Read Online In a Stranger's Arms by Deborah Hale - Free Book Online

louder.
    If he had any sense, he’d heed Templeton’s warning and steal away again. But he couldn’t bear to let any opportunity to help escape him.
    Manning sucked in a deep breath, and when the child paused briefly for air, he bellowed, “That’s quite enough, young lady!”
    Thanks to battlefield promotions, he’d mustered out of the army a captain. He’d had to learn how to put the fear of God into his subordinates when necessary. Now he put on his sternest face of command. “ What is the meaning of all this commotion? I thought someone was being murdered!”
    Mother and child froze in a comic tableau, their eyes wide and mouths round.
    Caddie recovered her wits first. “Don’t pay any mind. Varina always takes on like this when I comb her hair—and near as bad when I wash her face. I don’t care how our family fortunes have fallen, I won’t have my child traipsing around like some little cracker gal!”
    She seemed to be addressing this last part to the child, but the resentment in her voice suggested that he, being the nearest Yankee at hand, was personally responsible for her daughter’s deficiencies in grooming.
    Varina thrust out her lower lip and scowled. “I bet Aunt Lydene wouldn’t comb my hair or wash my face.”
    “You are not too big to paddle, young lady!”
    “Combs hurt!”
    ‘‘If you wouldn’t squirm so, I could take my time and be gentle. Besides, you never take a scrap of notice when you fall and bloody your knee.”
    “No call to cry after it’s over.”
    Manning almost choked on suppressed laughter. By will, he dragged down the corners of his mouth. “Ladies, ladies. That’ll be quite enough. Templeton and I could use your help gathering wood, Varina, but if your hair is flying wild it’ll get caught in the twigs. That’ll hurt worse than your mother’s comb.”
    The child’s pout grudgingly twisted into a grin.
    “May I have the comb, please?” Manning held out his hand.
    “I’m fully capable of dressing my own daughter’s hair, sir.”
    “Not without raising the roof in the process.” His palm remained where it was.
    Caddie looked ready to protest again, but instead she handed over the comb. Her wry look asked if he was man enough to tackle the job he’d set himself.
    Though he tried to appear confident, deep down Manning had his doubts. What if he bungled the whole thing? What if he made such a mess of it that Varina took it into her determined little head to run off to her uncle?
    As his hand closed over the comb, his fingers suddenly felt like enormous sausages, far too big and clumsy to assay the delicate operation of grooming a little girl. He might not have any experience with children, Manning conceded, but he’d once owned a wildly spirited mare who’d resented being curried.
    Perhaps the situations were not so different.
    “Now, you want to help Templeton and me, don’t you?” he asked.
    Varina gave an emphatic nod, sending her rusty mane into a wild tangle about her head.
    “Then turn around and stay still. I promise I’ll stop if you tell me it’s hurting you.”
    He moved the comb up and down, not actually making contact with Varina’s untidy tresses. “That doesn’t hurt, does it?”
    “No.” She sounded surprised and a little suspicious. Gradually Manning worked the comb deeper and deeper, always pulling back just before he sensed Varina was about to protest.
    “How does that look?” he asked Caddie awhile later. She stared at him as if he’d just withdrawn his head, unbloodied, from the jaws of a lion. “I—I reckon I can braid it now.”
    When he passed the comb back to her, she handled it like some magical artifact of frightening power.
    Manning tried to keep his chest from puffing out like the old rooster’s. Light-headed with satisfaction, he even dared to offer a suggestion. “Maybe if her hair was cut shorter, it’d be easier to keep.”
    “Maybe.” Caddie sounded dazed as she plaited her daughter’s hair into a neat