Eternity

by Jude Deveraux

  Wrapping him in two blankets, covering his head, she pulled him to her and rubbed his back and sides.

  Josh came to her and carried Tem to the fire, where he had put the coffeepot filled with rainwater and a handful of Carrie’s tea. “Get out of those wet clothes,” he ordered.

  It was then that Carrie realized that she was nearly as cold as Tem. Moving to the back of the cave, she took off her clothes and wrapped herself in a blanket, then went back to Josh and Tem.

  Josh was holding his son to him as though he meant to put life back into him, and as Carrie watched, Tem’s eyes fluttered.

  “Tem,” Josh said. “I want you to talk to me.”

  Lazily, Tem opened his eyes and smiled at his father. “I fell. I saw the wild girl and I fell.”

  Josh looked up at Carrie. The poor child must have felt guilty at scaring Tem. “It’s all right,” Josh said, stroking his son’s damp hair. “You’re safe now and your wild girl told us where to find you.”

  “I didn’t get a rattlesnake.”

  “I’m glad that you didn’t.”

  Turning his head, Tem looked at Carrie, then back at his father. “You brought her.”

  “She wouldn’t let me leave her behind.” He smiled at his son. “Wait until you see the knots she can tie. Beautiful.”

  Tem closed his eyes. “Do you think Carrie is the best person in the world? The greatest?”

  “Right this moment I do.”

  Tem smiled, and within moments he was asleep.

  Moving close to them, Carrie stroked Tem’s forehead. “He’s still cool to the touch.” She looked up at Josh. There was blood running down the side of his head, and Carrie reached out to touch the place, but pulled her hand back.

  “You’d better get into something dry,” she said. “There are more blankets over there.” When Josh hesitated, Carrie said, “I’ll take care of him. You don’t have to worry about him.”

  For a moment she wasn’t sure that Josh was going to turn the precious burden of his son over to her, but then she sat down by the fire, and he placed Tem in her arms. Carrie thought that it was perhaps the most precious gift anyone had ever given her and surely the most trust that had ever been shown her.

  While she held Tem, Josh stood behind her undressing and wrapping himself in a blanket. When he was done, he went to the horses and unsaddled them, but the blanket kept slipping so Josh, with a curse of frustration, wrapped the blanket about his waist.

  Carrie smiled at the sight of his strong, muscular bare back. No matter how bad his farming was, it had put muscle on him. He dropped the saddles by the fire, then brought the bags of food and pulled out a big chunk of bacon.

  “I should have brought a skillet,” Carrie said guiltily. “I wasn’t thinking too well when I packed.”

  Taking a knife from his saddle bag, Josh sliced the bacon. “I can cook it on a stick,” he said, then looked up at her in a teasing way. “Or you can cook it with your cursing.”

  Feeling herself blushing, Carrie looked down at Tem. “I didn’t know you heard me.”

  “They probably heard you in Eternity.”

  She laughed. “That mare wanted to go down the mountain when I wanted to go up.”

  “She’s a bit lazy and frightens easily.” He was holding a piece of bacon on a stick and watching it fry in the fire. “Truthfully, I didn’t think you’d get her up here.”

  “Is that why you gave her to me? You wanted her to carry me back down the mountain?”

  “The thought did cross my mind.”

  Carrie didn’t say anything; she didn’t have to. He had not wanted her with him, had thought she’d be a hindrance, so he’d given her a horse that he didn’t think she could control. But she had controlled the horse, and she’d been a help to him when he’d found Tem.

  “I couldn’t have brought him up without you,” Josh said softly. “If you hadn’t been here, I don’t know what I would have done.”

  “You’d have managed,” she said, but she was pleased by his praise. She watched him for a few moments as he fried bacon. “You were certainly skilled at getting me out of my corset,” she said in a voice of mock indignation. “Have you had much practice with corset strings?”

  Josh didn’t look at her, but concentrated on the bacon. “I’m better with corsets than with corn.”

  Carrie smiled because he had come very close to making a joke about himself. “Where did you learn so much…about corsets, I mean.”

  “Not the same place I learned about corn.”

  Carrie frowned, because he had told her nothing.

  After putting three slices of bacon on a chunk of bread, Josh filled a mug with boiling hot tea. “Wake him up. I want to get this down him.”

  Carrie pulled Tem to a sitting position, although it wasn’t easy since her arms had gone to sleep while holding him. Tem was tired and sleepy and he had no desire to wake up, but neither Carrie nor Josh would allow him to continue sleeping.

  When he had drunk three cups of hot tea and had eaten a large bacon sandwich, he snuggled down by Carrie and went back to sleep. Sitting by him, she stroked his forehead, smiling down at him.

  “Nothing makes you realize how insignificant everything else is until you come close to losing a child,” Carrie said, and when she looked up at Josh, she saw that he was staring at her from across the fire. He was cooking more bacon for the two of them. With the rain closing off the outside of the cave and everything being darkness at the edges of the fire, it felt very intimate to be together. The firelight glistened off Josh’s bare chest. “Who do you think the little girl is? And did you see the old man? He helped me pull the rope up.”

  “I didn’t see him,” Josh said, “but it’s my guess that he’s Starbuck. No one that I’ve ever talked to has actually seen him. He’s a hermit.”

  “And the child?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of her, but then I haven’t been in Eternity long.”

  She watched him put bacon on bread. “Maybe your brother knows.”

  “Maybe,” Josh said in a way that let her know that was the end of that conversation. He handed her a sandwich and a cup of very strong tea.

  “Where were you before you came to Eternity?” She watched his face and was sure that she saw a flicker of pain go across it. What had he done that caused such a look? What had he done that made him keep his past a secret? Carrie was well aware that his children had been instructed to never tell anything about where they had come from or where they had been. Poor Dallas was so confused about what she could and could not tell that sometimes she thought she wasn’t supposed to mention Carrie’s brothers to Carrie.

  “I’ve been many places,” Josh said, and Carrie knew he wasn’t going to say any more.

  The intimacy was broken, for he was reminding her that she was an outsider. If she sometimes looked at the children and couldn’t imagine a life without them, she knew that Josh didn’t feel that way about her. To him she was someone who was going to leave in a few days, and he wasn’t about to share any secrets with her.

  In silence, Carrie ate her sandwich and stared at the fire, no longer attempting to make conversation. She chastised herself, for what had she expected, that she’d help him when he needed it and he’d say that he had misjudged her? Was he going to tell her that she wasn’t an empty-headed piece of fluff after all? If she hadn’t come to Eternity, if she hadn’t played a trick on Josh in the first place, Tem wouldn’t have decided to go after rattlesnakes, and Josh wouldn’t have needed to climb down a ravine and—

  “No stories about your brothers tonight?” Josh asked.

  She knew he was trying to lighten the silence between them, but it didn’t help. “Why don’t you tell me about your brother?” She said it with more venom than she’d meant.

  Josh looked at the fire for a moment. “He’s the best farmer in the world. Perfect corn; perfect beets. Everything in straight, even rows. I don’t think a bug would dare attack his plants.”

>   “Why does he have your horse?” Carrie didn’t have to be told that the black stallion was Josh’s horse. A man and a horse don’t work as well as Josh and the stallion did unless they had spent a great deal of time together and had learned to trust each other.

  “I sold it to him,” Josh said softly. “Or rather, gave it to him as partial payment for the farm.”

  Carrie tried to hide her frown at that. It didn’t sit well with her that one brother would take another brother’s horse, no matter what the reason. Carrie wanted to ask more questions, but she didn’t because she knew she’d be rebuffed once again.

  After more long minutes of silence, Josh got up and came to her side of the fire. “It will be daylight soon, so we’d better get some sleep.”

  Carrie yawned. “I could sleep for a week.” When she saw Josh looking at her oddly as she stretched, she realized that her blanket was slipping. She started to draw it more fully over her breasts, but then she stopped, for she didn’t really care. He was the one who had decided to reject her and was continuing to reject her, not the other way around.

  Stretching out on the sandy floor beside Tem, she put her arms around him and closed her eyes, opening them when Josh lay down on the other side of his son. Carrie looked into the dark eyes of her husband and forgot her anger. Reaching out her hand, she started to touch the bloody place on the side of his head.

  “Don’t,” Josh whispered, sounding as though he were in pain.

  Carrie left her hand where it was, hovering over his temple.

  Josh looked at her a moment longer, so close yet so far away, then he turned on his other side, facing away from her, and unbidden, sharp tears came to Carrie’s eyes at his rejection of her. “Good night,” she said with as little emotion in her voice as she could manage. Josh didn’t reply.

  Chapter Nine

  Carrie awoke with a smile. She was warm and dry, and she knew that Tem was safe beside her, and, too, there was a warm hand on her cheek. With her eyes still closed, she turned toward the hand.

  “Carrie,” Josh whispered, and she slowly opened her eyes. He was dressed and kneeling beside her, touching her. It was cold in the cave, and although the rain had stopped, it was still dark outside. When she smiled at him, he moved back from her abruptly.

  “I don’t bite,” she said dreamily, then raised her bare arm out of the blanket. “Is everything all right?”

  “I have to find the searchers and tell them Tem is safe.”

  Carrie’s eyes opened wide at that. “I forgot all about them. Do you think they’ve been looking all night?”

  “If I know my brother, he didn’t go into town until it stopped raining. He wouldn’t get himself wet merely because a child was lost.”

  Carrie gaped at him in disbelief, but Josh’s face showed that he wasn’t going to answer the questions that ran through her mind. She’d already found out that he didn’t answer questions about his brother.

  “I want you to stay here with Tem, and I’ll come back for you after I’ve found the searchers.” He hesitated. “Will you do that?”

  She laughed. “I obey when the orders are worth obeying.”

  He gave her a little smile. “When your brothers are captaining their ships and the sailors disobey because they don’t think the orders are worth obeying, what do your brothers do?”

  She gave him a look of mock innocence. “You don’t expect me to know what goes on on a man’s ship, do you? I think I might be shocked to the very depths of my soul if I were to be told something like that.”

  When Josh grinned at her, a lovely, warm grin that showed his fine white teeth, Carrie thought she might swoon at the sight of him. She was sure that there was no better-looking man on earth than Mr. Joshua Greene. She lifted herself onto her elbows. “Josh,” she began, “do you think—”

  He put his fingertips to her lips to silence her, then drew back as though he’d been burned. “Wait here and keep Tem warm.”

  She nodded at him, and he was gone.

  When Carrie got up to dress, she saw that before he’d left, while she and Tem were still asleep, Josh had raked the fire and put more wood on it. He had filled the coffeepot with water and tea and set it to boil. As Carrie poured herself a mug of tea, she smiled. He may not be a great farmer, but he knew how to take care of people and he knew how to climb up and down ropes in the middle of a storm and he knew how to ride—and he knew how to love.

  “I could stand a little of that love,” she said out loud, as she stood up and went to the mouth of the cave to look out at the dawning of the day.

  By the time Josh, Carrie, and both children, as well as Choo-choo, were once again assembled in their pretty little house, it was almost noon. Mrs. Emmerling had come and gone, the house was clean, and there were ham sandwiches made, as well as a pot of bean soup simmering on the stove and two fat apple pies in the oven.

  “I’m hungry,” Tem said.

  All the way down the mountain, Josh had held his son tightly in front of him, as though he couldn’t believe the boy was well and safe, but now Josh turned a stern face to his son. “You and I are going to have a little talk,” Josh said, and Tem looked at his father in disbelief.

  Carrie took Dallas outside while Tem and his father “discussed” what Tem had done.

  While Carrie and Dallas sat under a tree with Choo-choo, the child’s doll, and a stack of buttered bread and mugs of fresh milk, Carrie kept glancing back at the house. “You don’t think that your father will…you know, do you?” she asked Dallas.

  “Beat the stuffin’ out of Tem?” Dallas asked without much concern in her voice.

  “Where did you hear such an expression?”

  “Uncle Hiram says that’s what’s wrong with us. He says that Papa should beat us now and then, and it would do us a world of good.”

  “Does he?” There was a tone of challenge in Carrie’s voice. “And what does your father say to that?”

  “Papa doesn’t talk to Uncle Hiram much. He just sits and listens.” Dallas’s voice lowered. “I think Papa hates Uncle Hiram.”

  Carrie opened her mouth to tell Dallas that she was sure that Josh didn’t hate his own brother, but she couldn’t make herself say the platitude. From what she’d heard about Josh’s brother, she already hated him. “Will your father strike Tem?”

  Dallas gave Carrie a smile that was as sly as any adult’s. “Naw. Papa couldn’t hit us. He’ll just talk a lot.”

  Carrie laughed. Her own father would have died before he hit one of his children. Of course most of the townspeople were in agreement with Hiram and thought that she and her brothers and sister would have benefited by a good, sound beating, but it never happened.

  When, at long last, Josh came out of the house, Tem behind him, Tem looked fine, but Josh looked miserable. Carrie knew that Josh fully realized how close Tem had come to death, but Tem was already beginning to look on last night as an adventure.

  Slipping her arm through Josh’s and holding tight when he tried to pull away from her, Carrie said, “I declare today a holiday. No corn bugs today and no anything that we must do.”

  Josh gave her a look of irony. “You look on every day as a holiday.”

  “Thank you,” Carrie said. “I think that may be the nicest compliment I have ever received.”

  The snide look melted from Josh’s face and he smiled. “All right, you win. No bugs today. No weeds.” When he looked down at Carrie, his eyes were teasing. “And for you, no dishes to wash, no floors to scrub, no laundry to scour. For once you can do just as you please. You can be as lazy as you want.”

  She didn’t like the implication that she led a life of constant frivolity. “I don’t think I’m lazy,” she said in a hurt voice, then saw that he was teasing her. When she raised her hand to strike him on the chest, he agilely danced away from her, so Carrie ran toward him and tried to hit him, but she couldn’t catch him. A minute later, the two of them were chasing each other like children, while Tem was standing by and smili
ng and Dallas was laughing and clapping her hands, with Choo-choo barking excitedly.

  Carrie couldn’t catch Josh, but when she struck at him once and he sidestepped her, he caught her in his arms, her back to his front, and wrestled her arms to her side.

  “I am not lazy,” Carrie said, trying to wiggle away from his grasp.

  “You’re the laziest person I ever saw,” Josh said, then, without thinking what he was doing, he bit her earlobe, and before he realized what he was doing, he was kissing her neck.

  Carrie stopped struggling and leaned back against him, her eyes closed in ecstasy.

  It was at that point that the worried Choo-choo, who didn’t understand what was being done to his mistress, bit Josh on the leg.

  One minute Carrie was being kissed and the next Josh’s shout sounded in her ear. Squealing in pain as Josh released her, Carrie saw him go after Choo-choo with his hands made into claws.

  “Run, Choo-choo,” Dallas called.

  When Josh caught the little dog and said he was going to wring its scrawny neck, both children leaped on their father, trying to knock him down. Josh dropped the dog, held both of his children in his arms, and twirled them about. Choo-choo, who seemed to think Josh was hurting the children, snipped at him again, so Josh, still holding the kids, went after the dog.

  This time, Carrie leaped on Josh, and the four of them went tumbling to the ground, while Josh yelled that they were too heavy for him and they were going to crush him. Dallas started giggling, then Tem got the giggles and Carrie joined in. Josh rolled over and over, the three of them in his arms, all the while protecting them from the rough ground.

  When they had rolled far enough to reach the edge of the woods, Josh flopped on his back, his arms flung outward, and declared that they had worn him out, that he was dying.

  Carrie, with both children, was half on top of Josh, half on the ground, and she saw right away that this was a game the children had played many times before.