struggling for control of the revulsion and overwhelming horror rumbling up from her woman's heart.
Drawing Ines down to sit on the bed beside her, she asked, "Why would you think that? What could you have done?"
Ines sat beside Caroline, her gaze distant. "I could kill myself. I have a knife, and I think about it, but I am too weak."
"No one could blame you for being strong enough to live," Caroline told her sincerely. She could hardly imagine such a horror. It was every woman's nightmare, and Ines had lived it—and survived. How could she, or anyone else, ever judge Ines?
"One night, my door is unlock and I am running away. But they find me and I am brought back." Caroline felt the tremor that coursed through Ines's body. "They will do terrible punishment to runaways. You don't want to hear it. But Master Jason, he takes me away from there. He hits the big man with his fist like that." She swung out at the air for emphasis. "He takes the gun and tells them he will kill them. At the river, he put fires on their boats so they can't follow."
Jason did that? Jason had rescued her from that hellish situation. Her heart swelled with a new admiration and growing affection for her aloof husband. Ines hadn't said so, but Caroline guessed by her description that Jason must have risked his life for her. She could just imagine an enraged Jason wreaking vengeance on those despicable, brutal men. What a sight he must have been!
"Now I understand your loyalty," Caroline said, adding silently, and the shadows behind your eyes.
"And you understand Master Jason's heart?" Ines asked hopefully.
Caroline rose and went to the medical bag on the table across the room. "I never doubted Master Jason's heart." Reaching inside the bag, she found the bundle of letters, taking them out with loving care. "But he cares for you. Ines, you remind him of his sister."
Caroline held the letters out toward Ines.
"I am not knowing how to read," Ines told her.
"You don't have to. They're letters, letters from Jason. I brought them with me from New Orleans."
"He writes to you?" Ines asked, her brow furrowed in confusion. "But I think you aren't knowing Master Jason until you come here."
"He didn't write them to me," Caroline explained. "He wrote them to his cousin who let me read them. Listen. 'Every morning I walk out into the orchards and I am glad to be alive. I've never felt this way before. The jungle is so clean, so untouched. Its eternal newness and beauty heal me. Every day is fresh and full of promise. Peggy would have loved it here.' He wrote that. Peggy was his sister. Ines, I have seen into his heart."
Ines stared at Caroline so long and so hard that she began to feel uneasy. "What is it, Ines?"
"Master Jason, he doesn't know you have these words?"
"No." Caroline felt the same sickness in the pit of her stomach that she had felt the day she told Jason she was a widow.
"Senhora, Master Jason, he is very secret, privado. He must never know you have read these things. He will not like someone looking into his soul."
"Don't worry," Caroline said, turning away and dropping the letters back into the medical bag, "I'm not going to tell him. I'm taking that little secret back with me. I don't even know why I keep them."
"Please, Senhora," Ines urged, "he can never know you have seen this."
Irritation began to take hold of Caroline. "Don't worry, Ines."
The expression on Ines's face as she left told Caroline that her assurances hadn't quelled Ines's anxiety. Caroline had to admit that she wasn't completely convinced herself. What if Jason did somehow find out that she was the one who had been answering his letters for the past year?
A tremor of dread shivered through her body as she bent to retrieve the talisman Ines had dropped. Love charm, she thought with a smirk. There wasn't enough magic in the world to break through the barriers around Jason Sinclair's heart.
Caroline sat up with a gasp, disoriented for a fraction of a second. She raised her hand before her eyes. Though she couldn't see in the darkness, she knew that the object she clutched was the talisman Ines had given her. The twine had become tangled around her arm, cutting off the blood flow so that her hand had gone to sleep.
The sound came again, louder this time, a knocking that