This Side of Heaven Read Online Free PDF

toward her. Caroline watched him approach, vaguely registering the limping gait that he must despise. He kept coming until he stood over her. She said nothing for a moment, merely looked up at him with eyes that were slightly unfocused. It was an effort to return to the present.
    “What have you done with my cat?” Millicent was all she had left to love in the world, and the animal’s well-being was the first thing that popped into Caroline’s mind.
    “Daniel has the creature. It’s safe enough.”
    He studied her briefly. Then he reached inside his sleeve and withdrew a square of linen, which he held out to her.
    “Wipe your face.”
    After a moment’s hesitation Caroline took the cloth and did as he bade her. When she was finished, she automatically handed the crumpled ball back to him. Only the slightest of grimaces betrayed the distaste he must have felt as he accepted it and tucked it into his waistband.
    “That’s better.” His gaze ran over her, his eyes narrowed. “I remember your mincing Cavalier of a father well. You resemble him physically. I hold scant hope that the resemblance is only surface deep, but I am willing to be proved wrong. Tobias informs me that you have come to make your home with us. He also tells me that I owe him for your passage, spinning me a tale I can hardly credit. I have no patience with thieves, but I cannot in all fairness condemn you without giving you a chance to speak. So, Miss Caroline Wetherby, here is your chance: tell me what you will, and I will listen. More than that I cannot promise.”

4
    “Y ou will not speak slightingly of my father!”
    Caroline’s eyes flashed as she defended the honor of the parent who had been, admittedly, somewhat lacking in stability and possessed of myriad other faults, but dearly beloved even so.
    “Will I not? It is no more than the truth, although Marcellus Wetherby’s failings are certainly not the central issue here.”
    Caroline scrambled to her feet, clenching her fists as she returned his somber gaze with a glare. “I’ll not listen to you befoul his memory. He was a fine man, a kind and good one!”
    “He was an irresponsible profligate with a misguided love for a debauched king, among other less-than-pleasant traits.” Matt’s voice was dry.
    “Fine talk from the scion of a family of regicides! I don’t doubt you’d sing another tune if King Charles had not seen fit to confiscate the property of all traitors!”
    According to what her father had told her of her sister’s husband, his family had lost land and fortune with the restoration of the rightful monarch in the aftermath of Cromwell’s death. For the next several years, the once-powerful Mathiesons had scratchedout a living from the soil of what had been one of their tenant farms. Then Mathieson père , still a staunch Puritan, had died, and Ephraim, or Matt as he apparently was called, as the new head of the family, had decided to emigrate. An unknown number of family members had sailed from England with him—as had Elizabeth Wetherby, who had then been twenty years old. It was not precisely tactful to fling such a recollection in the face of a man whose help she needed, Caroline realized even as she said it, but anger governed her tongue and the words were out before she could stop them.
    Fortunately, his temper did not heat to match hers.
    “The regicides were in the right of it. ’Twas the first King Charles who was gravely in error, and the son is cast from the same mold as the father. But I’ll not discuss politics with a chit who was not even born when the mess began. You may tell me, instead, what prompted you to come to Connecticut Colony. Was there no one in England you could turn to after the death of your father?”
    Caroline eyed him resentfully, but prudence prompted her to forbear continuing the argument. “No.”
    “An attractive young woman like yourself must have had at least one suitor. Could you not have wed?”
    “I had no wish to