. An ally of considerable determination.

“I can’t promise fish
every
night, Miss Varina. You might get sick of it if I did. But I can hunt possum and quail. Maybe buy a sow to raise shoats for barbecue.”

“What’s barbecue?”

“Something you’ll enjoy, unless I miss my guess.”

Abandoning her interrogation for the moment, the child looked up at her mother. “Did you tell him
yes,
Mama?”

“I—I have to study on it, Varina.” Caddie’s cheeks pinkened and she cast Manning a glance that might have held bashfulness or resentment. Possibly a compound of both. “A lady shouldn’t accept a gentleman’s proposal right off. That’d be too forward.”

Manning almost chuckled again. The woman made it sound like he was some sort of gallant beau and she a blushing debutante culminating their lengthy courtship.

“Your mama’s right, Miss Varina. Marriage is a big step folks oughtn’t to rush into.” He straightened from his crouch. “I’m content to bide my time until she makes up her mind.”

From behind his sister, Templeton spoke in a quiet, wistful tone. “That’s a nice dog you got there, sir.”

Manning glanced back. Though the poor beast was anything but handsome, it had behaved well during his talk with Mrs. Marsh. Perhaps he’d tuckered it out trotting back from town. It lay in the shadow of his horse, panting softly.

“He’s not mine, Son. I brought him for you folks. An out-of-the-way plantation like this needs a good watchdog.”

With wary incredulity, the boy looked from Manning to the scarecrow mongrel.

“I think he’s hot and thirsty,” said Manning. “Would you and your sister do me a favor and take him to get a drink?”