The harsh command from Caddie startled them. She approached them, blocking the doorway, her hands on her hips, her gentle face flushed. “After two years, I have endured quite enough of this nonsense.”
Tessa stiffened. “But Caroline, he?—”
“Be quiet, Tessa! Now I want both of you to turn right around and march back into the parlor.”
When neither of them moved, Caddie actually took a menacing step forward. Zeke’s flash of anger dissolved as his sister’s stern expression put him in mind of Sadie those times she had been induced to lose her temper. The incidents had been so rare that even he, ever the defiant one, had scuttled to obey.
After she had them both securely inside, Caddie announced, “Now neither one of you is coming out again until you have put an end to this silly quarrel.”
Before either could guess her intent, she closed the parlor door and locked it. Zeke registered one mild protest, but Tessa rattled the knob, bellowing her sister’s name.
“You might as well have done, Tess,” Zeke said. “I think Caddie means it.”
Tessa shot him a seething look, but she abandoned her efforts with the door. She stomped over to the sofa and plopped down, lapsing into a stony silence. After a brief hesitation Zeke perched himself on the opposite end of the divan.
The situation certainly was not funny, but he couldn’t prevent a chuckle from escaping him. He said, “This reminds meof those times when we were kids and Sadie would make us sit out on the stoop until we had patched up our spat. You were so stubborn, I was always afraid we were going to starve to death.”
“Me!” Tessa cried. “It was always you—” She choked off and then averted her face from him.
Zeke inched closer. He managed to get possession of her hand. “Tessa, look at me.”
When she wouldn’t, he caught her chin, gently turning her head around. Bitter tears sparkled in her eyes, but he forced himself to stare directly into them.
“I’m sorry.”
Her lips trembled.
“I know now I shouldn’t have done what I did, interfered with your marriage plans in that high-handed way. At least, I should have made you understand why I did it.”
She squirmed to get away from him. “You did it to be mean. To get back at me for all the nasty things I said to you about being adopted”
“You know that isn’t so.” He hesitated, groping for the right thing to say, to make her understand. “I know you never wanted me, but I was trying to be your brother anyway, the best that I knew how.
“I broke up your engagement because—” He swallowed, the words forming a hard lump in his throat. He didn’t think he’d be able to get them out, but somehow he managed. “Because I cared too much about you to see you wed some fellow who wasn’t fit to lick the soles of your shoes.”
Her eyes widened as though stunned by the emotion in his voice. It was as unexpected to him as it was to her. He thought perhaps he had said too much, because she stiffened. But suddenly she dissolved into tears. He watched her in awkward silence for a moment, and then draped one arm about her. She tried to twist away from him, but he persisted, drawing heragainst the lee of his shoulder. With a great sob, she gave way at last, collapsing in his arms, crying down the front of his waistcoat.
“B-but Johnnie,” she wept. “It was so awful. You can’t know. When you paid Marco to go away, we were supposed to run off the next day. He left me waiting at the door of the church.”
“The bastard,” Zeke said, stroking her hair. “If I had him here now, I would break his head.”
“If he were here, I would let you.”
He rocked her gently until the worst of her grief was spent. She surfaced at last from his shoulder and drew back, sniffing. “I guess I always knew what a bounder Marco was, but he was all I had. He was the only man who would ever have wanted to marry me.”
“Idiot!” Zeke used his handkerchief to help her wipe her eyes. “Lots of fellows would have been proud to have you. You were always a clever girl, Tessa. The cleverest one of us.”
“Clever isn’t pretty.”
“You were pretty, too. You still are—except when you’ve been crying. Then you look like hell.”
She hiccuped, the sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.
“Toad!” she said.
“Shrew!” he shot back.
“Brat!”
