His blue eyes turned wary, as if he expected her madness to return. “Will my office be private enough?”
She nodded and followed him out of the machine shop, down a long corridor, and into his office.
He closed the door behind them and turned to face her, frowning. “You still don’t look well, Hannah. You should be home resting.”
“I’m fine, and I’m sick unto death of resting.” She knotted her fingers together for the courage to continue. “Reiver, I’d like to help you run the mill.”
His eyes widened in surprise. “But you already do so much.”
“Yes, I buy books for the library and visit the sick, but it’s not enough.”
Astonished, Reiver took a step back and stared at her as if she had gone truly mad. “You have my home to keep and my children to raise. Surely that should be sufficient.”
She shook her head. “But it’s not.”
He ran his hand over his long, wide jaw in consternation. “You’re a woman.
Women don’t run silk mills.”
“I merely want to help. Surely there’s something I could do.”
“You do a great deal as it is by concerning yourself with our workers’
welfare.”
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“But it’s not enough.” She read only exasperation and frustration in his face, not real understanding. Hannah swallowed hard and said quietly, “I’ve lost so much.”
His eyes darkened with shared pain. “What would you like to do?”
“Perhaps I could keep the accounts. I used to keep them for my father—his patient accounts, that is, not his gambling debts. I could also do your commercial correspondence. That would allow you more time to devote to other aspects of Shaw Silks. I could even accompany you to the New York sales office now and then.”
Something flickered deep in Reiver’s eyes when she mentioned New York, but it passed so quickly Hannah thought she had imagined it.
“Doing the accounts and correspondence is time-consuming,” he admitted.
“I don’t enjoy it.”
“Then let me do them.”
“All right. I’ll turn over the accounts and correspondence to you. But if the extra work should prove too taxing for you…”
“Then I shall give it up.”
He smiled. “Agreed.”
When Hannah headed for the door, Reiver placed a restraining hand on her arm. “Wait.”
She stopped and looked at him expectantly, noticing his remote expression.
His hand fell away. “Are you going to tell Samuel about the child?”
A searing pain shot through Hannah. “Those who know what happened assume the child was yours,” she replied softly, staring at the floor. “I see no reason to tell Samuel anything.”
“It’s for the best.”
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For whom, she wondered bitterly as she turned and left him, Samuel or Reiver?
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Chapter Twelve
“We should wait for Reiver,” Hannah said, shivering in the chilly machine shop. “He wouldn’t want to miss this momentous occasion.”
She watched James slip a spool of silk thread on the spindle of the new Singer sewing machine and guide it along a route of loops and holes that ended in the tip of a needle poised to strike. After years of trial and error, he had finally perfected a loom capable of doubling and twisting their silk to make it strong enough to survive the rigors of this mechanized seamstress. Today he was going to put his new thread to the test.
James swept his hair off his brow. “I thought he would be back from New York by now.”
Hannah glanced at the door as if expecting Reiver to materialize at any moment. “He was supposed to be home this morning, but with this sleet falling, perhaps the train was delayed.” She wondered why Reiver had even wanted to travel to New York in February, with 1855’s unpredictable weather making travel perilous.
She returned her attention to the machine Reiver insisted would make Shaw Silks’ fortune.
“I feel so sorry for poor Mr. Howe,” she said, shaking her head. “To have Mr.
Singer steal his invention like that.” Although Elias Howe had invented the sewing machine some years ago, public apathy drove him to London in an attempt to garner financing. When he returned, cheated and penniless, he The Vow
discovered that several others were producing their own sewing machines, including one Isaac Merrit Singer.
Red streaked James’ thin cheeks. “It makes my blood boil whenever I think of it.”
“At least the courts found in Howe’s favor, so he’ll get some money for his invention.”
“As much as I hate to admit it, Singer did add some significant improvements.” James pointed to the metal foot. “This holds the cloth in place, and this”—he indicated a pulley beneath the machine’s base—“keeps the material moving along with every stitch. If you didn’t have these innovations, you’d never get a straight stitch. The seamstress would have to struggle just to keep the cloth even.”
Hannah sighed. “I know Reiver would say, ‘What do we care who invented it as long as Shaw Silks profits?’ Everyone will be buying our thread to use in their new sewing machine.”
James nodded. “That’s exactly what my brother would say.”
The telltale creak of the door opening interrupted their discussion, and Hannah looked up expecting to see Reiver, but Benjamin and Davey appeared instead, their cheeks rosy from the wind and traces of cookie crumbs on Davey’s chin. Benjamin as usual led the way and his brother followed resentfully. Both boys kept on their wool caps and scarves.
“Is the thread strong enough this time?” Benjamin demanded of his uncle James, his eyes glowing with the avidity of a true Shaw as they pored over the sewing machine. “Does it work?”
“We don’t know yet,” James replied. “We’re waiting for your father before we test it.”
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“Of course it will work,” Davey said, giving his brother a disdainful look as he moved closer to the machine. “Uncle James is clever with machines.”
Hannah sighed, wondering when her two sons were going to outgrow their exasperating rivalry, with Benjamin fighting to lead and Davey resenting having to follow. Perhaps never. Perhaps they would always scrap like two dogs over a bone.
Benjamin fidgeted. “Mama, when will Papa arrive?”
Hannah said, “He should be home at—”
The familiar creak interrupted her, and all four turned to see Reiver blow into the room on a gust of wind, his long wool coat decorated with diamonds of frozen sleet and his prominent nose red from the cold.
“Have you tried it?” Reiver demanded, going right to the sewing machine and stamping his feet to warm himself.
“Hello, Reiver,” Hannah said, trying to keep the annoyance from her voice.
“I trust you had a profitable trip in spite of the weather?”
“Yes, yes, I did,” he muttered, scanning the sewing machine. Finally he stepped back, noticing his wife and sons for the first time. He kissed Hannah on the cheek and plucked the wool caps from his sons’ heads. “I trust you boys behaved yourself in my absence?”
“Yes, Papa,” they said in unison.
The social niceties dispensed with, he whipped off his wet hat and coat, threw them aside, and looked at James. “So, have you tried it yet?” he demanded again. “Is the thread strong enough?”
“We were waiting for you,” James said. “We knew you wouldn’t want to miss the big moment.”
“I would’ve had your hide if you started without me,” Reiver said. He placed his hands on his hips. “Now, show us what our new thread can do.”
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Hann
ah took the boys out of James’s way so they could observe. James sat down at the sewing machine, placed a length of thick homespun fabric in position, then set his feet on the treadle and pumped back and forth, back and forth.
The sewing machine hummed, whirred, and clacked faster and faster.
Hannah didn’t know where to look first, at the spool of thread whirling around on the spindle or the needle jabbing at the cloth moving beneath the metal foot.
So she looked at her husband’s face instead and held her breath.
Beads of sweat stood out on Reiver’s furrowed brow. His blue gaze darted everywhere as he waited for the thread to snap, along with his hopes and dreams.
“It’s holding!” he cried. “You’ve done it!”
James grinned and peddled faster in his own euphoria. A dark, even line of stitches appeared like magic in the cloth.
Hannah’s hand flew to her mouth in amazement. “It would take me hours to sew that much!”
Benjamin added, “And the thread hasn’t broken like all the others.”
Davey piped up, “Uncle James is a genius!”
“That he is,” Reiver agreed, his eyes gleaming with thoughts of a spool of Shaw thread on every sewing machine in America. “That he is.”
Later that night, long after the sleet, the flow of hot apple brandy, and the ringing echo of triumphant laughter had all finally ceased, leaving the house hushed and its inhabitants sated with victory, Reiver lay alone in his bed and finally allowed himself to think of Cecelia. Without the mill’s concerns and celebrations to keep her at bay, Cecelia filled him like water poured from a
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pitcher, an image so potent that he could smell the sweetness of her heliotrope perfume and feel the beguiling softness of her lips against his.
He rose and padded across the smooth, chilly floorboards to the east window, where he stared out into the soothing winter darkness and thought of their last momentous assignation.
He had been standing at a far different window just yesterday afternoon, looking down into the slushy, bustling New York street, counting the endless seconds until he and his mistress would be together again for the first time in three months. Just when he thought he would go mad, a hired carriage pulled up to the Union Square Hotel and a furtive veiled figure stepped out daintily onto the curb.
Soon there came an urgent knock on his door. Heart pounding, he drew her inside and shut out the rest of the world. The moment she flung back her veil and he saw her white, drawn face, he should have known something was wrong, he who prided himself on knowing her so well. But after all this time he was too eager to have her. Again and again.
After they both lay replete and exhausted, Cecelia raised herself on one elbow and looked down at him out of troubled brown eyes.
“What is it?” he asked, alert in spite of the luxurious lassitude.
Her lower lip trembled. “I’m with child.”
He looked away. “Tuttle should be pleased.”
“It’s not Tuttle’s.”
Reiver’s head snapped back and he stared at her.
“It can only be yours,” she said.
His child…his and Cecelia’s. For a moment he felt numb, followed by a painful rush of elation. He took her hand and kissed it in silent reverence.
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“There’s no mistake,” she said quietly. “I haven’t slept with Tuttle in over four months, and—”
“—and we were together just three months ago,” he finished for her. “There can be no question that it’s mine?”
“According to my own calculations and my doctor’s, I’ve been in this condition for three months.”
Reiver thought her breasts felt heavier and her belly appeared more rounded. Now he knew why. He leaned over and kissed one dusky nipple.
She closed her eyes and shivered. “I didn’t mean for this to happen, but now that it has, what are we going to do?”
Reiver gathered her into his arms and placed her head against his shoulder.
“What do you wish to do? If you don’t want to bear it, there are doctors who—”
“Reiver Shaw, how can you think that I would ever even consider destroying your child?”
He lifted her chin and looked deeply into her eyes. “But how are you going to explain your condition to your husband? Even if he believes the child is his, there is bound to come the day when someone notices that it resembles a Shaw more than a Tuttle. We Shaws do breed true, you know. Then what will you do?”
She lifted one smooth white shoulder in a careless shrug. “I will decide when the time comes. All I know is that I want this child. Do you?”
“It’s a part of you. How could I not want it?”
She smiled. “I knew you’d feel that way.”
“But you cannot bury your head in the sand, Cecelia. Tuttle forgave you once. I doubt that even he would forgive you for trying to pass off another man’s child as his.”
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She bowed her head. “I seduced him as soon as I learned of my condition.
Though the child will be born prematurely, he will think it’s his. At least for a while.”
Reiver thought of Cecelia sharing intimacies with her husband and stiffened with white-hot jealousy. “You could always leave Amos. I could set you up in a little house of your own somewhere near Coldwater. We’d be able to see each other more frequently, and you’d want for nothing.”
“If I left Amos, would you leave Hannah?” she asked, though she knew his answer.
“You know I can’t.”
She smiled wanly. “And I can’t leave Tuttle. For all his faults, he is a decent man, and deserves my loyalty, if not my fidelity. Besides, I would never leave my children. No, my love, though my life here isn’t perfect, it’s endurable.”
“As you wish.”
“This is the way it must be, Reiver,” she said gently. “We’ve always known we couldn’t be together, that we have to grasp what happiness we can.”
And they had.
Reiver kissed the top of her head and noticed several gleaming strands of silver standing out among the chestnut ringlets, and an unexpected fear gnawed at his gut. Cecelia was thirty-seven, surely too old to endure the rigors of pregnancy and childbirth.
She felt him tremble. “What is it?”
“I don’t know if I want you to take the risk.”
“Reiver, what are you saying?” She pulled away, eyes wild with alarm.
“That you want me to—to kill your child?”
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“It’s you I’m worried about.” He stroked her cheek to gentle her. “Childbed becomes even more dangerous as a woman grows older, and the thought of losing you…” He looked away.
Cecelia’s desperate expression melted. “I want to bear your child, whatever the risk.”
“But I’m a selfish man, and I’m not sure if I want you to.”
“Please don’t fight me about this.” She placed a beseeching hand on his chest. “I see you so seldom. If I had your child, at least I could always have a part of you with me. And if the day ever comes when you grow tired of me…”
He turned and grasped her wrists. “Have I ever grown tired of you? I never will, so don’t ever say that to me, even in jest.”
To punish her, he deliberately aroused her again until she writhed and moaned beneath him. When he finished with her, he helped her dress, hooking her corset and buttoning her gown with the efficiency of long practice.
“When can I see you again?” he whispered, brushing her neck with his lips and making her tremble.
She ignored his kisses and smoothed her skirts. “It will be impossible for me to leave the house for social calls once my condition becomes apparent.
Tuttle always becomes annoyingly solicitous at such times.” She straightened her narrow lace collar. “So we won’t be able to meet until after the baby is born.”
Reiver frowned. “Six months? That’s a lifetime.”
She smiled and patted her abdomen. “But you’ll be with me.”
“It’s not the same and you know it.”
Cecelia gave him a mocking smile. “My bold, impatient lover…we shall both have to make sacrifices.”
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Reiver slipped his arm around her narrow waist and crushed her to him, his mouth seeking hers for one last, passionate kiss. Cecelia melted in his arms, and he fancied he could feel their child nestled in her womb.
When she drew away, her eyes sparkled with happiness. “Goodbye, my love. Until we meet again.”
He grasped her hands and brought them to his lips. “Take care.”
“I shall.” She put on her bonnet, tied the broad satin ribbons beneath her chin, and drew the black veil over her face so she was hidden from him. Then she was gone.
He watched from the hotel window as she climbed into a carriage and drove away.
Now, standing at his bedchamber window and looking out into the black, moonless night, Reiver watched a shooting star streak across the heavens, then die, leaving only a memory of its brilliance.
Sick with dread and foreboding, he padded back to bed, wondering if he had seen Cecelia for the last time.
August found Hannah sitting in the study with tears coursing down her cheeks. Sniffling, she blotted her eyes with a handkerchief and blew her nose.
Grief shook her shoulders and turned sniffles into sobs.
The study door opened and Reiver walked in, startling her, for she wasn’t expecting him back from New York for another two days. He stopped and snapped, “Why are you crying?”
Then he turned gray. “Has something happened to one of the boys?”
Hannah shook her head, dried her eyes, and waved her book in the air. “It’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I’ve just finished the part where Simon Legree has poor Uncle 240
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