Another man said, “Why Yokohama?”
“Geographically it’s the nearest Japanese port to the United States,” Reiver replied, “and it’s accessible to their big silk-producing districts. Right now producing silkworm eggs and selling them abroad is most profitable to the Japanese. I think if they turn from egg production to producing raw silk, we will have a whole new source, higher in quality than the Chinese can produce.” He paused. “In fact, I’m considering traveling to Japan to meet with their silk merchants myself.”
Hannah started. Reiver traveling to Japan?
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Burrows glanced at Hannah and noticed her stunned expression. “I think you’d better tell your wife your plans, Shaw.”
“Please do,” Hannah said. “I’d be interested to hear them.”
Reiver just grinned disarmingly. “I’ve put off telling you because you’d try to talk me out of it.” He looked around at his cronies. “Hannah can’t bear to be without me.”
“A devoted wife.”
“Worth her weight in gold.”
“Wish my wife would miss me as much.”
Hannah shut her ivory fan with an annoyed snap. “If my husband’s absence benefited Shaw Silks, he could stay in Japan for as long as he liked.” She turned and glided off in an angry hiss of silk.
So Reiver planned to go to Japan. She wondered if he was going to wait until he booked passage before telling her.
Hannah had scant time to reflect on Reiver’s latest plan. She was in the middle of a wedding reception and her concern for her guests’ enjoyment of the festivities had to take precedence.
As she approached the refreshment table, her worst nightmare came true.
She overheard a woman say, “What a shame that Samuel lost his hand.”
“I was so shocked when I saw him,” said another.
The speaker was none other than Patience Broome, the woman Reiver had once told Hannah Samuel loved. Now a plump matron, Patience piled her plate with sandwiches as heedlessly as she spoke.
“I always thought him so handsome,” Patience said, her voice carrying, “but what good is a handsome man if he’s a cripple?”
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Standing on the other side of the table was none other than Samuel. Judging by his stricken expression, he had heard every word. Drawing his right arm close to his body, he turned and walked away.
Seething, Hannah wanted to pull out every bouncing ringlet on Patience’s golden head. Instead she waited until the tactless bitch had a cup of punch in her hand, then she purposely swung around, her elbow jabbing Patience in the ribs.
“Oh, how clumsy of me!” she exclaimed as punch splashed a wide brown swath down the front of Patience’s dress.
“My dress!” Patience wailed, dropping her plate. “It’s ruined!” She had seen what Hannah had done but dared not accuse her hostess of bumping her purposely.
“I’m so sorry,” Hannah said, trying not to gloat. “I will, of course, pay for a new one. Just have your dressmaker send me the original bill.”
Her satisfaction was worth every penny.
Hannah counted the minutes until the reception would finally end and she could go find Samuel.
She found him in the homestead, sitting alone in the parlor with only shadows and silence for company.
Hannah maneuvered her wide skirts through the door. “It’s so dark in here.
May I light a lamp?”
“If you wish.”
“I brought you a piece of wedding cake since you weren’t there when the happy couple cut it.” She set the plate down so she could light the lamp. Its warm glow revealed Samuel sitting in a chair with his elbows propped on its arms and his long legs stretched out before him, crossed at the ankles.
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Seeing him there with his proud head bowed and his shoulders slumped, Hannah felt a fierce, overpowering urge to protect him. She wanted to build a wall around him and keep the rest of the world at bay, but as she reminded herself, he was most adept at doing that without her help.
He smiled wryly. “You needn’t come hunting me down to soothe my hurts.”
She gathered her skirts and settled herself in the chair across from him. “Not all women are as cruel and thoughtless as Patience Broome, you know.”
“I used to think I knew women.” Samuel rubbed his forehead. “But after the accident I discovered that I didn’t know them at all.”
“How do you mean?”
“As long as I was attentive, whole, and gainfully employed, I was worthy of their attention, but once I lost my hand, they avoided me as if I were a leper.”
“Samuel Shaw, do I detect a faint note of self-pity in your voice?” When he colored, she added, “I thought you told me that you never indulge in it.”
“I am merely offering a more realistic assessment of your fair sex.”
Hannah raised her brows. “And are you including me in that assessment?”
“You’re the exception.” He stared into the cold, empty fireplace. “I’ve always held you in the highest esteem.”
“I should hope so. We were once lovers.”
As always, any mention of their former relationship caused Samuel to withdraw from her, becoming as unreachable as the stars. She wondered why.
“Surely on your travels you met some admirable women.”
Samuel’s shifting moods flitted across his features. “Yes, I did. One was a prospector’s young widow searching for gold. She always wore men’s trousers and her late husband’s shirts. Another was a dance-hall girl offering her favors to as many men as she could to save enough money to return east. They both 352
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offered me comfort when I needed it most. And in Australia, I was going to marry a lady rancher descended from English convicts.”
Hannah’s eyes widened in surprise even as an unexpected knot of jealousy tightened deep inside her. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“After I lost my hand, she called off the wedding. She said she was sorry, but without a hand, I couldn’t help her work the ranch. She gave me enough money to return home and sent me on my way.”
“Of all the cruel, insensitive—”
“You needn’t be indignant on my behalf. She was a practical woman and I don’t blame her for bowing out.”
“I’m afraid I couldn’t be as charitable.”
A bittersweet smile touched his mouth. “Ah, but you were very much alike.
You both put duty before personal desire.”
Stung by his mild reproof, Hannah became reflective. Samuel was right. She always had followed the dictates of duty and family obligations, but they had served her well. Benjamin and Davey were fine, upstanding young men, and she now enjoyed the unexpected satisfaction and heady power of controlling Shaw Silks.
Suddenly Samuel’s company weighed her down with melancholy. Hannah rose. “I have to get back to the house to supervise the cleaning up.”
He rose. “You needn’t worry about me, Hannah. It takes more than a cutting remark to defeat me.”
You are still so fragile, she thought, no matter what you may think.
She smiled and wished him good night.
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Walking up Mulberry Hill on her way back to the main house, Hannah saw Davey’s heavyset figure hurrying toward her, his round face flushed with indignation.
Hannah groaned inside, for she recognized his determined expression all too well. Davey’s private scales of justice were out of balance again, tilted in Benjamin’s favor, and he was seeking to right them with a vengeance.
“What is it?” she asked.
Huffing and puffing, Davey paused to catch his breath. �
�Mama, Father has taken Ben into Hartford, and he wouldn’t take me with them.”
“Hartford? At this hour? It’s almost dark.” The sun had set long ago, leaving only the lingering September twilight. “Did he say where they were going, or why?”
“No, Mama, they wouldn’t tell me, and Ben goes around acting like he knows something I don’t. Did Father say anything to you?”
“No, he didn’t. I assumed that your uncle’s wedding and reception would be enough excitement for one day.” Evidently not.
Davey thrust out his lower lip. “Why does Father always leave me out?”
“Don’t sulk. It’s an unattractive trait in a young man.”
“He doesn’t love me as much as he loves Ben, does he?”
“David Shaw, that will be quite enough!”
“Why? I’m his son, too.”
“Your father loves you both equally, and I’ll not hear another word about it.”
Hannah placed her hand on her son’s shoulders “I don’t know where they’ve gone, but I’ll find out once they return.”
Back at the house, Hannah sat in the parlor and waited. And waited. The room grew dark as the hours slipped by, but she didn’t bother to light a lamp.
She dozed fitfully, sitting up in her chair.
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She awoke at the sound of the front door slowly opening.
She listened. She heard soft, deliberate footsteps, followed by lowered voices and an emphatic “Sssh!” Hannah rose, lit a lamp, and walked into the hall.
Reiver and Benjamin froze when they saw her.
Hannah folded her arms. “Where have you two been?”
Reiver exchanged a guilty look with his son. “Hartford.”
“And you couldn’t take Davey with you?”
“Not this time.” Reiver looked pointedly at Benjamin and grinned.
By lamplight, Hannah noticed the disarray in both Reiver’s and Benjamin’s clothing, as if trousers had been hastily pulled on and cravats clumsily tied.
She smelled faint traces of alcohol on Reiver, but Benjamin reeked of a woman’s cloying perfume;
Hannah stared at her son, rage and reproach in her eyes. He looked away.
She turned her attention to Reiver. “You’ve taken my son to a whorehouse!”
Her sixteen-year-old son had lain with a whore.
Hannah’s hand trembled so violently that she had to set down the lamp on a nearby table. “Benjamin, go to your room. I have to speak with your father in private.”
Emboldened by his rite of passage, Benjamin said, “I’m going to stay. This concerns me as well.”
“Do as I say!”
He lowered his head in a defiant gesture reminiscent of his father. “I am not a child. You can’t order me to my room as if I were five years old.”
“Do as your mother says,” Reiver said calmly.
“But, Father—”
“Leave us. It’s late and it would be better for all concerned if you went to your room.”
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Hannah suddenly felt helpless. They were allied against her, two reasonable men against a hysterical female who didn’t understand their masculine natures.
Benjamin glared at Hannah as if she had stripped him of his newly won manhood but obeyed his father and went upstairs. Hannah took the lamp and headed for the study. She would have Reiver’s head for this, so help her God.
Inside the study, Hannah set down the lamp so hard, the flame jumped and flickered. She whirled around to face Reiver when she heard the door shut. “You depraved bastard, taking a boy to a whorehouse!”
Reiver raised his hands. “Calm down.”
Hannah backed against the desk, her fingers gripping the edge as if it were Reiver’s throat. “Calm down? I could kill you.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.” He eyed her warily. “Benjamin is not a boy.
He’s sixteen years old, the same age I was when I had my first…experience with a woman.”
“Why was it even necessary?”
“It’s part of becoming a man.”
“Part of becoming a whoremaster, you mean.”
Reiver turned red with anger. “I don’t expect you to understand, but this is a part of any young man’s education. He should be as skilled in the bedchamber as he is in business.”
“You’ve mined him.”
“On the contrary. I’ve made a man of him. I know you’re determined to protect him, to keep him an innocent boy forever, Hannah, but whether you will admit it or not, he is a young man, and it’s time you started treating him as such.”
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She stepped away from the desk and clenched her hands into fists. “I do not regard him as a child, but neither do I think he’s ready to go fornicating his way through the bedchambers of Connecticut!”
“You have so little faith in him.”
Shaking, Hannah headed for the door. “When some poor girl appears on a doorstep with Benjamin’s illegitimate child, don’t expect me to raise this one.”
Reiver caught her arm as she passed. “Right or wrong, it’s done, Hannah.
Accept it. Otherwise you will drive your son away.”
Hannah jerked herself free. “I won’t forget this.” She stormed out of the study, slamming the door behind her.
Hannah’s wrath lingered as if it were a palpable presence, causing Reiver to sigh and shake his head. Women…they just didn’t understand men and their needs. He poured himself a glass of apple brandy and stretched out in his favorite chair.
If Hannah hadn’t been waiting up for them, she never would have known what he and Benjamin did tonight. He supposed Davey tattled on them. There were times when he honestly disliked his younger son, with his exasperating demands for absolute fairness and equal attention. As Reiver had discovered long ago, no parent ever loved all his children equally, and he couldn’t help loving Benjamin best. Davey was too much Hannah’s son.
He smiled. Benjamin, on the other hand, was exactly like his father. Tonight, when Reiver had introduced him to the Countess and her beautiful women, Benjamin had approached them with the reverence and curiosity of an acolyte eager to be initiated into a secret and mysterious ceremony.
Later, after Reiver had attended to his own pleasure, a smiling Countess informed him that his son had been an apt pupil. Just like his father.
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Reiver finished his brandy, rose, and extinguished the lamp. He wished he could say something to appease Hannah, but she was too angry and upset to listen to reason.
Perhaps she would listen tomorrow.
Hannah slept fitfully that night and awoke before dawn. A heavy gray fog pressed against her bedchamber window, mirroring the despair she felt smothering her.
She dressed quickly. No one else stirred at this hour, not even the maid firing up the kitchen stove. She wondered how Reiver and Benjamin could sleep so soundly after their night of debauchery.
Hannah pulled on her shawl and went outside. She ignored the wet grass dampening her slippers and trailing hem as she hurried down Mulberry Hill.
The homestead suddenly loomed out of the blurry mists like a ghost on some godforsaken English moor. A light shining in an upstairs window distracted her, but only momentarily. Hannah kept on walking and didn’t slow down until she came to the path that ran through the woods.
She hadn’t gone twenty feet when she heard footsteps behind her.
“Hannah, wait!”
She turned to find Samuel coming down the path. His tousled hair and absence of a jacket told her that he had left the homestead in pursuit of her.
His eyes, as ghostly as the fog, regarded her with concern. “What are you doing out here at this hour?”
Han
nah burst into tears.
Samuel moved toward her, his arms extended. Then he remembered Reiver and stopped short, his arms falling helplessly to his sides. “Why are you crying?”
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Hannah took several deep, shuddering breaths to compose herself. “Reiver took Benjamin to a whorehouse last night.”
Hannah told him how they had gone off to Hartford after James’s wedding and their condition when they came sneaking in at one o’clock in the morning.
“It was disgusting.” She dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief. “There was my baby reeking of some whore’s perfume and Reiver looking as if he had done something to be proud about. Samuel, if I had had a gun, I swear I would have shot him.”
Samuel placed an awkward hand on her arm. “I don’t think Reiver intended for you to find out.”
“How could I not find out!” she wailed. “The Benjamin who walked through that front door had changed so much, I’d have to be blind not to realize that something catastrophic had happened.” She leaned back against a nearby tree, letting the rough, damp bark bite into her spine. “It was just too soon for him to lose his innocence. Too soon!”
Samuel broke off a twig from a nearby tree and twirled it. “When I turned sixteen, Reiver did the same with me, and later, James as well. You could say that it’s a tradition with the Shaw men.”
“Don’t you dare defend him, Samuel Shaw!”
“Benjamin isn’t a little boy anymore, he’s a young man, and there’s nothing a young man hates more than being treated like a child by his parents.”
“He’s grown away from me. I could see it in his eyes last night, this smug, superior air that dismissed me as nothing more than a mettlesome woman to be humored and ignored.”
“Hannah,” he said gently, “do you remember your reaction when you first saw the portrait I did of you?”
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