The Vow
Page 7
He held up the portrait for all to see. “Look what my brother has done for me…a lovely portrait of my wife.” He bowed his head. “She has already given me the grandest gift a man can hope for.”
Then Reiver handed Hannah a package and kissed her lightly on the top of her head. “This cannot compare with the gift you’ve given me, but I hope you’ll like it.”
When Hannah tore the paper off, she found a serviceable gray wool shawl.
“It’s just what I need to ward off a chill on these cold days,” she said, slipping it around her shoulders.
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Later Reiver followed Samuel out to the barn. At first the darkness blinded him, but as his eyes became used to the dimness redolent of fresh hay and horseflesh, he saw his brother in the back, saddling his horse. The horse threw up his head and whickered softly, warning Samuel of someone’s approach.
Reiver stood before the stall, feet slightly apart, head lowered like a charging bull. “What in damnation did you think you were doing?”
Samuel fitted the saddle on his mount’s back. “What am I supposed to have done now?”
“Don’t play the innocent with me!” Reiver scoffed, the barn’s cold air turning his furious breath into clouds. “That portrait you did of Hannah…it doesn’t look anything like her.”
Samuel stopped and turned. “It’s quite an insult to tell an artist he can’t capture a subject’s likeness.”
“Well, you didn’t. You made her look too—too—”
“Sensuous?” Samuel tightened the saddle cinch. “I draw what I see in a person. I can’t help it if we don’t see the same qualities in Hannah.”
“Don’t mock me, Sam.”
His brother stared at him coldly. “You’re making something out of nothing in your usual thickheaded way. I offered to do Hannah’s portrait as a Christmas gift to you, and I captured what I saw. I’m sorry if you don’t like it.” He took his horse’s reins and led him out of the stall. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going visiting.”
Reiver watched his brother mount his horse in the barnyard and ride off, graceful and erect in the saddle.
Women swooned over Samuel’s looks and his attentiveness. Could he be trying to woo Hannah?
“He’s my brother,” Reiver said, dismissing that thought at once.
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He turned and walked back to the house.
Spring came early the following year, and Hannah felt in harmony with the season of rebirth, always so welcome after a harsh New England winter. Just as the maple and ash trees sprouted tight green buds, Hannah blossomed with her unborn child.
Round and cumbersome now, she spent her days napping and dreaming of a little boy sledding down Mulberry Hill, or she sat by the window and watched the world turn greener as April slid into May. It wouldn’t be long now the midwife had assured her.
The day came sooner than she expected.
A nagging backache had plagued Hannah all afternoon, and by early evening the dull pains had crawled around to gnaw at her belly like a starving beast.
She heaved herself out of her wing chair and lumbered across the parlor to where Reiver sat, his brow furrowed and head bowed over the account books.
She placed a trembling hand on his shoulder. “You had better send for the midwife.”
He took one look at Hannah’s face and turned gray. “Dear God, are you sure?” When she nodded, he jumped to his feet, almost sending his chair toppling in his haste to assist her.
If another pain hadn’t gripped her, Hannah would have found Reiver’s concern touching. But all she could think about was her upcoming labor and the primitive female fear that she might not survive it.
“Mrs. Hardy!” Reiver bellowed as he slipped his arm around Hannah and guided her toward the stairs. When the housekeeper appeared in the doorway,
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he snapped, “It’s time. Don’t just stand there. Find Sam and tell him to go for the midwife. My son is about to be born.”
“Don’t get excited,” Mrs. Hardy said. “He won’t come for hours yet.”
Hours later Reiver’s child still had not yet arrived.
Banished from his wife’s lying-in chamber by women determined to do women’s work without masculine interference, Reiver paced back and forth outside the door until Hannah’s groans drove him back downstairs to where Samuel and James were keeping a vigil.
Reiver circled the parlor, running his hands through his hair. “I wish there was something I could do.”
Samuel poured half a glass of apple brandy and pushed it across the table in his brother’s direction. “There’s nothing you can do. Hannah has to do this alone.”
Reiver grabbed the glass and downed it in two swallows, savoring the burn as it slid down his throat. He stared at his brothers. “What if she dies?”
Then you can marry your precious Cecelia, said the look in Samuel’s accusing eyes.
Reiver’s gaze fell away in shame.
“Hannah won’t die,” James said, tinkering with a piece of machinery. He rose. “I’m going for a walk. Call me when the baby’s born.” And he left.
Reiver spent the next few hours pacing the parlor while Samuel sketched the brandy bottle sitting on the sideboard. Both men stopped whenever Hannah’s screams of agony filtered down.
Reiver regarded Samuel with desperation in his eyes. “This has been going on too long. I’m going upstairs, and they had damn well better let me in.”
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Suddenly the door flew open and James stood there, white-faced and panting, a lantern in hand. “Reiver! A cat got into the rearing shed. The worms…” Words failed him and he gestured helplessly.
Reiver swore loudly enough to shake the walls. He bolted for the door, his wife and child forgotten as he and James went running through the darkness, the wildly swinging lantern casting eerie arcs of light on the grass.
When he stormed into the rearing shed, the ominous silence seemed to scream disaster and made Reiver want to retch. Overturned trays, mulberry leaves, and dead worms were scattered all over the floor. The surviving worms squirmed in pathetic confusion.
He whirled on James. “Where in the hell is that miserable, useless Freddie Bates?”
“H—here, Mr. Shaw,” came a wee frightened voice from the doorway.
He looked around James to see Freddie, a tired-looking little boy of ten, standing there, quaking in abject terror.
Reiver was on the boy in two strides, cuffing him before he could dart out of range, sending him sprawling. “Damn you, you little idiot! What do you think I pay you five cents a week for, to sleep on the job?”
Freddie sat up. “N-no, sir.”
“I hired you to keep an eye out for cats and rats so they don’t attack the worms. So what do you have to say for yourself?”
The boy scrambled to his feet and dusted off the seat of his trousers. “I—I’m sorry, sir. I guess I fell asleep and a cat got in. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
Reiver took a menacing step forward. “When I find that cat, I’m going to put you and it in a sack filled with stones and drop the miserable pair of you into the brook!”
That was too much for Freddie. He turned and ran for his life.
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James said, “Weren’t you a little hard on the boy?”
Reiver whirled around. “Hard on him? Skinning him alive would be hard on him.” He looked around at the devastation and swore again. “A whole crop of cocoons is gone. Lost. Ruined. And all because one goddamn stupid little boy fell asleep.”
“Maybe we can salvage something,” James said softly.
Reiver scoffed at that. “Those that weren’t killed ar
e probably too shocked to spin.”
“Let’s try, anyway.”
So James and Reiver got to work, Hannah and the baby forgotten.
Her ordeal was over, and she had survived.
Hannah looked down at her infant son feeding greedily at her breast, and the long hours of agonizing pain that had racked her body vanished from her memory as though they had never occurred. She felt a surge of love so powerful that it jolted her physically. He was so tiny, with ten perfectly formed, miniature fingers and toes.
“Giving birth is hell, isn’t it?” Mrs. Hardy said. “But now you’ve earned a rest. When you wake up, Reiver will be here.”
But when Hannah finally did awaken, she saw Samuel sitting beside her bed, his eyes bleary and jaw shadowed with stubble.
He squeezed her hand. “How are you feeling?”
She smiled wanly. “Much better, now that it’s over.”
He looked down at the baby lying in the wooden cradle that James had built for him just two weeks ago. “Thank you for giving me such a handsome nephew.
What are you going to name him?”
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“Reiver and I have agreed on Benjamin,” she replied. She frowned. “What time is it?”
“It’s almost morning.”
She looked past him at the door. “Where is Reiver?”
“He and James are still in the rearing shed,” he said. “A cat got in and—”
“You needn’t make excuses for him, Samuel,” Hannah said bitterly. “Those worms mean more to him than me or his son.”
“Not that I want to defend my brother, but this accident was a calamity. He and James have been working all night trying to salvage what’s left of the worms.” He managed a reassuring smile. “He’ll be here soon. And he’ll be delighted with his son, I promise.”
After Samuel left, Hannah looked down at her peacefully sleeping son.
Suddenly she realized that her husband no longer mattered to her as much as her child. She was bound to her husband legally, but she was bound to her son by blood. She would give all her love to Benjamin, and he would return that love a hundredfold.
Her son was her future, her family, her power.
There came a knock on the door, and it opened to reveal Reiver, looking both haggard and sheepish.
“I’m sorry your worms were destroyed,” Hannah said, thinking those were the words he wanted to hear above all others.
But his eyes were on the cradle as he crossed the room.
Hannah reached down and picked up the sleeping bundle, holding him as if he were made of glass. “Isn’t he beautiful?”
Reiver ran one finger down the baby’s soft cheek and stared down at him as if he had never seen one before. “My son.”
No, Hannah thought. Mine.
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Chapter Four
“Benjamin Shaw, you are the smartest little boy in the whole world,”
Hannah said, beaming down at her fourteen-month-old son as he sat on the nursery floor and carefully piled the little wooden blocks atop each other.
“You’ve just built a house, yes, you have.”
Benjamin’s cherubic face split into a wide grin at his mother’s effusive praise just before he swung his hand and demolished his creation with one quick swipe, sending the blocks clattering and scattering all over the floor. Then he giggled and clapped his hands.
“Oh, we’re so pleased with ourselves, aren’t we?” With an indulgent sigh, Hannah knelt to retrieve the blocks and set them before her son to pile up and knock down again.
She rose and the dizziness hit her like an unexpected slap in the face.
Groping for support, she found the back of a chair and clung to it, waiting for the nausea to pass.
When the room stopped spinning, she smiled at her son, who was eyeing her strange behavior solemnly. “Well, Benjamin, soon you will have a little baby brother or sister to play with.”
She knew it wasn’t the stifling July heat that was making her light-headed.
She had missed two monthly cycles, and since Benjamin had been weaned, the tenderness in her breasts had nothing to do with nursing.
The Vow
No, she didn’t need Dr. Bradley to tell her that she was going to have another baby. Joy as bright as the summer sunshine filled her. She couldn’t wait to tell Samuel.
The moment Hannah realized her mental slip, she blushed and looked down at her son as if he could read her thoughts. “I meant your father.”
Scooping up the baby in her arms, she said, “And I’m going to tell him right now.”
After Hannah left Benjamin in the kitchen with Mrs. Hardy, she hurried across the lawn toward the mill.
She hadn’t meant to think of Samuel first. His name had just popped into her head. It meant nothing. Nothing at all.
Hannah reached the mill and went inside, still a little awed by the huge square stone building with its windows set high to collect as much daylight as possible to illuminate the work area below. It was so obviously Reiver’s domain, a mysterious world of noisy water-powered looms spinning silk onto bobbins.
She searched the room for her husband, and finally found him standing in a corner, a paper in his hand, deep in animated conversation with James. Although she couldn’t hear him over the din of the machines, she knew from his scowl that he was furious about something.
She walked over to them. “Reiver, may I speak to you for a moment?”
He didn’t even glance up from the paper. “Not now, Hannah.”
“But it’s very important.”
“It will just have to wait.” Ignoring her, he stabbed at the paper he held and said to James, “Can’t you see that this gear configuration will never work?”
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Hannah turned and quietly left, trying to ignore the mill girls’ sidelong pitying glances for their employer’s slighted wife. Outside, she blinked rapidly, telling herself that her eyes were watering because of the painful, blinding sunlight. She walked back to the homestead.
No sooner did she reach the back door than she noticed that Samuel had tied his new horse, Titan, in the shade of a nearby oak tree and was industriously brushing the chestnut’s coat to a burnished shine. Because of the hazy afternoon heat, Samuel went shirtless.
Hannah should have gone inside, but found she couldn’t tear her eyes away from Samuel. While his bare shoulders and back were not as broad or muscular as Reiver’s, they rippled beneath his pale skin as he extended his arm to the crest of Titan’s neck, then drew the brush down in a firm sweeping line. His narrow hips shifted his balance with every movement.
Hannah was just about to go inside when the horse betrayed her by lifting his head, perking up his ears, and whinnying softly in welcome. Samuel turned, saw her, and smiled.
She had no choice but to join him. “He’s beautiful,” she said, extending her hand so Titan could nuzzle her palm with his velvety muzzle. If she kept her attention focused on Titan, she wouldn’t have to look at Samuel’s bare chest, as shiny with sweat as his horse’s hide.
“Isn’t he?” Samuel scratched Titan between the ears, causing him to close his eyes and sigh in equine contentment. “He’s as fast as the wind and as gentle as a baby.”
“Speaking of babies,” Hannah said, blushing, “Reiver and I are going to be parents again.” She kept her eyes focused on the horse’s cheek.
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Even though she wasn’t looking at Samuel, Hannah could sense a change in him at once, a withdrawal, as if she had disappointed him somehow. Then it was gone in an instant.
“That’s wonderful,” he said, transferring the brush to his right hand and moving away to brush Titan’s sleek hindquarters. “Congratulations. I’m sure my brother must be excited and ple
ased.”
“I haven’t told him yet.”
Samuel stopped brushing and raised his brows in surprise. “Reiver doesn’t know?”
Hannah faced him. Even in the cool dark shade, his pale blue eyes collected the light, making them look more vibrant. “I tried just now,” she said.
“Don’t tell me. He said he was too busy to talk to you.” He paused. “I can tell you’re disappointed.”
“I try not to be. I know Reiver is working hard to make the mill a success.”
Samuel’s handsome features darkened. “He could still spare you a minute of his time, especially to hear wonderful news like this.”
Hannah lifted one shoulder in an unconcerned shrug. “I’ll tell him tonight, before dinner, when he’s had a chance to rest and isn’t so preoccupied with the mill.”
“I think it’s time I had a little talk with my brother.”
She placed a restraining hand on his arm. It felt pleasantly hot and damp, the hairs rough to the touch. “Please don’t. You’ll only make Reiver angry.”
When Samuel glanced down at her hand still resting on his arm, Hannah became self-conscious and quickly withdrew it.
“My brother may know a great deal about running a silk mill,” Samuel said,
“but he has much to learn about being a considerate husband. Still, if you don’t wish me to speak to him…”
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“It would be best.”
“Then I won’t.” He studied her. “How are you feeling? You look very pale today.”
“I felt a little dizzy this morning while playing with Benjamin, but it passed.”
He frowned. “You’re running yourself ragged. Perhaps you should get more rest and let the girls do the household chores.”
The distinct aroma of horseflesh and male sweat tickled Hannah’s nose.
“You needn’t worry, Samuel. I’m fine, really.”