The sound of an approaching horse snapped her thought in two, destroying her composure. Greene.
Within seconds the handle of the door jostled, light at first, then after a pause, violently, followed by a hard pounding. She held her breath, a stream of prayers rising to the heavens as she stared at the door. There was no place to run, no place to find safety.
The pounding persisted. “Hannah? Hannah, are you there? Let me in.”
“Joseph?” Fragile and fractured, the voice that left her barely reached beyond the first step.
She flew down the stairs and placed the candle on the table. Unlatching the door, she hurled it open and gasped as relief stole her strength at the sight of his tall silhouetted frame.
Pressing a hand to her chest, she stepped back to allow him in, trying to rein in her runaway pulse. “I’d feared you’d been taken.” The confession blurted from her mouth, sounding far more self-serving than she’d wished.
“You feared I’d been taken?” He entered, stare trained upon her, boots stomping against the floor. His height seemed even taller as he stopped inside. Candlelight shadowed the angles of his jaw, the downward arch of his nose.
Little compassion laced his words. Instead, his own relief was speckled with frustration. “What in God’s name were you thinking?” He entered the rest of the way and closed the door with a gruff motion. Leaving one hand upon the wood, he pointed with the other in the direction of Sandwich. “Traveling such a distance? Have you gone mad?”
Pride all but shattered, her attempt at valiance in the face of her failing was futile. She stepped into the parlor, unable to answer, her frame trembling more as the walls of her carefully constructed calm began to crumble in large chunks. What had she been thinking? She couldn’t speak it aloud. Would he believe her even if she did?
The flameless hearth cried mournfully for heat, and she went to oblige—more to ease her own need for occupation than anything else. She couldn’t long stand motionless, or she might give in to the need to spin back and put her arms around him, tell him all she’d rehearsed those twenty miles home—how she’d wished things would have been different, how she had never stopped thinking of him. Tell him of their child.
“Hannah.” Joseph’s firm timbre stopped her midstep.
She needn’t turn to know his face was etched with questions, lined with the same vexation that knit his voice.
“Why would you do that? Why would you leave? You cannot be so ignorant of the danger. ’Twas foolish.”
Gripping her from behind, his tone knocked free the last stone of her hiding place, leaving exposed every piece of her.
“Did you not remember what happened with Greene?”
She grappled for strength. “I needed to speak with Caroline.”
“About what? What was so urgent that could not wait?” His boots stomped behind her. “Heavens, woman, our people are at war. You and I are working toward something far greater than ourselves. We cannot—”
“I went to talk about you!” Chin quivering, she circled back, a flood of long-concealed hurts consuming her as they unwillingly spilled from her heart to her lips. “For years I have endured this pressing on my heart, and with you now here to make my pains even greater, I was desperate.”
His head jerked back, as if her words had struck him. “Your pains?” His throat bobbed, but he didn’t speak. His jaw ticked, but he didn’t move. The blueness of his eyes faded in the wan light of the solitary candle. “Tell me how I have grieved you, so I may find a remedy.”
Spurred by his humble petition, Hannah trembled all the more, the rest of her splintered soul willing her at last to pull free the shards of hurt and reveal what she’d harbored so many years. But she could not, the familiar agony of her prison more inviting than the unknown.
She moved to the fire, but his voice reached out to grab her as real as a grip on her arm.
“If you wish to leave Eaton Hill…I will not stop you. In truth, you must leave as quickly as you can.” He stepped forward and tugged her to face him, his expression tender, pleading. “I have learned more of Stockton’s nature, and I will not have you here a day longer.”
Unsettled by how the closeness of him weakened her knees when it should rally her hurts to anger, Hannah swallowed to moisten her parched throat and covered the past she’d been so near to revealing. “I cannot leave. Not yet. You say you do not wish Stockton near me, but if I do not attend the ball, I fear his suspicions will be even greater. I owe Ensign this.”
“Stockton planned to have a woman hanged, and I refuse to submit you to this any longer.” He paused, his chest rising. “Higley petitioned me to take you away.”
“Take me away? Does he think Stockton will do me harm? I do not believe it.”
His gaze roamed her face, his fingers light at her sleeve. “Once it is discovered we have betrayed him, he will stop at nothing until we are killed.” His dark brow dipped. “I could not live with myself if anything were to happen to you.”
Joseph’s rich voice and the tenderness in his firm touch began to undo her. She moved her arm free from his grasp but hadn’t the strength to do the same with her gaze. “What of Eaton Hill? What is to become of it?”
He paused, the question reaching his eyes before it reached his mouth. “You said you would not return.”
Hannah looked away. Aye. A vow spoken in a moment of feminine hurt. But did she feel the same now? Of a sudden, the question blurted raw and ugly from her lips. “Why did you not tell me you bought Eaton Hill?”
Joseph’s expression went flat. “Hannah, I—”
“Why would you purchase this very land if you didn’t want me to know it?”
“I didn’t want you to think I’d done it only to be close to you—”
“You don’t want to be close to me.”
He raised his hand, irritation crouching his posture. “I didn’t say that.”
“You wanted to make us think you were fine with us staying when you were simply waiting for the right time to let us go?”
He stormed forward, inches from her. “I made a decision for my future, and you happened to once again be a part of it.”
“Once again?” Bitterness chirped free. “I was never part of your future.”
Towering above her, his timbre throbbed with aching. “You were everything to me.”
Grabbing for her waist, he pulled her against him and covered her mouth with his. The room dispelled, his hot mouth and strong hands consuming every sensation. She should push him away, not give in to this longing, but she was helpless as the years of wishing and wanting commanded more than she could resist. His lips toyed with hers, begging them open, and she complied, wrapping her arms around his back. Moaning, he knit his fingers through her hair, cupping and angling her face to more fully expose her mouth. She succumbed, rising on her toes to press even closer, her own hands kneading the firm muscles of his back. Never could she have imagined such a moment, though she’d dreamed of it endless times. Never until now did she truly know how desperately she wished to be his wife, as she always had.
Almost as if she had whispered the wish against his lips, he trailed kisses to her ear, his warm breath tingling across her skin. “Marry me.”
Light of breath, knees weak, she rested her forehead against his, willing him to speak the words over and over, that their mellifluous sound would drown away the discordant voice of the past. He isn’t the marrying kind.
Hands still in his hair, bodies still close, she whispered back. “Why?”
His tender words dusted her skin like a soft touch. “My heart has never stopped aching for you.” His lips brushed atop hers again, soft and hungry. “Whatever has happened between us, whatever has kept us apart, matters little when our hearts still beat as one.”
Hannah stilled, the gross sorrow of her secret looming like a dark spirit. “Joseph…”
Hands gently cupping her head, he brushed his thumb against her cheek. “Say yes.”
She clos
ed her eyes, praying God would give her strength it seemed her body hadn’t of its own. “There’s something I—”
The sound of an approaching rider tapped lightly against the door, and she pushed free from his arms. The same panic rimmed his gaze. Her hair was mussed, her lips red. If Stockton saw them…
Not waiting another moment, she raced up the stairs and into her room, closing the door only seconds before Stockton burst into the room.
Back against the door, Hannah pressed a hand to her constricting chest, listening to the muted voices of the men volley quietly back and forth belowstairs. Two steps forward and she collapsed on the bed, the humming of her soul still heating her body.
Joseph’s words curled before her like gold-dusted lettering. Whatever has kept us apart matters little when our hearts still beat as one.
Lies did not burn as hot as the truth. And here, in this moment, her heart was afire. She loved him more than she ever had. Mayhap, after all this time, at last she could have the life with him she’d always wanted. He cared for her—she knew it. But then…mayhap he would leave her again?
Yet, somehow the thought didn’t curb her longing. Nay. In truth, she would prefer a life of pain in want of him rather than ignore the pleading of her heart. Perhaps ’twas time to trust again.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sleep did not always beget peace, though Philo wished it. He stared at the blackness of the ceiling, willing his eyes to close and the hours to drown away the vision of Hannah’s pain-filled expression, the sorrow in her voice. But the memory howled, long and lonesome. He sat up, the milky moonlight draping across his quilt. Rubbing his head, he picked apart all the reasons he’d acted toward her the way he had. Each action right, each choice just. So why did his conscience plague him like a possessed body, railing over and over that somehow he’d done wrong?
Grumbling, he threw off the quilt and tucked his feet into his slippers before pulling his banyan from the chair beside the bed and shrugging it on. Candle lit, he went belowstairs. Not to answer a hunger or ease a thirst as he might have done on nights before, but he must try something for his unsettled state, and tea might prove a remedy.
In the chilled kitchen he reached for a mug, unable to escape the memory of her words. I am your daughter in little else than blood. ’Twas true, but how could he have changed it? She had made her decision—she had gone against God and chosen Joseph and her need of the flesh over all else. Such was not to be borne from the daughter of a reverend.
He grabbed for a pitcher of water and prepared a stash of tea leaves. Even now she betrayed him, living with the very man who had taken from him all that should be his. The unease of his stomach began to abate even without the tea. Nay, he’d been right to speak to her thus, and she had been in the wrong. She had always been wrong.
The dim glimmer of the candle gifted only a slight halo, but somehow it seemed a light glowed in the parlor, illuminating the small wooden box atop the mantel. He knew what lay entombed inside, though it had been years since he had read it. Perhaps if he did now, ’twould ease his disquiet all the more.
He finished his descent to the darkened parlor and rested his companion of light on the space beside the box he loathed to touch, but must. The box was lighter than he’d remembered when he lifted it from its home. Top pulled free, he raised the letter from its coffin and returned the box to the mantel.
Candlelight gleaming over him, he swallowed and unfolded the paper that crackled and snapped with pleasure at being released from its prison. This one thing he had kept, and rightly so, never letting Hannah know of its existence. If any other of Joseph’s letters had been secreted to her, he knew not, but Ensign’s compunction for dishonesty made Philo believe his brother would have told him.
Almost as if the letters waved with pleasure at being read, Philo allowed his eyes to roam over the flowing script.
July 27, 1765
Dearest Hannah,
You must think me the vilest of men, as well you should. I cannot begin to wish for your forgiveness, though I would seek it endlessly. You are right to despise me, and if you truly desire never to see me again, I shall with full respect honor your wishes. However, I must in deep humility beg one last request from the depth of my heart that still bleeds from the loss of you. Do not doubt, my darling, how sincerely and most painfully I have loved you and how I will continue in such sweet agony until the day my spirit leaves this earth. Never shall I forget you, and never shall I forgive myself for the selfish and foolish actions of a lovesick boy. For if I had acted a man, I should have tread with tenderness, not lust. If I could take back that night, I would, only to offer you my love when we are first made one in the Lord.
If you can find the grace in your heart to forgive me ~ as I have petitioned Providence in His mercy to do ~ and to consent to be my wife, a thing which I have longed for since the day I first beheld your heavenly face, I would be your most humble servant the rest of my days and live every moment to bring a smile to your heart, a heart that I know and love even more than my own.
My darling, I shall always be yours.
Forever,
Joseph
Philo lowered his hand, staring off into the coal-black shadows of the parlor’s sleeping corner. A strange disquiet rustled in his chest, but he slammed the emotion deep into the cellar of his heart. Nay, those were not the words of a man of repentance, no matter how sincere they seemed. Joseph had only written these flowery petitions in an attempt to soften Hannah’s heart toward him. He wished again to take advantage of her and further soil her body and her name. A snarl ticked upward. And it seemed Joseph had done just that, despite Philo’s efforts.
Snatching the candle, he lowered the corner of the letter into the flame and watched the hungry ribbons char the memory he should never have retained.
As he watched the paper curl and blacken, a light knock tapped at the door. Startled, he threw the piece inside the fireplace and looked up. He raised the candle to the clock on the mantel and squinted. ’Twas nearly two in the morning. Who called upon a preacher at such an ungodly hour?
The knock came again, and he neared his face to the door. “Who is it?”
“Reverend Young, ’tis I, Mrs. Smith. I’ve come for you urgently.”
Mrs. Smith? The doctor’s wife?
He yanked opened the door and took in her weary eyes, the bulge around her belly. Was she ill? “Dear woman, what brings you to call in the middle of the night?”
The grief in her face made him almost reach out to steady her as she clutched the shawl around her shoulders. “I have been sent to fetch you. You must come straight away.”
She begged so emphatically he nearly raced out the door in his nightclothes. Stranded between thoughts, he gestured for her to enter. “Wait while I dress.”
“No, sir. I must go.” She stepped away. “Come to my home at the back. I shall let you in.”
He nodded, and she hurried up the dark street. Worry snaked about his heels and up through his limbs. Philo raced to his room and dressed, snatching his Bible before he left, his stomach aching at the thought of who it was that she called him for.
Ready with coat, hat, and scarf, he left the house with lantern in hand, his legs aching to run but his bones too weary to comply.
Arriving only a few moments later, he knocked on the back door as instructed, his nerves a jumble. Though he didn’t care for Joseph or his young ward, ’twas terrible to see a youngster go before his time. For surely who else would he be called to administer to?
The woman answered instantly, ushering him in. Candle in hand, she motioned to the stairs. “Follow me.” She started, then stopped and turned, pinning him where he waited. “You are a man of God.”
“Aye.” He didn’t know how to answer, for it seemed more an affirming statement than a question.
Licking her lips as if to allow her mind time to finish her thought, she breathed out slow but hard. “You must not speak of this to anyone. For his safety, as wel
l as your own.”
Dear God, did this woman hide a fugitive? She seemed ready to see him back out if he would not agree, so he obliged her with a curt nod. “I give you my word.”
An abrupt about-face and she was at the stairs, taking them quickly for one so great with child. He stayed behind her, fear at the unknown weighing his steps.
The room was large, fully furnished but dark. The fire in the hearth at the far wall spewed an umber glow that failed to reach but half the room. Mrs. Smith turned at the head of the bed, voice pleading as much as her eyes as she handed him the candle.
“I will leave you now.”
He followed her with his gaze as she descended just as quickly as she’d come up. Shaking his head, he turned back around to face the one who’d summoned him.
The sight impaled like a harpoon. It couldn’t be.
His breathing went shallow. “Brother.”
Upon the bed, Ensign looked already passed, his face ashen, eyes sunk away. If not for the wheezing of his breath, Philo would not have believed he lived.
Ensign rolled his head against the pillow, his raspy sound unearthly. “I am glad you have come.”
“You are alive.”
There was a deathly pause as he swallowed. “Disappointed?” A weak smile tugged at one side of his mouth. Even at death’s door, his humor had not altogether been snuffed out.
Yet Philo didn’t find the laughter in it. “The British told me you died.”
He gave a weak cough. “They would have liked that.” Finally raising his gaze to Philo’s, Ensign’s voice gained strength.
“What happened? Who brought you here?”
Pain scrolled across Ensign’s face as his mouth contorted. “They were after Hannah.” Groaning, he sighed through his words. “Where is she? Is she safe?”
So Pure a Heart (Daughters of His Kingdom Book 4) Page 25