“Mr. Torelli,” she called.
He looked up, smiled and nodded, and handed the dye stick to one of his sons.
“Good morning, signora,” he greeted her in broken English, with a courtly bow.
www.samhainpublishing.com
153
Lindsay Chase
“Another shipment of dyestuffs,” Hannah said, handing him her collection of bottles.
“Grazie. Thank you.” He took them over to a wide table, where he set them down and began taking a pinch of this and a spoonful of that and blending the dyes with the skill of a wizard mixing some magic potion while Hannah watched in amazement.
She shook her head. “How do you know how much to use?” Giuseppe Torelli tapped one indigo-stained forefinger to his forehead.
Hannah’s eyes widened. “From memory?”
He nodded.
Enrico, his youngest son, passing by with several soft muslin bags of boiled silk now ready for dyeing, smiled and said proudly, “My father’s formulas are carefully guarded secrets. Only he knows how much dye to mix for each color.”
Hannah stared at him. “Enrico, you don’t know? No one else knows this except your father?”
Enrico nodded, smiled, and blithely went about his work, leaving Hannah to wonder what would happen to Shaw Silks if their dye master were to die tomorrow.
Later that evening Hannah cornered Reiver in his study. “I learned something very alarming today,” she said.
He kept his eyes trained on his ledger, for relations between them were still strained. “What is it?”
“Did you know that Giuseppe blends the dyes from memory, that no one else knows the formulas and they’re not written down?”
Reiver gave her a condescending look. “Of course I do. A dye master’s formulas are closely guarded secrets. They don’t write them down, otherwise 154
www.samhainpublishing.com
The Vow
they could be stolen and sold to a rival silk house. When I hired Torelli, he brought his secrets with him.”
“But what do we do if something happens to him?”
“Find another dye master.”
Hannah’s voice rose in exasperation. “Wouldn’t it be so much simpler to have his formulas written down and locked away somewhere, especially the one for black dye?”
Black was the most difficult color of all to achieve and always in demand because black thread was needed to sew mourning clothes. Giuseppe Torelli’s black was always rich and consistent, his scarlets and crimsons from cochineal more vibrant than any Hannah had ever seen.
Reiver leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know if Torelli will want his secrets written down. These Italian dye masters are pretty tight-lipped.”
“There must be something you can do to persuade him.”
Reiver looked thoughtful. “You have a point. If something were to happen to Giuseppe—”
“The quality of our threads would suffer, not to mention all the time you’d lose finding a new dye master.”
The following day Reiver struck a bargain with Torelli: he would teach his secret formulas to his son Enrico, and if either of them left Shaw Silks for a competitor, they agreed to pay Reiver all costs he incurred finding a new dye master.
Hannah suspected the Torellis would be faithful Shaw employees for a long, long time.
www.samhainpublishing.com
155
Chapter Eight
One cool morning in June, Hannah took her tin pail and headed for the blueberry patch on the west end of Shaw property, for she had promised Benjamin and Davey blueberry cobbler when they returned home from school.
Life was slowly returning to normal. The flame of the Shaw scandal burned a little less brightly in Coldwater these days. Conversations ceased less frequently when Hannah walked down Main Street, and fewer surreptitious, speculative looks came her way. Benjamin’s taunting at school dwindled and died.
But Hannah’s wound was deeper and slower to heal. Mercifully Reiver kept his distance and made no demands. He went to the mill before six o’clock in the morning and didn’t return until eight o’clock at night, when his conversations with Hannah were polite but still strained. At night they retired to separate bedchambers.
She reached the blueberry bushes and picked to the slumberous accompaniment of bees humming, unable to resist tasting a handful of the sweet fruit herself. The ping-ping-ping of the first berries hitting the bottom of the pail sounded as soothing as falling rain. Her pail was one quarter full when she noticed a man leaving the road and walking toward her.
It was Nate.
The years had thickened and coarsened his stocky body and drawn his fleshy face into slack jowls. He lumbered closer, like a bear sighting its dinner, and with every step he took toward Hannah, she resisted the urge to take one step back.
The Vow
Instead she smiled politely when he reached her. “Good morning, Nate. I’m sorry to hear your stepfather is so ill.”
Nate’s white shirt was grimy and reeking of sweat. More than his odor, the maliciousness glittering in his eyes made Hannah’s stomach queasy.
“Sorry, are you? That’s a lie. You’re one of the high-and-mighty Shaws. You look down your nose at the likes of us.”
Hannah plucked a cluster of berries and threw them into her pail. “That’s not true. We went to your wedding last year, and I’ve asked Aunt Naomi to the house many times. She’s always sent her regrets.”
“If you’re so high and mighty, Mrs. Shaw,” he jeered, “why has your husband been”—he thrust his hips back and forth—“with the banker’s wife?”
Hannah’s face burned, her fingers tightening on the pail’s handle. “Do you know why I’d never have you in my house, Nate Fisher? Because you’re so common and crude.”
He turned crimson, then his dirty hand shot out and grasped her wrist.
“Why don’t we see just how crude I am under these here bushes?”
“You lay a finger on me, and my husband—”
“Your husband will do what? He doesn’t care about you. All he cares about is nailing his doxy.” Nate’s scornful gaze roved over Hannah, and he flung her away. “What man would want a cold, stiff piece like you, anyway? You’re not even good enough for breedin’, with your idiot girl. If it’s pleasure a man’s after, he’d get more taking a sheep to his bed.”
Hannah was too outraged to be shocked. Without thinking, she lifted her bucket and dumped it on Nate’s head, then gathered her skirts and ran for her life. She heard his muffled bellow of surprise and rage, but she didn’t risk looking back.
She kept running.
www.samhainpublishing.com
157
Lindsay Chase
Finally, when she realized that the only footsteps pounding the hard earth were her own, Hannah slowed down, her corset stays squeezing the breath out of her. She stopped and turned. Nate had disappeared.
Hannah crossed her arms and shivered in the warm sunlight. No matter how much the boys wanted blueberry cobbler, she would not return to the berry patch today.
She turned and walked toward the house, but Nate’s taunting words rubbed old wounds raw.
Hot tears stung Hannah’s eyes, and her step slowed. No man had ever desired her for herself. Nate wanted only her body. Reiver had married her for the river land, and he came to her bed for physical release or to sire children, not because he wanted her.
But men desired Cecelia with her porcelain prettiness and chestnut ringlets.
Reiver wanted her enough to risk scandal, and her husband wanted her enough to cause one. But would anyone fight to possess Hannah?
She reached the homestead, nothing more than a blur, and leaned back against the rough bark of the oak tree’s wide trunk. She was still standing there moments later when Samuel came striding out of the house toward her.
“Hannah, what’s wrong? I saw you running across the field like the devil was after you.” He was painting today, not engraving,
for a dab of blue smudged one high cheekbone and dark brown spots freckled the backs of his hands and forearms where he had rolled up his shirt sleeves.
“I’m just feeling sorry for myself.” She wiped away her tears and managed a brave smile, but when she thought of Nate’s vicious, hurtful words rending her fragile confidence to shreds…
Samuel frowned, his pale eyes always seeing too much. “What has my brother done to you this time?”
158
www.samhainpublishing.com
The Vow
“Not Reiver. Nate.”
“Naomi’s gargoyle?”
“He came over while I was picking blueberries, and he said—he said—”
“Come inside and tell me.”
Hannah followed him into the hushed, empty house and upstairs to his studio. Welcoming sunlight flooded the room. The vigorous smell of turpentine, the assortment of brushes and engraving tools scattered on his worktable proclaimed this room Samuel’s domain.
He smiled. “Now, what did the gargoyle say?”
Hannah suddenly became tongue-tied and shy. “I don’t know if I should tell you. It wasn’t very flattering. Quite humiliating, in fact.”
“Then you must tell me,” he said gently, “so that I can refute his lies.”
So Hannah went to the window, took a deep breath, and told Samuel everything.
Everything.
When she finished, she turned around to face him. She expected him to express indignation on her behalf, and sympathy, for he was her friend and champion. But Samuel appeared curiously unmoved, his handsome face shuttered.
“Naomi’s gargoyle is wrong, and I would like to prove it to you.” He crossed the studio to the door and grasped the key, only his trembling lingers revealing the crack in his outward calm. “If you want to leave, Hannah, you must leave now, otherwise I’m going to lock you in and make love to you.”
His declaration stunned her. She couldn’t breathe. Excuses rushed to her lips unbidden. I am married. I have three children. This is wrong. We mustn‘t. Someone will catch us.
www.samhainpublishing.com
159
Lindsay Chase
Yet the words remained unspoken. Reiver’s infidelity had left her feeling so hollow inside, so unworthy of love. And she realized with blinding clarity that she also wanted Samuel for reasons that had nothing to do with filling that void.
“Will you stay?” Samuel’s low, soft, beguiling voice promised untold riches if she did.
“Lock the door.”
He closed his eyes and sighed, a mixture of wonder and relief. When he turned the key in the lock, the click reverberated through Hannah’s mind like a gunshot.
Samuel walked toward her. For the first time Hannah allowed herself to assess him as a lover, and she found him stirring indeed. Her fingers ached to stroke the springy softness of his dark, curly hair, and the thought of his sensuous mouth roving over her naked body left her knees weak and shaking.
She wanted to push his shirt open and feel the smooth, silky skin and hard muscles of his shoulders and chest beneath her fingertips. She wanted him. Oh, yes.
He grinned and drew her away from the window before some passerby could see them together. “My, my, what wicked, wanton thoughts you have.”
She blushed like a schoolgirl. “That’s not fair. You can read my mind.”
Samuel cupped her face in his hands, lightly stroking her cheeks with his thumbs. “No, only your beautiful eyes.” Then his fingers went to her chignon, pulling the offending pins from it and letting her glossy hair tumble down her back in sweet abandon.
When he kissed her, Hannah felt as though she had never been kissed before, an unrestrained, openmouthed, hot-tongued possession that left her dizzy and drowning.
160
www.samhainpublishing.com
The Vow
They kissed until kissing no longer aroused them. They needed more.
Samuel’s palm closed over Hannah’s left breast, caressing it through thin calico and thinner lawn, then teasing the nipple with his thumb until she gasped through clenched teeth.
He brushed his lips along the delicate shell of her outer ear, whispering, “Let me see your breasts.”
Hannah’s shaking fingers undid the buttons down the front of her dress, and when it spread gaping and inviting, he parted it farther and slid it off her shoulders and down her arms, where it gathered at her elbows, imprisoning them against her sides. Her chemise came down next over her breasts.
Samuel stared. “Ah, but you are beautiful.”
At his sweet, husky words, Hannah felt a clench of white-hot heat unfurl deep inside. Reiver never spoke when he took her, never complimented her.
Still staring, Samuel took several steps back to his worktable, picked up a large, dry paintbrush, and returned to her, his eyes sparkling mischievously. At Hannah’s puzzled look, he murmured, “I have the urge to paint you.”
He dipped the brush’s soft tip in the moisture gathering in the hollow of her throat, then slowly drew it down her chest in a seductive, voluptuous tickle.
“Samuel, you mustn’t.” She shuddered. “This is—this is—”
“Indescribable? And it’s only beginning.” He drew the brush down her right breast and traced the areola around and around before quickly flicking the soft bristles back and forth across one straining nipple then the other, teasing them.
Hannah’s knees buckled and she swayed. Samuel steadied her, and resumed stripping her with the attention and dedication of one performing a sacred ritual.
He knew just what to unhook and untie. Soon Hannah’s dress, corset, petticoats, and undergarments lay on the studio floor in a crumpled heap and she was standing naked before a man not her husband. Her lover.
www.samhainpublishing.com
161
Lindsay Chase
My lover. How wicked that sounds.
She watched him undress with masculine grace, and blushed when his trousers and drawers slipped down over his narrow hips. She stared, for Samuel was larger than his brother.
He took her hand and led her over to the old settee standing against one wall. “It’s not as grand as I’d like, but it will have to do.”
Hannah lay down and prepared herself to accept Samuel’s weight, but he surprised her by kneeling on the floor and continuing his arousing caressing with hands, lips, and flicking tongue. He concentrated on her breasts, tugging and sucking until she groaned and writhed in abandon. When his palm cupped her most intimate flesh and his fingers explored her relentlessly, Hannah almost arched off the settee.
“Dear God, Samuel!”
He came to her then, parting her thighs and possessing her with one swift thrust. He felt so hot and hard, filling her to bursting. Hannah moved with him, compelled to reach for the ecstasy that often eluded her in her husband’s arms.
When it came, rising, rising, exploding like a Roman candle, Hannah finally awoke inside.
Then Samuel gave her another gift.
After his own shuddering climax that caused the settee to hop up and down, Samuel kissed her tenderly and murmured, “You are not a cold piece, Hannah Shaw, and you’ve given me more pleasure than a man deserves.”
Afterward, Samuel knew Hannah would be racked with guilt.
He saw it in the furrow etched between her brows as she cast darting sidelong glances toward the door, in the hurried way her nervous fingers 162
www.samhainpublishing.com
The Vow
smoothed her disheveled hair and arranged it back into its familiar chignon at the nape of her neck, in the way her gaze avoided him.
He helped her dress with the efficiency of a ladies’ maid, though he couldn’t resist kissing inviting patches of flesh before concealing them.
“I—I have to go,” she said, rubbing her wrists as if they’d been locked in a pillory for hours.
“I’ve stayed too long and Mrs. Hardy will wonder where I am.”
He caught her hand
just as she was about to flee. “I want to make love to you again, Hannah. All day, every day.”
Panic and fear flooded those huge blue eyes. “We mustn’t! I—I’m a married woman. I have children. Someone will catch us.”
“No one will find out, if we’re careful. I’m alone here for most of the morning. James is always at the mill, tinkering with those damned machines, and the women don’t come to clean until later.” He smiled. “You don’t think this was a mistake, do you? A momentary lapse in sanity? Because it’s not, my sweet little Puritan. At least for me. And I don’t think it was for you, either.”
“No, it wasn’t. But I have duties. Responsibilities that must come before personal desires.”
“Forget about duties and responsibilities. Live for the moment because it will never come again.”
She gave him a curious look. “And what about you? Don’t you feel some shame for what we’ve just done?”
“For coveting my brother’s wife? No, because Reiver doesn’t deserve you. I want you so badly that I’m willing to risk everything to have you.”
Her brow furrowed. “But what if we’re caught?”
“Then we’ll beg Reiver’s forgiveness just as he begged your forgiveness for his affair with Cecelia.”
www.samhainpublishing.com
163
Lindsay Chase
His blunt reminder that Reiver had first wronged her brought Hannah up short. “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“No, but when I see you become the beautiful, sensual woman in the portrait I engraved when you first married, I know it’s right.”
Her hand flew to her abdomen and her eyes darkened in panic. “What if I conceive a child?”
“I’ll show you how not to. All it takes is a piece of sponge, vinegar, and a little care.”
She stared at him. Such forbidden, mysterious knowledge belonged to a Samuel she didn’t know.
He caught her hand and kissed her palm to allay her fears. “Come tomorrow.
The Vow Page 15