But first, she’d get an answer to the question that had plagued her heart and mind every waking moment for the last six years.
Chapter 13
Caroline searched until she found Jackson working in the barn.
He looked up from the stall he was repairing and narrowed his eyes at her.
She strode right up to him as he rose from a squat. “Why did you marry Amanda?”
Shame flashed through his eyes, and he looked away.
“All those years, you called on me, wrote to me—I want an answer, Jackson.”
His shoulders slumped, then he lifted his head and looked her in the eye. “Amanda lost her virtue. I married your sister to save her reputation.”
The answer gave her pause, but not for long. Her anger at Jackson was compounded for seducing her sister and renewed toward Amanda for giving in to him. “My father didn’t question your choice?”
“No. I convinced him that, though I adored both of you, I felt Amanda was the more suitable choice to be my wife. The three ofus had spent so much time together over the years, he accepted my answer.”
“I can’t believe he didn’t challenge your reasons at all.”
“He suspected there was more to the story—your father’s no fool—but he trusted me enough to know that if Amanda had been compromised, I would do the honorable thing and protect her.”
She scoffed. “Very convenient, considering you were the one who compromised her.”
Jackson’s mouth fell open, his face frozen in a look of complete incredulity. “I didn’t lie with your sister. How could you even think such a thing?”
“I’ve seen Noah. The resemblance is undeniable.”
Jackson stuffed his hands in his pockets and stared at the toes of his boots.
Caroline crossed her arms and waited until he lifted his head.
“There’s a family resemblance,” he said, as if he had to lasso each word and drag it out, “because Noah’s father is Ross.”
Caroline felt her lips part in shock. How had she not noticed before? The shape of Noah’s face could just as easily be Amanda’s, but the color of his eyes—pale, like clouds viewed through green glass—they were Ross’s.
“When I visited you in the garden,” Jackson went on, “that was the first time I’d set foot in Greenvale since I enlisted. Noah was born in February, not May, when the announcement was sent. Count the months, Caroline. I couldn’t have sired him. I was still at war.”
Now her emotions were a jumble. Ross deserved the lion’s share of her rage—he’d acted abominably, the shameless libertine. But what about Jackson and Amanda? They’d made choices, too. And theirs had left deep wounds.
She held Jackson’s gaze without blinking. “Did Amanda pressure you?” No matter how he answered, the words wouldhurt. Either her sister had coerced the man she loved away from her, or Jackson’s feelings had been shallow and easily diverted.
“No,” he said in a soft voice. “She slipped a note into my correspondence while paying a call on my mother, asking me to meet her by the boathouse at the lake, but she disguised her hand, so no one would know. In truth, I had no clue whom I was meeting.
“I went armed and did reconnaissance, in case an enemy from the war had come to do me harm. But it was only her, looking fretful. She asked me where Ross was, and when I told her I didn't know, she broke down and told me she was pregnant with his child.”
“And you believed her?”
“Yes. Amanda wasn’t the type of woman to lie about a thing like that.”
No. She wasn’t. “But she knew I loved you, and she stole you from me.”
“She didn’t steal me. I proposed. And, even then, she refused.”
“Apparently not strenuously enough.”
The guilt in Jackson’s eyes was indisputable, but he looked at her head-on, as if inviting her to search his face for doubt. “Turning my back on you was the hardest thing I ever had to do, but Ross was nowhere to be found. I couldn’t let Amanda suffer because of my brother’s dishonorable behavior.”
