This Side of Heaven

by Karen Robards

  At the end of a quarter hour, Matt’s temperature still soared. He was moaning, trying to thrust Caroline and his brothers away with gestures that were fright-eningly feeble, his skin so searingly hot that Caroline nearly despaired.

  “It’s not working!” Thomas spoke through his teeth, his blue eyes flashing with animosity as they turned on Caroline. She shook her head at him. “He’s getting worse!”

  Caroline said nothing as she wrapped the newest sheet around Matt’s body. What could she say? Despite her best efforts, there was merit to what Thomas said. After he helped Robert lower Matt back to the mattress, Thomas straightened up.

  “I’m going to fetch Mr. Williams. This farce has gone on long enough.” His eyes challenged his brothers to disagree with him.

  Instead, Daniel looked up worriedly. “Aye, maybe you should. If ’tis bleeding he recommends, then ’tis bleeding we’ll try. This is not helping.”

  Although neither his voice nor his eyes accused her as did Thomas’s, Caroline felt to blame. She also felt frustrated and afraid. Matt’s body was so hot that the sheets grew warm before they could stay on him long enough to bring his temperature down. What was needed was some way to keep cold water on him for a longer period of time.

  “The water trough!” Thomas was already on his way out the door as the solution occurred to her. “We’ll dunk him in the water trough!”

  She stood upright for the first time in what seemed like hours, hand on spine as she eased her aching back. Thomas, stopped by her words, had turned to stare at her. Daniel and Robert looked at her too, but their eyes contained more questioning and less dislike.

  “We’ll fill the water trough with spring water and rest him in it! ’Tis the answer, I know it!”

  Matt moaned, stirring. All eyes shifted to him. His skin was scarlet with heat, his lips parched and cracked. His case was desperate; even the least perceptive of them could not mistake that.

  “ ’Tis naught but more foolishness!” Thomas said in disgust and turned to leave.

  “Wait!” Daniel stopped him. “We’ll try it. It makes more sense to me than bleeding him again.” His eyes locked with Thomas’s, clashed.

  “What makes sense to me is that you’ve developed an eye for her.” Thomas jerked his head in Caroline’s direction. His face was taut with anger.

  “That’s a lie!” Red patches popped out high on his cheekbones as Daniel came upright.

  “Is it?” Thomas’s words were almost a taunt.

  “A damned lie, and an irresponsible one too! As if I would endanger Matt’s life over any female, even if I did have an eye for her, which in Caroline’s case I do not!”

  “You’re very quick to take her orders!”

  “Enough!” To Caroline’s amazement, Robert roared the word in fair imitation of Matt’s stentorian tones. Except for Matt himself, who remained insensible, the rest of them started and looked at Robert in surprise.

  “Would you quarrel over Matt’s deathbed?” he demanded fiercely. “Which is what you’ll be doing if you don’t cease at once. Come on, Thorn, and help me fill the trough. If that does not work, then you can go for Mr. Williams. You know as well as I that he’s not much use as a doctor.”

  Robert headed around the side of the bed as he spoke. Thomas eyed his brother with some belligerence even as he was pushed into the hall.

  “But she’s …” The last of Thomas’s statement was inaudible, which, Caroline reflected, was probably just as well. Because there was no doubt the “she” referred to herself, and the comment was sure to be uncomplimentary, if not downright inflammatory.

  When Robert and Thomas—the latter looking sullen—returned some quarter of an hour later to report the deed done, Matt was no longer making any sounds at all, or even moving. His breathing was alarmingly fast and shallow, and Caroline was sore afraid that they might be losing him. Daniel leaned over him, encouraging him with words made gruff by emotion.

  “Hold on, Matt. Think of Davey, and John, and the rest of us, and just hold on.”

  Caroline and Daniel had already rigged a makeshift stretcher of blankets for the journey to the barnyard, and with the three men to heft it getting Matt to the trough was no great problem. But when they arrived, Daniel as well as Thomas seemed reluctant to just plunge Matt into the water, as Caroline directed.

  “What about his leg? The bindings will get wet.” Daniel’s objection seemed to be designed to cover second thoughts.

  “Bindings can be changed. Lower him in, please!”

  Although the three men looked doubtful, Thomas even going so far as to wince, Matt’s inert body was lowered, blankets and all, into the trough with special care taken not to jar his broken leg. He was too big for it, of course. His splinted leg thrust stiffly out over one end while the other hung limply from the edge of the trough, his foot trailing on the ground. His head and shoulders stuck out at the other end. Thomas stood behind him, supporting his lolling head, as Caroline scooped up water in her hands to pour over his neck and shoulders. His trunk, hips, and thighs were almost completely submerged. Caroline prayed that this was enough.

  Except for his splint, Matt was completely naked. The clear water hid nothing of his person from the view of anyone who cared to look, which Caroline did not. But despite her scruples about invading his modesty, his bareness no longer bothered her, nor did it seem to occur to the rest of them. All knew that at this point they were fighting for his life.

  At first his skin remained ragingly hot, and Caroline nearly despaired. But gradually, by degrees so infinitesimal that at first she thought she was imagining it, his skin began to cool. Finally she laid a hand on his forehead and found it no more than moderately warm to her fingers. Her shoulder muscles eased; it was only then that she realized just how tense she had been.

  “I think the worst is over,” she said slowly, her gaze going first to Daniel then to Robert and Thomas. They looked at her for a moment, Thomas narrow-eyed, Robert thoughtful. Then Daniel broke into a broad smile.

  “By the rood, we’ve done it! You’ve done it, Caroline!”

  Before she had any inkling what he would do, he caught her up in a bear hug, swinging her off her feet and around in an exuberant circle. Caroline, taken by surprise, shoved at his shoulders to be free. Being held so close to a hard male body brought the familiar repulsion surging into her throat; her stomach heaved.

  “Let me go!” Her voice was far sharper than the occasion warranted.

  Daniel immediately stopped what he was doing and set her down. Almost shuddering with distaste, Caroline pushed him away.

  “I’m sorry. I meant no offense,” he said quietly. Caroline knew her reaction was far more severe than the offense warranted, and she knew too that she was bringing down on her own head the speculation that was rife in all three men’s eyes, but she simply could not help it. With the best will in the world she could not mitigate her distaste.

  “ ’Tis all right,” she managed, still battling inward queasiness. Her eyes shifted to Matt. “Let’s get him back inside.”

  She was careful not to look at any of the three of them as they did as she directed.

  By the time they got him into the house, all three men were thoroughly wet from the soaked blankets, while Caroline, who had walked beside the procession, was merely splotched. After Matt, still apparently senseless but no longer sizzlingly hot to the touch, had been settled in his bed, Daniel, Robert, and Thomas retired to change into dry clothes. Caroline perched on the edge of the bed to swap the soaked bindings securing the splint for dry ones. A quilt folded beneath the leg protected the mattress from getting wet; another quilt covering Matt to the shoulders restored his modesty. She was bone tired, having gotten no rest at all the night before. After his leg was rebound, she promised herself a nap. The idea of sleep was almost irresistibly alluring.

  Her head was nodding even as she tossed the wet bandages aside and began to rewrap the lower half of the splint in dry ones. She would do the exchange in
sections; that would limit the possibility of jarring the bone out of position. The leg was still grotesquely swollen, and the gash where the bone had come through was open and ugly. Barely able to drag herself up, she fetched basilicum powder from her store of medicines and sprinkled it over the wound, then set herself to finishing the rebinding of the splint. Even as she knotted the ends of the bandage below his knee, she heard a sound behind her and turned.

  To her dismay, she beheld Mr. Williams standing in the doorway glaring at her. Behind him stood a tall man with hair as black as Matt’s dressed in the sober Puritan garb of the community, and a diminutive white-capped woman in a gray dress of coarse homespun. Their eyes were fixed on Matt instead of herself, and they were frowning with concern.

  Behind them was the dominie.

  19

  “Sabotaging my good work, are you?” Mr. Williams demanded wrathfully, his plump chin quivering with annoyance as he stalked across the room to hover at her side.

  “Daughter of Belial, what evil are you about now?” The dominie squeezed around the couple to follow Mr. Williams into the room. “But we may take heart from the certain knowledge that your sins are about to catch up with you. As you see, James, it is as I have told you.”

  “I am the daughter of Marcellus Wetherby, and not Belial at all, whoever he may be. Good afternoon, Mr. Miller. Mr. Williams.” Caroline rose to her feet to sketch the new arrivals a brief curtsy. Prudence tempered her wish to skewer the pair of them with her tongue, but she could not quite control the satirical edge to her reply. Both men already harbored a considerable amount of enmity toward her; Mr. Williams’s opinion mattered little to her, but Daniel had warned Matt about making an enemy of the pastor. Caroline would not like to bring trouble down upon the household for no more reason than an inability to hold her tongue.

  “Belial is the Devil,” the dominie spat, plainly scandalized at her ignorance. Before he could say more, Robert appeared in the hall buttoning his shirt. His frown cleared as he clapped a hearty hand down upon the shoulder of the man in the doorway.

  “Well met, James. Good afternoon, Mary.”

  “I’ve just returned from Wethersfield, to be greeted with the news that Matt lies at death’s door. Why was I not sent for?” James demanded hotly.

  Now that she was permitted a good look at him, Caroline would have known him for another Mathieson brother even if his name had not previously been mentioned to her. He very much resembled Matt, though he was perhaps a few inches shorter and a great deal leaner. But the features were similar, as was the coloring. James’s eyes, while light, were more gray than blue, and his black hair had reddish highlights and a degree less curl. He lacked both scar and limp, which should have made him handsomer than his brother, but oddly enough, in Caroline’s eye at least, it did not. Though James was without doubt a very attractive man, he lacked the indefinable something that made Matt breathtaking.

  “Why, I suppose because we never thought to do so. We’ve been somewhat busy, you see.” Daniel emerged from his bedroom in time to answer that question. “Hello, Mary.” He nodded at the woman, who smiled at him. Caroline recognized her then: she was the woman whom Daniel and Captain Rowse had greeted as they escorted her through the village. Clearly, she was James’s wife.

  “But be assured we would have summoned you at once if he had died,” Robert quipped, grinning at his brother. Mary looked shocked. James frowned.

  “I take it from your manner that Matt is not going to die?” James, sounding surprised, cast a sidelong look at Mr. Williams, who bristled.

  “Perhaps it may still be prevented, if we take his leg,” Mr. Williams took it upon himself to answer, manipulating the swollen, purpled flesh of Matt’s thigh above the splint. He sounded almost disappointed at the prediction that Matt would live. It was all Caroline could do not to push him aside; Matt stirred under his ministrations, and she guessed that they must be causing him considerable pain even in his unconscious state.

  “He will not die or lose his leg,” Caroline said firmly to James, controlling her nearly overwhelming impulse with herculean effort. She had stepped a little away from the bed when she had curtsied, which had given Mr. Williams room to maneuver around her to stand at Matt’s side. A mistake, but at least the apothecary had left off squeezing Matt’s leg to take his pulse, which would at the very least not cause him pain.

  “That is for God, not you, to say.” Contempt shone from Mr. Miller’s eyes as they moved over her. He gave a disdainful sniff. Caroline was reminded that she was a mess. Her hair, which she had barely had time to brush, much less dress, was in the same type of plait she wore for sleeping. It hung to her waist, the braid thick as a man’s wrist and black and gleaming, but still woefully unsuitable for daytime wear or viewing by strangers. To make matters worse, she had that morning pulled on the first dress that came to hand. Following the reverend’s eyes, she really looked at it for the first time in months. The white dimity with the once-cunning cherry ribbons trimming skirt and sleeves was no longer white: it had yellowed with age, and was splotched with water and medicines and dirt and God alone knew what else. In addition, it was sadly crushed. But what prompted the minister’s condemning frown was the bodice, she was certain. It was cut too low to suit the man’s stiff-rumped Puritan sensibilities. The oval neckline revealed just the tops of her breasts and a hint of cleavage, but Mr. Miller was looking at her décolletage with as much horror as if she had been naked. Nasty man, Caroline thought.

  “Have you met Caroline, by the by?” Daniel said to James and Mary. “She’s the newest addition to our family.”

  “How do you do?” Mary smiled at her. Caroline thought that with her round placid-looking face and gentle brown eyes, she would be kind. James, on the other hand, regarded her with suspicion and merely inclined his head to acknowledge the introduction. Was it inbred in the Mathieson men to distrust women, Caroline wondered with some exasperation as she nodded at them in turn.

  “So she has already wormed her way into your full acceptance, has she?” Mr. Miller said. “I should not be surprised at it, I suppose. Evil is ever cunning.”

  “I am not evil!” Caroline’s gaze snapped around to the dominie. Their eyes met and clashed. But before either of them could say more, they were interrupted by a voice from a most unexpected source.

  “I do not recall inviting you into my home, Mr. Miller.”

  Amazement silenced Caroline and the rest of them for the space of a heartbeat. Then Caroline pivoted. The voice, raspy and weak as it was, belonged to Matt. Not more than two hours earlier they had battled to bring him back from the verge of death. Now he was not only very much alive, but clearly aware. His eyes were open and focused on the dominie, dislike turning them a darker shade of blue than she had yet seen them.

  “Matt!” It was a collective gasp, coming from at least two and possibly all four of his brothers, as Thomas entered the bedchamber.

  “I came in my calling as God’s representative to ease your passing into eternal life,” Mr. Miller replied, moving toward the bedside, the piousness of his words not matched by his expression as he looked down at Matt.

  “You are premature,” Matt said, his eyes never leaving the minister. Caroline could tell that talking even so briefly was tiring him.

  “ ’Tis as well I am, for your soul’s sake. You have much repenting to do before you can enter the Garden of Heaven, Ephraim Mathieson! Your harboring of this daughter of the serpent cannot enhance your standing in the eyes of the Lord.”

  “You slander a member of my family at your peril, Mr. Miller. We have laws against such, you know.” Anger strengthened Matt’s voice. “And I would have it known, by you and everyone else in the community, that Caroline is a member of my family. I will tolerate no slights to her.”

  The firm statement warmed Caroline’s heart. Her eyes moved to Matt in silent gratitude, but his attention was all for the dominie.

  “So yet another angel of the bottomless pit has seduced you, ha
s she? You are weak, Ephraim Mathieson, an easy target for Lucifer’s minions. Your only hope of salvation is to cast her, and your weakness, out!”

  “I would cast out you and your twaddle instead. Understand me, and understand me well. If you fling unfounded aspersions against Caroline again, I will have you before the authorities for the spreading of malicious lies. The punishment for that is a public lashing, and so I would remind you, Mr. Miller.”

  The dominie looked as if he might suffer an attack of apoplexy. His face reddened, and his eyes bulged. “You dare for a second time to threaten a servant of the Lord!” He drew in a deep breath and turned to look at James and Mary, his hands outflung as if in appeal. “I fear your brother is lost to us, James. But you and your dear wife need not be, nor your other brothers, nor your poor defenseless nephews. I call upon you all to turn your backs on him and the temptress who is leading him astray, and leave him to suffer the righteous afflictions that beset the wicked with no one but the cause of his pain to succor him. I …”

  James stiffened, but Mary, by a quick shake of her head at him, intervened. With a gentle smile she reached out to grasp the sleeve of the incensed pastor and draw him toward the hall.

  “Do you come belowstairs, and let me fix you a cup of tea. Then James and I would be most grateful if you would pray for the salvation of all within this house, Reverend Master Miller. I am sure that neither Caroline nor Matt is beyond the reach of prayer by such an august disciple of the Church as you. Just think: perhaps you were intended by God to be the instrument of their salvation! And you know Matt: he can be very tetchy, but he means little of what he says. Pray do not take offense.”

  To Caroline’s amazement, Mary succeeded in coaxing Mr. Miller from the room. Her soothing words faded as they traversed the hall together and began to descend the stairs.

  “Your wife is truly a saint, James,” Thomas said to his brother under his breath, sounding awestricken as he stared after them.