In a Stranger's Arms

by Hale Deborah

  All the secrets, fears, regrets, doubts and yearnings he’d been running from caught up with him on the road to Washington that day. Perhaps the chase had made them stronger, or the energy he’d spent trying to outrun them had exhausted his defenses. Either way, he was no match for them.

  He’d been a damned fool, he decided, to let himself get so intimately mixed up in the lives of Caddie Marsh and her children. It had been such a long time since he’d cared about another person that he hadn’t been prepared for Tem and Varina to take immediate possession of his heart.

  And their mother? She excited such a seething stew of emotions within him. Some good, some bad, but all far too intense for his liking.

  Long ago he’d learned that caring about folks gave them the power to hurt him. In the long, empty years since his boyhood, he’d forgotten that harsh lesson. Until yesterday, when Caddie had given him a remedial course.

  Promise or no promise, he wondered if they all might be better off if he didn’t return to Sabbath Hollow.

  Himself most of all.

  “Face facts, Caddie-girl. You’ve seen the last of that carpetbagger.” Lon Marsh looked over the bustling mill and woodwright’s shop with the air of a fond parent indulging his children in a game far beyond their ability. “What a shame you didn’t heed my warning about him.”

  Caddie’s fingers tingled, wanting to slap the gloating grin off her brother-in-law’s face. Perhaps his words wouldn’t have aggravated her to the same degree if they hadn’t so closely mirrored her own worst fears.

  Not for an instant would she give Lon the satisfaction of knowing it, though. “I declare, I don’t know who you’re talking about. We don’t have any dealings with carpetbaggers around here.”

  “I’d say marrying one is pretty good dealing.” Flicking the ashes from his cigar, Lon called out, “Wouldn’t you say so, Bobbie?”

  Bobbie Stevens walked toward Lon and Caddie. “I’d be obliged if you’d put that cigar out, sir. Sawmills and fire don’t mix real well.”

  For an instant, Lon’s mask of affability slipped. The mocking twinkle in his blue eyes hardened, like the surface of a pond in January. If Lon had his way, it proclaimed, Bobbie Stevens would regret that polite but firm request and all it implied about the young man’s loyalties.

  Caddie suppressed a shudder. Her instincts about Lon had been right on the mark. What would happen to her and the children if Manning didn’t return, and she had to stand against this man on her own?

  In less time than he needed to take a deep draw on his cigar, Lon Marsh became his old too-charming self. “Trouble with sawmills and fire, Bobbie—” He chuckled and let the smoking brown cylinder fall to the ground, where it set a few blades of grass alight “—they mix too dang well.”

  Stamping out the tiny blaze with fierce vigor, Caddie couldn’t decide if she was glad or sorry not to have a gun in her hand. “Bobbie, could I trouble you to fetch a little water and douse this bit of ground?”

  “Surely, Miz Caddie.”

  She held Lon’s gaze as she listened to the retreat of Bobbie’s uneven gait. When she decided the young man was no longer within earshot, she pointed to Lon’s horse. “If you’ve got nothing better to do than stir up trouble, I suggest you go do it somewhere else. Folks here are busy preparing to fill the orders my husband will bring back from his travels.”

  Her brother-in-law smirked as if she’d just told him a particularly amusing joke. “As a matter of fact I came by to offer you and the young’uns my advice and support. Seemed the least I could do, as head of the family. We both know that Yankee’s skedaddled right back where he belongs, once he found out this place wasn’t goin’ to make him a millionaire overnight.”

  Caddie didn’t dare let herself believe that “I—I know no such—”

  His smirk became an outright leer as Lon’s gaze roved over her. “Or maybe he found out a good-lookin’ woman can still be cold as creek water when you get her in bed?”

  If he’d struck her hard across the face, the man could not have shaken her worse. All Caddie’s bewildering feelings about Manning and Del threatened to overwhelm her, along with her crippling doubts about herself as a woman and a wife.

  She countered with the only ammunition she possessed.

  “You’ve got no right to Sabbath Hollow, Lon Marsh, and you’re never going to get it.”

  As Caddie turned to stalk away, she nearly barreled into Bobbie Stevens, returning with a pail of water. Snatching it from his hands, she pitched its contents over the small circle of blackened grass. And Lon’s handsomely buffed boots.

  He jumped back, cussing.

  Caddie passed the bucket back to Bobbie. “If Mr. Marsh doesn’t leave peaceably, send a couple of boys to escort him off the property. At the point of a pitchfork if need be.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I can find my way,” Lon growled. “You’re making a big mistake, Caddie. Don’t say I never gave you the chance to mend fences. You’re soon going to need a friend like me, but I won’t be there.”

  She walked away without another word. Head held high and back straight in the regal bearing her mother had taught her.

  Let Lon taunt and threaten. Even if Manning didn’t come back, she’d be able to hold on to Sabbath Hollow now that the mill was operating.

  And the children? she asked herself that evening as the three of them ate supper in silence. Again.

  Tem and Varina would manage just fine without a Yankee stepfather, her pride insisted. He’d kept so busy at the mill and making repairs to the house, they would hardly notice his absence.

  Her son soon disabused her of that hopeful notion.

  “When’s Manning coming home, Mama?’’ asked Templeton, as Caddie tucked him in for the night.

  “I can’t say for certain, dearest.” She tried to sound matter-of-fact, and more confident than she felt. “It all depends on how long it takes him to find folks willing to buy our wood and furniture. No telling how long that might be.”

  “A week?” It wasn’t like Tem to persist in questioning once she’d given him an answer, no matter how vague. “Two?”

  Caddie sensed a vigilant attention from the unmoving form beneath the quilt on Varina’s bed. Her daughter hadn’t spoken a word to her all day.

  “It could easily take as much as two weeks, if he has to go on to Baltimore.” She ran a hand over her son’s hair and pressed a kiss on his puckered forehead. “I know you’ll miss Sergeant sleeping at the foot of your bed, but while Manning’s gone we need the dog to keep watch outside. You’re old enough to understand that, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The boy’s words didn’t carry much conviction.

  “Good.” She didn’t need enthusiasm—just obedience. “Good night, dear.”

  Caddie planted a kiss on Varina’s forehead, too, while the child squeezed her eyes shut tight in an unconvincing pretense of sleep.

  Closing the nursery door behind her, Caddie wandered to the end of the hall and hovered outside Manning’s room.

  Since the early hours of that morning, when she’d woken to find him gone, a bilious ache had lodged in her stomach. In spite of her defiant words to Lon, nothing she’d done all day had been able to ease that nagging uneasiness.

  Now, with the house quiet and nothing else to occupy her, it intensified. Would Manning return to Virginia, as she’d assured the children and insisted to their uncle? Or would he keep right on riding north and never come back—driven away by her suspicion and ingratitude?

  With the heightened caution of a spy venturing into enemy territory, she stole through the open doorway and stood by Manning’s bed.

  Some unspoken compact had kept her from entering this room since the day he’d taken possession of it. He made his own bed every morning, depositing clothes and linen outside the door on laundry day. Perhaps she should give the place a thorough dusting and airing before he came back.

  If he came back.

  The possibility seem
ed less and less likely as Caddie stared at the empty coat hooks beside the door, slid open the bureau drawers and peeked beneath Manning’s bed. He’d taken every blessed thing he owned.

  With no brother-in-law around to oppose and no children to reassure, Caddie sank onto the bed, feeling more empty and forlorn than when she’d heard the news of General Lee’s surrender. More twisted with guilt than when she’d seen Del’s name on the list of casualties after his last battle.

  As she rested her head on Manning’s pillow, inhaling the faint aroma of his shaving soap, Caddie acknowledged that she’d felt more guilt than grief on learning of her husband’s death. Del had joined the Army of Northern Virginia to escape the unspoken hostilities of their marriage. She had driven him to take up arms, which made her as responsible for his death as the faceless soldier who’d killed him in combat.

  Had she nursed her deep bitterness against the Yankees because she couldn’t bear to lay the blame at her own doorstep, where it belonged?

  Caddie wasn’t sure she had the courage to answer that question honestly.

  One possibility she could not escape. In her guilt and misplaced spite, she had driven a far better man out of her children’s lives. If some miracle should bring Manning Forbes back to Sabbath Hollow, Caddie vowed, she’d find a way to keep him there.

  “A man came by today and left this for you, Mrs. Forbes.” Dora handed Caddie an envelope when she returned from the mill at suppertime. “Yankee fellow, by the sound of him.”

  Manning? The name whipped through Caddie’s thoughts as she tore open the envelope. Of course it couldn’t be, she realized, even before she had time to unfold the paper inside. Dora knew Manning by sight. The girl would have said it had been him.

  Perhaps he’d sent a message by way of a friend, though.

  Caddie wished she’d been at home, to invite the stranger in. Over a cup of coffee or a drop of spirits, she might have learned a little more about her husband’s past than he’d been willing to divulge.

  Expecting some account of Manning’s trip or a message to say when he’d be returning, she had to read the words on the paper several times before she could make sense of them.

  “Bad news, ma’am?” Dora turned from the stove, a big wooden spoon in her hand.

  “It—” Caddie shook her head, holding out the document “It’s a bill for back taxes on Sabbath Hollow.”

  Sinking onto the nearest available kitchen chair, she reread the sum demanded. “We can’t pay this. And we have more resources than most folks hereabouts. Are they fixing to evict the whole county?”

  “Jeff Pratt told me about this when l called on Ann the night before last.” Dora moved to where she could scan the paper over Caddie’s shoulder. “He says they’re only billing folks they reckon can pay. Or folks who have property some scallywag wants to buy up cheap after it’s seized for taxes.”

  Something in a pot on the stove began to boil over. Dora scurried across the kitchen, lifted the lid and gave it a stir. “Gracious me, I hope none of them has an eye on our place. If we sold every blessed thing we have left, we couldn’t begin to raise a tenth of what they’re trying to levy on you.”

  “Don’t go borrowing trouble, Dora. I don’t reckon anybody has designs on Gordon Manor, but I see my brother-in-law’s hand in this plain enough.”

  Caddie crumpled the paper in her fist “If Lon Marsh thinks he and his trashy wife are going to run me and my children off this land, he’d better think again.”

  “Surely Mr. Marsh can’t have anything to do with this.” Dora shook her head. “Him such a well-spoken gentleman and all. What would he want with this place when he’s got Hemlock Grove? Not as much acreage, but I hear tell the house is in fine shape.”

  What did Lon want with Sabbath Hollow? Caught up in her own compelling reasons for wanting to hold on to the place, Caddie had never given his a whole lot of thought. If she hoped to stay a step ahead of him, maybe she’d better start...

  “Don’t you go fretting yourself, ma’am.” Dora pulled a pan of beaten biscuits out of the oven. “Mr. Forbes will be back soon with a pile of orders for wood and chairs. Cash in hand for some of them, most likely. Then he’ll go talk to that old tax collector, one Yankee to anoth—that is, he’ll talk some sense to the man...”

  Were Southern girls born with the knack of putting the best face on the worst situation? Caddie wondered as Dora’s optimistic predictions went in one ear and out the other. Or did they learn the skill at their mother’s knee? Even as President Davis and his cabinet had caught the last train out of Richmond, her sewing circle had insisted to one another that a Confederate victory was not only still possible, but very likely. They had temporarily managed to convince each other it was true.

  The flaming apocalypse of Richmond’s fall, and the hungry, humiliating months thereafter, hadn’t fully cured Caddie of the tendency to put the best face on a bleak situation.

  “I reckon you’re right dear.” No sense worrying Dora that she might soon be out of a job... unless the girl wanted to stay on and work for Lydene. Caddie almost made a face just thinking of it “Mr. Forbes will take care of all this when he gets back.”

  Except that Manning wasn’t coming back. She’d better quit trying to fool herself on that score and face the truth.

  How much longer could she go on pretending to the folks at the mill that they’d better work hard to prepare for the orders Manning was sure to bring? Running breathless to the porch every time the dog barked or the children claimed to see a wagon on the road? Assuring Tem and Varina, every night at bedtime, that his return was a day closer than it had been the night before?

  “Would you mind calling the children for supper?” Caddie asked Dora. “Then you’d better head off home. Didn’t I hear something about a prayer meeting in Mercer’s Corner tonight?”

  Dora gave a pensive nod. “Bobbie Stevens got his old wagon fixed up and he offered to fetch a bunch of us into town.”

  “Jeff going, too?” Caddie smoothed the crumpled tax bill.

  “He might be.”

  Folding the paper, Caddie slipped it into her apron pocket. “You enjoy yourself tonight, dear. And don’t worry about getting here too early tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

  Dora was halfway out the door when Caddie called to her.

  “Ma’am?” Only a slight catch in Dora’s voice betrayed a hint of impatience.

  “While you’re praying tonight I’d be obliged if you said a little one for me.”

  “Of course I will. I plan to thank the good Lord for how you and Mr. Forbes have been helping folks around here get back on their feet again.”

  “That’s kind of you, dear.” As Tem and Varina filed in the kitchen door, Caddie couldn’t bring herself to admit she really needed a prayer of intercession—a whole church full of them, as a matter of fact.

  Fortunately, the children didn’t pester her with a lot of questions while they ate. Templeton picked at his pork and greens in anxious silence, while Varina consumed her supper with almost defiant concentration. Caddie had plenty of opportunity to fret about their future.

  She wouldn’t give in to Lon without the fight of her life. But barring a minor miracle, like finding the lost Marsh silver, Caddie much didn’t fancy her chances of winning.

  The Marsh silver! Could that be part of the reason Lon wanted to get his hands on Sabbath Hollow?

  During the Union Army’s first forays into Virginia, Caddie’s father-in-law had moved his family to the comparative safety of Richmond. Before leaving, Mr. Marsh had hidden the family silver and some valuable pieces of jewelry.

  Caddie’d assumed her father-in-law had confided the location to both his sons. But after he’d died suddenly of a stroke, Lon had arrived at the house in Richmond and turned the place upside down with no explanation. Shortly after that, Del had been reported dead in battle, and Caddie’s world had begun a rapid descent into darkness. She hadn’t dared let herself dwell on th
e fate of the Marsh silver, in case regret or wistful dreams paralyzed her.

  If the treasure still rested undisturbed, waiting to restore the family fortunes, Caddie knew better than to hope she might find it. Del’s father had been a clever, some might say devious, man. Any hiding place she could imagine, he probably had, too, and discarded it for that very reason.

  What about Lon, though? Had he been responsible for some of the ravages to Sabbath Hollow she’d blamed on the Yankees?

  Caddie glanced up at Tem and Varina. “After you two round up the chickens, you can play for a spell before bedtime.” She shook her head over Templeton’s barely touched plate. “Are you sure you can’t eat a little more, Son?”

  Templeton worried down the mouthful he’d been chewing. “I just don’t feel too hungry, Mama.”

  “Reckon I’m the onliest one with a appetite.” Varina shot an accusing stare at her mother’s plate.

  Glancing down, Caddie was astonished to discover she’d hardly touched a bite. A sharp rebuke rose to her lips, but she held it back, wishing Manning was there to ease the volatile relations between her and Varina.

  “You do seem to be the only one with an appetite. Which means you should have plenty of energy to coax those hens into the coop. Mind you don’t chase them, now, or they won’t lay.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Varina sounded disappointed not to get a fight she’d been spoiling for. “Come on, Tem.”

  The children left and the kitchen fell quiet.

  Caddie, tried to think more about the tax bill and the Marsh silver. Instead she found herself missing Manning’s presence during these few minutes of the day they’d often spent together in the past three months. Savoring a cup of tea and a bit of placid ease after the children had gone to do their evening chores.

  If she and Manning had exchanged words at all, they’d been about practical, everyday matters. Did she need anything particular from town the next time he went? What repair job should he undertake next? They’d cut so many board feet at the mill that day—a new record. Varina had come out with the funniest little saying.