This Side of Heaven (30 page)

“Because for all your sweet little seduction, you weren’t a bit more ready for a man’s loving than a twelve-year-old virgin!”

“But—that’s because—you know.” She was stuttering in her surprise.

“Yes, I know.” Bitterly mimicking her tone, he surged to his feet. His face was red with temper as he adjusted his breeches without the slightest bit of modesty. Glaring at her all the while, he continued, “I’ve wanted to lift your skirts ever since I first laid eyes on you, sitting on your delicious little rump in the dirt with your gown half torn off and your hair tumbling over your shoulders, looking so mad you could spit.
When you lay in my bed and I kissed you, do you know how hard it was for me to let you go? No, of course you don’t. You don’t have any idea. But let you go I did. And why? Because I had a fondness for you, Caroline, and you clearly needed to be cherished and kept safe. Trust was there between us, and trust is something I value far too highly to allow it to be tarnished by my lust. Before I took you to bed—if ever I did—I wanted to give you time, and a chance to heal. And by God, I did my part. I’ve kept my hands off you, haven’t I? I’ve earned my spot in heaven with all the effort it took! But now—how the devil do you suppose we’re going to be able to go back to what we had? We can’t, because I’m going to go mad with wanting you, and yet knowing that if I take you you’ll be sick with revulsion all the while I’m slobbering and panting away! Do you think I’m such a swine as to take a woman who doesn’t want me? Especially a woman I have a care for?”

“But—but …” Words failed her. Never in her wildest imagining had she suspected that her selflessness would lead to such a denouement. His reasoning was beyond her at the moment, though she had clearly heard him say he had a care for her. That alone would have been enough to make her happy if he hadn’t looked so fiercely angry.

Decent now, he was thrusting the ends of his shirt back inside his breeches. She bethought herself of how she must look, naked from her waist to the middle of her thighs where her white cotton stockings began, her legs wantonly sprawled, her skirt twisted about her middle. The sable triangle of her womanhood stood
out starkly against her pale skin, and even the small indention of her navel was clearly visible to his view. Face crimsoning, Caroline thrust her skirt down and scrambled to her feet.

“I did want you to—do what you did. It’s just that—I—I can’t help it if I don’t like it when it happens! Oh, Matt, can’t you just accept the fact that I made you a gift, and be happy about it?”

“Be happy about it!” For a moment she thought he would punch the nearest wall. His face mottled with passion, and he clenched his teeth. “I neither need nor want any human sacrifices, thank you very much!”

“It wasn’t like that!” she protested, almost wailing, but he was already stalking toward the door, running his fingers viciously through his disordered hair as he went. Clearly he did not mean to stay and discuss the matter further.

“Matt!”

Ignoring her, he yanked the door to one side, his temper and strength combining to make it slide as though its runners were greased. Then he stopped dead as he came face to face with Daniel outside.

Daniel stopped too, and for a pregnant moment the two merely stared at each other. Matt’s back was to Caroline, but even so she could see the menacing stiffening of his body. Daniel, facing her, was still largely enveloped by shadows despite the pool of light that spilled out through the barn door, but she could sense the tension in him too.

“What do you want?” Matt growled, his big body planted so as to block both Daniel’s access to and view of the interior of the barn. Daniel made as if to step
around him, but Matt held him off with an answering move of his own.

“Where’s Caroline?”

Matt laughed, the sound ugly. “Caroline is no concern of yours.”

“She’s as much my concern as yours! Where is she? She …” Daniel’s voice trailed off as, over Matt’s shoulder, he found Caroline with his eyes. She had hurried in pursuit of Matt, only to stop some paces behind him as he confronted Daniel. Now she moved so that Daniel could see her, and urgently shook her head at him. But Daniel, his eyes widening, was not pacified. Though Caroline didn’t realize it, with her hair fallen from its knot to tumble over her shoulders, her lips rosy and swollen from Matt’s mouth, and the pale skin of her cheeks reddened from his sandpaper jaw, she was the very picture of a woman who had just been, at the very least, thoroughly kissed.

“You—bastard!” Daniel said to his brother on an incredulous note. And then, without any warning at all that Caroline could see, he punched Matt in the face.

The blow resounded throughout the barn. Jacob, who had his own spacious stall at the rear, snorted in alarm, his gigantic body thumping against the wood. A cow penned nearer the door mooed loudly as Matt stumbled backward and then measured his length on the floor with a loud thud.

“Matt!” Caroline shrieked, running to Matt’s aid as he sat up, a hand to his eye. She clutched his arm, crouching at his side and glaring up at Daniel with the ferocity of a lioness defending her cub. “You’ve hurt
him! What were you thinking about? He’s your brother!”

“You stay out of this,” Matt growled at her, pushing her away and seeming to shake himself. Then he was coming up off the floor in a fast lunge, tackling his brother and staggering with him out into the barnyard. They fought furiously, trading blows and kicks and curses, both big, strong men and lethally furious. Matt was an inch or so the taller and the more muscular by a discernible degree, but he was hampered slightly by his lame leg and so the contest was more or less even. Darting behind them as they circled, grappling, the shadowy, shifting darkness obstructing much of her view, Caroline was reminded of nothing so much as a pair of dancing bears.

“Stop it! Matt! Daniel! Do you hear me? Stop it!”

Caroline grabbed at Matt’s arm, only to be shoved back out of the way. At the same time, Matt, distracted, took another blow to the face. The splat of Daniel’s fist connecting with Matt’s jaw made Caroline cringe. Matt grunted, jerking his head back. Daniel followed with a blow to Matt’s midsection, which, fortunately, Matt managed to avoid by twisting to one side. With a roar Matt planted a toe in Daniel’s middle. Then, as his brother doubled up with a gasp, Matt followed with a bone-crunching punch to the face. This time it was Daniel who measured his length on the ground.

“Please stop! Please!”

But she might as well have kept silent, for all the good her cries did. Daniel flung himself at Matt again. Caroline, jumping from one foot to the other as she
watched helplessly, remembered the bucket in the barn and ran to fetch it just as Daniel managed to lock his arm around Matt’s neck. On the way back, she detoured just long enough to fill it with icy water from the trough. Then she stood beside them—’twas Matt who had Daniel in a headlock now—and sloshed the contents of the bucket impartially over them both.

“What the devil …!” They parted, gasping and spluttering at the freezing deluge. Both men rewarded her interference with identical glares. In the shifting moonlight, despite the differences in their coloring and height, they looked enough alike at that moment to be twins. Once the source of the intervention was identified, their eyes swiveled from Caroline to fasten on each other. Then, with identical snarls, they were at it again.

This time Caroline didn’t even hesitate. She threw the bucket down on the ground, clenched her fists, and stormed toward the house. If the blasted fools wanted to kill each other, then she could only hope that they would succeed!

Once inside, she stalked into the kitchen, glared at the quartet who occupied themselves in various fashions around the room, and started gathering the trenchers from the table with a good deal more clatter that the task deserved.

Four pairs of eyes looked up at her with interest as she entered, and as they took in her disheveled state, heightened color, and obvious temper, at least two pair? of them widened with curiosity.

“Well?” Thomas finally said when Caroline, clanging utensils, seemed determined not to speak.

“Two fools are beating each other to death in the barnyard,” she threw at him over her shoulder, speaking through gritted teeth. “And I, for one, don’t care to watch!”

“What!”

After an appalled instant the four of them were on their feet rushing for the door. But what happened after that, Caroline didn’t know, because she, tired of every single man who ever walked the earth, took herself off to bed.

Where she tossed and turned and fumed, and slept not so much as a single wink the whole night through.

32

T
he atmosphere around the breakfast table the next morning was heavy as a thundercloud. Davey and John, apparently never having seen their father fight with one of their uncles before, were awed into unaccustomed noiselessness. They shoveled their corn mush and molasses down without so much as a peep and scooted off to school with only quick, scared glances for the adults they left behind. Robert and Thomas, after exchanging pregnant looks and attempting one or two conversational gambits that went unanswered, gave it up and concentrated on downing their food. Matt and Daniel ate with matching black frowns while Caroline slapped food into trenchers and trenchers onto the table in stony silence.

Matt sported a grotesquely swollen black eye, from, she thought, Daniel’s first punch, and one corner of his mouth was cut and presumably sore. This she discerned by the way he winced as he ate and probed at the hurt area with his tongue. Daniel’s nose was red and enlarged, and there was a massive dark bruise on the left side of his jaw. At first glance he appeared to have gotten the better of the battle. But he grimaced with every movement, and even sitting seemed to cause discomfort, so Caroline couldn’t say for sure. In
any case, she didn’t feel the least sorry for either one of them. In her august opinion, it was a pity they had not beaten each other senseless!

Actually, she was quite glad to find herself so angry at the pair of them. It kept at bay the shame she would otherwise have been feeling over her disastrous attempt at lovemaking. It was Matt for whom she reserved her choicest fury, for taking an act that had been one of unselfish giving and twisting it out of all recognition, and then fighting with his brother over her, which was perfectly ridiculous. But she was angry at Daniel too, for hitting Matt and for acting as if she had betrayed him, Daniel, in some way. As if they had an understanding or something, which they most emphatically did not!

And she was angry at Robert and Thomas because they were Mathiesons, and men, and quite astute enough to have figured out the cause of their brothers’ quarrel for themselves. Those two had been shooting the three principals speculative looks ever since they had all four thumped downstairs to discover Caroline banging pots in the kitchen, but so far neither of them had had the nerve to come right out and ask the cause of so much familial ill will.

Matt finally shoved his chair back from the table, his food only half eaten. For the first time in Caroline’s memory, something had actually interfered with a Mathieson’s appetite, but whether it was bruised emotions or a sore lip she wouldn’t venture a guess. Robert and Thomas followed suit, but Daniel stayed where he was.

“You coming, Dan?” Robert paused on the way out the door to ask.

Daniel shook his head. “I’ll be along in a minute. First I have something to say to Caroline.”

This was accompanied by a challenging look at Matt, who had started around the table toward Caroline before being halted by his brother’s words. Robert and Thomas both stopped what they were doing to stare at Daniel, while Matt turned to meet Daniel’s gaze with an expression that did not fall far short of menacing.

“ ’Tis I who have something to say to Caroline. And as I require privacy in which to say it, you can take yourself off.” Matt’s tone was deceptively quiet, but his glittering eyes belied it. As far as Caroline knew, it was the first word that either brother had addressed to the other since their fight. Though she wondered what Matt might have to say to her, she told herself stoutly that she was in no mood to hear it. Both he and Daniel had behaved like buffoons the night before, and if either of them had aught to say to her, they could just wait until she felt like listening! And when the words came, they had best be an abject apology!

“The devil I will,” Daniel answered, abruptly standing up. His chair skittered back on two legs and was saved from crashing to the floor only by the fact that it smacked into the wall first.

“Oh, you will.” Matt was coldly positive.

“Not on your say-so!” Daniel sounded as if he was spoiling for a fight.

They bristled with mutual animosity while Robert and Thomas, sensing another incipient battle, moved
to grasp Daniel and Matt, each by an arm. Daniel suffered Robert’s hold, merely ignoring him, but Matt shook Thomas off, though the younger brother still hovered watchfully close.

“Caroline has nothing to say to you.” Matt spoke through his teeth.

“That’s for her to say, not you. She’s not your property.”

Matt smiled then, a mere baring of his teeth. “Isn’t she, little brother?”

“Wait just a minute!” Caroline, who’d listened to this exchange with growing outrage, slapped an empty trencher down on the sideboard. All four men started, as if they had forgotten she was there, and immediately switched their attention to her. She glowered from Matt to Daniel almost impartially, although there might have been just a dollop of extra venom in the look she gave Matt, who, in her opinion, was the more deserving of it.

“I don’t care if you quarrel. I don’t care if you fight. I don’t care if you pound each other into matching bloody pulps, but you will not do it in my kitchen! Get out!” Her voice rose as she spoke, and by the time she finished she was shouting at them. When they continued to stand there gaping at her with as much surprise as though the wall had spoken, she snatched up her broom and waved it at them threateningly.

“Caroline …” Daniel began heavily. Matt shot him a murderous look, and opened his mouth to reply.