This Side of Heaven (39 page)

“Well?” She wanted an answer.

His mouth quirked into a half smile. “Why, that you, my poppet, are the most tempting sight I could ever hope to feast my eyes on this side of heaven—and she is not.”

“And it had best stay that way.” Pleased at his answer, she nevertheless fixed him with a severe stare.
“Because you have given yourself to me, sir, and I warn you that I do not share!”

“Are you making me a declaration, Caroline?” The smile in his eyes as he repeated the question he had asked her once before was belied by the husky undertone to his voice.

“And if I am?” Her response was husky too.

“Then I would tell you that it’s my turn.”

“Your turn?”

“To make you one. But consider well before you answer. ’Tis a crew you’ll be taking on, and a permanent one. If you would have me, you must also take Davey and John, and James and Dan and Rob and Thom and even the deuced dog. There’ll be more babies, because I won’t be able to keep my hands off you for more than a few hours at a time and babies are the necessary result of that, and all the work that they bring on top of everything else. Even a bond servant is freed when the term of indenture ends. You, on the other hand, would be giving yourself to me forever.”

Caroline’s eyes widened, and she pushed herself up on her elbows from her supine position on his chest to blink at him.

“Are you by any chance attempting to make me a proposal of marriage?”

“I suppose I must be.”

“ ’Tis a most negative one. May I be permitted to ask what prompted it?”

His brows shot up. His hands moved explicitly down the naked length of her back to linger on the curve of her buttocks. Caroline ignored the delicate
tremors that shot along her nerve endings in the wake of his hands and frowned at him.

“You want me in your bed.” If there was an ominous note to that, she couldn’t help it.

“Aye, I do.” His fingers tightened, pressing her against him so that she could feel his renewed arousal.

“That is the most insulting thing I’ve ever heard!” Barely managing to control the urge to hit him, she started to scramble to her feet, only to be forestalled by his arms wrapping around her.

“Whoa, now, Madam Spitfire, control that hasty temper of yours! Would you have me deny the obvious? I’ve wanted you in my bed since I first laid eyes on you, hightailing it across my field with that red cloak flapping behind you and Jacob on your heels. A woman who can run like that, I said to myself, is a woman far and away above the ordinary herd of females.”

He was teasing her, she knew he was, but her feelings, so newly tender and sensitive to hurt, rendered her in no mood for it.

“Let me up, you randy oaf!”

She shoved against his shoulders. Matt must have seen the true pain in her eyes, floating just beneath the surface of her temper, because the smile in his died. Without warning he turned with her, holding her captive until she was pinned beneath him, not struggling but glaring at him with fierce hurt.

“Nay, I didn’t mean it,” he said quietly. “Or, rather, I did, but there is more to it than that, as you should know. I would wed you because I love you, Caroline, more than I have ever loved anyone or anything before
in my life. I love you so much that the thought of losing you fills me with dread. I love you so much that, if you refuse me, I’m liable to spend the rest of my life howling at the moon like a wolf who’s gone weak in the head.”

The smile accompanying this was a mere flicker that did not reach his eyes and was quickly gone. Looking searchingly up into his face, Caroline realized that he meant what he said: he loved her. But like herself, he had been wounded by life, and so he sought to protect himself from his tenderest emotions with humor or whatever other means he could seize.

At that realization her pique died, and she lifted her arms to link them behind his head.

“I’ll be proud and honored to be your wife,” she said, and she smiled at him with all the love she’d kept inside for so long shining from her eyes and her voice.

Matt stared down at her for just a moment, his own eyes darkening. “No, my poppet, ’tis I who am honored,” he muttered, and bent his head to lay his lips against hers in a long but achingly gentle kiss.

41

O
n that night the snow falling outside the shelter could have turned into a medley of cherubim singing in celestial chorus, and neither Caroline nor Matt would have noticed. They loved, and whispered, and laughed, and loved some more, and if the bliss they found together spoke more of earth than of heaven, it was still paradise enough for them.

Though the night was largely sleepless for both of them, when the dawn came Caroline awoke at the first creeping tendril of light. The interior of the shelter was amazingly bright because of the reflective properties of the snow outside. The fire was still burning steadily—Matt had fed it regularly, and though he had tossed limbs on the blaze from a careful distance, she had been pleased that he could bring himself to do so—but it barely took the chill off the air. Snugly wrapped in their cocoon of fur and covers, however, Caroline was toasty warm.

It helped, of course, to have a very large, muscular, hairy man sharing body heat with her.

His arm was around her waist with a hand resting just beneath her breast, and his leg was flung possessively over her thighs. She was curled, back to his front, as close to him as an apple to its skin, and it
required some effort on her part to turn over enough so that she could see him properly.

Asleep, he had the look of a dark angel fallen to earth, his black hair tumbling in a riot of curls over his brow and around his ears, his thick, stubby lashes lying like sable crescents against bronzed cheeks, his features as finely delineated as if they’d been chiseled by a master sculptor.

On the mortal side, that unshaven stubble threatened to develop into a full beard, and her love slept with his mouth open.

In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he snored.

Not loudly, but the rasping sounds issuing from between those classically carved lips were definitely not heavenly in origin.

Her eyes lighting with tender amusement as a particularly loud snore disturbed the pristine peace of the morning, Caroline thanked God, or Providence, or whoever was responsible, that Matt, for all his masculine beauty and staid Puritan ways, was no angel.

Because she loved him just as he was, snores, scars, beard, and all.

As she remembered the things he had done to her during that daft, wild night just past, she felt her cheeks pinken. Recalling the things he had taught her to do, the pink turned to rose. The recollection of their last coupling of what must have been at the very least half a dozen or more deepened the rose to burning red.

He’d caught her hips and pulled her down on him, and she’d ridden him with an abandon that would haunt her every time she caught his eye, for many and many a day to come.

At the thought of catching his eye, she panicked. What did one say to a man after such a wanton night? They had no more secrets from each other in truth now, and Caroline shut her lids at the thought of seeing his new knowledge of her reflected in his face.

Under his tutelage, she had discovered a capacity for strumpetry that she had never suspected lay dormant inside her. At the end, she’d no longer even needed his whispered encouragements to touch and caress, hold and fondle.

She’d done plenty of that on her own.

What she and Matt had done together bore no relationship to the horror that had, in her previous life, been forced upon her. The one was making love; the other was an abomination. After last night, the shade of Simon Denker would no longer cast a shadow of darkness over her life. She could put him and what he had done to her behind her, and get on with the business of living. Matt had set her free.

Was she really going to be his wife?

At the thought she almost fell to giggling like a silly schoolgirl. Only the knowledge that she must surely wake him if she gave way stopped her.

Suddenly she could not bear to face him as she was, naked and tousled with the marks of his lovemaking still everywhere upon her. She would get up from their bed and bathe and dress before he awoke. Besides, nature called, and the matter was growing increasingly urgent.

Getting up was not easy; even his limbs were heavy, and she had to shift them without disturbing him. But he seemed deeply asleep, and she managed to lift his
arm and slide herself out from under his leg without even causing a disturbance in the rhythm of his soft snores.

Standing naked beside the rumpled pallet, Caroline discovered that it was, indeed, bitterly cold. Catching up Matt’s shirt, she quickly put it on, amused to discover that the sleeves hung a good foot past the tips of her fingers and the tails reached down past her knees. She must look ridiculous, but there was no one to see, and she meant to have a quick wash if she froze to death making the attempt. Accordingly, she stepped into Matt’s boots. She could almost have slept in one of them, so huge were they. Picking up the jug that was still half full of rum, she moved aside a few branches and headed out into the snow.

She went no farther than a step or so outside, wincing at the frigid temperature that made it hurt to breathe and stung her skin with icy fingers. The sun was rising, a hazy pale ball just visible as she looked toward the river, and the wind had eased. Though snow still fell heavily, it was no longer whipped into pellets that bit at the flesh. The sparkly blanket on the ground came up to her knees—she was thankful for the enormousness of Matt’s boots—but the blizzard had passed. If not that day, then surely the next, they would be able to start for home.

What would Davey and John and the rest of them think of their news? She and the boys had crossed a crucial bridge on that afternoon in the village, but would their newfound affection extend to welcoming her as their father’s wife?

Having taken care of the most urgent part of her
business, Caroline emptied the remainder of the rum on a drift—everywhere it touched, strongly aromatic steam rose, and she was reminded of just how potent the drink had been—and quickly swirled the interior clean before filling it with snow. Then, shivering, teeth chattering, she stepped back inside the shelter with her prize.

“What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

To her dismay, Matt was very much awake now. He stood, gloriously naked and apparently not a whit abashed, just beside their pallet, which he had clearly just left. His fists were planted on narrow hips as he scowled at her. She was so chilled that she could hardly speak, but she could look, and look she did.

With his archangel’s face atop that magnificent body, he was a sight to stop any living, breathing female’s heart. Caroline drank in the sheer glory of him, barely noticing how his eyes swept her in their turn.

“You little idiot, what possessed you to go outside like that?” Sounding far more irritated than a lover properly should, he reached down, dragged his fur coat from beneath the piled coverings, and stalked across the small space that separated them to wrap it around her.

Caroline, having set the jug close to the fire so that the snow could melt, was just straightening as he reached her, and she was grateful for the sudden warmth. Her teeth still chattered, and her skin tingled as it thawed, but she had not been outside for long enough to do herself any damage, she knew.

“We n-needed water for w-washing.”

“You went outside practically naked for that?” The
volume of his voice escalated to a near roar on the last word.

Caroline scowled right back at him. “Don’t you dare roar at me, Ephraim Mathieson!”

“I’ll roar if I want—and don’t call me Ephraim.”

“I will if I want to. Actually, I rather like the name.”

“Oh, do you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“You’re feeling mighty cocky this morning, I see. Don’t think I can’t deal with impertinent chits.”

“Pooh—you don’t scare me! For all your big talk, I’ve never seen you so much as put a hand to the backside of one of your boys!”

“They’re good boys and don’t need that kind of correction. But don’t think I won’t put my hand to your backside, if you ever again do something so foolish as to go outside next door to naked in freezing weather to fetch water so you can wash!”

Put like that, it did sound rather witless.

“There were—other reasons too,” she said lamely.

Her very hesitancy told him what she meant. As realization hit, his lips compressed and his frown lightened. “Next time get dressed first. Have you never heard of frostbite?”

“You’re a fine one to be telling me to get dressed! Look at you, as naked as a babe!”

“You happen to be wearing my clothes!”

“Not all of them.”

“Enough.”

“You’ve breeches remaining, and stockings, and …”

“Caroline, do you really want to spend the entire morning arguing with me?”

Put that way, the answer was clear. “No.”

“Good. Because I can think of numerous things I would rather do.” He smiled then, a slow wicked smile that set her insides to doing flipflops, then walked over to her and slid his hand under her chin to tilt up her face for his kiss. As his mouth touched hers she wrapped her arms around his neck and rose on tiptoe and clung, kissing him back.

“That’s better.” He lifted his head to flick her nose with his finger. “If you’ll give me my boots, I, too, have business outside.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, oh.”

Occupying such close quarters was going to have its embarrassing aspects, Caroline could see. She went pink to her ears as she passed over boots and coat, pulling on his stockings—they were of heavy wool, and far warmer than her own cotton ones—and wrapping herself in the Indian blanket instead.

Still naked beneath the coat and boots, Matt stepped outside for no more than a few minutes before he was back. Caroline had had time to remove the now-melted and warmed snow from the fire, but certainly not enough to wash. Crouching by the pallet, in the act of wetting a piece of linen she had ripped from her mutilated petticoat, she jumped as if caught out in some nefarious deed as he slid back inside and replaced the branches that she had dislodged.