This Side of Heaven Read Free

men were striding briskly ahead. Already they were nearly out of sight. Plucking up her courage—she had not come so far and dared so much to be put off by a mere woods, no matter how daunting she might find it—she hurried after them. Neither man bothered to hold branches out of her way, so Caroline, with one and sometimes both hands holding the basket, ducked and dodged the overhanging limbs as best she could. A supple sapling sprang back in Captain Rowse’s wake to strike her face; with a little cry she clapped a hand to her stinging cheek and glared after the offender, who marched on, oblivious. Then he disappeared around a bend in the path, and she was alone. The hairs on the back of her neck rose as she contemplated the various types of beasts that might at that very moment be watching her hungrily from the undergrowth. Did they have bears in Connecticut Colony, or wolves? Looking around her, she shivered. Catching her skirts up over one arm to free her feet, she almost ran after the men.
    During her lifetime she had, with her father, traveled from town to town over the length and breadth of England, and not often in the lap of luxury, either. But her father had earned his living by the turn of a card or the fall of a pair of dice, and such a profession by its very nature was largely carried out within the environs of civilization. She had much experience of town life, and little practical knowledge of farms or the countryside. This wild, primitive place was totally beyond herken. Caroline felt her skin crawl as she glanced at the shadowy woodland around her. The conviction that she had been a fool to come had been festering inside her for weeks. Never had it been stronger than it was at this moment. But what other choice had she had? She’d been destitute, with no one to turn to and nowhere to go. The only alternative had been to turn whore, and that she would not do.
    Daniel had paused at the edge of a clearing. Captain Rowse was just catching up to him as Caroline, remembering her modesty, dropped her skirts and emerged from the trees behind them.
    “Here we are. We’ll just leave these here”—Daniel lowered the trunks to the ground with obvious relief—“until Matt decides what’s best to do.”
    “That’s sensible.” Captain Rowse spoke approvingly and set the trunk he’d been carrying down beside the other two. From their unwillingness to tote the heavy load any farther, it was clear to Caroline that they feared they might soon be lugging it back the way they had come. Her stomach churned again; they didn’t think she was welcome, and they might well be right. But surely Elizabeth, her own sister, would want her. Although they hadn’t set eyes on each other since Caroline had been a child of seven—could it really be fifteen years?
    Caroline stopped a pace or so behind the men, surreptitiously straightening her hood and brushing her skirt free of the leaves and twigs that clung to it. Her first view of her destination was at an angle to encompass house, outbuildings, and the surrounding land, and was at least partly reassuring. The town dwellingshad been little more than shacks. This establishment looked both comfortable and prosperous.
    The house was two stories tall, with long, narrow windows of leaded glass and a massive front door. The upper story overhung the lower in a design most likely intended to provide shelter from bad weather for the rooms below. It also seemed meant to serve as a lookout and would undoubtedly be a strategic place from which to shoot should the need arise, which, in such an unsettled land, it probably did all too often. The whole house was built of rough-hewn logs, with huge chimneys of native stone rising on both sides. Behind the house was a barn with fencing to contain a number of cows and horses. A small, shirt-sleeved boy fed chickens in the barnyard, and beyond him two men could be seen laboring in the nearest of the vast fields that had been carved out of the