“Hurrah!” Laughter and applause rang out as the deed was done. Daniel, with a quick smile at Caroline, retreated again to the safety of the other side of the circle. For a moment Caroline felt herself the cynosure of all eyes, some laughing, some weighing, and some openly disapproving.
“Why, to think I never noticed! Daniel’s sweet on
you,” Mary marveled at her side. Caroline turned to shush her, but Mary, brown eyes twinkling, would not let the subject pass so lightly.
“ ’Tis as well I’ve grown so fond of you, because it seems as if we might be sisters soon,” she teased. Eyes widening at the implication that Daniel might have serious intentions, Caroline frowned Mary into silence. Then, even as her hands reached for another ear and began to work, the better to hide her confusion, she could not forbear seeking Daniel out with her eyes. He was still red-faced as he weathered James’s teasing. On Daniel’s other side, Matt was not laughing along with the rest. Instead he was talking again to Hannah, seemingly quite composed.
Did the idea of his brother’s kissing her really bother Matt so little? Across the floor, Lissie Peters was grim-faced as she yanked at the silken tassels, and the glance she sent Caroline’s way was quite poisonous. Not that Caroline blamed her. She would feel poisonous too, if the object of her affection had openly been seen to prefer another.
If Matt had kissed Hannah Forrester, Caroline would be hard put to it not to murder them both!
Because Matt was the one she wanted. With a feeling of inevitability Caroline acknowledged the fact that she should have realized long ago. Her eyes sought him again. The black-hearted wretch was still conversing with Hannah Forrester. Daniel’s kiss, which Mary had interpreted as almost as good as a declared intention, had clearly not disturbed him one bit!
Now that she thought about the matter, not during
the whole course of the summer had he touched her in any way that was more than acceptably polite, and not by word or deed had he done anything that even the most optimistic female could interpret as an admission of interest. Had the physical attraction she had once clearly held for him died? Or had he, perhaps, decided that he was being led by his male passions down a path he had no real wish to travel, and deliberately pulled back? He’d said he had no intention of wedding again, and to make a mistress of her while she was living in his house and caring for the lot of them was obviously not a wise idea. Not that she would permit herself to become his paramour, of course. But his wife?
Caroline shied away from the question. With great deliberation she set herself to shucking her corn until, while she still had some half dozen ears to go, the other side was declared the winner. Then they ate and drank, and it was time to go home.
As before, she rode between Matt, who drove, and Daniel. The night had grown chilly, and wisps of clouds scuttled beneath a huge, orange-red moon. A harvest moon, someone at the husking bee had called it. The wind had picked up, causing the branches all around and above them to creak and sway. In the distance—Caroline hoped—a lone wolf howled.
The boys, tired into silence, were slumped against their uncles in the back. Robert and Thomas conversed in low voices. Beside her, Matt was still as a stone, his face unreadable as he drove, his arm hard and tense against hers. On her other side, Daniel was equally silent. The lighthearted air that had prevailed during the trip to the husking bee had vanished. Something
heavy, though unexpressed, seemed to lie—if not over them all, then at least over the trio in the front seat. Caroline glanced from one to the other of the men beside her, thought of breaking the somber mood by lightly commenting on the evening just past, and then changed her mind. She was not feeling particularly jolly herself, and from the demeanor of her companions they were in no better spirits. Both appeared to have something weighty on their minds.
When they reached the house, Matt pulled up before the door to allow Caroline and the boys to alight. His brothers would accompany him to the barn to help put the buckboard and horse away and finish the chores that still needed doing. Caroline gave a fleeting thought to their working in all their finery, started to protest, and then, with a sigh, did not. She was in no mood to argue with anyone tonight.
The buckboard had barely started to move again before Caroline heard Thomas speak up from the back.
“Are you in
love
, Dan?” he asked in a twitting way.
“With
Car-o-line
?” Robert joined in. Caroline understood that they had merely waited until she was, as they thought, out of earshot before starting in on their brother. They would tease him mercilessly, of course, and she could only thank her lucky stars that she was to be spared.
“Shut up,” she heard Daniel respond with more good humor than she herself would have exhibited under the circumstances, and then whatever else might have passed among the four of them was lost to her as
the distance between them grew and she shepherded the boys into the house.
“Are you going to marry Uncle Dan?” Davey blurted as she shut the door behind them. He looked appalled.
Caroline turned to look at him, surprised that he had discerned so much when he had been busily engaged with his friends the whole evening. It was amazing how much children picked up when they seemed to be paying not the least attention to what was happening around them.
“No, of course not,” she answered, more sharply than she had intended, and shooed them upstairs to bed. Halfway up John turned to glance at her.
“ Twould be all right with me if you did,” he said almost shyly. Looking at him, dressed in his best suit of clothes, which was a miniature of his father’s, with his shock of black hair tumbled from the wind and his cheeks ruddily aglow, Caroline felt a surge of warmth. A smile began to curl her lips, only to be frozen in its tracks by Davey, who had already gained the upstairs hallway.
“Well, it wouldn’t be all right with me!” he yelled, and then before anything else could be said he darted out of sight along the corridor. Seconds later a reverberating slam announced that he had run to his room.
John shrugged, his shoulders drooping as he continued on up the stairs. Accustomed by now to Davey’s adamant opposition to what he felt was any attempt on her part to worm herself too firmly into the family, Caroline watched John go, then took herself off to her own chamber. As she went, she pondered the question:
had Daniel’s very public kiss been in the nature of a declaration of intent, or had it been no more than an affectionate gesture? Caroline found herself intently hoping that the latter was the case. If not, if Daniel meant to court her in earnest, then she could foresee that her hard-won peace would be subject to a degree of upheaval that she could look forward to with nothing short of dread.
But over the next few days Daniel neither said nor did anything to give credence to the suspicion that he had serious intentions toward Caroline. Indeed, he was out of sorts, as was the rest of the household. Davey and John fought constantly, and the other boys—she would not dignify them by calling them men, so childish was their behavior—bickered. Matt was for the most part silent, scowling at any and all who crossed his path, opening his mouth only to lambaste those unlucky enough to incur his particular disfavor. What ailed them all Caroline couldn’t imagine, but whatever it was she heartily hoped that they would either soon die of it or recover forthwith.
“ ’Tis not my fault that the blade rusted through, so you needn’t behave as though it is!” Thomas growled one night at supper, responding to an implication by Robert that the hoe was ruined by having been negligently left outside.
“Oh, isn’t it? Who was using it last, then? You’re confounded careless with things, and if you were honest you’d admit it!”
“I don’t know what
you’re
grumbling about! ’Tisn’t
you
who’ll have to repair the thing, is it?” asked Daniel, sticking in his oar.
“You
won’t!” Robert retorted, switching his glare to Daniel.
“Why won’t I? I always do! Were it not for me, we’d have no tools to work with at all! Both of you are always breaking things, or leaving them out to ruin!”
“ ’Tis Thomas, not me, who’s deuced careless!” Robert said in defense of himself.
“That’s a jest! Ha, ha, I’m laughing!” Thomas scowled at his brother in marked contrast to his words.
“ ’Twas Uncle Thom who left the rake out last week. I saw him,” Davey piped up.
“Shut your mouth, bantling.” Thomas transferred his scowl to Davey.
“I won’t! I saw you! I …”
“What a slimey little talebearer you are,” John said to his brother in disgust.
“I am not a talebearer! ’Tisn’t bearing tales to say that! I saw him, and …”
“Oh, shut up!” John turned his shoulder in disgust.
“See there!” Robert was triumphant.
“Out of the mouths of babes …” Daniel muttered.
“I tell you I did not!” Thomas said defensively.
“For God’s sake, hold your blasted tongues! I’ve heard enough and more from the lot of you!” Matt’s roar from the head of the table made even Caroline jump. John and Davey looked scared and dropped their eyes to their plates. Thomas and Robert, their animosity apparently forgotten, exchanged speaking looks and likewise returned their attention to their food. Daniel chewed a mouthful slowly and swallowed.
Then he looked at his older brother, his eyes narrowed, his jaw hard.
“Whatever the deuce is bothering you, I wish you’d stop taking it out on the rest of us! We’re devilish tired of walking on eggshells around you for fear we’ll put a foot wrong and get our heads snapped off for it!”
The silence that greeted that was fraught with tension. Caroline, fork suspended halfway to her mouth, looked wide-eyed from Daniel to Matt. Robert and Thomas seemed equally surprised. Davey goggled at his brave uncle, while John seemed to brace himself for an explosion.
“What did you say?” From the ominous quiet of Matt’s words, John seemed in the right of it.
“You heard me.” Daniel refused to back down. He met his brother’s eyes without flinching. “You’ve been as tetchy as a bear with a cob up its backside for the last three days. You’re making the rest of us suffer, and we’re all miserable as a result. If you’ve got something on your mind, for God’s sake spit it out. Or keep it to yourself, if you prefer, but don’t take it out on us!”
“You”—Matt’s eyes took on a ferocious gleam as they clashed with Daniel’s—“can go straight to hell!”
He shoved his chair back from the table, got to his feet, and stalked from the room. The six of them who remained sat in stunned silence until the
thunk!
of the front door being slammed released them. They let out their breaths in a collective sigh.
“I ain’t
never
heard Pa swear before!” Davey breathed, clearly awed. Caroline, sitting beside him, patted his knee reassuringly beneath the table. For her pains she received a scowling look, and the limb was
moved out of her reach. But of course, what else had she expected?
“Do you think he’s sick?” John sounded worried.
“We’re men grown. He can’t get away with snapping at us and ordering us about whenever it suits him.” Thomas recklessly threw in his lot with Daniel.
“But it’s not like Matt to be so blasted short-tempered. He never was, not even when”—Robert cast a quick glance at Caroline and the boys—“not even when things were real bad here.”
Caroline understood him to be referring to when Elizabeth was alive. She dismissed her chagrin over Davey’s continued dislike and frowned thoughtfully.
“Matt’s been out of sorts, and that’s why you’ve all been behaving like spoilt children,” she deduced, marveling at her own insightfulness.
“Out of sorts!” Thomas snorted. “That’s like saying the ocean’s a mite wider that the creek!”
“But what do you suppose is bothering him?” Robert frowned.
“I don’t know,” Daniel answered tautly. “But if he gives me any more of his gaff, I’m going to punch him in his teeth!”
“You can’t hit Pa!” Davey and John cried in unison.
“He’s just talking,” Robert assured them, although he looked at Daniel as if his brother had suddenly grown a second head. Indeed, such a threat was so out of character for Daniel that Caroline blinked at him.
“Someone needs to go talk to him, to find out what’s wrong,” she said.
The adults all looked at each other. The unspoken question that hovered in the air was, who?
“You do it, Caroline,” Robert said suddenly. “He doesn’t bare his teeth at you.”
“You make him sound like a mad dog. He’s not
that
bad,” Thomas said sotto voce.
“Isn’t he?” Daniel returned grimly.
“Me?” Caroline ignored this last low-voiced exchange. The merest germ of a notion had begun to take route in her brain, and try as she would she could not dislodge it. “All right, I will.”
Making up her mind suddenly, she got to her feet. She could feel all of them watching her as she left the room in pursuit of Matt.
30
H
e was in the barn. As soon as she stepped outside, Caroline saw the faint light glowing through the open door. Gathering up her skirts, she headed in that direction, opening and closing the gate behind her and then stepping carefully through the barnyard to avoid any nasty surprises that might lie in her path. As she reached the open door, she caught just a glimpse of Matt seated on an overturned bucket with his lame leg outstretched, face grim as he massaged his scarred knee. Raleigh, who had been lying at Matt’s side, spied her and jumped up with a mighty
woof!
“Hush, Raleigh,” Caroline said, annoyed at being announced when she would have watched unnoticed for a minute or two more. Was Matt’s leg paining him, and was the pain causing his unusual irritability? At the notion, some of Caroline’s confidence fled. He might not be upset over the idea of her and Daniel at all.
“What do you want?” Matt looked up, his expression in no way indicating that he was glad to see her. The moose came rollicking over to her, grabbing the hem of her dress and shaking it as an invitation to play.