In a Stranger's Arms (2 page)

Pulling a slender cigar from his breast pocket, Lon trimmed and lit it. His lips stretched into a wide grin. “Take more than a few Yankees to get rid of Alonzo Marsh, my dear. I’ve got more lives than a cat and I generally land on my feet, too.”

There
was
something sleek and feline about Lon—an air of smug self-satisfaction, an elegant disdain for the rest of the world. A single-minded concentration on his own interests. And charm that usually won him his own way.

Lon’s gaze strayed to the buckboard wagon, heavily laden with supplies. “You fixing to stay a spell with us?”

“Us?”

“Me and my missus.” Lon turned and held out his hand to the woman, who sashayed over and plastered herself up against him. “You recollect Lydene, don’t you?”

Caddie slammed down a lid of propriety on the feelings that boiled inside her. Did Lon have any notion what his bride had done with his brother? Or had that represented part of Lydene’s attraction for him?

Not trusting herself to answer Lon’s second question, Caddie seized on his first, instead. Indignation sharpened her words.

“I
am
planning to stay. Richmond’s no fit place to raise children these days if a body has any choice, and I do. As Del’s widow, Sabbath Hollow belongs to me. It’ll be Templeton’s when he comes of age.”

As if to strengthen her claim, Caddie helped Tem down from his seat on the backboard and put her arm around his thin shoulders. She needed to feed both her children a good hot meal and tuck them into bed, not stand around like uninvited guests to their own home.

“Hold on a minute.” Lon’s expression hardened. “If the war hadn’t come, you and Del would have inherited Sabbath Hollow and I’d have got money from Pa to buy or build a place of my own.”

His voice grew louder and angrier with every word. “But the war did come. The money’s gone and so are Pa and Del. There’s just the house in Richmond and Sabbath Hollow. You have one and I’ve got the other. Seems fair to me.

The spring breeze tickled Caddie’s neck into gooseflesh. She could barely coax her reply above a whisper. “I sold the house in Richmond.”

In bad shape, it had barely fetched enough for her to buy the old mare, the buckboard and a few supplies for them to start over up country.

Lon shook his head, as if in sympathy, but his lips clenched tight on his cigar. “That wasn’t wise, Caddie. A woman on her own with two young’uns is safer in town or with her folks. You’re welcome to stay here a spell, while I send word to your brother, Gideon. Then we’ll see about putting you all on a train back to Jessamine.”

So intent was Caddie on her brother-in-law’s outrageous suggestion that she did not hear Varina stirring. At least not until Lydene scrambled to the buckboard and lifted the child down.

“Ain’t you just as sweet as sugar pie?” Lydene crooned while Varina yawned and rubbed her eyes with dimpled fists. “Maybe you can just stay here with me and your uncle Lon when your mama goes back to South Carolina.”

Caddie ripped her four-year-old daughter from Lydene’s arms, pitching her voice low so as not to upset the children. “Don’t you ever touch my baby again, do you hear?” Inside her, the heat of rage and the chill of fear collided, brewing up a thunderstorm of emotion she was powerless to control. When she turned her gaze on Lon, Caddie half expected bolts of lightning to shoot from her eyes and fry him where he stood.

“I am
not
going back to Jessamine or Richmond or anyplace else. Sabbath Hollow is my home and my children’s. Which means you are trespassing on our property, Alonzo Marsh.”

“Now see here, Caddie—”

“Don’t you
see here
me! I know you have land and a house from your ma where you can live just as well. Now, I want you and your...
her
to pack up and clear out. My children are tired from the trip. I want to tend to them and get settled.”

Caddie felt Tem step back behind the protection of her skirts. Varina struggled against her tight grip.

Flicking the ashes from his cigar, Lon met Caddie’s glare with a sneer. “If I say I like it here fine and I don’t plan on leaving, just how are you fixing to make me go?” How, indeed? Caddie’s knees began to tremble.

She had soldiered through the hardscrabble months since Appomattox, lured on by a single goal. Like a flickering candle in the window of the future, guiding her through a stormy night when she longed to surrender to weariness and despair. Now, within sight of her haven, that last hope was being snatched away by her children’s blood kin.

At least with the Yankees there had been no illusion they were anything but enemies.

The soft click of a rifle cocking shattered the tense, breathless silence. From behind her, Caddie heard a man’s voice, quiet and calm yet somehow just as menacing as the muted sound of the gun.

“If the lady wants you off her property, friend, I’m prepared to make you go.”

A Yankee. Caddie could tell by the way he spoke. Even to run Lon off the plantation, she wasn’t sure she could bring herself to accept help from one of
them.

Lon’s smirking mouth fell open. His cheroot dropped to the ground and lay there smoldering. Lydene looked as though she’d been kicked in the belly by a mule. What had gotten into them? It must be more than just the surprise of the Yankee’s arrival or the sight of his weapon.

Slowly, Caddie turned

What she saw made her head spin like a whirligig. Where had all the air gone? She could not seem to suck enough into her chest

The man’s gun wasn’t pointed at Lon, as Caddie had half expected. It was aimed toward the ground. His stance proclaimed a desire to avoid violence, but a resolve to use it if pressed. That wasn’t what made Caddie fear she might swoon for the first time in her life.

The man did not carry a spare ounce on his tall frame, least of all on his face, with its sharply chiseled features and fierce jutting chin. His full dark brows overhung deep-set eyes, shadowing whatever emotion they might have otherwise betrayed. The lean contours of his face were clean shaven, which made him look slightly less familiar.

Slightly.

Caddie coaxed a question out of her mouth, which had suddenly gone dry as sawdust. “W-who are you?”

Part of her felt a fool for asking. Who could the man be but Delbert Marsh? The husband whose reported death she’d never truly mourned.

Difficult as her life was now, it would become a hundred times more complicated if Del had suddenly risen from the grave.

Chapter Two

“
T
HE NAME
’
S
M
ANNING
Forbes, ma’am.”

He had a hard job forcing those words out. Seeing Caddie Marsh up close robbed him of air and made his vocal organs balk. He hadn’t been prepared for her to look so beautiful.

Another man might not have seen past the threadbare dress or the shadows of toil and worry beneath her eyes. Manning scarcely noticed those things. Instead, his gaze fell on the glory of her red-brown hair and the striking eyes that mingled misty gray softness with emerald fire. Something about the way she held herself stirred his admiration, too. Like the exiled aristocrats of old France, who had lost everything but their nobility.

Her children clung to her in the mute certainty that she would protect them at any cost to herself. Just watching the little family brought a wistful ache to Manning’s belly—as though he’d been hungry for so long he’d begun to doubt the existence of food.

Clearing his throat, he continued. “I came to speak to you on a matter of business, Mrs. Marsh. When I overheard your discussion with this
gentleman,
I thought you might need my help.”

Her gaze held equal parts fear and hostility, each vying for control. Manning shrank from the look in her eyes, even as he owned that he probably deserved it. Had he done a stupid thing, rushing to her aid uninvited? It seemed likely. But when he’d heard the bullying contempt in the squatter’s voice and the impotent desperation in Caddie Marsh’s, Manning hadn’t been able to stop himself from striding to her rescue. When she parted her lips, he braced himself to be sent packing.

Before she could get any words out, the squatter challenged him. “This little
misunderstanding
is between me and my sister-in-law, sir. You’ve got no call to meddle in our affairs. Certainly not at gunpoint. Whatever
business
you want to discuss, I think it’s safe to say we aren’t interested.”

Sister-in-law?
The word rocked Manning. He’d believed Mrs. Marsh and her children alone in the world, without menfolk to look out for them. If the children had an uncle, perhaps they wouldn’t need him as urgently as he’d assumed. Particularly when that uncle looked to have come through the war unscathed.

A queer mixture of relief and disappointment washed over Manning. What if Caddie Marsh didn’t need his help, after all? How would he ever make good the vow that had expanded to fill his empty life? Without a word, he stepped back and let his rifle barrel droop lower.

The dapper Virginian abruptly shifted his attention back to his sister-in-law, clearly satisfied that he’d dismissed Manning, and expecting him to slink away.

“Don’t let’s quarrel, Caddie. Not on the first day of your visit” The man had a voice like molasses taffy—warm and sticky. “You’re welcome to stay a good long spell with us.”

He took a step toward Caddie Marsh and her children. “We’d like to get to know young Templeton, here. He was just a wee scrap when you left for Richmond. The boy needs a man’s influence what with his pa gone and all.” Mrs. Marsh drew back from the man’s approach, clutching her daughter in one arm, while groping for her son with the other. Reacting instinctively to a perceived threat, Manning swung his gun up and fired into the dirt at the other man’s feet.

The Virginian jumped back and the women both screamed. The old mare shied as if startled by the sudden loud noise but too tired to rear or bolt. The little girl in her mother’s arms stared at Manning as she popped a small thumb between her lips and began to suck. Her brother covered his ears and blinked his eyes rapidly, making a manful effort to fight back tears.

Much as the child’s quivering fear reproached him, Manning tried not to let the boy’s uncle see him wince.

“Hold your horses, mister.” His voice sounded harsh and threatening, even in his own ears, as he reloaded the rifle. “Move back from the lady and let her speak for herself. If she tells me to clear off her property, I will. Until then, I’m staying put. I suggest you do the same.” Snapping the breech of his weapon closed again, Manning made himself meet Caddie Marsh’s wary, searching gaze. “What do you say, ma’am? Should I go?”

Caddie struggled to rein in her galloping pulse and to keep her words from leaping out in a breathless rush. The Yankee’ s warning shot was only partly responsible for her agitation. Now that she’d had a better look at the stranger, Caddie realized she’d been mistaken about his resemblance to her late husband.

Or had she?

Manning Forbes was a shade taller than Del had been... perhaps. His voice was certainly different than she remembered Del’s. A difference that lay in more than just the stranger’s Yankee accent... maybe.

What kind of woman, she silently chided herself, could let the memory of her children’s father dim to such a bewildering degree in such a short time?

Prompted partly by uncertainty and curiosity, Caddie made her decision. “I’d like you to stay, please, Mr. Forbes.”

“Have you lost your mind, woman?” barked Lon.

A twitch of the Yankee’s rifle barrel chased the sharpness from his voice. “Come to your senses, now,” Lon coaxed. “You don’t want to wash all our family linen in front of one of
them,
do you? Send him away. Then you and I can discuss Sabbath Hollow peaceably.”

Varina grew heavier in her arms with each passing minute, and Caddie’s last square meal was a distant memory, but she couldn’t bring herself to stay at Sabbath Hollow even one night as Lon’s
guest.
Or Lydene’s. It would set too dangerous a precedent.

Besides, she’d heard the unspoken threat in Lon’s voice when he said Templeton needed a man’s influence. If she gave this pair any leverage, they’d be scheming to get their hands on her children in order to secure their hold on the plantation.

“There’s nothing to discuss,” she replied. Lon was right about one thing. She didn’t like airing their family squabble in front of a Yankee, but he’d left her no choice. “I am not moving back to South Carolina, now or ever. I’m also not a visitor at Sabbath Hollow and neither are my children. The plantation belongs to us and
you
need to leave.”

“Now, Caddie...” With a sidelong glance at the Yankee’s rifle, Lon kept his voice hushed. His tone sounded wheedling yet vaguely hostile. “How can I leave one of my womenfolk alone with an armed Yankee? Think what he might do to you.”

Lord in heaven, she hadn’t thought of that. She also hadn’t thought it was possible for her heart to race any faster. This must be what Jessamine’s foreman had called “betwixt a rock and a hard place.”