From This Day Forward

by Deborah Cox

  "We? There is no we. This is my fazenda, not ours. I don't need your help. I don't want your help. Your meddling has cost me a fortune."'

  Again his cruel words hit their mark, causing tears to well behind her eyes. Again she fought them down and faced him squarely. "You cannot expect to be successful if you hoard every penny you make. Surely you realize that you have to reinvest some of your money in the plantation or it cannot operate. Why don't you tell me why you're really so angry? It's me, it's not the pump at all."

  "I don't spend money unnecessarily. And I don't need you telling me how to run my business. I did quite well before you came and I can continue to do so without any interference from you."

  He stalked away toward the open door. He'd just arrived, and already he was running away from her, and he hadn't even asked why she was still there or if she was pregnant.

  "What are you going to do? You don't have a bookkeeper," she asked, even though it was the last thing she wanted to talk about.

  "I'll send Ignacio to Manaus to find someone."

  "And in the meantime?"

  "That's not your concern. I'll deal with it."

  "Jason!" she called desperately.

  "What now?" he snapped, turning with a scowl of absolute annoyance.

  Caroline opened her mouth, but the words wouldn't come out. Two simple words—I'm pregnant—two words that would alter their lives forever, and she couldn't say them.

  "Nothing," she said, dropping her gaze to the desk before her.

  Just go, she thought, run away again. Leave me alone.

  She glanced up and her breath caught, her chest tightening. He was still there, staring at her with such an expression of longing and fear that she knew in that instant that somehow he'd guessed the truth.

  His eyes met hers and her legs went weak before he disguised his yearning with anger and turned to go, slamming the door resoundingly behind him.

  Sinking into the soft leather chair, Caroline buried her head in her hands and gave in to the torrent of tears she'd held at bay for so long.

  * * *

  Caroline allowed the notes of the etude she'd been playing to float softly away until the parlor settled into silence. The sound of rain falling gently beyond the open window slowly insinuated itself into the stillness of the empty room.

  She closed her eyes and her mind took her to the orchards where no doubt Jason worked alongside his men. Or perhaps they had taken refuge from the rain beneath the red-tiled roof of the beneficio. She couldn't help remembering the first time she'd seen it—Jason standing naked on one of the patios, water pummeling his body and running over his muscled torso in rivulets.

  With a low growl, she came to her feet, walking angrily to the open door and peering out. He was back to his old games, avoiding her by staying away from the house. What was he waiting for? Was this a new tactic? If his strategy was to wear down her nerves, it was working brilliantly.

  Five months! He'd been away for five months.

  She'd made the trip from Manaus, and she knew how long it took. In good weather like they'd had lately, it took less than three weeks. Even allowing two weeks to transact business, he should have been back three months ago.

  She almost wished she weren't carrying his child. Almost. In the beginning, she'd wished it fervently. She'd been violently ill every morning and queasy for the rest of the day. She'd actually lost weight. Her clothes had begun to hang on her. Only now was she beginning to fill them out again, and shortly they would be too small for her.

  And she didn't even want to think about what waited for her at the end, the pain. Whenever she thought about her crude surroundings, her heart grew faint. There were no facilities, no help at all for a pregnant woman, not even a midwife. She tried to shore up her courage by reminding herself that women had children in the jungle every day.

  How she needed Jason now. She needed the strength and comfort of his arms around her. She needed to feel that he wanted this child as much as she did, that it wasn't just her baby. She needed to talk to him about her anxiety and to hear him say that everything would be all right.

  That was the root of the problem, she decided. She still cared for him. She still wanted him to love her, wanted it even more now. She didn't want to bring a child into a house where a constant state of open warfare existed. She wanted to be a family, the three of them.

  But when she thought of the way Jason had been raised, the kind of family life he'd described in his letters, she wondered if he were capable of that kind of bond.

  A terrible sickness settled in the pit of her stomach every time she allowed herself to think of the life he and his sister must have lived. Home was the one place in all the world where one should feel completely safe, especially a child. Jason had never experienced that kind of home. Perhaps he had no concept of it, but even so, she knew from his letters that his heart yearned for it.

  Was he still angry at her over the stupid water pump? Despite his harsh words, she had continued to handle the plantation books and he'd left her alone to do so. Evidently she'd proven her competence, but he wasn't about to admit it. Instead he ignored her while Ignacio traveled to Manaus to hire a new bookkeeper.

  But something more powerful, much deeper than anger kept him away from her. A huge chasm had opened between them, a wide emptiness that she wasn't sure could ever be spanned. Why? Why had he withdrawn from her completely? Surely it couldn't still be the letters. It was worse than with Wade. Never had she felt this way about Wade, or any other man, for that matter. She told herself it was because she could feel his child growing inside her day by day, but she suspected there was more to it than that.

  She wanted desperately to recall the intimacy they'd shared so long ago at the slave village. She'd thought, hoped, that a closeness was beginning to form between them. Now that had been destroyed, perhaps forever.

  Sensing someone behind her, Caroline turned to see Ines standing in the doorway, her expression as forlorn as Caroline's own heart.

  "What am I to do, Ines?" she asked, turning to gaze into the impenetrable jungle once again.

  "I am not knowing, Senhora. It is as I said, you should not have kept the letters."

  "I know!" Anger and impatience pushed Caroline toward an emotional explosion which she tried with all her might to curb. It wasn't Ines's fault, none of it. "I can't undo it and he won't forgive me."

  "Be patient."

  Caroline laughed mirthlessly. "Patient? It's been two weeks. Two weeks and he hasn't spoken a word to me. In the mornings, he rises early and he's gone by the time I arrive at the table for breakfast. In the evenings, he disappears completely."

  "When he went after you to bring you back—"

  "What do you mean?" Caroline asked, turning to face Ines again. "When he found me at the slave village? He came after me then to put me on the mail boat."

  "Oh, no, Senhora, he thinks you are on the mail boat and goes after you to take you off and bring you back."

  "Are you sure?" Caroline asked, her heart soaring at the thought that he hadn't wanted her to leave, that there might be another reason for his allowing her to stay besides her pregnancy. Maybe he did care about her but was afraid to admit it, even to himself.

  Even so, if he intended to ignore her and scorn her for the rest of her life, what had she really gained?

  "I've been here nearly six months, and I don't even know where he sleeps," Caroline mused aloud, turning to face Ines, who came to stand close behind her. "But you do, don't you?"

  Ines's eyes filled with terror. "Oh, no, Senhora, I couldn't! He would be so angry if I told you."

  "All right, fine," Caroline said with an exaggerated shrug. "I'll just open every door in the house until I find his rooms. I don't know why I didn't think of it before."

  "Rooms, Senhora?"

  Sudden insight illuminated Caroline's mind. "He doesn't sleep in the house, does he? Where then?" But a better question was why. Why had he gone to all the trouble to build this mansi
on and not even sleep in it?

  "I—I can't, Senhora. Please don't ask me to."

  Caroline's shoulders sagged. "You're right. It wouldn't be fair of me to ask you to betray Jason that way. I'm sorry for trying to force you to defy him." Turning, she grasped Ines by the shoulders and hugged her, then said with all the emotion she could gather, "I suppose I should be packing."

  Caroline walked past a dumbfounded Ines, taking her time in reaching the door, certain that Ines would stop her.

  "Packing?"

  Suppressing a smile at her own cleverness and at the ease with which Ines had fallen into her snare, Caroline turned to face Ines with a dejected expression. "I can't stay here. I can't live like this, with a husband who won't speak to me. If I can't even find him, how can I convince him to forgive me? The rain has stopped. I'm going to my room to start packing."

  "No!" Ines called as Caroline reached the door. "Senhora, you cannot go. Master Jason, he cares for you. Once the baby is born, he will forget his anger. I know it."

  "I'm not as certain as you are, Ines. I'd rather my baby be raised without a father than with one who resents him and his mother."

  "Wait, Senhora!" Ines cried in panic. She took a deep breath, the struggle with her conscience and her loyalties apparent in her eyes. "When Master Jason is here first, he builds a hut in the jungle to live in until his house is finishing. There is where he sleeps now."

  "The hut where I nursed the child with measles?"

  "No, that is storehouse. Master Jason puts food and supply there for the runaways."

  "What?" Caroline asked in stunned disbelief, remembering the blankets and barrels of supplies she'd noticed in the hut. "Jason provides supplies for the runaways?"

  "He can do no more," Ines explained.

  Tears formed in Caroline's eyes as she thought about Jason's generosity and sacrifice. The storehouse was on his property. If the slaves were discovered there, he could lose everything, including his freedom.

  "Please, Senhora," Ines pleaded, "do not go there—to his place. He will be unpleased."

  "I can't go there unless you tell me where it is."

  "Master Jason, he comes to the house very lately, when you are in sleep. He will eat and then goes to his place in the jungle. If you waited for him...."

  "Yes! Ines, why didn't you tell me this before?"

  Ines hung her head. "He'll be even angry to me for this."

  "He cares about you, Ines," Caroline assured her, gripping her by the shoulders again. "He will forgive you. Besides, he doesn't have to know you told me."

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jason ran the coarse brush over the bay stallion's glossy coat, trying not to think of anything beyond the animal that nickered contentedly under his ministrations.

  Bad blood, his father's voice rang clearly in his ear. Me da' passed it to me and I'm passing it to you. You'll never amount to nothing, you worthless, ungrateful wretch!

  Closing his eyes and his mind against the memory, he stroked the animal on the muzzle and moved to the stall door. The stallion tossed his head, snorting in protest that Jason had stopped the daily grooming ritual too soon.

  "That's enough for tonight," Jason said with a half-smile. "You're spoiled, that's what's wrong with you."

  Jason fastened the stall door as the stallion began to munch on his feed, once more content. If only he were an animal.... If only he didn't have to think or remember or feel pain. His father's beatings hadn't been the worst of it. There were hundreds of more subtle injuries. Emotional wounds took far longer to heal and left much deeper scars.

  He paused on the patio, staring up at the door on the second floor. Closing his eyes, he tried to head off the surge of tenderness that suffused his heart.

  He'd thought having a family of his own would blot out the past and give him a chance to start over. Now that his goal was within his grasp, he wasn't so sure.

  Was he capable of harming a helpless child or a woman? Was there a monster sleeping inside him, waiting for the right moment to awaken? His father had battered his own family, the people he was honor-bound to protect and nurture, physically and emotionally until they loathed and feared him. To this day, he couldn't use a razor strop without being reminded of cowering in the dark with Peggy, terrified that their father would come after them.

  He'd learned early to withdraw into himself, to dull his mind so that he didn't feel anything, physically or emotionally. But those tactics didn't work with Caroline. Intimidation didn't frighten her, perhaps because he hadn't pushed hard enough. What if he pushed her and she pushed back? Would he be able to control himself, to keep things from escalating too far?

  More than anything, he wanted to go to Caroline, to talk to her, to make her understand. But how could he when she knew the very worst about him—his secret fears, his bitter failures. He should have done something to stop his father. Instead he'd stood by and watched his family being destroyed.

  "At first your letters were very businesslike," she'd said. Had there been something in her letters, something so subtle he hadn't been aware of it consciously, that prompted him to pour out his heart to her? To Derek?

  Christ! He didn't know anything anymore except that he could never face her again. Every time she looked at him with those deep hazel eyes, he felt as if his soul had been stripped bare.

  Turning with a heartsick sigh, Jason made his way to the dining room where, as usual, Ines had left a plate of food and a lighted candle.

  He didn't even taste his food as he ate in silent solitude, trying not to think, not to wonder what the future held. Trapped in a life that had become a living hell, he found himself constantly yearning for his wife but unable to touch her, to even talk to her, wondering when he would become a brute like his father.

  The right thing to do would be to put her on a boat for New Orleans. He knew exactly how far along she was; how could he not? She still had nearly four months, ample time to reach New Orleans. He'd provide for her and the baby financially; it was the least he could do.

  But selfish man that he was, he couldn't bring himself to send her away. His position was intolerable. He couldn't bear having her near, and he couldn't bear the thought of sending her away.

  Downing a glass of warm wine in one gulp, he stood and, taking the candle with him, stepped into the parlor. The shadowed figure of the grand piano mocked him from the corner. He hadn't heard her play since he returned, but then he'd spent as much time as possible away from the house. He missed it, missed the beautiful sounds she could evoke from the instrument.

  Softly he ran a finger over the ivory keys, his touch so light that no sound came from the instrument. How recently had she played? Perhaps tonight while he was away hiding in the jungle, he thought, imagining that he could feel the warmth of her touch lingering on the silent keys.

  In a way, it was as if she'd gone and he was alone again. He had to get a grip on himself. He'd gotten along fine before Caroline had come into his life. As long as she stayed out of his way, he would be able to control his violent nature—or so he hoped. All he had to do was convince her to stay inside the boundaries he'd established for her.

  Jason laughed softly in the quiet darkness. He'd have better success convincing the Amazon to flow upstream! He struck a white key and a clear, dulcet note filled the room. A soft moaning sound behind him startled him. Jerking around, he found Caroline lying on the sofa, her eyes closed in sleep, her brow furrowed.

  Momentarily dazed, Jason could only stare at her, his little forger. He should be furious with her for what she'd done. It didn't matter that she'd been right. She'd acted without his authority. She'd forced her way into every facet of his life.

  But despite all his efforts to hang on to the anger, he couldn't prevent his heart from twisting with a deep longing that took his breath away. She lay on her side, her dark hair draped over her shoulder, her hands crossed underneath her chin to serve as a pillow. How innocent she appeared, how vulnerable, how sweet. He wanted to tou
ch her soft, white skin, to kiss her awake, to make love to her. He wanted to tell her about his demons and to hear her say it didn't matter.

  Instead, he stood immobilized by this vision, this woman, his wife. He still didn't understand why she'd left everything behind and traveled to this remote, uncivilized jungle.

  Placing the candle on the piano and extinguishing the flame, he moved toward her slowly, quietly, so as not to wake her. She'd probably been waiting up for him; it would be just like her. Having allowed him to retreat for several days now, it was about time for her to take action.

  He drew a deep, ragged breath, stunned by the depth of his knowledge of her. He could predict her reaction to nearly any situation with alarming accuracy. When had she become so much a part of him?

  Leaning over her sleeping form, he reached out and smoothed tendrils of hair from her forehead. His hand trembled as a surge of affection engulfed him. He didn't want to feel anything for her; he'd fought the feelings she evoked in him since the first moment she'd swept into his life and his heart.

  Though she appeared comfortable enough right now, he couldn't leave her there to sleep the night away on the sofa. In her condition, she needed plenty of rest, and she didn't need to be cramped.

  Carefully, he wedged his arms underneath her limp body. She groaned but didn't open her eyes as he lifted her off the sofa and straightened, twining an arm around his shoulders and nestling her head against his chest.

  "Jason," she murmured.

  His throat tightened as he felt a tiny chip form in the armor around his heart. Steeling himself against the swell of longing that rose in his chest, he carried her through the open doorway.

  Her eyes fluttered open as the cool night air touched her skin. "Jason," she repeated, "what are you doing?"