The Vow
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Tom flogged to death.” Fresh tears sprang to her eyes and she rose from her chair. “I can’t believe that there are people in our own country who would be so cruel to other human beings.”
“Well, there are,” Reiver replied, loosening his cravat against the wilting August heat. “I’ve heard more and more talk that something’s got to be done to free the slaves. And that means war.”
Hannah stared at him, aghast. “War? With our own countrymen? Brother fighting against brother?”
For once Hannah was grateful that Samuel was far, far away.
He nodded absently and walked over to the window. For the first time Hannah noticed the dark circles under Reiver’s red-rimmed eyes and deep grooves of strain bracketing his mouth.
She set down her book, poor Uncle Tom’s painful demise forgotten.
“Reiver?”
“Cecelia Tuttle is dead.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said she’s dead, damn you!”
The vehemence of his outburst made Hannah flinch and she turned away.
The beautiful Cecelia, her rival, now dead…images flowed unbidden into Hannah’s mind: Cecelia at the dinner party, vivacious and charming, Reiver lying on the hallway floor after Amos Tuttle had shot him, and poor Benjamin coming home crying from school in the shameful aftermath of his father’s infidelity.
Seven years had passed since Reiver broke off his affair with her, and now she was dead.
Hannah turned back to her husband. “What happened?” she said gently.
“Was she ill?”
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“No. She died in childbirth.”
“How horrible.” Hannah shook her head. Though the woman had caused her much heartache, Hannah felt nothing but pity and sadness for her now. She knew how devastated she would be if Samuel died. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll fetch you a glass of cold cider.”
He nodded numbly and sat down.
When Hannah returned with a tankard of cider, she found Reiver cradling his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking with muted sobs. He raised his head to look at her. Reiver had never been good looking, but now grief distorted his features into homeliness. He took the proffered cider with trembling hands and gulped it down without once pausing for breath.
He set the empty tankard down. “I loved her.”
His careless words slit like a blade reopening an old wound. “Reiver, I’m sorry that Mrs. Tuttle is dead, but I think it’s rather callous of you to make such an admission to your own wife! Let’s leave her in the past where she belongs, shall we?”
“I can’t.”
Long-slumbering anger and resentment awoke deep in Hannah’s breast. “If you have any consideration for my feelings, you will.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand. There are…things about me and Cecelia that I must tell you.”
“Well, I don’t wish to know them.” Her head held high, Hannah whirled on her heel and marched to the study door. Reiver’s wail of anguish brought her up short.
“Please, Hannah! You must listen to me. I’m begging you.”
She turned to stare at him in puzzlement. Reiver never begged; he commanded and expected to be obeyed. She hesitated. What could be the harm 242
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in listening to her husband ramble on about his late mistress? Surely she could put her own feelings aside to ease his pain.
She walked over to the chair opposite him and sat down.
He smiled wanly and rested his elbows on his knees. “Cecelia died giving birth to my child.”
In spite of the sweltering heat, a bone-chilling coldness stole through Hannah. She rose calmly and stood behind her chair as if she needed a physical barrier between herself and her husband.
She grasped the back of the chair so hard, she thought her knuckles would pierce the skin. “Your child?”
His gaze slid to the carpet and he nodded.
“How do you know this child is yours?” she asked with a deceptive calmness. “For that to be true, you and Cecelia would still have to be—”
“Lovers.”
And then Hannah understood all too well. “I see. So these trips you’ve been making to New York City all this time…they haven’t been to visit the sales office.
You’ve been meeting Cecelia secretly.”
“They were to conduct business. But also to see her.”
“And what of her husband? After all this time poor Mr. Tuttle never suspected anything?”
“Never. We were very careful.”
A knot of bitter loathing uncurled in Hannah’s belly. “You sanctimonious, hypocritical bastard! All the while you were condemning my love for Samuel, you were carrying on with your mistress!”
He stared at her, his cheeks flushed with a rare display of shame.
Knees wobbling, Hannah staggered over to the open window and breathed in great gulps of the tepid summer air to keep herself from collapsing.
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Reiver rose. “Don’t you see! I couldn’t help myself! I’ve always loved her, and she’s always loved me. I couldn’t give her up. We had to be together.”
Hannah whirled around, mimicking him savagely. “Don’t you see? I couldn’t help myself! I loved Samuel and he loved me. I couldn’t give him up, either. I had to be with him, but you sent him away.”
“I suppose I deserve that.”
“I’ve heard quite enough.” Hannah started to make good her escape, but Reiver blocked her path.
“You said you’d listen.”
“What is there for me to hear? You’ve just told me that you’ve fathered an illegitimate child by your mistress. I’m sure I’ll endure this scandal just as I endured the previous one.”
“Please listen. The situation is much more complicated.”
Hannah hesitated.
“While Cecelia lay dying of childbed fever she told Tuttle that the child was mine. You recall the telegram that arrived for me several days ago? It was from Tuttle, informing me that he wanted to see me; that’s why I went to New York.
“I was reluctant to go at first. He had already shot me once, and I wasn’t eager to repeat the experience.”
“I can hardly blame him now, can you?” Hannah snapped.
Self-righteous anger flared briefly in Reiver’s eyes, then died. “No, I suppose I can’t. But when I got there, all I found was a broken man, grieving for his wife.
He had the nurse show me my daughter.”
Hannah’s blood stopped in her veins. Cecelia had given Reiver a daughter.
Suddenly Reiver smiled, a great warmth and tenderness suffusing his sad expression. “She is so beautiful, Hannah, so perfect. She has the biggest blue eyes you ever saw. Right now she’s as bald as an egg, but—”
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Hannah drew back her arm and slapped him with all her strength. She watched with grim satisfaction as his head jerked to the side, his body recoiling from the blow.
“That’s for Abigail.”
Rage simmered Reiver’s eyes to a dark blue as he recovered, cradling his stinging cheek in one hand, but he made no move to retaliate.
Hannah clutched at her skirts to keep from striking him again. “I don’t want to hear one more word about your little bastard, do you hear me? Not one word!
After the despicable way you treated your own daughter, never giving her one little crumb of affection…” She trembled. “I wish Amos Tuttle had killed you.”
She made an attempt to brush past Reiver, but he caught her wrist. “Tuttle won’t have anything to do with her.” He took a deep breath. “She is my own flesh and blood, Hannah, and I want to raise her in this house, as a Shaw.”
/> The cold, deadly calm returned, giving Hannah strength. “What you’re saying is that you expect me to raise your bastard as if she were my own. Well, I will not!”
“Hannah,” he murmured, his voice cajoling, “she is so tiny, so helpless. Once you see her, I know you’ll fall in love with her. Surely you won’t blame an innocent babe for its parents’ sins.”
“I had a daughter and she died. I will not raise your bastard to take her place.”
“If I don’t take her, Tuttle is threatening to send her to a foundling home.”
“Then install a nurse in a little house somewhere and let her raise it.”
“I don’t want my daughter to be raised by strangers. I want her to know her father and her half-brothers, to never feel the scorn of illegitimacy.”
“You should have thought of that before you resumed your liaison with your mistress. Quite frankly I don’t care what happens to her child.”
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His eyes narrowed and hardened into blue glass. “This is my house, and my word is law. If I wish to do this, you won’t stop me, Hannah. I can make life deuced uncomfortable for you if you don’t agree.” He let his blatantly sexual gaze rake her up and down.
Hannah raised her chin a stubborn notch. “I swear to God that I’ll go to Samuel and leave you with three children to raise.”
Her threat took him aback for a moment, then he dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “You’re bluffing. If you wouldn’t leave the boys to run off with my brother, you won’t leave them now.”
“They were younger then. Now that they’re old enough to understand…”
She bared her teeth in a ghastly parody of a smile. “I wonder how long your own sons will hold their father in such high regard when they learn that he drove their mother away?”
The blood drained from Reiver’s face, making the print of Hannah’s hand stand out in bright crimson relief. “You wouldn’t do that to your own children.
You couldn’t be so heartless.”
“Don’t test me, Reiver.”
And without another word, she flew out of the study.
This time he knew better than to try to stop her.
She had to get away.
Hannah left the house and walked faster and faster. She resented the hot, placid day, with nary a breeze to stir the listless leaves. Her rage demanded a wild, howling storm with scudding black clouds that conquered the sun and a high wind to break the trees’ backs.
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She didn’t stop until she reached Nate’s tobacco field. Unmindful of the sun beating down on her bare head, Hannah sat on the stone wall and looked out over the tobacco plants. She cried herself dry, then wiped her wet cheeks with the back of her hand.
She remembered the day an eternity ago when Amos Tuttle had shot Reiver and Hannah had learned of her husband’s infidelity. Humiliated and furious, her emotions in turmoil, she had come back to this field to decide her future. And that’s where Samuel had found her.
If she closed her eyes, she could feel his arm tightening about her waist so he could lift her into the saddle, and the hardness of his body against her back. She had kissed him defiantly, and he had returned that kiss against his will. Hannah moistened her lips as if she could still taste him, but there was only the whisper of a memory.
She sighed. Dreams were all well and good, but she had to contend with the present.
“What am I going to do?”
She knew she couldn’t stop Reiver. He wanted his child to be raised as a Shaw and he expected Hannah to comply with his wishes like a dutiful wife. But she couldn’t, not after the way he had treated Abigail. And what about Benjamin and Davey? What would happen to them if this child replaced them in their father’s affections?
Hannah rubbed her arms, feeling suddenly cold in spite of the heat. She frowned. There had to be something she could do to thwart Reiver. She rested her chin in her hand and stared at the horizon as if she could find the answer written there.
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Half an hour later she smiled in triumph and slid off the stone wall. This time there was no Samuel riding down the road like a white knight to comfort her. She was alone, and she prayed for the courage to fight her husband.
Along the western horizon, black clouds gathered like a flock of crows.
Perhaps Hannah would have her storm after all.
She found Reiver still in his study, seated at his desk and pressing the heels of his hands into his tired eyes. He looked up expectantly.
Hannah closed the door and faced him. “I will agree to raise your daughter—”
“Hannah, I don’t know what to say.” He sprang to his feet, his eager face alight with a mixture of relief and gratitude, and started toward her, his hands extended. “I knew you couldn’t abandon a helpless infant.”
She stepped back and raised her hand to ward him off. “I haven’t finished.”
Reiver stopped, his expression darkening with suspicion. “As I started to say, I will agree to raise your daughter. But on two conditions.”
“Hannah—”
“Two conditions, Reiver.”
He paused, wary now. “What are they?”
“I want legal control of Shaw Silks.”
Reiver burst out laughing. “Don’t be absurd.”
“Oh, I assure you I am quite serious. If I am to suffer the humiliation of raising your mistress’s child, I expect you to pay a very heavy price. So I’ve decided that I want what you love best—your silk mill.” Hannah strolled around the room. “I want sixty percent of your shares, and you may retain ten percent.
So even with James’s and the boys’ shares, you will never gain control from me.”
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His face twisted with rage. “I worked my fingers to the bone to build this company from nothing, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let anyone take it away from me!”
“Oh, you would still run it, of course. But I would expect to be consulted on major decisions, and I would have the final say.”
“Be reasonable. You know nothing about running a silk mill.”
“That’s not true. Who thought of giving our silks an Italian name? Who suggested that another person should know Giuseppe Torelli’s dye formulas?
And I’ve been keeping the accounts. One can learn much from accounts.”
“Women don’t run silk mills, damn it! They’re supposed to raise their children and make a comfortable home for their husbands.”
“Then I shall be the exception.” And her first order of business would be to make sure that children never worked for Shaw Silks again.
He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “Hannah, this is insane. I can’t agree to it.”
She shrugged. “Fine. Then I suggest you find a suitable foundling home for your little bastard.”
“Don’t call her that, damn you! She’s still my daughter.”
Hannah ran her fingertips over the back of the settee. “And my second condition is that no one can know she’s your daughter. She’ll be my niece, the child of one of my New York cousins who died in childbirth. I offered her a home out of the goodness of my heart. When she’s old enough to understand, you may acknowledge her.”
“You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I believe I have.”
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Reiver’s lip curled in contempt. “You stupid, heartless bitch! You would ruin everything I’ve worked for, just to satisfy your own petty female hunger for vengeance.”
Hannah arched her back like a cat ready to spit and claw. “This isn’t about vengeance, but you’re too bullheaded to see it. This is about protecting my son
s’
birthright. If I control this company, you’ll never be able to give it away to your little bas—daughter.”
“Is that what you’re afraid of?” He looked genuinely shocked. “Benjamin and Davey are my sons. I would never cut them out of this company.”
“I don’t trust you anymore, so I’ve got to look out for my own welfare and that of my sons.” She clutched the back of the settee. “You’re an arrogant, selfish man, Reiver Shaw. You married me against my wishes, you never showed my daughter one crumb of affection, and you banished your own brother from his family to salvage your own pride while you continued to see your mistress.”
Two spots of color stained his cheeks, but he made no retort.
“And now, in your supreme arrogance and insensitivity, you expect me to swallow my own pride and raise your mistress’s child.” She steeled herself for what she had to say next. “Perhaps if I thought it would make you love me, I wouldn’t hesitate. But I’ve come to realize that you’ll never love me, no matter what I do. You’ll always love Cecelia first and foremost.”
Hannah hesitated, giving him a moment to deny it, but he didn’t. She continued, “So I expect to be repaid, and handsomely. I’ve named my price.”
“And if I refuse to pay it?”
“You won’t. You may be arrogant and selfish, but you do love your sons and you wouldn’t want them to come to resent you as you resented your own father.
You could send me away, but you would never separate your sons from their mother, even to give your daughter a home. You could also tell the boys of my 250
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affair with Samuel, but then I would go to him and you’d be left raising three children alone.”
Hatred smoldered in his eyes. “I’ll agree to your terms. But know this, Hannah. You’ll control Shaw Silks, but you’ll never control me.”