It was near noon of the following day when Robert at last sighted smoke rising lazily toward the sky over the tops of the trees.
“We’ve made it,” he cried, and Caroline felt her weary spirits pick up at the knowledge that they were almost there. Had it been possible, she would have urged her mount on at all speed, but the careful gait they had maintained since leaving the shelter was the only one possible in the snow.
As they sighted the house through the trees, she swayed in the saddle. She was so tired, so deadly tired and so cold and so hungry and …
“Pa!” Davey and John erupted from the front door with Thomas behind them as the riders emerged into the clearing. “Pa!”
The children were jumping through the snow, uncaring in the way of small boys that they were not wearing their outdoor things and were wetting themselves to the waist. Raleigh bounded behind them, hopping through the snow like an enormous piebald rabbit as he barked his fool head off. The sheer exuberance of the greeting made Caroline smile even as she shook her head at the thought of the soaking the boys—and the dog—were getting.
“Pa!”
Matt reined in his horse, and blanket and all swung down to catch them up one in each arm as they reached him, giving them both a fierce hug that was just as fiercely returned.
“Why aren’t you in school?” he demanded gruffly, putting them away from him as Raleigh, his barks deafening, bounced around the three of them.
“There’s no school on account of the fever!” John said.
“Ain’t that grand?” Davey echoed, and Caroline had to laugh at his cheerful self-centeredness. The whole world was well lost as long as he got out of school, it seemed.
“It’s grand. Now go on inside the house while we put the horses up. Caroline, you go with them.”
Matt put the boys into his saddle and led the horse the short distance to the house with the rest of them following. Once there, he lifted his sons down, then moved to hold up his hands to Caroline. With a wordless murmur she slid into his arms, feeling very cared for as she gave herself over to Matt’s strength. Matt didn’t set her down in the snow, but carried her, high against his chest, to the stoop, where he at last put her on her feet. Elevated as she was, their eyes were on a level. The sudden gleam in the blue eyes boring into hers was the only warning she got before he leaned forward to press a quick, hard kiss to her lips.
Then he turned and remounted without a word, leaving her pink-cheeked and flustered to face two wide-eyed little boys and their gaping uncle.
43
“P
a kissed you!” Davey’s words were almost accusing.
“Does he love you, Aunt Caroline?” John’s eyes were every bit as wide as Davey’s.
Thomas, while not saying anything, seemed to wait with as much interest as either of the two boys for her reply.
With an exasperated glance at her beloved, who was disappearing toward the barn with his brothers, the dog, and all four horses, Caroline shooed them before her into the house and shut the door.
For a moment she leaned back against it, so tired she could hardly stand. The warmth of the house was almost painful, and she grimaced as tingling life came back to her frozen fingers and toes. Food and rest were what she and her partners in adventure needed, and she knew a craven desire to plead hunger and fatigue and let her betrothed answer to his children and brother for himself. But the expressions on Davey’s and John’s faces stopped her. They were incredulous, their eyes enormous with questions.
“You’re wearing Pa’s hat!” Davey said as she took it off.
“And his coat!” John sounded scandalized.
“It was cold outside, and I had none of my own.” Caroline must have looked hunted as she addressed herself to the least sensitive matter first, because Thomas, who’d been staring at her with much the same expression as his nephews, began to grin.
“But why did he kiss you?” Davey persisted. “He only kisses me, or John, and only when we’re hurt or real sick. He don’t kiss nobody else. Does he, John?”
John shook his head. Caroline sighed, opened her mouth—and found that she lacked the courage to tell them after all.
“Give me a minute to catch my breath, and then we’ll talk about it,” she temporized, moving away from the door toward the kitchen.
The hem of Matt’s coat trailed the floor, and as she grew warmer she took it off. Millicent rose from her cozy bed by the hearth, stretched, and meowed a greeting. Something was bubbling over the fire in the kitchen—corn mush from the smell of it—and a sudden hunger pain cramped her stomach. The others would be hungry too, and she needed to think about making a meal. Then there was Mary, and after the meal she must hurry to her friend’s side. All these fragments of thought ran through her mind in the time it took her to hang the coat on a peg.
She turned back to find three males regarding her foreshortened skirts with interest.
Caroline rolled her eyes, and headed for her bedchamber.
“But, Aunt Caroline …!” Davey protested as she shut the door in his face.
“I’ll be right back,” Caroline promised. “But I really must change my gown.”
It took some fifteen minutes to wash and change her dress and brush her hair. Just as she stepped from her chamber, the men came in from the barn, stamping snow from their feet and brushing it from their clothes.
“Thom, you cooked!” Robert exclaimed on a note of appreciative surprise.
Thomas shot his brother a darkling look and continued to stir the mush.
“The boys and I had to eat, didn’t we? ’Tis fortunate for the lot of you that I misjudged the quantities and made such a vast amount.” He sounded almost defensive, and Caroline guessed that he feared being teased. Since she had lived with them, they had gotten in the way of considering such necessary tasks as cooking beneath their masculine dignity.
“Pa, why did you kiss Aunt Caroline?” Davey went right to the heart of the matter that was troubling him as Matt unwrapped himself from the blanket and sat down to pull his boots off.
“Come here, John, and help me,” Matt directed. John, having clearly done this before, approached his father and straddled his foot, his back to Matt. Matt placed his other boot on John’s bottom and pushed. The boot slid off.
“Pa! You’re not paying attention!” Davey wailed.
John was repeating the exercise on Matt’s other boot while Robert and Daniel performed much the same task for each other. Caroline shooed Thomas away from the pot and took over the cooking, just as
the mush, too long neglected, was threatening to become lumpy.
“Yes, I am, Davey.” Matt was in his stocking feet now, starting to unbutton his jerkin.
“Then why did you kiss her?”
“Because I’m going to marry her, half-pint.” Matt said it almost teasingly, but the effect on the boys was dramatic. John stopped what he was doing to regard his father openmouthed, while Davey’s lower lip quivered as if he would cry.
“Does that mean she’ll be our mother?” John sounded horrified.
“I don’t want no mother!” Davey began, very noisily, to sob.
So much for crossing bridges. This was worse than Caroline had expected. Hurt assailed her at the boys’ unequivocal rejection, but she fought it off, striving to view the matter from their point of view. After all, their experience of having a mother had been disastrous—and they must be feeling very proprietary toward Matt as well. The notion that he might take another wife had probably never occurred to them.
“I can never be your mother,” she interjected calmly, turning back to stir the mush although her attention was on the little scene behind her. “When I marry your father, I’ll still be your Aunt Caroline.”
“No!” Davey ran sobbing from the room. John, being older, had more control, so he merely pursed his lips and looked strained. “I’d better go after him,” he said. With great control, he left the room. Then his stoicism apparently deserted him. Caroline winced, listening to his footsteps pounding up the stairs and
across the floor overhead as, like his younger brother, he bolted for his room.
“You handled that well,” Daniel said, scowling at Matt.
“You should have broken it to them gently,” Robert seconded.
“Poor little tykes,” Thomas muttered.
Matt, eyes narrowing, glared impartially at his brothers. “They’ll come around,” he said, and, getting to his feet, headed after his sons.
“Don’t force them to accept me, please,” Caroline said to his retreating back, but if he heard her, he appeared to pay her no heed.
Not more than ten minutes later, just as the mush was ready to be served, the three of them reappeared, with Matt, grim-eyed, herding his sons before him.
“We’re glad you’re marrying Pa, Aunt Caroline,” John said glumly, his expression surprisingly adult for one of his tender years as he looked at her with barely masked anger.
“Thank you, John,” Caroline answered as gently as she could, feeling a lump rise in her throat at the boy’s stiff pride. How she longed to put her arms around them and assure them that everything would be all right! But instinct told her to hold back, to give them time to get used to the news. Their opposition was more the result of shock, she thought, than personal dislike, but she felt as though all the ground she had gained had been lost again.
Matt nudged Davey in the back. “Me too,” Davey echoed his brother, obviously compelled by the weight
of paternal authority. His expression was rebellious, and his lip still had a tendency to tremble.
Caroline smiled at him.
“Food’s ready,” she said, feeling it best to change the subject. “Sit and eat.”
The boys, clearly glad to be released from onerous duty, immediately decamped for the table. Robert, Thomas, and Daniel joined them, while Matt lingered to smile rather grimly at Caroline.
“They’ll get used to the idea, don’t worry,” he promised her under his breath. Caroline shook her head at him.
“You can’t just order them to like the idea of our getting married,” she warned, but he merely smiled at her, chucked her under the chin, and took himself off to the table.
When the meal was finished, Caroline wanted to head for Mary’s home at once, but Matt insisted that she first needed to rest. She was gray-faced with fatigue, he told her, and he would not have her make herself sick. His concern touched her heart, and she found herself more willing to bow to his wishes than, she promised herself, would be the case once the newness of their betrothal wore off
“Another hour or so can make no difference, and you’re out on your feet. Besides, James will have had a true physician to her long before now” was the clincher, and Caroline had to concede that his words made sense. She was so tired that she could barely hold her eyes open. As soon as she climbed into her bed she was asleep, and then Matt refused to allow her
to be awakened. Thus it was nearly nightfall before they set out for James’s house.
Matt drove her in the sledge, wrapping her in thick fur robes and providing a hot brick for her feet. Cleanshaven now, he was pale from lack of sleep. Caroline snuggled close against his side as they whisked toward town, and would almost have enjoyed herself were it not for the seriousness of the matter that drew them there.
But likely Mary would be well on the road to recovery by now, and she was worrying needlessly.
The settlement seemed almost deserted, in thrall to a strange hush that Caroline attributed to the snow. The setting sun cast an orange glow over everything, painting even the bay the color of fire. Lights glowed in the windows of numerous houses, but only a lone figure, a man clad all in black, hurried along the street where James and Mary lived.
Even as Matt pulled the horse to a halt before their house, the door opened and James stood silhouetted in the aperture with the light from within spilling out around him. Matt raised a hand in greeting, came around the sledge, and lifted Caroline down. All the while James never moved, but merely stared at them as if he’d been frozen in place.
It was not until she stepped up on the stoop that Caroline got her first good look at James’s face. White and haggard, his eyes red with weeping, he looked so distraught that Caroline felt a fist close around her heart.
He ignored her, looking past her almost blindly at Matt.
“She died. Mary died,” James said brokenly, and as he said it he broke into wrenching sobs.
Caroline cried out as Matt pushed past her to take his brother in his arms.
44
T
wo days later, at Mary’s funeral, the drip, drip of melting snow was what burned itself most forcibly into Caroline’s brain. Ankle deep in gray slush, she stood beside Matt, who was as sober as she’d ever seen him, clad all in black with his hat in his hands as he bent his head in response to the dominie’s exhortation to the small gathering to pray.
“Our Father, who art in heaven …”
The familiar words of the well-loved prayer fell from Caroline’s lips as she joined in with the others in ragged chant. On Matt’s other side, James stood as if in a daze, his voice faltering a dozen times during the prayer he must know as well as he knew his own name. Matt glanced at him from time to time during the service, which was more hurried than usual as there were two more victims of the fever to be buried that day. His expression was nearly as drawn as his brother’s. What one suffered they all did, it was clear. Daniel stood on James’s other side, and Robert and Thomas were just slightly behind him, all white and still with misery that was as much for their widowed brother as for the woman he had lost. They appeared to form a guard around James, and Caroline knew that their hearts ached for him, as did hers.
Oh, and for little Hope! Tears slid down Caroline’s cheeks as she glanced at the poor motherless child. Too young to know aught of her tragedy, Hope was clutched to James’s chest, where she cooed contentedly and reached out from time to time to touch her father’s nose or mouth. He permitted her explorations as if he was not even aware of them, but he would not give the child up for someone else to hold—Caroline had offered to take her, as had others of Mary’s many friends. The little girl’s bright blue eyes sparkled, and she was all smiles, because she liked to be in company and there was so much of it. Her unaware happiness was heartbreaking to see.