In a Stranger's Arms (34 page)

He sounded like a condemned prisoner requesting a last meal. Caddie almost recanted her demand for answers. If the trouble was that bad, maybe she’d be better off not knowing about it. But she couldn’t let Manning continue to shoulder the burden alone.

She tightened her embrace, pressing her face into his hair, willing her love and support into him. “Whatever’s wrong, maybe we can find a way to fix it.”

For the longest time he didn’t reply, just sat there. Then he disengaged one of her hands from around his neck and raised it to his lips.

“You said it yourself, Caddie—some things can’t be forgiven.” The hoarseness of his voice rasped across her heart. “And some things can’t be fixed.”

Could the man be dying of some incurable disease? she wondered as Manning put on a brave face to watch Sergeant’s tricks and help her put Tem and Varina to bed. If he was, she hadn’t seen or felt any sign of it on his lean, firm-muscled body during the nights they’d spent together. Were their nights together numbered, too?

Closing the children’s door behind them, Caddie reached for Manning’s hand. “I know I said I wanted some answers tonight but now that I think on it perhaps it can wait till morning. Things always look better after a good sleep.”

Did the husky note of desire in her voice tell him she wasn’t thinking about sleep?

Perhaps.

Manning shook his head, but reluctantly, as though his body wasn’t anxious to cooperate. “One more night with you would only make it harder to do what I have to do, Caddie-girl.”

He headed for the stairs, towing her behind him. “Let’s go sit on the porch. I don’t want the children overhearing us.”

“Very well.”

A whippoorwill called from the hollow as they seated themselves. For some reason, the odd whistling cry struck Caddie as plaintive, as if the little woodland bird was bidding its mate farewell or calling in vain for one it had lost.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked when several protracted minutes passed without a word from Manning. “There’s a drop or two of moonshine left over from the barbecue.”

“No thanks. I want my head clear to say what I have to. If I drink I’m liable to make a damn fool of myself on top of everything else.”

“Suit yourself.”

“Where the hell do I start?” Manning kneaded his knotted brow with his fingers.

Caddie’s patience snapped. “Anywhere! Just tell me and be done with it.”

He turned and looked at her, chastened, accepting the rebuke as his due. “I’m not trying to drag this out Caddie, I swear. I just want to lead into it so it doesn’t come as too bad a shock.”

“I believe I could abide a shock better than this waiting and imagining all sorts of terrible things.”

Manning gave a grim nod. “I guess you and I were set on a course toward one another early in May of ’64.”

Caddie’s heart seemed to swell and rise until it blocked her throat. She couldn’t speak—struggled to breathe.

“We were inspecting one of our pickets on the right flank,” Manning began, “when some rebel cavalry blundered into us.”

If she had not been sitting there struggling to take in his words, Manning might never have known the difference. In his mind he was back to that spring day over two years ago, on the right flank of the Union Army in that tangle of forest near Chancellorsville.

“The whole bloody mess was over in a few minutes. I ended up with a couple of nicks and a busted ankle. The rest were all dead, except for a cavalry officer I’d shot.”

Caddie felt as though someone had shot
her
and every drop of blood was draining from her body.

“Off to the left I heard the battle commencing. I knew I wouldn’t be any use to my company, the shape my leg was in. I didn’t dare try to move the wounded man—I could tell he wasn’t going to make it. If I’d had the stomach, I might have finished him off, but he didn’t seem to be in too much pain, just weak and fading...” Manning’s voice trailed off.

I’m sitting here beside the Yankee who shot my husband. I’ve let him live in my house all these months, even taken him into my bed. This can’t be happening. It must be a nightmare.

Letting loose a shaky sigh, like a distant locomotive shuddering into motion, Manning began to speak again. “Either he didn’t know it was me who shot him, or it just didn’t make any difference to him. He talked about his home and his family, mentioned the pump out behind the stable over and over. I couldn’t figure why at the time.”

The pump. The silver. Tem had told her Manning knew. None of his explanations or proof of his identity had explained how that was possible. Once she’d been satisfied he wasn’t Del, she’d looked no further. Now her stomach had joined her heart up in her throat. Caddie strained to swallow a mouthful of bile.

“I’d shot plenty of the enemy during my soldiering days. But he was the only one I had to watch die. And when I looked in his face, I saw my own. Before he died, he gave me your last letter. He made me promise to find you and his children after the war and look after you. That’s what I’ve tried to do.”

He didn’t love her—never had. The certain knowledge sickened Caddie worse than anything she’d heard about Del’s death.

Manning Forbes had married her out of guilt then bedded her out of pity laced with lust. She felt so dirty she wanted to rub herself raw with the harshest lye soap she could lay hands on.

“I’m sorry, Caddie.” Manning reached for her. “I didn’t mean for you to find out like this.”

“Don’t touch me!” She leaped from the seat like a scalded cat and backed away from him as though his confession had made him a stranger again. A dangerous stranger armed with all sorts of intimate knowledge about her.

“How could I have been such a blind fool?” It all made a kind of macabre sense now. All the questions, the suspicions, the baffling inconsistencies. Caddie looked back on the idyllic life she thought she’d been leading and saw one huge lie.

He’d played a warped joke on her and she’d been too gullible a love-starved fool to see it. Even as she gazed at him hunched over on the porch seat, his face buried in his hands, some weak, pathetic little ninny inside her wanted to lie naked beneath him and quiver at his touch.

His power over her infuriated Caddie as much as any other wrong he’d done her. “Get out of my house, you lying carpetbagger, and don’t ever come back. I rue the day I first laid eyes on you!”

Manning rose from the seat. “I was afraid that’s what you’d say. I’m sorry you had to hear it like this, Caddie. I’m sorry I wasn’t honest with you from the beginning, I’m sorry—”

“Don’t!” Caddie clamped her hands over her ears. Next he’d probably tell her how sorry he was about letting her lure him into her bed. “Just go!”

He nodded, and Caddie saw his lips form the words, “Yes, ma’am.”

She removed her hands from her ears and wrapped them tightly around herself to keep from reaching for him. Then she turned away, so the sight of him wouldn’t stir unwelcome feelings in her. Feelings like passion... or compassion.

“I’m going to send you money for the children, and I want you to use it. Not for my sake, but for theirs and for... your husband’s. He wanted you looked after.”

He had a fine way of showing it. Caddie swallowed the bitter retort. Was there a woman in all the former Confederate states who chose worse husbands than she did?

Manning persisted. “I’m going to keep in touch with Bobbie Stevens. If you or the children ever need anything, I want you to let him know so he can get a message to me.”

“Fine, I’ll do that.” Promise him whatever he asked to get him out of there before her resolve weakened.

Caddie listened as he walked to the front door, opened it and went inside. Presently, through his open bedroom window above, she heard the sounds of him packing his few worldly possessions.

She held herself still. Frozen like brittle ice, she didn’t dare move lest she shatter.

Behind her the door opened and shut again, and Manning’s footsteps moved away. Then they paused. “I had no right to love you, but I couldn’t help myself. Goodbye, Caddie.”

The frigid force of pride and stubbornness held her together long enough for Manning to retreat out of earshot. Then the ice statue that was Caddie melted onto the porch floorboards in a thaw of bitter tears.

Chapter Twenty-One

C
ONSIDERING HE
’
D JUST
passed the worst night of his life, Manning felt at peace with himself for the first time in months—maybe years.

As he had on that long-ago night in April, Manning sat on the rise overlooking Sabbath Hollow, keeping watch on the sleeping house. He’d get Bobbie to hire someone to guard the place at night for a while. He’d also let Lon Marsh know, in no uncertain terms, that he’d be quick and ruthless to avenge any harm that came to Caddie or the children.

Caddie and the children—he would carry them forever in his heart, a constant ache that would remind him he had lived and loved. If it weren’t for the fact that his lies had hurt Caddie and his leaving would hurt the children, he would not regret anything he’d done on his own account He’d trade the whole rest of his life, before and since, for this one bittersweet summer when he’d been a husband and father. Loving and beloved.

The sun had risen a while ago. Time for him to be on his way. Maybe now and then in the years to come, he’d return to this spot and listen for the dog’s bark, Tem and Varina’s laughter, the sound of Caddie’s voice calling them in to supper.

Manning hefted the rucksack over his shoulder and turned away from the one place that had been a home to him.

“Where’re you going?” Tem’s query slammed into Manning like an artillery shell, blowing his stoic composure to smithereens.

He turned. The truth might hurt them both, but he was done with lies, no matter how well intentioned. “I’m not sure, Son.”

“When’re you coming back?” Tem yawned and stretched. His arms looked a lot less scrawny than when he’d first come to Sabbath Hollow. He held himself differently, too—at the same time straighter and more relaxed. With all his heart Manning prayed his going wouldn’t change that.

He shook his head. “Can’t say.”

“Does that mean... you’re leaving? For good?”

“I wish I didn’t have to, Tem. Maybe when you’re older you’ll understand why.”

“No, I won’t. I’ll never understand it and I’ll never like it! Neither will Rina. She doesn’t know what a carpetbagger is, but I do. It’s a Yankee who comes here to make a pile of money, then skedaddles back up North.”

Perhaps the boy was trying to shame him into staying. “You’d better get home to breakfast, Son.”

“How come you call me that? I’m not your son.”

“No. But I’m as proud of you, and I think as much of you as if you were.”

“Then don’t go ’way. If you do, I’ll...” The boy seemed to be conjuring up the direst threat he could imagine. “I’ll run off and go live with Uncle Lon—so there!”

“No, Tem. You stay away from your uncle Lon, you hear me? I don’t think he’s really a bad man, but he wants something so much he doesn’t care anymore what he has to do to get it—lie, cheat, steal.” Were he and Lon all that different at heart?

“I want you to promise me you’ll never let that happen to you, Tem. If you want something you can’t get by honest means, let it be, no matter how much you hanker for it.”

“I’ll promise if you’ll stay.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry that makes you feel bad, but this is how it has to be.”

“Because of my ma? I thought she liked you now. I’ve seen her kiss you and she says your name the special way she says Rina’s and mine—like it tastes good. If she’s being mean to you again, I’ll—”

“No, Tem. Your ma’s not making me go.” So much for his resolution to tell the brutal truth. “It’s something else. I need you to look after your ma and Varina once I’m gone. You’ll be the man of the family.”

“I ain’t a man!” The child threw his arms around Manning’s legs and began to wail. “I’m just a little boy, and you hadn’t ought to leave, you danged carpetbagger!” Apart from watching Tem’s father die, and tearing his mother to pieces by telling her about it, Manning had never done anything harder in his life than detach himself from the sobbing child and walk away—leaving a great chunk of his heart raw and bleeding in the dust behind him.

Just like when he’d burned his hands, the pain made Manning blind and deaf to everything around him. He stumbled up the lane and onto the main road, heading for Mercer’s Corner.

He almost walked right into Lon Marsh’s sleek bay.

“I don’t like the looks of this, Carpetbagger,” Lon growled. “Where’re Caddie and the young’uns? Have you got my deed?”

All Manning’s hurt ignited into rage. “It isn’t
your
deed and it never will be!”

He knew this was all his fault. Lon Marsh had done nothing more than exploit the situation for his own ends. Still, it felt good for once to blame somebody else.

“I told Caddie the truth and now I’m leaving. But I’m not going far, so don’t entertain any fool ideas about getting your hands on Sabbath Hollow. I almost gunned you down once to run you off Caddie’s property and I wouldn’t hesitate a second to do it if you harm a hair on my family’s heads.”

From his lofty perch, Lon glared down. “Damn you straight to hell, Yankee! Did my brother send you here just to bedevil me?”

“I guess neither of us is getting what we want out of this, Lon. Let’s think of it as a lesson in character building.” Manning skirted the horse and continued on his way to town.

Behind him a revolver cocked. “Not so fast, Yankee. If I’m not going to get compensation for my brother’s death, I reckon I’ll have to settle for revenge.”