From This Day Forward

by Deborah Cox

  "I don't mean to intrude," she said in a voice that dripped honey. "I usually spend the afternoons here reading."

  She had donned a light cotton dress and come to the patio to pass the afternoon. It had not been her intention to force her presence upon her husband again. She didn't relish the thought of facing him so soon after her humiliation. But she'd spent far too much time fleeing to her room, and she wasn't about to do so now.

  Jason ran a hand through his damp hair. He stared at her silently, and Caroline watched the changing expressions that always shifted across his face. At first, he seemed surprised to see her, surprise giving way to something she might have interpreted as gladness, if she didn't know how unlikely he was to be glad to see her. Whatever that emotion might have been, it quickly gave way to curiosity.

  "I had no idea," he said. "I mean, that you spent the afternoons here."

  "How could you?" Caroline asked. "There are many things you don't know about me."

  Anger was getting the better of her, and she struggled for control. If she didn't tread lightly, she'd find herself baiting him again. She didn't want to drive him away, so she'd have to use another approach.

  She turned the leather-bound book in her hand so that Jason could see the title on the spine. It was Bleak House by Dickens. "Your taste in books seems quite eclectic. Your library is extensive."

  "I'm glad you approve. Please feel free to avail yourself of anything that interests you."

  "I wondered if you had anything on coffee cultivation." Her eyes remained on the book in her hand, but she could feel the heat of his gaze on her. "I can't imagine that you would not. You've got everything from Russian history to Goethe to Jane Austen.... If I didn't know better, I'd think that every book in your library was a new edition."

  "They are. It's my only requirement. Derek and his wife bought them on my behalf," he told her. "One hundred and twenty yards of books, enough to fill all the shelves in the room."

  "You don't...?"

  "I don't have time to read," he said.

  The skill with which he told the lie chilled Caroline to the marrow. He was very good at it—at lying. How would she ever be able to know when he was telling the truth?

  / used to sneak and keep some of the money I made working at the sugar mill to buy books, he wrote Derek. I'd hide them under my bed and read them late at night after my father passed out.

  The words of the letter leaped unbidden into her mind, jolting her with their significance. Compassion gripped her heart at the thought of that small boy hoarding the money he'd worked so hard for and using it to purchase books, books his father had burned more than once.

  Jason was still hiding his books. He guarded his secrets carefully. How would he react if he ever learned that for the past year she and not Derek had taken his detailed lists and purchased the books he'd requested?

  "The most I can manage is the month's worth of newspapers we get when the mail steamer comes up from Manaus," he was saying. "And why would you want a book on coffee cultivation?"

  Caroline shrugged, trying to appear casual while her mind churned with unspoken questions. "I told you, I'm curious." She held his gaze for as long as she could, but something in those iridescent blue depths forced her to look away before he penetrated her very soul. It was the second time she'd experienced the sensation of being scrutinized, physically and emotionally, by those sharp, inquisitive eyes.

  Opening her book to the place where she'd left off yesterday, she tried to dismiss him, but Jason would not be dismissed so easily. He stood still, studying her intently. She read the same paragraph three times without comprehension before finally lowering the book and gazing back at him.

  "There are no seasons here," he told her, "not like you're accustomed to at any rate. There's the rainy season when it rains every day, and there's the dry season when it rains every other day."

  She smiled up at him serenely, and he frowned and looked away. "I'm not at all what you expected, am I?" she asked.

  Jason returned his gaze to her with a shrug. "I don't even remember what I'd expected any more. What about you? Am I what you'd expected? I mean, you must have had some kind of expectations or you wouldn't have come here."

  Caroline felt her face burn as she remembered the fantasies she'd nurtured in New Orleans. She was twelve years old when her mother had died, so she remembered what it was like to have a complete family. And she remembered how it had been between her parents—the love, the laughter, the secret glances they shared that she didn't understand at the time. That was what she wanted, what she'd dreamed of. She wanted the kind of marriage her parents had enjoyed, a partnership.

  Those dreams seemed quite ridiculous now. She sat in a tropical garden in the heart of the Amazon Valley surrounded by the pervasive jungle with her irascible, unrefined husband, a man who had been cut off from civilization for so long he'd reverted to behaving like a savage.

  "I still can't understand why a young, attractive woman like yourself would want to live in such an isolated place," he said. "Or why you would marry a man you'd never laid eyes on. You're obviously not desperate."

  "No," she agreed, "only lonely."

  She'd been lonely since her father's death. Losing the love and camaraderie they'd shared had left her hungry for that kind of spiritual belonging. Foolishly, she'd turned to Wade Marshall to fill the void.

  Her first husband had exuded taste and impeccable breeding, but his dissolute living had nearly destroyed them.

  Studying her tall, ruggedly handsome husband, she had the inexplicable feeling that she could be happy with him, in spite of his lack of polish, social grace, sophistication. Somehow those things seemed unimportant, meaningless, even ridiculous.

  "May I ask how old you are?" he asked, bringing her back from her reverie.

  "Twenty-five."

  Jason quirked a shocked eyebrow at her answer.

  "You needn't look so shocked. Twenty-five is hardly ancient."

  "That's true, but you.... I mean, you're so lovely, so..." His incendiary gaze seared her flesh and melted her composure. "Why didn't you marry before now?"

  Caroline swallowed her fear. Finally, the moment had come, the moment she had been dreading since she answered Jason's request for a wife. The words in Jason's letter rose in her mind—"chaste, tractable, and of child-bearing age"—and her heart settled to her stomach.

  "I didn't mean to pry," Jason said a bit defensively. "You yourself said that I know nothing about you."

  "I... I was married before," she confessed quickly before she lost her nerve, feeling as if she'd just admitted to murder or some other heinous crime.

  His face hardened and he stood straight up, dropping his foot from the bench. "Derek failed to mention that detail," he said through clenched teeth. "Didn't he tell you what my requirements were?"

  Fear began to coalesce into anger. Caroline clenched her fists to control her rising ire. "I suppose he thought we were suitable..." she lied. She knew she'd live to regret it, but she couldn't tell him the whole truth, not when he stood glowering down at her as if he'd like very much to throttle her.

  "I'm sorry." She studied him, mesmerized by the bitterness etched across his taut mouth. A cold dread shivered through her body. "I'm a widow. That is... I'm not sorry I'm a widow, I'm sorry..."

  Jason laughed without humor. "This must be Derek's idea of a joke."

  "A joke? I hardly think so. I mean, if he knew how you would react, it would have been very cruel to send me all this way for nothing." Tell him, her conscience urged, but when she gazed into those fury-bright eyes, her throat closed.

  "Well, that's exactly what he's done," Jason assured her, turning away as if to leave.

  "Wait!" Caroline came to her feet, and Jason turned to face her expectantly. "You can't just walk away like that. Surely you didn't expect one of the fine families of New Orleans to send a young, innocent daughter to the wilds of Brazil."

  "I have quite a lot to offer a wife," he assur
ed her. "Or didn't my cousin tell you that? I think he did. I think that's exactly why you're here. You seemed overly interested in my financial status earlier."

  Caroline bristled. She threw the book onto the stone table with all her strength, then stood glaring at him, hands clenched into fists at her sides.

  "I never asked you about your financial status." She bit the words out. "If you'll remember, you volunteered that information."

  "You did the calculations, Mrs. Sinclair."

  "If I were only interested in financial security, I could have found that without traveling hundreds of miles!"

  "It would have been better for both of us if you had."

  "What are you saying?" she asked apprehensively. "Are you saying that because I'm not a—a—because I've been married, that you intend to...."

  "The mail steamer will return in a month. What I am saying is that you will be aboard that boat when it returns to Manaus."

  "But—but we're married!" Caroline sputtered.

  "A condition easily remedied," he said, his manner indifferent. "An unconsummated marriage is easily dissolved. You can take care of it when you reach New Orleans."

  "Annulment? What if I refuse?" She trembled with outrage and frustration. He was so cold, so unbending.

  Jason shrugged. "Then I'll take care of it myself. You misrepresented yourself to me."

  Caroline sucked in her breath as if she'd been hit in the stomach. "Don't you think your views are a little outdated? It is nearly the twentieth century, and we're a long way from Victorian England!"

  "That is irrelevant."

  He turned to leave again, and his apathy fueled her anger. Determined to elicit some kind of emotion from him, she shouted at his retreating back. "It was very wise of you not to consummate the marriage until you decided whether or not to keep me. It avoids the necessity for a nasty divorce. But if I should decide to oppose your suit, how would you prove your claims? A medical examination? I can't possibly profess to be untouched since I was married before, and for the same reason, you can't possibly hope to prove the marriage was not consummated!"

  He turned to look at her, his face a pale shade of red that gave Caroline a small measure of gratification. "You are a very blunt woman!"

  "Yes, I am," she admitted, tilting her chin proudly. "I am blunt and bold and daring and intelligent, all the qualities you must abhor in a mate!"

  He impaled her with his gaze. "How could you possibly know what I abhor or desire?"

  "You wanted a girl and you got a woman! You wanted someone you could bully and frighten with your blustering and your—your..."

  Her words trailed off, and she backed away as he moved slowly toward her until her back was against the stone table. Standing close to her, their bodies nearly touching, he leaned over her menacingly, forcing her to bend backward to avoid contact with him.

  "And I don't frighten you?"

  "No." She averted her gaze from the violence in his blue eyes, gasping for breath as the very air turned thick with tension like the stillness before a violent thunderstorm.

  "Not in the least?" Heat radiated from his body; his warm breath stirred the wayward tendrils of hair at her temple.

  "No." Her trembling voice belied the word.

  "Then perhaps you aren't as intelligent as I'd thought. You see, I know a great deal about inflicting pain." He touched a callused finger to her chin and she recoiled as if she'd been burned, her heart pounding ferociously.

  He wouldn't really hurt her, she tried to assure herself, but the very threat was enough to fill her soul with fear.

  "I learned from a master," he went on, his voice soft, mesmerizing. "I know your every vulnerability. I know how to make you beg for mercy. You have no idea—"

  "Stop it." Her throat constricted around the words as a genuine fear shivered down her spine. He could easily hurt her. His size alone was daunting, even if she hadn't seen the corded muscles that rippled beneath his skin. He could crush the life from her with his bare hands.

  "Pain is a different sensation for women than for men. Certain parts of the body and mind are more susceptible."

  "Stop. Please." Tears threatened her control. A part of her, the small part not immersed in fear, almost pitied him. Had he survived the pain of his youth by hardening himself to suffering and learning to inflict pain himself? The thought terrified her. She was very much alone, very much at his mercy, cut off from civilization by a thousand miles of river.

  "Have I managed to frighten you now?" he asked tautly.

  "Yes. Are you happy? Does it make you feel more like a man?"

  Panting with anger and excitement, he moved closer to her, barely brushing her body with his. She placed a hand behind her to brace herself against the table. The other hand she pressed against his chest, pushing against him with all her strength, but he refused to yield. Instead, he twined a hand in her upswept hair and wrapped his other arm around her narrow waist, crushing her roughly against him as his mouth possessed hers in a bruising kiss.

  This time she did fight him. She wedged both arms between their bodies and pushed desperately against his hard, implacable chest. He deepened the kiss, forcing her lips apart and assaulting the inner softness of her mouth with the lash of his tongue. Desire began to creep insidiously into her flesh and she stopped struggling and let her body fall against his as his hands moved to her buttocks and he pressed her soft loins against his hardness.

  "Are you always so easily aroused?" he asked, releasing her abruptly so that she settled ungently onto her feet.

  Caroline tensed at the harsh cruelty in his tone. Anger drove her to recklessness. She reached up, swinging out wildly, feeling the satisfying sting of her hand against his cheek.

  Jason chuckled. "Leave it to my cousin to send me a whore for a wife."

  "How dare you!" She swung out again, but this time he caught her wrist and held it fast. She tried to pull free of his grip, but he refused to release her.

  "Whore or not, you are my wife," he reminded her. "And like everything else in this house, you belong to me. And my word is final here. You will be on that steamer when it leaves for Manaus."

  Chapter Four

  Jason stalked from the house to the stable where he mounted his prized bay stallion and sent it flying over the twisting paths to the beneficio. The building and surrounding patios were silent and deserted, as he'd known they would be.

  He unsaddled his horse and let it loose to graze and find shade from the blistering sun, then went to stand on the only empty patio, gazing out across the dark water to the jungle on the opposite side.

  A widow.

  Hadn't Derek even read his letter? Of all the people in the world, he would have expected Derek to understand his need to surround himself with purity.

  He'd never been close to anyone, not really, but he and Derek had been friends during the three years he'd spent working at the Sinclair Coffee Company. And over the past year, Jason had revealed more about his past to Derek than he ever had to any other living soul. Betrayal by the one person he'd thought he could trust cut deeply. He'd poured his guts out to Derek in his letters. Derek should have understood.

  He'd wanted a woman without expectations, a woman without knowledge of the world, a woman who would fit easily into the place he'd created for her and not complicate his life with a lot of questions and demands.

  All he required was a woman to give him an heir, to give him tenderness when he wanted it, on his terms and without asking for anything from him in return. But tenderness had never been a part of his life, at least not after Peggy. If not for his older sister, his life would have been a wasteland. He'd believed her to be the most beautiful, most loving creature in the world. Peggy had tried to make their pitiful shack habitable. She was always picking wildflowers from the field behind their house and bringing them home or making paper lanterns that their father would destroy in one of his drunken fits of violence. It had been a useless exercise, but Peggy had never given up—not until
the end when life and reality had finally extinguished the tiny flame that had been her spirit.

  He hadn't thought of Peggy in a long time. It was Caroline's fault. She and his sister weren't at all alike, except that they were both beautiful and they were both dreamers. Peggy might have done something as impetuous as hopping on a boat and traveling to an unknown fate in a savage country, but Peggy would have been doing so to escape. Was that what Caroline had done?

  Damn her! He didn't need complications. And why did it matter? He'd already decided she had to go when the mail steamer returned. There was no other way.

  He closed his eyes, allowing the pain in his soul to wash over him. To be honest, he'd been looking for something, some flaw in her apparent perfection, something he could use to justify rejecting her. He couldn't bear it, being near her, always wondering when the demon inside him would strike out. She'd pushed him to the very brink of his restraint twice already, and she hadn't been in his house a week. So far he'd channeled his frustration into the escalating desire within him.

  She would be better off without him. She could go back to New Orleans and resume her life, forget about him.

  He wasn't proud of his behavior, but it had been necessary. He'd succeeded. For the remainder of her stay, she would go out of her way to avoid him. It was a good thing. He didn't know how much longer he could resist her. After all, he wasn't made of stone. Just thinking about her set his blood on fire. The feel of her lips against his, the softness of her skin still lingered vividly in his mind.

  He opened his eyes when, without warning, the heavens parted and a drenching rain beat down on the already sodden earth. A wall of water surrounded the beneficio, cutting him off from the rest of the world. He breathed deeply of the exhilarating, familiar scent of wet jungle and sultry heat, listening to the sound of the rain battering the red tiled roof.

  Work, that was what he needed. The men would be waking from their siesta soon. He'd work himself to the point of exhaustion, leaving no energy for reflection or conjecture.

  Caroline looked up from the book that lay open on her lap. Her spirit slumped in disappointment as the sound of rain filled the library. She'd mistaken the noise for approaching hoof beats that would have heralded Jason's return.