From This Day Forward

chapter Thirteen



Jason sat at the bar in the small, crowded tavern, nursing a glass of whiskey and lamenting his decision to come to Manaus. He hated the city, any city, but Manaus in particular. It reminded him of the Irish Channel and the life he'd been running from all these years.

So many things about Manaus touched the chord of memory inside him—the stench of the sewers, the sight of barefoot children playing in the streets, the sound of steam whistles from the river. He could imagine what life must be like for those barefoot children running back to their tenement homes in a part of Manaus that the city fathers tried with some success to hide behind a facade of prosperity. In his mind, he could see inside those unpainted eyesores to the sparse, crude interiors devoid of ornamentation, devoid of tenderness.

He'd been right about one thing. Manaus had come of age since last he'd been here. The seedy underbelly still existed, but it had been carefully covered with a veneer of civilization. A city built on the blood and flesh of slave labor, Manaus, like New Orleans, possessed an inbred decadence that no amount of culture could disguise.

He coughed, squinting in the dark smoke-filled room. More than anything, he wanted to leave this place, to wash the dirt and corruption of Manaus from his soul.

For ten years, he'd been sending coffee to market in Manaus, and for ten years, he'd avoided the city by sending Ignacio to conduct his business—until now.

Jason closed his eyes and the vision of lush green vegetation and the scent of fertile earth filled his senses. He yearned to get back to the fazenda, but he couldn't go back for the same reason he'd left in the first place. Caroline. Every time he thought of his home, there was Caroline to be reckoned with. What a coward he'd become, hiding from a woman. Her power and strength confounded him.

She'd disrupted his life, taken over his house, his last refuge, and now she'd forced him to flee to the city, the one place he'd been trying to escape for fifteen years. He couldn't bear to face her every day, to look into her eyes and know that she might discover the worst about him.

What he couldn't understand for the life of him was why she was still here, why she'd come at all, knowing what she did know about him.

That was the heart of his agony. She knew the very worst about him—the truth. He'd come to Brazil and built his own world, a world he controlled absolutely, from the orchards to the beneficio to the handpicked servants who ran his household. Nothing happened on the fazenda without his approval.

A thousand miles of jungle and as much water separated him from anyone who might challenge his authority, from anyone who knew that he was Cullen Sinclair's son and what that meant. Caroline had changed that. Caroline challenged him at every turn.

He tried to close his mind to the surge of memories that crowded his consciousness—Caroline playing the grand piano with an abandon that made his blood run hot; Caroline working like a mad woman to save a wounded boy, unmindful of the mud and muck and blood; Caroline soft and alluring in a sarong, her toes peeking out from beneath the hem; Caroline holding an orchid bloom close and inhaling its essence as if it were the elixir of life; Caroline moaning, warm and yielding beneath him, her eyes half-closed in passion.

It would be just like her to be pregnant. If he were dealing with any other woman but Caroline, he might have to concede that she could hardly control something so capricious. But he wasn't sure that Caroline didn't command the sun to rise and the stars to twinkle at her pleasure. If she didn't, it was surely not for lack of trying!

"Pregnant," he snorted, downing the watery whiskey in his glass. The very word awakened a dark terror inside him, while it caused his foolish heart to yearn for something unattainable—for love, for belonging.

"What did you say, patrao?" Ignacio asked.

Jason scowled. "Damn and hell, I said I need another drink." He slammed his empty glass down on the bar for emphasis.

"Patrao, surely you've had enough to...."

"What do you mean enough? Don't you know I'm full blooded Irish?" he asked, affecting an Irish brogue. "There's no such thing as enough to an Irishman!"

Ignacio frowned as the bartender filled Jason's glass again. "Patrao, when will we start for home? The men are getting restless."

"The men are old women!" Jason growled, raising his glass and draining half its contents. If he drank enough whiskey, maybe he could forget the softness of her smile and the sweetness of her perfume.

"You have never been away so long," Ignacio pointed out. "Don't you wonder what is happening?"

"Mr. Baur will take care of things."

"He is the overseer," Ignacio reasoned. "If the jungle overtakes the coffee and the river runs dry and the beneficio burns to the ground, he will move to another fazenda."

Jason frowned at his irritating companion. "Aren't you being a little dramatic, Ignacio?"

"I've never seen you like this, patrao. Don't you care?"

Ignacio's question hit its mark. Of course he cared. He cared too damned much. Worry about the fazenda kept him awake all night. Worry about Caroline robbed him of his appetite. So he drank to forget them both, only it didn't work.

Maybe she wasn't even there anymore. The idea left him feeling as empty and lost as when he'd thought she'd sailed away on the mail boat.

Oh, he was a man trapped in a hell of his own making—wanting her to stay, wanting her to go.

"The coffee has been sold," Ignacio pointed out reasonably. "Some of the men have families."

"Families? What the hell is a family?"

"You know what a family is, patrao. How should I answer that?"

"I'm dead serious, Ignacio." Jason squinted at the double image of the other man. "Is it a house, or is it two people who decide to have children so they can bully them and mistreat them? Oh, no, I suppose we're talking about happy families, right? Happy." He lifted his glass and pronounced in a loud roar, "To happy families!"

"Please, patrao, you will attract attention."

"Do you think I care?" Jason asked with a snort.

"Maybe you should, unless you want to end up in jail for fighting again."

Jason flexed his right hand, the pain in his knuckles reminding him of last night's brawl, which had landed him in jail for the night. He could hardly remember the face of the man he'd beaten to a bloody pulp, nor could he remember the insult that had provoked him. He was losing control more and more often. It was a good thing he was away from Caroline.

Of course, she'd been unable to resist prodding and probing. She couldn't just leave well enough alone. Given the chance, Caroline would challenge the patience of Job and spit in the eye of the devil himself!

No, that didn't excuse his actions. He'd pushed her. His chest tightened as he remembered her falling—just like his father had.

Clenching his fist, he silently commanded the visions to leave him in peace, but they would not. He'd been in a towering rage that day, too. Until then, he'd been too small and too afraid to stand up to his father, but on that last day, it hadn't mattered. The fury inside him had tripled his strength.

"We've been here three months, patrao," Ignacio was saying, pulling him back to the present. "It's a long time since we sold the coffee, and it will take at least three weeks to get home. Before long, the rainy season will set in, and the journey will be much more dangerous."

"You're right!" Jason declared, banging his glass on the bar for emphasis. Whiskey sloshed over the sides and onto his hand. "There's no point endangering the men just because I have nothing to go back to."

"Nothing?" Ignacio laughed. "You have what you have always had—the fazenda, the jungle. And now you have a beautiful wife waiting for you."

Jason turned his glass up and drained it. "Have you ever thought you wanted something, and when you got it you found out it wasn't what you wanted at all? I want things back the way they were before she came."

"Why? Nothing is so very different."

"Everything is so very different," Jason contradicted emphatically.

"What is different is better! Besides, you sent her away once and you only ended up going after her."

"She defied me!" Jason shouted. "She didn't even get on the bloody boat!"

Ignacio smiled wryly. "In all the years I have known you, I always believed you to be an intelligent, fair-minded man—until now."

"Well, maybe you don't know me as well as you think." He seemed to be pointing that out often lately. He'd said the same thing to Caroline.

"I know you better than you know yourself. You sit here in a filthy saloon feeling sorry for yourself—"

"Feeling sorry..."

"I may be overstepping my place, patrao, but someone has to talk some sense into you. I am speaking to you now as someone who has known you for a long time and can't stand by and let you destroy yourself. You sit here night after night drinking in order to dull your mind when you have a beautiful wife waiting for you in the house you built and furnished so that you could have a family, a wife who cares for you for some reason that I can't understand."

"Neither can I, Ignacio, neither can I."

"If she'd gotten on the boat, you'd have taken her off. You want her to stay but you do everything in your power to run her off!"

Ignacio was right. Fool that he was, he'd gone after her. Fool that he was, he'd allowed himself to be seduced by her beauty and her grace and her charm.

"It's the principle of the thing, Ignacio," he said with all the passion he could muster, "the principle! No matter! Tell the men we leave for home tomorrow morning. The boats should be ready in a matter of days."

With that, Jason stood on wobbly legs. The room swam around him, but he managed to right himself.

"Are you all right, patrao?" Ignacio asked, grabbing Jason by the shoulder to help steady him.

"I'll be fine as soon as I find my room."

"We'll walk together," Ignacio offered, groaning under Jason's weight.

Ignacio steered Jason toward the door and into the damp night air.

#####

Caroline placed her pen in the ink stand and went still. Brilliant sunlight poured through the window across the study, spilling bright patterns of light on the terracotta tile floor. She listened intently, the only sound in the cluttered study the loud ticking of the clock on the white stucco wall behind her.

It came again, a sound like no other. Shriller than a train whistle, the steamboat whistle had been a part of her life since her first recollection. In New Orleans, they came so frequently one hardly noticed them. But in the remote Amazon, any man-made noise caught the attention immediately.

Standing, Caroline straightened her skirt, hurrying around the desk to the open window. From here she could see the river for several miles, until it made a sharp curve on the horizon.

The first time she stood at this window and gazed down at the river and the orchards beyond it, she realized that this was the view from Jason's study that he'd described so poignantly in his letters—"the coffee trees heavy with berries and bright with blooms... the river pulsing through the very heart of a boundless wilderness... nature and man in perfect harmony.... This is what the Garden of Eden must have been like. I have reclaimed paradise. "

How could a man with such depth of feeling live in the emotional isolation that Jason had fashioned for himself?

She spotted a boat as it rounded the bend and steamed toward her, and her heart leaped into her throat. It was too far away to see any markings, but

Caroline was almost certain it couldn't be the mail boat. It had just left going south with Senhor Aveiro aboard five days ago.

How would Jason react when he learned that his trusted bookkeeper had resigned and returned to Portugal and that she had taken over his plantation books? Well, that was easy enough to predict. He'd be furious. He'd be angry enough to find that she hadn't left in his absence.

When Senhor Aveiro made the announcement that he would be returning to Portugal, Caroline had been thrust into a dilemma. She had to get word to Jason in Manaus, but how? Mr. Baur had informed her that with so many men away in Manaus, the plantation needed every hand just to keep running. She couldn't take even one away from his work to make the two month trip to Manaus and back.

The smartest solution seemed to be to have Senhor Aveiro find Jason in Manaus and give him the sad news. But a third option occurred to her almost immediately. She'd kept books for Derek. She knew about balance sheets and accounts payable and accounts receivable, debits and credits. Why not do the job herself? When Jason saw how useful she could be, that she could be a partner as well as a wife, maybe he would realize that he needed her. At the very least, her keeping the books would force him to deal with her. If she held the purse strings of the fazenda, he would not be able to ignore her as he had done in the past.

Was he still angry about the letters? Would he finally talk to her or would he push her away again?

The doubt and fear that tugged at her soul weren't enough to keep her from bounding out the door and racing to the pier. She arrived in time to see the first boat dock and the occupants disembark.

Most of the men who stepped onto the pier were familiar to her. She'd treated many of them for everything from minor scrapes to serious contusions. They appeared tired and travel-worn, but glad to be home. Many of them had families who greeted them joyfully. Tears flowed freely, and it was only then that Caroline was able to look past her own loneliness and realize that not only had Jason kept himself away from her far longer than necessary, he had also forced his men to stay away from their loving families. Everyone had suffered because of Jason's stubborn pride.

As man after man left the boat, Caroline realized that Jason was not aboard and her attention turned to the second boat which arrived a few minutes after the first.

Again men disembarked one after the other and were greeted by elated family members. Ignacio stepped ashore, and his wife and son embraced him immediately. His expression when he pulled away from them and spotted her made her breath catch. She glanced up the river for the last boat, only to find the river empty.

Her pleading gaze followed Ignacio as he walked wearily toward her, his hat in his hand, his head bowed.

"I am sorry, Senhora," he said as he came to stand before her, his eyes reflecting some of the pain in her heart. "He would not come."

"Where is he?" she asked, struggling to keep her voice from shaking.

"We left him in Manaus," Ignacio told her.

"But what...?" A faintness washed over her; her body swayed slightly, trembling with dread that he might never come back as long as she remained here. "Why? When?"

"He will come home," Ignacio assured her as if reading her thoughts. "He cannot bear the city. He will grow weary of it and return soon."

Caroline lifted her chin high, her lower lip trembling with the tears that threatened to humiliate her. There was nothing left to say. A persistent pain burned inside her soul, but she beat it down, substituting anger for the hurt that she could not, would not allow to devour her. She walked slowly back to the house with all the dignity at her command.

"What are you doing, Senhora?"

Caroline gazed up from the papers spread on top of the mahogany desk to see Ignacio staring at her from the doorway in openmouthed astonishment.

"What does it look like?" she asked, smiling in order to cushion the harshness of her words.

What she'd been doing was staring at stacks of papers and ledger books without comprehension. She'd hoped keeping busy would take her mind off of Jason, but all she could think of was Jason sending his men back and remaining in Manaus. She had half a mind to jump on a boat and go after him herself.

Ignacio's brow furrowed in suspicion. "What have you done with Senhor Aveiro?"

Caroline laughed softly past the persistent pain in her heart. "What do you think, Ignacio? How could you think I would do anything to that kind old man?"

"I didn't mean...." he began, removing his hat and stepping cautiously into the room.

"He received word on the last mail boat that his father is ill, so he left immediately for Portugal, judging by Senhor Aveiro's advanced age, I can only imagine that his father must be over a hundred years old."

"But, Senhora," Ignacio said, twisting his hat nervously. "What are you doing?"

"I'm keeping the books," she replied impatiently. He acted as if he'd caught her with her hand in the till.

"You can't!" he insisted vehemently.

"Why not?"

"Because... because..."

"Because I'm a woman?" she asked angrily.

She'd received the same reaction from men in New Orleans when they learned that her position at the Sinclair Coffee Company entailed a little more than smiling and looking pretty. Filling her lungs with air, Caroline launched into her defense. "I kept the books for the Sinclair Coffee Company for a year. I paid the bills, placed the orders—"

"No, Senhora," Ignacio managed to interrupt. "Because... well, you know the patrao, how he is. He likes to make all the decisions."

Caroline settled back into the comfortable leather chair. "Well, then he shouldn't stay away so long."

"I told him the same thing," Ignacio assured her. "When he finds out what you've done, he will—"

"He will be angry, I know!" Caroline rolled her eyes and gazed toward the ceiling as if beseeching heaven. "Everything I do or say or even think about doing or saying makes the patrao angry. I don't care! He's not here and I'm not as confident as you are that he will ever come back as long as—"

She cut her speech short before she blurted as long as I'm here.

"I must write to the patrao and tell him so he can hire another man while he is in Manaus," Ignacio told her, turning to leave.

"Wait!" Caroline cried, coming to her feet once again. How could she explain her need to keep busy? The opportunity to keep the books had come at a time when she desperately needed something to occupy her mind.

"Ignacio, please," she pleaded, trying to keep the urgency from her voice, "let me do it. Give me a month. If I don't do a good job, you can take a boat and go to Manaus to find someone yourself."

Ignacio scratched his head in indecision. "I don't like it. You should not anger the patrao."

"I only have to breathe to anger the patrao. Please, Ignacio. Maybe he won't be angry. Maybe he'll be glad I'm so resourceful. Besides, it'll save him money. He'll be happy about that, especially since I had to order a new water pump tor the beneficio."

"You did what?"

Stunned by the horror on Ignacio's face, Caroline felt a prickling of apprehension and prepared to defend her position once again. "It stopped working, so I sent an order back with the last mail boat. In the meantime, they've had to use a hand pump."

"Oh, Senhora, you shouldn't have done that!" Ignacio said, making the sign of the cross in front of his chest.

"Stop it!" Caroline snapped, anger pushing the momentary fear from her mind. "I had to. The fazenda can't operate without water power."

"Senhora, it is an old pump."

"Yes, I know," Caroline said, settling in her chair once again. "High time it was replaced."

"It breaks all the time."

Caroline nodded agreement. "My point exactly."

"It breaks, Luis fixes it. Master Jason isn't a man who spends money freely. He has had that pump for nine years."

"Freely? Surely he knows there are things he has to spend money on to keep the fazenda running?" Stony silence met her words. Gazing at the horrified Ignacio, her temper rose steadily. "Luis wasn't here to fix it this time!"

Caroline watched Ignacio's inner struggle as the clock on the study wall ticked away the seconds. Surely he could see her point. Why continue to fix a piece of equipment that broke regularly? It took time away from harvesting the coffee, which was the main occupation of the fazenda. There was plenty of money in the plantation account to cover a new pump.

"Maybe you're right," Ignacio said unconvincingly. "That pump was old and worn out."

"Of course I'm right," Caroline said with a smile of relief. If Ignacio agreed with her, it must have been the right thing to do. "We had no choice."

Swallowing the nagging doubt in the back of her mind, Caroline added, "Besides, I'll take full responsibility."

"The boat, Senhora!" Ines called. "It is coming!"

Caroline stopped in the motion of snipping a parsley stem and came to her feet, lifting her head to listen as the sound of a steam whistle rent the air.

Her whole being trembled as she walked slowly along the narrow path between the well-defined rows of Ines's herb garden, the handle of a wicker basket draped over her arm.

Finally, he'd come home. Finally, the waiting was over, the wondering, the frustration. Her heart faint with dread, she remembered how they'd parted more than five months ago. Was he still angry about the letters? Was he ready to face his past and the fact that she knew much of it so that they could get on with their lives?

Uneasiness settled in her chest every time she considered that Jason, who had built his life in such a way that he could completely avoid contact with civilization, had spent so much time in the city. No matter how much he hated the city, he'd chosen it over her. How would he react when he found her still here? The thought filled her with dread.

At the edge of the garden nearest the kitchen, she stopped in indecision. Should she rush down to the pier to greet her husband with open arms or ignore his arrival and continue with the day as she'd planned it? She'd made a fool of herself once, running down to meet him, only to find that he hadn't returned with his men.

How dare he just float home on a Tuesday morning and expect her to be waiting eagerly?

Her bottom lip quivered and she cursed herself for allowing the pain of rejection to seep through her control. She took a ragged breath as another whistle blast sounded.

"Come, Senhora!" Ines called, running across the patio, her face beaming with delight. "Master Jason is back! Let's go meet the boat!"

Ines grabbed her arm, but Caroline remained immobile. "No. You go on."

"But Senhora! Master Jason—don't you want to see him after so long?"

"Not particularly." If only it were true, Caroline mused, trying not to meet Ines's gaze for fear the other woman would read something in her eyes.

"But why not?"

"Go, Ines! Meet the boat. I have a garden to tend."

Ines called after Caroline as she turned to go. "But you can do that later! I will help."

"Ines! I am not going to run down to the pier like some silly girl! Go if you like. I'm staying here."

Her face a twisted mask of confusion and hurt, Ines tried to reason with her. "Maybe he will not be still angry."

"I don't care," Caroline said tiredly.

"But—"

Caroline walked away, back down the garden path to the place she'd left when the steam whistle had sounded. There were herbs to be cut and weeds to be pulled. Life went on, in spite of Jason Sinclair.

Three mail boats had come and gone in Jason's absence, and Caroline had come close to boarding each and just sailing away from this place and her unreasonable, heartless husband. He didn't want her; he would never want her. Even if his anger had cooled during his prolonged visit to Manaus, he would never forgive her for the letters. Those damned letters!

She snipped a sprig of basil and placed it neatly in her basket, careful not to mix the herbs together.

He'd arrived for the final battle, she knew, the last skirmish in the war they'd been waging since the day she stepped off the mail boat. They'd each had ample time to assemble their resources and formulate a plan of attack. Now all that remained was for one or the other of them to open fire.

Pushing with the back of her hand at an errant curl that had slipped out from under her wide hat, she settled back on her heels, listening for another whistle blast in spite of her resolve.

With a determined sigh, Caroline deposited her small scissors in the basket and stood up, wiping her dirty hands on her skirt. She'd take the herbs to the kitchen and then occupy herself elsewhere. This time, she would not be the one to seek him out.

#####

None of the arguments mattered. No matter how fiercely he tried to convince himself to do otherwise, he could think of nothing but seeking her out. He didn't want to face her. He'd spent the last five months hiding from her and the unwanted emotions she stirred in him. He didn't want to wonder if she'd look the same, if her skin would be as clear and sweet as he remembered it.

And yet somehow, without making a conscious decision, he found himself in Ines's herb garden. Caroline was there, as Ines had said she would be, bending over the plants that had pushed their way through the earth. Her light dress of pale rose cotton swathed her body in a way that made it evident she'd forgone corset and petticoats.

A wide straw hat shielded her face and head from him, but he heard her sigh before she straightened wearily and wiped her hands on her skirt.

He couldn't help marveling at her ethereal beauty, her fragile grace, her sensual power. She stood for a moment, her face lifted, her eyes straining toward the distant dock, and his foolish heart quickened at the thought that she was looking for him, thinking of him.

Oh, Caroline, how I've missed you. The thought leaped to mind before he could crush it.

Why was she still here? Why hadn't she left while he was gone? It would have made it so much easier all the way around. Unless....

His gaze followed her hand as it moved caressingly over her gently rounded abdomen.

"Hell and damn," he muttered under his breath, shock vibrating through his being. He'd known it was possible, but somehow he hadn't really believed it would happen.

He couldn't take his gaze away from her belly. He couldn't stop thinking about his seed growing inside her, his child. It filled him with joy and terror.

Stepping back so that the shadows of the jungle concealed him, he watched her walk away toward the house. He'd gotten what he'd wanted, what he thought he'd wanted. A child. His own child. The very thought scared the hell out of him.