by Deborah Cox
"The marriage can't be annulled," he ground out, shaking her violently, his face trembling with barely suppressed rage, "but I'll arrange for a divorce. By God, I'll be rid of you once and for all."
He released her abruptly and her own momentum propelled her backward. Surprise and horror flashed across Jason's face as he tried unsuccessfully to save her from falling, but she landed on her rump in the mud with a jarring thud. He extended a hand to her, but Caroline struggled to her feet unaided, not knowing whether she was angrier at herself or him.
"Are you hurt?" he asked, a frown of concern marring his brow.
Good, she thought, let him worry, the brute. A thought occurred to her and she smiled inwardly at her own cunning.
"What if I'm pregnant?" She lifted her chin with her last vestiges of pride and courage. "Did you think of that?"
His eyes widened and she knew he hadn't. Neither had she, to be honest, not until that moment. In three years of marriage to Wade, she'd failed to become pregnant. She'd suspected there might be something wrong with her, but Jason didn't have to know that.
"No," he said, "I didn't think of that, but I'm sure you did. I guess we'll know by the time the mail boat returns, won't we? In the meantime, I want you to stay away from the slave village."
Shock tore through Caroline. "But you said I could go back and—"
"That was before I realized that your condition might be so delicate. You're endangering your life, and perhaps my child's, to say nothing of my liberty. Aiding runaway slaves is punishable by imprisonment, and they won't care that you're a woman or that I forbade you to go there. Besides, I don't want my pregnant wife exposed to sickness."
"But I've already had the measles," she reasoned.
"My word is final, Caroline! For as long as you remain here, you will do exactly as I say or I swear I'll lock you in your room. Is that clear?"
Caroline jerked free of his hold and drew herself up to her full height, glaring at him. "Quite," she said, her heart in tatters as she watched him turn and walk away from her.
Chapter Thirteen
Jason sat at the bar in the small, crowded tavern, nursing a glass of whiskey and lamenting his decision to come to Manaus. He hated the city, any city, but Manaus in particular. It reminded him of the Irish Channel and the life he'd been running from all these years.
So many things about Manaus touched the chord of memory inside him—the stench of the sewers, the sight of barefoot children playing in the streets, the sound of steam whistles from the river. He could imagine what life must be like for those barefoot children running back to their tenement homes in a part of Manaus that the city fathers tried with some success to hide behind a facade of prosperity. In his mind, he could see inside those unpainted eyesores to the sparse, crude interiors devoid of ornamentation, devoid of tenderness.
He'd been right about one thing. Manaus had come of age since last he'd been here. The seedy underbelly still existed, but it had been carefully covered with a veneer of civilization. A city built on the blood and flesh of slave labor, Manaus, like New Orleans, possessed an inbred decadence that no amount of culture could disguise.
He coughed, squinting in the dark smoke-filled room. More than anything, he wanted to leave this place, to wash the dirt and corruption of Manaus from his soul.
For ten years, he'd been sending coffee to market in Manaus, and for ten years, he'd avoided the city by sending Ignacio to conduct his business—until now.
Jason closed his eyes and the vision of lush green vegetation and the scent of fertile earth filled his senses. He yearned to get back to the fazenda, but he couldn't go back for the same reason he'd left in the first place. Caroline. Every time he thought of his home, there was Caroline to be reckoned with. What a coward he'd become, hiding from a woman. Her power and strength confounded him.
She'd disrupted his life, taken over his house, his last refuge, and now she'd forced him to flee to the city, the one place he'd been trying to escape for fifteen years. He couldn't bear to face her every day, to look into her eyes and know that she might discover the worst about him.
What he couldn't understand for the life of him was why she was still here, why she'd come at all, knowing what she did know about him.
That was the heart of his agony. She knew the very worst about him—the truth. He'd come to Brazil and built his own world, a world he controlled absolutely, from the orchards to the beneficio to the handpicked servants who ran his household. Nothing happened on the fazenda without his approval.
A thousand miles of jungle and as much water separated him from anyone who might challenge his authority, from anyone who knew that he was Cullen Sinclair's son and what that meant. Caroline had changed that. Caroline challenged him at every turn.
He tried to close his mind to the surge of memories that crowded his consciousness—Caroline playing the grand piano with an abandon that made his blood run hot; Caroline working like a mad woman to save a wounded boy, unmindful of the mud and muck and blood; Caroline soft and alluring in a sarong, her toes peeking out from beneath the hem; Caroline holding an orchid bloom close and inhaling its essence as if it were the elixir of life; Caroline moaning, warm and yielding beneath him, her eyes half-closed in passion.
It would be just like her to be pregnant. If he were dealing with any other woman but Caroline, he might have to concede that she could hardly control something so capricious. But he wasn't sure that Caroline didn't command the sun to rise and the stars to twinkle at her pleasure. If she didn't, it was surely not for lack of trying!
"Pregnant," he snorted, downing the watery whiskey in his glass. The very word awakened a dark terror inside him, while it caused his foolish heart to yearn for something unattainable—for love, for belonging.
"What did you say, patrao?" Ignacio asked.
Jason scowled. "Damn and hell, I said I need another drink." He slammed his empty glass down on the bar for emphasis.
"Patrao, surely you've had enough to...."
"What do you mean enough? Don't you know I'm full blooded Irish?" he asked, affecting an Irish brogue. "There's no such thing as enough to an Irishman!"
Ignacio frowned as the bartender filled Jason's glass again. "Patrao, when will we start for home? The men are getting restless."
"The men are old women!" Jason growled, raising his glass and draining half its contents. If he drank enough whiskey, maybe he could forget the softness of her smile and the sweetness of her perfume.
"You have never been away so long," Ignacio pointed out. "Don't you wonder what is happening?"
"Mr. Baur will take care of things."
"He is the overseer," Ignacio reasoned. "If the jungle overtakes the coffee and the river runs dry and the beneficio burns to the ground, he will move to another fazenda."
Jason frowned at his irritating companion. "Aren't you being a little dramatic, Ignacio?"
"I've never seen you like this, patrao. Don't you care?"
Ignacio's question hit its mark. Of course he cared. He cared too damned much. Worry about the fazenda kept him awake all night. Worry about Caroline robbed him of his appetite. So he drank to forget them both, only it didn't work.
Maybe she wasn't even there anymore. The idea left him feeling as empty and lost as when he'd thought she'd sailed away on the mail boat.
Oh, he was a man trapped in a hell of his own making—wanting her to stay, wanting her to go.
"The coffee has been sold," Ignacio pointed out reasonably. "Some of the men have families."
"Families? What the hell is a family?"
"You know what a family is, patrao. How should I answer that?"
"I'm dead serious, Ignacio." Jason squinted at the double image of the other man. "Is it a house, or is it two people who decide to have children so they can bully them and mistreat them? Oh, no, I suppose we're talking about happy families, right? Happy." He lifted his glass and pronounced in a loud roar, "To happy families!"
"Please, patrao, you will
attract attention."
"Do you think I care?" Jason asked with a snort.
"Maybe you should, unless you want to end up in jail for fighting again."
Jason flexed his right hand, the pain in his knuckles reminding him of last night's brawl, which had landed him in jail for the night. He could hardly remember the face of the man he'd beaten to a bloody pulp, nor could he remember the insult that had provoked him. He was losing control more and more often. It was a good thing he was away from Caroline.
Of course, she'd been unable to resist prodding and probing. She couldn't just leave well enough alone. Given the chance, Caroline would challenge the patience of Job and spit in the eye of the devil himself!
No, that didn't excuse his actions. He'd pushed her. His chest tightened as he remembered her falling—just like his father had.
Clenching his fist, he silently commanded the visions to leave him in peace, but they would not. He'd been in a towering rage that day, too. Until then, he'd been too small and too afraid to stand up to his father, but on that last day, it hadn't mattered. The fury inside him had tripled his strength.
"We've been here three months, patrao," Ignacio was saying, pulling him back to the present. "It's a long time since we sold the coffee, and it will take at least three weeks to get home. Before long, the rainy season will set in, and the journey will be much more dangerous."
"You're right!" Jason declared, banging his glass on the bar for emphasis. Whiskey sloshed over the sides and onto his hand. "There's no point endangering the men just because I have nothing to go back to."
"Nothing?" Ignacio laughed. "You have what you have always had—the fazenda, the jungle. And now you have a beautiful wife waiting for you."
Jason turned his glass up and drained it. "Have you ever thought you wanted something, and when you got it you found out it wasn't what you wanted at all? I want things back the way they were before she came."
"Why? Nothing is so very different."
"Everything is so very different," Jason contradicted emphatically.
"What is different is better! Besides, you sent her away once and you only ended up going after her."
"She defied me!" Jason shouted. "She didn't even get on the bloody boat!"
Ignacio smiled wryly. "In all the years I have known you, I always believed you to be an intelligent, fair-minded man—until now."
"Well, maybe you don't know me as well as you think." He seemed to be pointing that out often lately. He'd said the same thing to Caroline.
"I know you better than you know yourself. You sit here in a filthy saloon feeling sorry for yourself—"
"Feeling sorry..."
"I may be overstepping my place, patrao, but someone has to talk some sense into you. I am speaking to you now as someone who has known you for a long time and can't stand by and let you destroy yourself. You sit here night after night drinking in order to dull your mind when you have a beautiful wife waiting for you in the house you built and furnished so that you could have a family, a wife who cares for you for some reason that I can't understand."
"Neither can I, Ignacio, neither can I."
"If she'd gotten on the boat, you'd have taken her off. You want her to stay but you do everything in your power to run her off!"
Ignacio was right. Fool that he was, he'd gone after her. Fool that he was, he'd allowed himself to be seduced by her beauty and her grace and her charm.
"It's the principle of the thing, Ignacio," he said with all the passion he could muster, "the principle! No matter! Tell the men we leave for home tomorrow morning. The boats should be ready in a matter of days."
With that, Jason stood on wobbly legs. The room swam around him, but he managed to right himself.
"Are you all right, patrao?" Ignacio asked, grabbing Jason by the shoulder to help steady him.
"I'll be fine as soon as I find my room."
"We'll walk together," Ignacio offered, groaning under Jason's weight.
Ignacio steered Jason toward the door and into the damp night air.
Caroline placed her pen in the ink stand and went still. Brilliant sunlight poured through the window across the study, spilling bright patterns of light on the terracotta tile floor. She listened intently, the only sound in the cluttered study the loud ticking of the clock on the white stucco wall behind her.
It came again, a sound like no other. Shriller than a train whistle, the steamboat whistle had been a part of her life since her first recollection. In New Orleans, they came so frequently one hardly noticed them. But in the remote Amazon, any man-made noise caught the attention immediately.
Standing, Caroline straightened her skirt, hurrying around the desk to the open window. From here she could see the river for several miles, until it made a sharp curve on the horizon.
The first time she stood at this window and gazed down at the river and the orchards beyond it, she realized that this was the view from Jason's study that he'd described so poignantly in his letters—"the coffee trees heavy with berries and bright with blooms... the river pulsing through the very heart of a boundless wilderness... nature and man in perfect harmony.... This is what the Garden of Eden must have been like. I have reclaimed paradise. "
How could a man with such depth of feeling live in the emotional isolation that Jason had fashioned for himself?
She spotted a boat as it rounded the bend and steamed toward her, and her heart leaped into her throat. It was too far away to see any markings, but
Caroline was almost certain it couldn't be the mail boat. It had just left going south with Senhor Aveiro aboard five days ago.
How would Jason react when he learned that his trusted bookkeeper had resigned and returned to Portugal and that she had taken over his plantation books? Well, that was easy enough to predict. He'd be furious. He'd be angry enough to find that she hadn't left in his absence.
When Senhor Aveiro made the announcement that he would be returning to Portugal, Caroline had been thrust into a dilemma. She had to get word to Jason in Manaus, but how? Mr. Baur had informed her that with so many men away in Manaus, the plantation needed every hand just to keep running. She couldn't take even one away from his work to make the two month trip to Manaus and back.
The smartest solution seemed to be to have Senhor Aveiro find Jason in Manaus and give him the sad news. But a third option occurred to her almost immediately. She'd kept books for Derek. She knew about balance sheets and accounts payable and accounts receivable, debits and credits. Why not do the job herself? When Jason saw how useful she could be, that she could be a partner as well as a wife, maybe he would realize that he needed her. At the very least, her keeping the books would force him to deal with her. If she held the purse strings of the fazenda, he would not be able to ignore her as he had done in the past.
Was he still angry about the letters? Would he finally talk to her or would he push her away again?
The doubt and fear that tugged at her soul weren't enough to keep her from bounding out the door and racing to the pier. She arrived in time to see the first boat dock and the occupants disembark.
Most of the men who stepped onto the pier were familiar to her. She'd treated many of them for everything from minor scrapes to serious contusions. They appeared tired and travel-worn, but glad to be home. Many of them had families who greeted them joyfully. Tears flowed freely, and it was only then that Caroline was able to look past her own loneliness and realize that not only had Jason kept himself away from her far longer than necessary, he had also forced his men to stay away from their loving families. Everyone had suffered because of Jason's stubborn pride.
As man after man left the boat, Caroline realized that Jason was not aboard and her attention turned to the second boat which arrived a few minutes after the first.
Again men disembarked one after the other and were greeted by elated family members. Ignacio stepped ashore, and his wife and son embraced him immediately. His expression when he pulled away from them and s
potted her made her breath catch. She glanced up the river for the last boat, only to find the river empty.
Her pleading gaze followed Ignacio as he walked wearily toward her, his hat in his hand, his head bowed.
"I am sorry, Senhora," he said as he came to stand before her, his eyes reflecting some of the pain in her heart. "He would not come."
"Where is he?" she asked, struggling to keep her voice from shaking.
"We left him in Manaus," Ignacio told her.
"But what...?" A faintness washed over her; her body swayed slightly, trembling with dread that he might never come back as long as she remained here. "Why? When?"
"He will come home," Ignacio assured her as if reading her thoughts. "He cannot bear the city. He will grow weary of it and return soon."
Caroline lifted her chin high, her lower lip trembling with the tears that threatened to humiliate her. There was nothing left to say. A persistent pain burned inside her soul, but she beat it down, substituting anger for the hurt that she could not, would not allow to devour her. She walked slowly back to the house with all the dignity at her command.
"What are you doing, Senhora?"
Caroline gazed up from the papers spread on top of the mahogany desk to see Ignacio staring at her from the doorway in openmouthed astonishment.
"What does it look like?" she asked, smiling in order to cushion the harshness of her words.
What she'd been doing was staring at stacks of papers and ledger books without comprehension. She'd hoped keeping busy would take her mind off of Jason, but all she could think of was Jason sending his men back and remaining in Manaus. She had half a mind to jump on a boat and go after him herself.
Ignacio's brow furrowed in suspicion. "What have you done with Senhor Aveiro?"
Caroline laughed softly past the persistent pain in her heart. "What do you think, Ignacio? How could you think I would do anything to that kind old man?"
"I didn't mean...." he began, removing his hat and stepping cautiously into the room.