In a Stranger's Arms (21 page)

Caddie fought down the urge to swat him as some of the tension seeped out of her. “Go ahead. I want to find out if...”

Wild superstition kept her from elaborating on that if.

“Yes, ma’am.” He dug the wedge-shaped end of the crowbar under the lid, then in a burst of power that set Caddie’s pulse fluttering in her throat, Manning wrenched it open.

A ridiculous stab of disappointment hit her when she saw only brown bundles of various sizes.

Manning plucked out one fat cylinder and untied it. A long roll of leather unwound across the grass.

It jingled.

“Oh, my,” Caddie breathed as she sank to her knees and began pulling piece after piece of silver flatware from pouches that ran the length of the specially crafted holder. “I can’t believe it. You really have found the Marsh silver.”

“Forks?” Varina infused that word with perfect disgust. “All this fuss over a mess of forks? I thought you found something good, Tem.”

“Shows what you know, Rina Marsh. These here are silver forks and they’re worth a whole heap a money. So there!”

“Yes, they are, darling.” Caddie unwrapped an elaborately engraved silver tray. Maybe she’d serve Lon and the tax collector a big old roasted crow on it “This’ll take care of our money worries for a while to come, I should think.”

Pay the taxes. Begin refurnishing the house. Maybe buy a filly of good blood to start rebuilding their stock? Too soon for that. A milk cow and a few shoats would be more practical.

She looked from Manning to Templeton and back again. “I don’t understand how you found it—in the well of all places.”

“It wasn’t down in the water, Mama,” Tem explained patiently. “There was a shelf built just a little way down.”

Manning shook his head as he looked over the contents of the dirty old box with obvious satisfaction. “The boy knew where to find it. I suppose his pa or his grandpa must have spoken about it when he was around, forgetting that little pitchers have big ears and long memories.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner, Son?” The child looked proud enough to bust. Also a little scared, Caddie sensed, unless her motherly intuition was misleading her.

Templeton shrugged and gave the answer boys had likely been giving their mothers since back in Bible times. “Don’t know.”

If only they’d found this hidden windfall the first night they’d arrived from Richmond... Caddie balked at the thought. She wouldn’t have had to marry Manning Forbes. How much poorer her life and the children’s lives would be now.

“The important thing is, we have it now when we really need it.” She pulled Tem down beside her and wrapped her arm around his shoulders to let him know he mustn’t feel bad.

Manning kept opening bundles and laying their precious contents before Caddie, like an emissary from olden days bringing tribute to a queen. “I don’t think the boy recognized the significance of what he’d heard until I told him about the Marsh silver. I had a hunch he might know something—even if he didn’t realize he knew it.”

“You’re our hero, precious.” Caddie hugged her son again. “Years from now, you’ll tell your grandchildren how you found a hidden treasure and saved Sabbath Hollow. Why, look at this!”

She unwrapped a glass cylinder sealed with wax that held some rolled-up documents. “Unless I miss my guess, this is the original royal charter for the very first Marsh who claimed Sabbath Hollow, back when Virginia was a young colony.”

She handed it to Templeton, who looked properly impressed. “We’ll make a nice frame for it and hang it up in the house.”

Glancing up, she saw her daughter investigating the spot Tem and Manning had dug up. “Varina, scoot away from that hole right this minute! Nobody needs you to cap off an exciting day by falling down the well.”

Before she got those words out, Manning had seized Varina around the middle and pulled her out of danger. The child squirmed and giggled in his arms.

A soft tide of contentment stole over Caddie as she returned the silver and other valuables to their wrappings. As she looked back, her life before the war seemed like a golden dream—one she hadn’t suitably cherished at the time. The years since Fort Sumter had been a cruel nightmare that still haunted her. The simple, peaceful existence she enjoyed now felt real and lasting.

She looked around at Manning and the children. “I believe we should celebrate and share our good fortune by hosting a barbecue and dance.”

“That sounds like a fine idea.” Manning’s eyes met hers and a long, intense look passed between them.

Was he picturing what she was picturing? Gliding and twirling in his arms to the smooth lilt of a fiddle on a sultry summer night?

Caddie’s mouth went dry as she thought of it, and her sweet milk of contentment soured a little. Her present life did lack something, after all. Hard as she tried not to hanker after it, she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

“What about you, Tem? Varina?” She tried to divert her wayward thoughts by focusing on the children. “Would you like us to get up a barbecue?”

The boy’s earlier excitement seemed to have burned itself out, for he only gave a grudging nod in reply.

Several hours later, Manning dropped onto one of the kitchen chairs, his hair stiff with sweat and the cloth of his shirt sticking to his damp skin.

“I got the hole filled in,” he puffed. “And the pump seems to be working all right again.”

Caddie held up a big glass jar. “Would you like a drink of lemonade? I just brought this up from the cellar.”

“Please.” Manning flexed his tired muscles. Maybe a drink would give him the energy to go bathe in the creek.

“I still can’t believe it.” Caddie shook her head as she strained the pale yellow liquid through cheesecloth into a tall glass. “The Marsh silver. Providence sure does work in mysterious ways.”

“Uh-huh.” Manning knew that for a fact.

How often had he pondered the divine or diabolical plan that had brought him and Delbert Marsh together, scrambling their lives like eggs in a frying pan? Finding the family valuables had been a carefully contrived plan of his own that seemed to be working.

Caddie handed him the glass and he drank the cool, tart lemonade in great thirsty gulps.

“I wonder what’s ailing Templeton?” she mused. “He seemed so excited at first, but by the time he went to bed he’d gotten real quiet and thoughtful.”

His last swallow of lemonade went down the wrong way. Manning choked and coughed, trying to catch his breath. Maybe his clever plan wasn’t unfolding so smoothly, after all.

“The boy’s probably just played out,” he managed to gasp at last. “We had quite a chore digging the hole and hoisting that heavy box up.”

Caddie didn’t look quite convinced.

“Besides, you know Tem.” Manning held out has glass for a refill. “It’s not in his nature to be excitable. Maybe he’s pondering what would have happened if we hadn’t found his grandpa’s stash. Or wishing he’d found it sooner, like you said. So his ma wouldn’t have had to marry a Yankee.”

“I’m sure it’s not that!” Caddie’s hand trembled and the lemonade sloshed over the table. “You know how fond the children are of you.”

The mild acid of Caddie’s lemonade seemed to eat away at Manning’s innards. Loving Tem and Varina gave his life meaning in a way it never had before. But for them to love him corroded his soul with guilt. Like a treasure tainted by murder and theft. He searched for a topic that would distract Caddie from her worry about Tem, and himself from thoughts he couldn’t bear to dwell on. “We need to talk about your brother-in-law.”

Caddie cast him a questioning look, perhaps wondering about the abrupt change of subject.

“Lon?” Her nose wrinkled. “He’ll be fit to be tied when he hears we found the silver.”

“Can’t blame him much.” A chance draft sent a chill rippling over Manning’s sweat-soaked body. “By rights, half of it does belong to him. I think we should do the fitting thing and give Lon his share.”

“Have you lost your mind, Manning Forbes?” Caddie looked ready to baptize him with the rest of that lemonade. “After everything that man’s done? Trying to claim squatter’s rights on Sabbath Hollow. Turning the neighbors against us. Setting that Yankee tax collector on us.”

“You don’t know that for a fact”

“No, but I don’t doubt it either. If you could have heard the way he went on about the children and me needing a friend. Saying you’d never come back from Washington.”

“Well, he was wrong, wasn’t he? And you managed to make the neighbors see reason—all the ones who count, at least. Isn’t it time to stop this feud, before it gets out of hand?”

He could tell he was winning her over. And she didn’t want to be won.

“Do you reckon Lon would give the children and me so much as a silver teaspoon, if he’d been the one to find it?” she asked, like a desperate gambler playing her last trump card.

Manning thought for a moment then shook his head. “I don’t suppose he would which is all the more reason for us to do what’s proper. You don’t want Tem and Varina growing up to act the way Lon would, do you?”

Her lips pressed together so tightly they all but disappeared, and her eyes flashed with fury.

“I reckon not” she conceded, almost against her will.

“Don’t worry. We’ll have plenty to pay the taxes and keep us going until the business starts to turn a profit. Maybe once Lon knows the silver’s been found and he’s got a share, he’ll quit making trouble for us.”

“There’s where you’re dead wrong, Mr. Right and Fitting.” Caddie poured herself a glass of lemonade. “Half of anything will never be enough for Lon Marsh.”

For once in her life, Caddie wished she hadn’t been right.

At Manning’s suggestion, they’d met with Lon outside the Methodist parsonage with the parson, Dr. Mercer and Bobbie Stevens acting as their witnesses.

When Manning pulled the tarpaulin off the battered old box, Lon looked as though he’d been struck by lightning. “Where the hell did you find this, Carpetbagger?”

Manning’s fists balled tight but he answered in a voice of controlled reason. “The where part hardly matters. What’s important is that the valuables your father hid have been found, on our property. We figure you’re entitled to half.”

The parson beamed. “If only the family states of our poor country had treated one another so fairly.”

“Fair?” Lon spit on the ground.

It was almost worth a half share of the findings, Caddie decided, to see the smirk wiped off her brother-in-law’s face.

“And just who’s to decide what constitutes a fair division of my family’s valuables?” Lon glared his challenge. “A Yankee, like the ones who looted the Stevens place?”

Much as she hated to admit it, Caddie knew Lon had a point. Without an expert appraiser on hand, how could they hope to reach an agreement over any division? If they let Lon do the choosing, they’d be lucky to end up with a quarter share. Any split she and Manning suggested, no matter how generous, would have Lon claiming he’d been grossly cheated.

Something about the look on Manning’s face told her he’d anticipated Lon’s objection. “You go ahead and divide what’s here into two lots you consider equal.”

Lon’s glacial eyes lit up. Caddie opened her mouth to protest Manning’s noble but foolish integrity.

“Then,” added Manning, “Caddie and I will choose which of the two halves we want.”

For an instant Lon appeared ready to object then the full implication of Manning’s proposal hit him. He gnawed the end of his cigar in speechless fury.

The parson murmured something about “the wisdom of Solomon,” while Bobbie Stevens cracked a grin so broad, Caddie worried his face would split in two. Doc Mercer, who’d looked dubious about the whole proceeding from the start, seemed to regard Manning with newfound respect.

“If you’d rather, we can divide and you can choose first.” Though he had every right to gloat, Manning made the offer in earnest.

Any trace of resentment Caddie had felt toward him for doing the right thing melted like hailstones after a summer storm. The man might have high principles, but he wasn’t a fool. A new ingredient slipped into the mix of contradictory, combustible emotions Manning Forbes stirred in her. If she didn’t look out, they might bake up into that sweet, poisonous cake called
love
.