In a Stranger's Arms (31 page)

He thought she’d cooed some nonsense about meeting him upstairs later for a little party of their own. Unless she was trying to torment him, which Manning didn’t discount, he couldn’t imagine why Lydene Marsh might make such a scandalous suggestion.

Maybe he’d been thinking too much about Caddie. How badly he wanted her, yet how wrong it would be to surrender to his desire. Somehow that might have gotten mixed up with whatever shallow pleasantry Caddie’s sister-in-law had uttered.

The sound of hands clapping for attention hit Manning like a hard slap on the cheek.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Caddie called from the parlor door. “Come and eat before the barbecue gets cold.”

Her voice sounded strange—hollow, as if echoing through an empty room, instead of a crowded one. And her face had paled to an ivory shade that looked striking in contrast to her vivid hair. Manning didn’t like it, though.

Had the barbecue brought back too many bittersweet memories for her? Had it made her yearn for life at Sabbath Hollow as it used to be? For the husband she’d once loved, whom Manning was luring her to forget?

He fought his way through the press of guests streaming toward the dining room, trying to get close enough to Caddie that he could ask her what was wrong. He wasn’t sure he could bear to hear it.

Either circumstances were against him, or Caddie was deliberately making an effort to avoid him. Hard as he tried, he could never seem to make any headway in reaching her. He was beginning to feel like a fish trying to swim upstream.

A flounce of green drew his gaze to the wide arched entry of the dining room. Lydene flashed him a smile brimming with sultry mischief. A smile that told him he hadn’t been hearing things, after all. When she glanced upward, there could be no mistaking her meaning.

Manning barely resisted the urge to yank out a handful of his hair. The last thing he needed right now was Lon Marsh’s wife poking around upstairs. He began to battle his way out of the dining room.

Doc Mercer loomed before him. “Appreciate your hospitality, sir.” By the smell of his breath, Manning guessed the good doctor had laced his lemonade with something a trifle stronger.

“Glad you’re enjoying yourself.” Manning tried to step around him.

“Many’s the fine time I’ve had at Sabbath Hollow over the years.” The doctor’s face took on a faraway look, for which the whiskey he’d consumed was only partially to blame.

“I hope you’ll have many more in the years to come.”

Picturing Lydene on the prowl upstairs, Manning pushed the doctor toward Dora’s mother. “You and Mrs. Gordon will have plenty of good old times to talk over, I’m sure.” As he threaded his way through a press of guests, he knocked Bobbie Stevens off balance and almost barreled into Jeff Pratt. “Sorry folks! Swear I haven’t had a drop stronger than lemonade.”

In case anybody might be watching, he resisted the urge to dash up the stairs two at a time. Just the same, his breath was coming fast when he reached the upstairs landing. Though he knew with nauseating certainty where Lydene Marsh must be, Manning cast a passing look into the nursery and Caddie’s room. There was no trace of the woman. He found more than a trace of Lydene in his own room. Dark curls hanging loose around her shoulders, she lounged back in his bed, the picture of wanton allure.

Manning stood at the door. “Mrs. Marsh, if you’re feeling tired or unwell, I suggest you ask your husband to take you home.”

“Silly man.” She laughed as if he’d just told the funniest joke she’d ever heard. “I’m not one bit tired—except of that poky old barbecue. I’ll bet you and me can have plenty more fun right here by ourselves.”

Manning reached back to rub the tightly bunched muscles in his neck. “I doubt your husband or my wife would take kindly to that idea, and I can’t say as I’d blame them. Now, why don’t you just act like a lady and come on downstairs?”

“I like it here just fine.” Her little raspberry mouth pulled into a pout some men might have found bewitching.

Manning wanted to shake some sense into her. “I’ve asked nicely, now I’m telling you. Get off my bed. Get out of my room. And get the hell out of my house!”

Lydene started to sit up, and for an instant Manning thought she was going to do as he’d asked. Instead, she began to unbutton the front of her dress, until a tempting expanse of plump breast strained over the top of her corset.

“If you want me out of here so bad, why don’t you come and get me?”

Manning swallowed hard. A fellow would need to be made of marble for the sight of a woman in such a provocative pose not to stir him the least little bit. He didn’t want Lydene Marsh, though. Not the way he wanted Caddie—with his whole heart and most of his soul as well as his body.

Just then he heard voices coming up the stairs—the loudest of them Lon’s. Suddenly Manning understood what had brought Lydene to his bed, and it wasn’t any kind of fancy for him.

He knew he needed to beat a retreat. If the Marshes had conspired to spring this trap on him, he should put as much distance as possible between himself and Lydene.

He had no intention of leaving her alone in the same room as his box of papers, though. As for trying to manhandle her off his bed... “I’ll leave that chore to your husband, Mrs. Marsh. I believe I hear him coming.”

Swearing that he’d burn Del’s letter before another day dawned, and cursing himself for not doing it sooner, Manning stepped toward the bureau to grab the box and be off. He nearly choked when he felt a small but forceful hand snag the waistband of his trousers from behind.

“I’m... not... used to being turned down by men, Mr. Carpetbagger.” The woman had considerable strength for her size.

Caught off balance, Manning staggered back toward the bed. His arms flailed out, grasping for something to break his fall. Only when he heard the high-pitched shriek of ripping cloth did he realize that he’d latched on to some part of Lydene’s gown.

She cried out in a very believable pretense of distress—or perhaps she was genuinely upset about the dress.

The rest unfolded as neatly as a stage play. The aggrieved husband rushed in on cue, conveniently accompanied by two witnesses in the persons of Mrs. Pratt and Mrs. Gordon. They all made proper noises of horror.

Manning didn’t bother trying to explain. What was the use?

At last Mrs. Pratt withdrew, huffing, “I’ll see to it that Caddie knows what kind of shenanigans are going on under her roof.”

Manning caught Lon in a smirk of triumph that told him he’d better start packing up his belongings.

Chapter Nineteen

C
ADDIE KNEW
.

“Of all the no-account behavior!”

“I good as told her something like this would happen!”

“What did she expect, marrying one of
them
?”

Deep in the pit of her stomach, she knew. If the look Lydene had shot her while dancing with Manning hadn’t been enough, the vindictive glee in Mrs. Pratt’s and Mrs. Gordon’s voices, masquerading as neighborly concern, slapped Caddie in the face.

She didn’t need to hear the women recount every disgusting, humiliating detail. But she let them run on, holding her peace with a show of cool dignity when all she wanted to do was scratch Lydene’s eyes out, shriek at her husband like an ill-bred scold, then fall on her bed and cry till her eyes ran out of tears.

Lon and Lydene appeared behind Mrs. Gordon and Mrs. Pratt, Lon’s coat covering the ruin of his wife’s dress in a pointed pose of gallantry. If she’d been carrying on with another man, why didn’t he seem the least bit angry at her? Caddie knew very well why.

The crowd of guests parted and fell silent as Manning made his way toward her. His hang-dog look drove Caddie nearer to losing control than the women’s nattering or the gloating gleam in Lon’s eyes. For it told her he was dead guilty on all counts, yet at the same time coaxing her to feel sorry for him when that was the last thing she wanted to do.

Perhaps not the last. The very last thing she wanted was to give Lon and Lydene the satisfaction of mortifying her in public.

Stonewalled by Caddie’s implacable silence, Mrs. Pratt and Mrs. Gordon finally sputtered out. In the hollow hush that followed, the sound of Manning clearing his throat thundered like a full battery of artillery.

“Caddie... I can explain, if you’ll let me.”

“There’s nothing to explain, my dear.” She glared at Lon and Lydene, not daring to glance at her husband’s stricken face, for it might smash her brittle composure. “I knew from the moment my brother-in-law accepted your generous invitation, he’d only be coming to make trouble. I’m disappointed such a sly fellow couldn’t dream up something more original than this tiresome farce.”

The shock on Lon’s face was almost worth what it cost Caddie to hide her anguish. At least when she’d discovered Del’s unfaithfulness, the whole neighborhood hadn’t been witness to it.

He puffed up like a rooster at a cockfight “How dare you accuse me...?”

A swell of muttering in support of Caddie and Manning drowned him out.

“I know what I saw!” insisted Mrs. Pratt.

“Mother!” Jeff pulled her away from Caddie, none too gently. “You have shamed our family, making these kinds of vile accusations against Mr. Forbes. We are going home. Mr. and Mrs. Forbes, I apologize for my mother’s disgraceful behavior.”

Awestruck by her son’s outburst, Mrs. Pratt let herself be led away, as meek as a lamb.

As Dora bore down on her, Mrs. Gordon recanted. “It might not have been as bad as it seemed. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be.”

Lon tried to protest, but outraged scowls from the other guests drove him and Lydene into ignoble retreat.

There could be no salvaging the party after such a spectacle. Caddie didn’t even try. Leaving Manning to bid their guests goodbye, she went looking for the children, to satisfy herself they hadn’t overheard anything that might upset them. She found them out back feeding bones to the dog.

“How come Rafe had to go home so soon?” Varina demanded. “Just when I’d almost coaxed him to dance.”

“He’s a nice little fellow,” Templeton agreed. “His pa got killed in the war, too. In the navy. He said he might get a new one if his ma marries Mr. Stevens. Varina and me wished him luck on it. Why’d everybody leave all of a sudden, Mama?”

“Maybe on account of it’s as far past their bedtime as it is past yours.” Caddie shooed them into the house and put them to bed as the last of the wagons trundled off up the lane.

When Manning finally ventured back into the house, she was carrying a stack of dirty dishes out to the kitchen.

He began to clear some glassware from the dining table. “Why don’t you go on to bed—I’ll see to this.”

Everything in Caddie’s upbringing urged her to go on upstairs without another word, nurse her tattered self-respect in private and sweep this whole unpleasant matter under the rug. But she deserved better from Manning Forbes, and she was going to demand her due, even if it let him see how much he’d hurt her.

“How do you expect to manage that with your hands still not healed? Besides, you could wash dishes till the day you die and it still wouldn’t come close to making amends for what you put me through tonight.”

Manning almost dropped the glasses he’d gathered up. His mind and heart were still reeling from the way Caddie had taken his part against Lon’s accusations. After all the secrets he’d kept from her, the half-truths he’d told her, he didn’t deserve the faith she’d shown in him. Not to mention the way he’d thrown the precious gift of her lovemaking right back in her face.

He had wandered out to take leave of their guests in a daze. If Caddie could stand by him after what had just happened, was it possible he could tell her the truth about his past, daring to hope she might understand? Perhaps even forgive him?

Her words hit him like jagged bits of shrapnel. He should have known she’d only defended him as a means of defying her brother-in-law.

“It happened like you said, Caddie. Lon and Lydene set the whole thing up. I didn’t—”

“Who invited them here in the first place?” Caddie slammed the dishes down on the table. “And how did Lydene get you up in the bedroom with her? Toss you over her shoulder and carry you? Or maybe she put a pistol to your head?”

Not a pistol—but a threat. A threat he himself had furnished with his lunatic refusal to destroy Del’s letter or hide it where no one would ever find it.

“Did you hear something?” Manning set down the glasses and started for the entry hall. He didn’t want Tem to overhear them fighting again. Who knew what danger the boy might court trying to distract them?

Caddie was not about to be distracted by anything. “Don’t think you’re getting away that easy, Manning Forbes. I know you had your reasons for marrying me, and love didn’t likely come in the top ten, but we took vows and I mean to hold you to them.”

Didn’t his vow to a living woman count at least as much as his vow to a dead man? Was it too late for him to mend what he’d marred again and again?

Before he could say anything, Caddie issued her terms. “If you wish to remain under my roof, I’ll need your solemn undertaking that you’ll never have anything more to do with that creature.”

Was that all? Maybe he could promise not to eat live slugs while he was at it.

“Oh, Caddie...” The noise he thought he’d heard completely forgotten, Manning crossed the room in two long strides and took her in his arms.

“Don’t you ‘Oh, Caddie’ me, you Yankee hypocrite!” She made a token swat at his chest then turned away from him. But she didn’t struggle to free herself from his embrace. “Preaching about it being wrong for legally married folks to sleep together if they don’t love each other, then carrying on with another man’s wife!”

She wouldn’t care about this so much if she didn’t care about
him
. The hope of it might have brought Manning to his knees, if he hadn’t been holding on to Caddie. It made him wrap her even tighter in his arms.

Pressing his cheek against her hair, he whispered, “You don’t think for a minute I could prefer her to you?”