Read In a Stranger's Arms for Free Online

Besides, you brought it up, Tem. I can’t imagine why you two have taken such a shine to that carp—er, to Mr. Forbes.”
    Why indeed? Could it be his likeness to their father? Caddie doubted it. Her one photograph of Del had disappeared forever in the flaming anarchy of Richmond’s fall. Varina had been just a baby on Del’s last leave. And Templeton had never been close to his father.
    The boy shrugged. “I just wish he didn’t have to go away.”
    Varina nodded in solemn agreement. “I like fish.”

    It was going to take more than a mess of brook trout, a pot of coffee and the loan of a rifle to persuade Caddie Marsh he wasn’t some kind of monster. Manning wasn’t sure anything on earth could change that woman’s mind once she’d made it up. While he admired such stubborn strength, he had to find some means to win her over.
    Last night, after she’d given him his marching orders, Manning had wandered back to his camp by the creek in a daze of relief and defeat. He’d asked the woman and she’d said no. He would simply have to find another avenue to fulfill his vow.
    Protect and provide. He’d made a feeble stab at both commissions with the rifle and the fish. Yet his showdown with Alonzo Marsh had made Manning realize something. Unless he married Caddie, he would have no authority to intervene on her account.
    Retrieving a blanket from his camp, he had trudged back up to the gentle rise overlooking the plantation. There he’d propped himself up against the trunk of an old poplar tree and watched the house until dawn. The long empty hours of his vigil had given him plenty of time to think.
    Too much time.
    Perhaps he could try furnishing money and other aid to them from a distance, Manning decided, staring up at the pale, haunting face of the full spring moon. The notion appealed to him. He could keep his promise without constant reminders of his transgression chafing his conscience.
    The moon’s ghostly visage seemed to mock him. If only it could be that simple! What if the widow took it into her head to marry someone else, by and by? And what if that someone mistreated her or the children? Manning would have no right to take their part then, either. The thought of such helplessness tied his belly in knots.
    Vivid recollections of Caddie Marsh bedeviled other parts of his body, much to Manning’s shame. The flickering caress of candlelight coaxing her hair to a coppery glow, softening the ravages of hardship from her features. The intensity of her gray-green gaze both times he’d caught her watching him. There had been a queer, mute intimacy in the looks they’d exchanged—almost like a touch.
    No other woman had affected him so. That this one did made Manning want to fling himself in the saddle and ride north as if the three-headed hound of Hades was baying at his heels. But his pledge bound him to her, like it or not.
    With dawn not far off, he’d brewed coffee to warm and wake himself. On a whim, he’d stolen down to the old mansion in the hollow and left a pot for Caddie Marsh to find. He’d half expected her to chase him off with his own rifle, but when he reached the back step unchallenged, worry snaked through his gut. He couldn’t stay awake every night to keep watch over them.
    So Manning had saddled up his horse and ridden into the nearest settlement, Mercer’s Corner. Midmorning found him wending his way back down the lane to Sabbath Hollow, with his saddlebags bulging and a lean, ugly dog loping behind his horse on a tether. Sometime during the past restless night and fatigue-addled daybreak, he’d made up his mind to match the fair widow stubborn for stubborn until she agreed to his proposal.
    She looked as intractable as ever when he first caught sight of her wrestling a big trunk out onto the verandah. She looked disturbingly fair, too, with rebellious tendrils of auburn hair escaping from their sedate, orderly arrangement to curl around her face. A face rosy from her