“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s different somehow”
Nathan thought it wiser not to tell Delilah he had redone the painting as a portrait of the woman who had nearly died in his arms. Someday, if she asked, if she guessed … he knew he would tell her regardless, but not today.
“Where will you hang it when it’s finished?”
“In the drawing room if you think it’s good enough. In the attic if it’s not.”
“I wouldn’t let you hide it in the attic”
Nathan stepped back, decided the last stroke had achieved what he wanted and dropped the brush into a jar of cleaner. “I’d burn it if I thought you didn’t like it.”
I’d keep it even if I hated it. I never thought anybody would paint a picture of me. That only happens to truly important people.”
“And women whose future husbands happen to be portrait painters”
“Are you really going to be my husband?” she asked. “I know we’ve talked about it, but … ”
“I keep asking, and you keep refusing—you’re a very stubborn woman—so I decided to keep you here until you agree to my outrageous demands”
“Do you mean I’m well enough to go home?”
“You are home”
“You know what I mean.”
“You’re well enough for just about anything except going back to Jane and the boys.”
“You’re not just saying that to keep me here?”
“Would it?”
“No, not if they needed me. But if you wanted me to stay …”
Nathan was at Delilah’s side instantly. “I’ve never wanted anything more. I would marry you tomorrow if I could”
“We can’t; Delilah said with a happy laugh. “We have to post the banns first.”
“I know”
“I can’t stay here after that.”
“Are you still worried about what people will say?”
“Not really. I could have had you take me home that next morning, or have asked Jane to stay with me, if I’d been concerned about wagging tongues. I didn’t suggest it because I knew Jane would probably stay, and I so desperately wanted you all to myself, even if it was to be for just a little while.”
Nathan’s happiness disappeared.
“Just a little while? You’re not thinking of going away again, are you?”
“I have to go, but I’m coming back this time.”
“You won’t let anybody stand in your way?”
“That’s what I wanted to tell you that night. I knew then I loved you more than anyone else in the world. I couldn’t explain that to Jane, though she feels the same about Reuben.”
“I know. She doesn’t see how you can love me.”
“I’m afraid she’ll always feel that way. Reuben, too”
“If you can accept Serena and Priscilla, I can accept Reuben and Jane.” Nathan sat next to her on the bed, put his arms around her, and drew her close. “We have strange families, the two of us.”
Delilah put her arms around him. “I don’t want to think of our families or the war or anything—except us.”
Nathan feathered a kiss on her cheek.
“And you can stop treating me as if I’m made of porcelain. I may have gotten a little too cold, but I’m plenty warm now.”
Nathan didn’t need a second invitation. They fell back on the bed, wrapped in each other’s arms. “I was afraid you might not be strong enough.”
“I know. I decided if I didn’t say something, you might never touch me again.”
Nathan kissed the delicate shell of her ear. “You like my touch?”
“Very much,” Delilah said, turning her head to make it easier for him to continue his attentions. “I’ve been thinking about it for days.”
“And I’ve been thinking about touching you ever since I saw you,” Nathan admitted. His tongue played along the edge of Delilah’s ear sending shivers of delight all through her body. Her stomach knotted and then shot tendrils of delicious tension into every muscle. Now Nathan was blowing gently on the wisps of hair behind her ear and along the side of her neck. More shivers, more tendrils of tension, until she squirmed away from him. But the harder she tried to twist away, the more Nathan tormented her until she captured his teasing lips in a hungry kiss.
“You know that drives me crazy,” she said in a breathless whisper.
“Not half as crazy as being next to you for months and not being able to touch you,” Nathan replied, once more snuggling in the crook of her neck.
“You did touch me”
“If I had touched you the way I wanted to, we would have created a scandal that would have been heard from here to Boston.”
“Oh,” Delilah replied. She turned to face Nathan and blocked his path to her tortured ear.
But Nathan did not give up so easily. He kissed the tip of her nose and then gently kissed her closed eyes. His tongue bathed her eyelids in soothing warmth. His fingertips traced the line of her cheekbone; his lips followed with a trail of kisses. Delilah tried to recapture his mouth, but Nathan seemed famished for the taste of her body. His tongue traced arabesques down one shoulder, then made a gentle arc back until it arrived at the mound of her breasts.
“It’s only fair for what you did to me with those tight breeches,” Delilah managed to say. “I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”
Nathan lifted a breast from her bodice and gently kissed its burning surface. “That’s how I felt about your blue dress.”
Delilah’s body tensed, her breasts hardening as Nathan slipped her gown over her shoulders and down to her waist. Then he lay very still, his lips exploring the side of her neck, his warm breath teasing the tiny hairs at her nape, his fingertips doing a slow ballet across her breasts.
“Those breeches caused me to have such shocking feelings I was afraid I was a wanton at heart. Nobody ever told me I was supposed to feel that way.”
“Like this?” Nathan asked as he alternately cupped her breasts and feathered his fingertip around each hard, puckered nipple. With a groan, she pulled his head down to her breast, somehow relieved when his lips tugged at the painfully sensitive nipple until she moaned with pleasure. She ran her fingers deep into his thick hair and pressed his head against her body. I gentle nip of Nathan’s teeth caused her to utter a tiny scream of delight.
“I’ve always wanted to undress you,” Delilah confessed as she pulled at his shirt, eager to feel the warmth of his skin beneath her hands. Her entire body was ablaze, yet she wanted to touch even more of him. “Does that shock you?’
“I’ve spent hours every day practically sitting on my hands so I wouldn’t undress you,” Nathan replied.
Delilah felt abandoned when Nathan deserted her breasts to slip her gown under her hips and drop it to the floor. But as the tension in her body spiraled down like a leaf in the wind, his lips and tongue traced a curving trail across her ribs and down her abdomen. Then, as she was once more swept up in the vortex of desire, he advanced to her very threshold. As his lips traced another path toward her still throbbing breasts, she felt his hands part her creamy white thighs and uncover the nub of her very existence.
Delilah forgot everything else.
Ever so gently he stroked her with his fingertip. Delilah moaned and moved against his hand, fire shooting through her like bolts of lightning. Nothing had ever so overpowered her, held her helpless in its toils. She could feel the waves of sensual delight increase in force and frequency as they washed over her.
Nathan’s lips found her breast once more and new currents of aching pleasure racked her. Delilah moaned, and arched against him, but the waves of pleasure from this gentle sucking were nothing compared to the sweet agony he had caused between her thighs.
She tried to rip the clothes from his body, but he wouldn’t be deterred. She tried to roll away from him, but he held her prisoner. He was going to torture her until she died of pleasure.
“Please d
on’t wait,” she begged, as she pulled his head away from her breasts. “I can’t stand it much longer.”
But Nathan’s hand never left her. By the time he had removed the rest of his clothing, Delilah had crested a series of waves to achieve a shattering climax. As her exhausted body slumped to the bed, she thought nothing could be any more devastating than this.
But the moment Nathan eased himself into her moist heat, she was in the toils of a physical desire for him that was so strong, so overpowering, that even though seconds before she had felt exhausted, burned out, she now felt starved for the only force on earth which could reach the kernel of need buried at the center of her.
Nathan. Only Nathan.
Delilah arched upward at the same time she took his firm buttocks in her grasp and forced him deep inside her. The urgency had left her when Nathan had withdrawn his hand, but as he started to move within her, hot waves of need returned, stronger than before.
It was impossible to remember that only a few days before she had been too weak to get out of bed. It didn’t matter that her body was drenched in sweat from a shattering climax only moments ago. She felt she was about to explode with energy, and still more was building inside her. She wanted to cling to Nathan until she absorbed him, wanted him to wrap her in his embrace until she became part of him. Her whole body seemed to be expanding, absorbing, encompassing, filling the space around her until the universe was part of her being.
She forgot yesterday, forgot five minutes before; she was aware only of each instant, time having been brought into incredibly sharp focus, momentary slivers of it having been stretched into slow motion by the forces which had rendered her utterly powerless, which even now were depriving her of conscious thought.
She was only vaguely aware of Nathan’s increasingly rapid breathing as she slipped into complete fulfillment.
Polly burst into the library unannounced. “Reuben’s in jail. He’s been sentenced to hang.”
Delilah gasped in horror. “When did it happen?”
“In Sheffield,” Polly said. “We heard about it only this morning when they brought him to Springfield.”
“I’ll be ready to go in half an hour. How did you come?”
“I, walked”
“Can I borrow the buggy?” Delilah asked, turning to Nathan. “Jacob can drive us”
“I’ll drive you myself,” Nathan said, but his hand restrained Delilah when she would have left the room.
“I understood that all the insurgents had been pardoned,” Nathan said to Polly.
“You knew he was captured?” Delilah asked.
“No, only that some insurgents had been. I was told they would be pardoned if they swore loyalty to the government”
“Most of them were pardoned, but they said they’re going to hang six as an example.”
“Nathan, can you … ?”
“I already have, but apparently I wasn’t persuasive enough”
That look was on his face again. Delilah didn’t know who had inspired it, but she hoped it was Noah Hubbard or Lucius Clarke. She was certain they had tried to insure that Reuben would be the example. From Nathan’s anger, he was sure of it too.
“If they mean to hang him now, they mean to do it despite anything I can say.”
“But you’ll talk with them again? Plead with them if you must?”
“11l do what I can”
“I’ve gut to go. Jane must be frantic.”
Nathan’s grip tightened. “Would you leave us alone?” he said to Polly. “Mrs. Stebbens would be happy to bring you some refreshments in the sitting room.”
Both women looked at him without understanding, but Polly shrank from the fierce look in Nathan’s eyes.
“I don’t know where it is.”
“The last door on the left,” Nathan told her.
“Nathan, what did you mean by that?”
“Sit down. I want to talk to you a minute”
“I don’t have time. Jane will be in a state—”
“Ever since I’ve known you, Jane has been in a state or Reuben’s been in a temper or they’ve both fallen down and bruised their shins. And you always run to them. Do you think that once, just this once, you could think of someone else?”
“You?”
“I was thinking of yourself, but I’d love it to be me”
“But this is different. They really need me”
“It’s always different. Every time they really need you. But that didn’t stop Jane from letting you go off after Reuben, and it didn’t stop him from letting you head off in a storm.”
But he couldn’t stop me.”
“I’d have stopped you. I’d have tied you to a bed, a chair, anything before I’d have let you nearly kill yourself.”
Delilah sat down. “Was I really that sick?’
“For twelve hours I thought you were going to die. I never prayed so hard in my life”
“You prayed for me?”
“Why should that be difficult to believe?’
“Nobody ever prayed for me before”
“If it makes you feel any better, I’ve prayed for you since, prayed you’d have better sense than to do something like that again. What were you doing out? You’ve lived here all your life. You know you can die in a storm like that.”
Delilah realized Nathan had never asked her why she’d been out in the storm. “I went to find Reuben. Jane grew so upset over the battle in Springfield she began having pains again.”
“That’s twice I can remember, but she’s been fine every time she’s come here. Can she have pains anytime she wants?”
Delilah dropped her eyes. “That’s what Reuben said.”
“Yet she let you go all that distance?”
“Jane didn’t know where Reuben was, and nobody knew the weather was going to turn so bad”
“Reuben must have.”
“He tried to get me to stay, but I wouldn’t”
“For your family you’ll practically kill yourself, but for me you can’t even—”
“Don’t say it.”
“Can’t you see they’re still using you?”
“Don’t say that, either. Reuben’s in jail, sentenced to hang, and Jane’s expecting a baby. What do you want me to do? Tell them I’m having too much fun, that I’ll come later?”
“No. I always knew you would go. I only hoped I would be able to make you understand what they’re doing. They’ll always need you. They will always have some reason why you can’t come back”
“I’ll come back. But now I have to be with Jane. You once said if I loved you I would have to choose you over my family. And I have. But I can’t choose you all the time. Someday it’ll be our children, maybe even our grandchildren. Today it’s Jane..”
There was nothing more to say. All he could do was watch her go and hope she would come back.
Chapter Twenty-five
“The General Court made the decision to pardon all but six of the leaders,” Nathan told Delilah and Jane. “They can’t hang Shays and Day because they fled the state, so they chose six men from across Massachusetts.”
“Isn’t there anything else you can do? Someone you can talk to?”
“I’ve seen everyone with any power to affect the decision. If Reuben would write a letter of apology and send it to the Governor’s Council, they might decide to grant him clemency.”
“Reuben would never do anything like that,” Delilah declared. “He’d hang first”
“He will not,” Jane stated. She had been nursing her infant daughter, but she handed the little girl to Polly, buttoned up her dress, and came over to Delilah and Nathan. “Tell me what the letter should say. I’ll write it down. Reuben will copy it over and sign it”
“But it goes against everything he’s ever stood for,” Delilah protested.
“Getting himself hanged goes against everything I stand for,” Jane stated flatly. “He’ll sign it if I have to club him over the head”
Delilah never
knew how Jane did it, but Reuben did write to the Governor’s Council:
Feeling the deepest sorrow and remorse and in full knowledge of the evils of my conduct, I now admit great shame and guilt. I was never an officer in the regulators, but having a good horse and a foolish fondness to be thought active and alert I was persuaded to take an old cutlass and ride at the head of a column during the attack on the Springfield arsenal. I had left home unarmed and was guilty merely one of uttering foolish and wicked expressions for which I am deeply ashamed. My part in the engagement at Sheffield was strictly defensive, being merely of a party that was out foraging for provisions when we were ambushed. I humbly ask the mercy and pardon of the most gracious and loving, fatherly Governor and Council.
Delilah offered to carry the missive to Boston, but Jane wouldn’t hear of it. “It’ll be more effective if it’s delivered by his wife, especially if she’s also suckling a babe.”
When Nathan heard Jane intended to travel to Boston alone, he insisted upon driving her himself. He invited Polly to help with the baby. Delilah would stay home with the boys.
Delilah endured several days of miserable suspense. People came by to express sympathy, but they also came out of curiosity. She tried to shield Daniel and David, but the lads knew. They had known almost from the first. Neither boy said anything until one evening when Jane and Nathan had been gone four days.
“Donny Hubbard says they’ll hang Papa,” Daniel said. “He says it won’t make any difference what Papa does now. He says they got to hang somebody, and it’s going to be Papa.”
Just like Noah Hubbard to poison his child’s mind with hate, Delilah thought.
“Your father wrote a very nice letter,” Delilah said. “I’m sure the men in Boston will give it special attention, particularly with your mama taking it personally.”
“Donny says Nathan’s going won’t do any good either. He says people don’t like him.”
“Who’s Nathan?” David asked.
“He’s the man who’s driving your mama and Aunt Polly to Boston.”
“Donny says—”
“I don’t want to hear any more Donny says,” Delilah snapped. “He’s only repeating what his father says, and Noah Hubbard is a miserly, mean-spirited, hateful man. I’m sorry I didn’t scratch his eyes out when he accused me of spying on Nathan.”
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