The Vow (15 page)
For the benefit of the maid who had announced him, Reiver said, “Forgive me for the intrusion, Mrs. Tuttle, but my wife asked me to bring you several jars of her apple jelly while I was in Hartford today.”
“Why, thank you, Mr. Shaw. How considerate of you.” Then she ordered the maid to take the jelly to the kitchen.
When the maid closed the door behind her, Reiver and Cecelia were finally alone.
She stepped away from him. “Dear Lord, are you out of your mind coming here? What if Amos finds out?”
“He already knows. When I saw him at the bank, I told him that I intended to call on you—to deliver my wife’s jellies, of course.”
Cecelia’s brown eyes widened in panic. “You shouldn’t be here. You must leave at once.” She started for the door, but Reiver restrained her.
“I have no intention of leaving, until I’ve said what I came to say.”
“Reiver, please!”
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He felt her tremble beneath his hand. “Stop acting like I’m going to take you right here, and sit down.”
Cecelia hesitated, and when Reiver’s hand fell away, she turned and seated herself in a nearby chair, her back stiff and straight, her hands folded.
He looked down at her. “Are you happy?”
“I’m very happy. I have a kind, generous husband who adores me, and a lovely little boy. Why shouldn’t I be happy?”
“Because you don’t love your husband. Admit it.”
“That’s not true! I do love Amos.”
“You always were a poor liar. You may think you’ve convinced yourself that you love him, but you don’t.” He reached out and lifted her chin. “I can see it in your eyes. You’re desperately unhappy.”
She jerked her head away and rose. “Stop it! No good will come of this.”
“I still love you. God knows I’ve tried to stop, but I can’t. Two years have passed, and I can’t stop wanting you.”
Cecelia stiffened, as if gathering courage. “Then you’ll just have to stop. This is wrong, Reiver. Need I remind you that you have a lovely, charming wife? She doesn’t deserve this.”
“But I’ve never loved her.”
“That doesn’t justify your—your obsession with me.”
He raised one brow. “I hardly think it’s one-sided.”
She shook her head repeatedly. “You’re wrong.”
He was at her side in two strides and grasped her cold hands so she couldn’t draw away. “Prove it. Show me that you don’t want me, that you don’t need me.”
“Reiver—”
“Let me kiss you, and then tell me how you feel.”
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‘‘No, I—’’
“Afraid I’m right?”
When a sigh of surrender passed her lips, Reiver took her face gently in his hands and searched the depths of her eyes until he found the desire hidden behind the fear. He lowered his mouth to hers.
The kiss told him all he needed to know.
When they parted, both panting and breathless, Cecelia looked dazed and bewildered.
“Where can we meet?” Reiver whispered.
She clung to him. “I don’t know. Somewhere safe. I know a friend who might let us use her house.” She told Reiver the address.
“Make the arrangements with her and meet me there tomorrow at one o’clock.”
She nodded helplessly, still clinging.
He kissed her harder this time. “Until tomorrow.”
After Reiver left, Cecelia stood at the parlor window and watched until his carriage disappeared. “Damn you, Reiver Shaw,” she whispered. “And damn me for my weakness.”
Yet even the thought of the fires of hell couldn’t stop her from anticipating tomorrow.
At dinner that evening Hannah noticed that Reiver ate but said nothing unless spoken to, his blue eyes glazed with a faraway look and his expression inscrutable.
Something’s troubling him
, she thought.
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She glanced at Samuel and James to see if they noticed, but both were too involved in a discussion of the proposed Providence-Hartford-Fishkill railroad to pay attention to their eldest brother’s strange mood.
Hannah looked at him. “How was your trip to Hartford today? Did Mrs.
Tuttle like the preserves I sent?”
Reiver devoted his attention to sopping up the gravy on his plate with a piece of bread. “I don’t know. I left them with her husband at his bank.” He glanced up and smiled. “But I’m sure she did.”
“I like Mrs. Tuttle,” Hannah said. “She is so charming and kind.”
“She is.” Reiver looked down the table toward James. “Have you tested our thread on the sewing machine yet?”
James nodded. “Unfortunately it breaks. It’s just not strong enough to withstand such a machine.”
“Then what do you propose to do to make our thread stronger?”
“I’m going to invent a loom that will double-twist the thread as it’s reeled,”
James replied. “That should strengthen it.”
Reiver nodded absently, then rose and excused himself.
When he was out of the room, Hannah turned to Samuel and James in bewilderment. “He doesn’t seem himself tonight.”
Samuel stared at the door, a curious expression in his pale eyes. “Perhaps something happened in Hartford today.”
James added, “Reiver’s always direct. It’s not like him to be so moody.”
Hannah smiled brightly. “I’m sure he’ll tell me what’s troubling him.”
She learned just that later when Samuel and James left for the farmhouse and she went upstairs to retire for the evening.
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Hannah found Reiver standing before his chest, the drawers open and a pile of clothing in his arms. He froze when he saw her and looked as guilty as a thief caught in the act.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m moving to the other bedroom.”
Hannah felt as if he had struck her. “The other bedroom? Why?” Damn her voice for trembling so! “I thought you enjoyed…” Her words trailed off.
He continued to add shirts to the pile in his arms. “I do.”
“Then why?”
He stopped and looked at her. “I don’t know of any way to tell you except straight out.” He paused, as if weighing each word. “I don’t want to risk having another child like Abigail.”
For a moment Hannah thought she had gone deaf. “What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
She wanted to pull the shirts from his arms and stuff them back into the drawers, as if that could make him stay. But her pride kept her hands clenched at her sides. If he didn’t want to share her bed any longer, she wouldn’t beg.
Reiver said, “Don’t look so crestfallen. You know you never enjoyed…that aspect of marriage.”
“Not at first,” she admitted. “But you know it ceased to be a duty years ago.”
Now she hungered for his touch with an avidity that frightened her.
“Be that as it may, how can we indulge ourselves if it means bringing another simple child into the world? Isn’t Abigail enough of a burden for you?”
“Abigail isn’t a burden, damn you! I love her as much as the boys. Besides, you don’t know that another child would be the same.”
“I don’t intend to take that chance!”
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Hannah almost reminded him of all the times he had withdrawn from her just before releasing his seed, and all the times children hadn’t resulted from their union, but she held her tongue.
Her hurt silence must have moved him, for he stepped forward to touch her cheek. “It’s not that I will never share your bed again, Hannah. I just don’t believe in tempting fate too often.”
She fought back tears. “If this is what you wish…”
“I said that I don’t want another child like Abigail, and I mean it.” He turned and left, closing the connecting door behind him.
Hannah stared at the closed door for a long time. With a resigned sigh, she undressed for bed. She threw back the quilt, placed Reiver’s pillow on a nearby chair, then set her own pillow in the center at the head of the bed. After blowing out the lamp, she slid beneath the sheets and closed her eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come.
She didn’t know why Reiver had become so remote, dancing elusively just out of reach at the very moment when she thought the mill and their children had brought them closer together. But Hannah knew better than to argue or challenge him.
She closed her eyes. Reiver would come back to her in his own sweet time.
The following day Cecelia met him at her obliging friend’s house just as he knew she would.
“I almost didn’t come,” she said, lifting her heavy black veil once they were alone in an upstairs bedroom.
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He grinned, enfolding her in his arms. “Don’t torture me with empty threats, Cecelia. You know you want to be with me.” She was so soft and her chestnut ringlets smelled of sweet heliotrope as he buried his face in their silkiness.
She closed her eyes and leaned against him. “This must be the last time. It’s far too dangerous.”
His fingers made short work of her gown’s infuriating buttons. “Why do you say that, to make a pretense of resistance? You know you’ll come whenever I want you.”
She gasped as he squeezed her breasts, all thoughts of her husband and son disappearing in a blaze of passion.
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Chapter Seven
The following spring the traveling peddler gave Hannah an unlikely idea that might be a boon to Shaw Silks.
That cool April afternoon of 1848, while Hannah stood with Mrs. Hardy before Septimus Shively’s overflowing cart, listening to him extol the virtues of various butter presses, clothes sprinklers, and brushes in his singsong voice, her thoughts kept wandering to Reiver and his persistent denial of their hapless daughter. But then something the peddler said brought her back into the present.
“Ladies, I have a new line of pretty china that I’m sure will appeal to women of taste and refinement such as yourselves.” With a flourish, he proffered a plate rimmed with delicate yellow roses. “It’s called Parisian ware and sells for only a nickle apiece, platters a little more.”
Hannah took the plate, squinted at the design, and ran her finger along the rim. “How can you sell French china so cheaply?”
The peddler stiffened. “Did I say this pretty china was from France, my good woman? I made no such claim. Septimus Shively never misrepresents a product, no sirree.”
“Then why is it called Parisian ware if it doesn’t come from France, you fool?” Mrs. Hardy asked.
“It’s merely a descriptive title. The china is just like French china, so the manufacturer calls it ‘Parisian ware’.”
Mrs. Hardy put down a hot-water belly warmer and gave the peddler a baleful stare. “Why, you hairy old goat! You’re trying to hoodwink us!”
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“My good woman! Septimus Shively is as honest as the day is long. He never misrepresents a product, no sirree.” Then he shrugged. “But if a customer should misunderstand and assume that this fine Parisian ware is from France…well, I can’t help what people think, now can I?”
Hannah smiled and handed back the plate. “Do many of your customers make such a mistaken assumption?”
Septimus Shively smiled back. “A surprising number do, yes sirree.” The peddler quickly pocketed payment for their other purchases. “The maker of these dishes couldn’t give them away before. Then he fancified them into
‘Parisian ware’, and suddenly everyone wants to buy them, and I keep running out.”
“All because he changed the name?” Mrs. Hardy asked incredulously.
“Yes sirree. Unbelievable, isn’t it?”
Then Septimus Shively climbed into his cart, waved goodbye, and started off in a clanging of pots and pans to the next house on his route, leaving the two women to marvel at their fellowman’s gullibility.
Later, as Hannah sat sewing and chuckling over the peddler’s Parisian ware, she glanced down at the label on her thread that said simply, “Silk Thread—
Shaw Silk Manufacturing Company.” The idea came to her like a flash of lightning in a dark summer sky.
She rose and went to find Reiver.
He was in the machine shop with James, leaning over an array of greasy gears spread out on the long wooden table. “I don’t think this is going to work, James,” he said with a shake of his head.
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“I disagree,” James replied. Then he looked up, saw Hannah, and greeted her with a warm smile. “Hannah. What brings you into the shop?”
“I need to speak to Reiver.”
Her husband didn’t look up at her. “Can’t it wait? James and I are very busy.”
“It’s important.”
“So important that it couldn’t wait until tonight?”
She stood her ground, unwilling to allow him to dismiss her like some bothersome child. “I think it is.”
He straightened and crossed his arms over his chest, his blue eyes bored and impatient. “Well?”
Hannah plunged right in. “I have an idea that may sell more thread.”
Reiver gave her a patronizing smile. “And what is this wonderful idea of yours?”
Hannah took a deep breath. “I think you should call our thread by an Italian name.”
His eyes widened incredulously, then he burst out laughing. “An Italian name? Whatever for? Our thread isn’t from Italy. It’s made in Connecticut by the Shaw Silk Manufacturing Company, and that’s the name it will always have.” He bent over the table again, dismissing her.
Cheeks flaming, Hannah didn’t move. “Before you’re so quick to discount my idea, Reiver Shaw, let me tell you about Septimus Shively’s Parisian ware.”
“Hannah, I told you that James and I are busy.”
James wiped the grease off his hands. “This can wait. Let’s hear Hannah out.”
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Reiver capitulated with an annoyed sigh, and Hannah related the story that the peddler had told her. “…and isn’t Italian silk known throughout the world as the best?” she finished.