by BJ Hoff
She wiped a hand across her eyes and slumped back against the seat. Her tortured look broke Jack’s heart, and he wondered how she could have ever kept silent for so long a time about something that must have caused her such despair.
“I don’t mean to rationalize or try to justify what he did to me,” she said, averting her gaze. “It was a nightmare. But I finally came to realize that in the last few years of Bronson’s life he was almost certainly—mad. The fact that he made me a victim of his madness was simply because I was the one closest to him, I suppose.”
Her expression was one of acute misery, and Jack felt chilled by the thought of what she must have endured at Harte’s hands. Again he longed to pull her to him and try to ward off the pain, the agonizing memories. But she was hugging her arms to herself now, her eyes glazed with a numb expression, her entire bearing one of stony self-control. He sensed it would be a huge mistake to try to encroach upon that rigid restraint, and so he forced himself to do nothing but wait—and listen.
“I was very young when I married him,” she went on in a quiet voice. “Too young, no doubt, and too naive to recognize the warning signs. I was so—overwhelmed by Bronson, so in awe of him, that I was completely blind to the darkness in him. For a long time, he actually convinced me that it was…my fault, that I had somehow driven him to—”
She broke off, her face, her fragile composure, crumpling.
Fury at Bronson Harte clashed with a monumental sorrow for Samantha’s pain, and Jack could no longer not touch her. Gently, he covered her hand with his, relieved when she didn’t pull away. After a few seconds, she straightened and seemed to regain at least a remnant of calm.
It occurred to him that Samantha was more than likely the bravest—and unquestionably the most unselfish person—he had ever known, but the torment in her eyes at this moment tore him apart.
“Your parents—surely you told them?” he said, his voice raw with his own heartache for what she must have gone through. “Your mother?”
She visibly shuddered at the suggestion, and he gripped her hand a little more tightly.
“I could never have made my mother understand my marriage! Believe me when I say that it would have only made matters worse. Besides, I realize now that I wasn’t merely protecting Bronson’s good name or his family. The truth is, I was protecting myself as well.”
Jack looked at her in disbelief.
“It’s true,” she insisted. “For months after his death, I was convinced that I’d failed him somehow. I couldn’t shake the thought that there must have been something I could have done, some way I could have prevented my own husband’s self-destruction. I blamed myself, and I suppose I thought everyone else would blame me, too, if they were to learn that Bronson had committed suicide.”
Jack lifted one dubious eyebrow, and she hurried on, seemingly intent on explaining. “You must understand that everyone who knew Bronson admired him deeply, even revered him. He drew people to him, won their affection—and held it—by the sheer force of his personality. I can’t really explain what it was in him—but he had a kind of power over people that was almost…frightening. I simply couldn’t face the disappointment or the disapproval of his friends and followers. By the time I came to realize that there was really nothing I could have done, that perhaps I had been wrong to keep his suicide a secret—well, by then it was too late. I had been silent too long.”
She paused, and Jack saw her shoulders sag slightly—a weary gesture that spoke more of dejection than fatigue. “Besides,” she added in a near whisper, “I’m not at all sure anyone would have believed me.”
The thought of what it must have cost her to live with such an abominable secret set off an ache in Jack that made him almost ill.
“What a remarkable woman you are, Samantha,” he said quietly.
His praise seemed to embarrass her. She shook her head, turning away. “There was nothing noble in what I did, Jack. I was protecting myself as much as Bronson’s memory.”
Jack realized that she truly had no sense of her own courage, her innate decency. Not only that, but he wasn’t convinced but that even now she still didn’t blame herself, at least a little, for whatever Harte had done to her. Perhaps even for his suicide.
More incredible still, he was sure he had glimpsed, if only for an instant, a genuine sorrow for the loss of the man who had in all likelihood brutalized her throughout their marriage. She was sorry for him, sorry at least for the tragedy he had made of his life!
Shaken, Jack wondered how he could have ever hoped to win such a woman.
She had spoken of the “darkness” in Bronson Harte, triggering the unsettling awareness—not for the first time—of the darkness in himself. Indeed, he never felt that darkness more keenly than when he was with Samantha. One brief hour with her could somehow tilt the axis of his existence and set him to searching his soul, albeit unwillingly.
The faint, indefinable light that seemed to glow within her somehow brought the shadows in himself roaring to the surface. It was a singularly unpleasant, bewildering experience, much like that of a nocturnal animal who crawls out of the depths of a dark cave in search of the sun, only to find upon exit that the brightness brings such pain he must close his eyes against the very light he came seeking.
And yet he needed her. Needed whatever it was in her that spoke of something better, something finer than anything to which he could ever hope to aspire. He needed her goodness, her gentleness, her honesty.
He thought perhaps he needed her to survive.
Jack suddenly realized that she was watching him, her features strained and showing signs of fatigue even in the weak glow from the cab’s lanterns. He glanced down at the slender hand enfolded in his, then met her gaze and held it. “I wonder…do you think you could ever trust me, Samantha?”
Her brows knit in a frown of confusion. “What kind of question is that?”
“The kind leading up to yet another proposal,” Jack replied.
“Jack, don’t—”
He lifted a hand to forestall any protest. “Wait. Hear me out. I think you love me, Samantha. If that’s true, then perhaps I can eventually gain your trust. And if you can trust me—well, then, perhaps you’d consider marrying me.”
“Didn’t you hear anything I said?” she countered, her voice rising in pitch. “This isn’t about you—”
“It is about me, Samantha,” Jack broke in, tightening his clasp on her hand when she tried to pull away. “Of course, I heard what you said, and every word of it was like a knife to my heart. I can scarcely bring myself to imagine your going through such torment. Samantha—I would give everything I own if I could somehow wipe those years completely out of your memory, as if none of it ever happened.”
She stared at him in what appeared to be confusion, but her hand had relaxed somewhat in his.
“That’s a fiddler’s dream, I know. Only a fool would think you can simply forget the past and go on as if it never happened. It did happen, and to my grief I expect you will wear the scars for a long, long time. But here’s the thing, Samantha, and please let me finish: We both have a past we’d like to forget, yours through none of your own doing; mine—well, to my shame, mine was largely my own doing.”
Her gaze never left his face as Jack went on, choosing his words with as much care as if he were on trial for his very life. In a way, perhaps he was. Surely he had never felt so desperate a need to convince anyone of anything as he did at this moment.
“What I’m trying to say, and making a royal muddle of it, is that I think we might be able to help each other, Samantha, even heal each other. In time.”
She was studying him with an unnerving intensity. Once she seemed about to speak but stopped, as if she’d thought better of it.
By now Jack was gripping both her hands, as much to steady himself as to keep her from withdrawing from him.
“Samantha, I confess to you that at sometime in my past, I may have done every despicable thing you’ve
heard me accused of. But this much I can promise you: I will never, ever hurt you. I will never lay a hand on you in anger. I will never touch you—unless I touch you with love. My word on it, Samantha.”
He watched her, searching for some slight crumbling of resistance, uncertain as to whether or not he detected any. “Let me try to explain something, macushla,” he said softly.
She blinked at the endearment that had rolled off his tongue so easily, without thought. But when she made no move to pull away from him, Jack continued. “Samantha, hard as it may be for you to trust my word, I vow to you that if you’ll give me the chance, I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to be the kind of man you can respect. And trust. With all my faults, I promise you that I can be—I will be—a good husband to you.”
Jack saw her tense and begin to shake her head. Yet he sensed that her earlier resolve had weakened, if only a little, so he kept a firm grasp on her hands. He had to get through to her. He had tried everything he could think of: He had attempted to charm her into wanting him; he had tried to make himself so vulnerable in her eyes that she would feel no threat whatsoever from him, no fear of him; he had even tried to win her on the basis of his wealth—what he could give her. And nothing—nothing—had moved her.
Now he would try to make her believe in him. Somehow, he had to convince her that she could trust him.
“Samantha?” he said quietly.
Her eyes stripped past every defense Jack had ever built for himself, and again a surge of hope rose in him. “Marry me, Samantha,” he said, making no attempt to control the urgency, the desperation, behind his plea. He was beyond pride now, beyond any pretense of caution. “I don’t care if you don’t love me the way I love you. I can live for a long time on the hope that your love for me will grow. We can make a good life together, Samantha. I’ll build you the house you want—you don’t have to live in that ugly old horror of mine. We’ll make a home, have a family—”
She uttered a low sound, much like a moan, stopping him cold. The stricken look she turned on him hit Jack like a blow.
“I can’t have children,” she said, her voice breaking.
Stunned, Jack stared at her. Almost instantly, he saw her withdraw from him, heard the door to her heart slam shut.
Jack struggled to conceal his shock, the wave of disappointment that came hurtling through him with her grim announcement. He knew that how he responded in this moment might well cost him any hope he’d ever had of winning her.
“All right,” he said, somehow managing to keep his voice even as he looked directly into her eyes. “You can’t have children. I didn’t know that, Samantha. But it needn’t make a difference. It doesn’t make a difference. Not to me.”
It was as if she didn’t hear him. “I was carrying his child at the last,” she said, the words little more than a broken whisper. “Not long before he—killed himself, he beat me so viciously, the baby died.” She caught a breath that was more a sob. “After that, there was—I can’t have children. Not ever.”
Jack felt a boiling, savage hatred slam through him, and it was everything he could do not to explode with rage at what had been done to her. It seemed a monstrous twist of fate that he could not somehow make Bronson Harte pay for the evil he had inflicted on Samantha.
“Oh, Samantha, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said lamely.
She looked at him. “So you see, I have nothing I can give you. You say it doesn’t matter, but eventually it would. A man like you, you ought to have children. You need a wife who can give you more than I can. You should have a son to carry on your name, the newspaper—”
She broke off, her face a mask of bleak resignation.
Jack had not wept since Martha’s death, and even then the tears had come sparingly, as if being ripped from him. But at this moment he had everything he could do not to give in to a fit of weeping.
He steadied himself, caught her by the shoulders and forced her to meet his gaze. “Samantha, you couldn’t be more wrong! All right, I would have liked to have had children. And, yes, it was a disappointment to us, to Martha and me, when we didn’t. But this is the truth, Samantha, and you must believe me: I can live without children. But I don’t think I can live any sort of life from now on without you!”
He pulled her closer, and she allowed it, but he was careful to hold her gently. “You have spoiled me for ever going on as I was before I met you. I can’t go back to that life, Samantha. Please, don’t make me.”
Suddenly she was weeping, the tears tracing a slow path down her cheeks. Racked by the sight of her pain, Jack gathered her into his arms, wrapping her in a careful embrace. “I’m sorry,” he said, feeling as if he would strangle on his own words, tasting the salt of her tears as he pressed his lips to her wet cheeks. “I am so terribly, terribly sorry for what he did to you. Please, Samantha…please…give me a chance to heal you with my love.”
Jack held her to him while the tortured sobs shook her slender body. He thought her pain would tear him apart. After a long time, he felt her shudder, then grow quiet in his arms.
“You haven’t answered me, Samantha,” he whispered.
She looked up, her gaze still clouded with tears.
“Will you marry me?”
She closed her eyes. “You don’t understand,” she choked out. “I’m…afraid. I don’t know…I don’t think…that I can ever be a wife to any man again! But it’s not just that—”
“What, then?”
“Jack—you say we can heal each other. But we can’t. Not really. No matter how much we might want to, we can’t. Only God can bring that kind of healing.”
He studied her. “And has he brought it to you?” he said bluntly.
She seemed to frame her answer with great care. “Not entirely. But in part, yes, he has. He’s done something for me that I could never have done for myself, something I could never do for you.” She stopped, then added quietly, “But he could.”
Jack wasn’t sure what kind of a reply she expected from him. This had always been an issue between them, this matter of her faith and his inability to share it. But he wouldn’t deceive her, wouldn’t try to make her believe a lie. All he could do was attempt to understand.
“What do you mean, Samantha?” he asked her. “What, exactly, has God done for you?”
He had seen her pain, after all, seen it for himself, had witnessed the torturous memories that still haunted her. What sort of healing was that?
“He’s given me peace,” she said quietly.
Jack studied her. “I don’t always see peace when I look in your eyes, Samantha. I see suffering.”
She flinched visibly. “God’s healing doesn’t always come quickly, or all at once. But it comes, Jack. If you open your heart to it…to him…it comes. I expect what you’re seeing are the scars. Not the wounds themselves, but the scars they left on my spirit. Eventually—”
She looked away, and he saw her throat work as she stopped, swallowed hard, then went on. “Eventually I hope even the scars will disappear.”
Again Jack puzzled over a way to overcome this barrier between them. But this was one place where he could offer her nothing. Whatever hope he might have held for some sort of divine healing or true peace had burned to ashes long ago, if indeed he had ever known such a hope at all. Yet there was no denying that something about Samantha—something indefinable, but the very essence of everything she was—set off a yearning in him for something more, something he instinctively knew he could never buy or win on his own.
“I confess that I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” he said. “But I believe life with someone you love has to be immeasurably better than life alone. I love you, and I want to be with you.” He tightened his embrace, but only a little. “And I’m willing to try to learn to be—the man you need me to be in order to make that happen.
“Samantha—I won’t give up. I’m going to keep right on trying to convince you to marry me. No matter what it takes. No matter how
long it takes.”
She started to protest, but he stopped her, pressing a finger to her lips and shaking his head. “I’m only asking you to think about what I’ve said tonight. Don’t be too quick to give me a decision. Not this time.”
She gave him a troubled look but made no more argument. Finally, Jack bent his head to search her gaze, and what he saw there gave him the courage to cup her face between his hands and gently kiss her on the forehead, then, even more gently, on her lips. Her eyes were closed, and there was a softness about her mouth that wrenched his heart. He touched her cheek, gently. She opened her eyes.
“Samantha,” he said, “we’ll make it work. Somehow. We will, I promise you.”
They rode the rest of the way in silence, the only sound the clopping of the horses on the wet streets and the steady rain falling on the roof of the cab. Jack was content to simply hold her hand and breathe in her closeness.
Hours after Jack had left her outside the door to her apartment, Samantha sat on the side of the bed, staring at the floor, twisting her hands in her lap. This was not the way a woman should feel after having just received a proposal of marriage from the man she loved.
That she did love Jack was no longer in question. She had known it for a long time, no matter how fiercely she might have tried to deny it to herself.
Nor could she refuse to face what she had only suspected up until now, that Jack cared for her, too, and cared deeply. He had said he loved her, and after tonight she would have found it difficult to question his sincerity; she had seen it in his eyes every time he looked at her, even with the awareness that she would come to him damaged and wounded—and barren.
Shouldn’t she be feeling elation instead of this aching despair of the soul?
She had wept until she was too spent to weep any longer. The scene in the cab had apparently uncapped an old but still extant reservoir of pain, propelling it full force to breach her hard-won wall of self-defense. Tonight for the first time she realized how desperately she had needed to purge herself of the truth about her marriage and Bronson’s suicide. Yet now that she had done so, guilt and regret had come gnawing at her like angry scavengers.