The Vow (16 page)
“For now,” Reiver said.
“So why don’t we call our thread ‘Genoa Silk Thread’ or ‘Milanese Silk Thread’? After all, it’s just as good as Italian silk, isn’t it?”
“It’s better,” Reiver said. “But the thread isn’t made in Italy, and to call it an Italian name is deceptive. I’m proud of our silk and I won’t be a party to such deception.”
“But it isn’t deceptive. The label would still say that it’s manufactured by Shaw Silks of Coldwater, Connecticut, and if people assume that it’s better somehow because of an Italian name, that’s their own fault, not ours.”
James grinned. “What she says makes sense.”
Reiver rubbed his wide jaw. “I’m not so sure. I’ll have to think about it.”
“Couldn’t you at least try it?” Hannah pleaded.
“I said I’ll think about it.”
Judging from Reiver’s flat, uninterested tone, Hannah suspected that he would ultimately find some reason to discard her idea, so she left the machine shop feeling more estranged from her husband than ever, and headed for Samuel’s studio.
Hannah stood at the window, looking up at the main house while Samuel engraved at his worktable.
“He won’t do it,” she said. “It’s a good idea, but because I thought of it and he didn’t, he won’t do it.”
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“My brother may surprise you,” Samuel said. “He is stubborn and proud, but he always puts aside his personal feelings for the good of the company. If giving the thread an Italian name will benefit Shaw Silks, Reiver wouldn’t care if one of Naomi’s gargoyles came up with the idea.”
Hannah smiled at that.
Samuel rose and crossed the room. “It’s a joy to see you smiling again. You haven’t smiled in such a long time.”
Aware of him standing behind her, so close that if she stepped back she’d bump into him, Hannah kept staring out the window. “You’ve noticed.”
“I always notice everything about you,” he said softly, “but I usually refrain from saying anything for both our sakes.” He hesitated. “But if you should ever need to talk, I’m always here.”
Hannah turned to face him, ready to decline his offer until she looked into his ghostly eyes and saw the warmth and sympathy there. Suddenly she had to share her loneliness or burst.
“Reiver has moved out of our bedchamber. He says it’s because he doesn’t want another simple child like Abigail.”
Wordlessly Samuel drew her into his arms. Hannah considered moving out of danger, for lately even the most innocent contact—the touch of his hand on her arm, his cheek pressed against hers in greeting—aroused such shameful thoughts. This time, though, she let him hold her.
“My brother can also be a heartless son of a bitch,” he said.
Hannah closed her eyes and rested her head against his shoulder. “It hurts me so to see how cold he is toward Abigail. You and James are so kind to her, so patient. Yet her own father can’t even look at her without cringing.”
Samuel rested his cheek against the top of her head. “He sees his children as reflections of himself, and he can’t accept Abigail because she is imperfect.”
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Hannah stepped back. “It’s not her fault that the Good Lord made her that way.”
“Your indignation on Abigail’s behalf is commendable, but aren’t you furious with Reiver for denying you? You’re a passionate woman.” His tone deepened with rough intimacy as his cool, burning gaze scanned her face. “I can’t imagine you sleeping alone forever.”
“Don’t say such—such intimate things, Samuel. You know how it upsets me.”
“I know, but I can’t seem to help myself, especially when I see you suffering.”
She made a dismissive motion with her hand. “The pleasures of the marriage bed are greatly overrated. I’m sure I’ll survive sleeping alone.”
A muscle twitched in Samuel’s jaw and he grew very still. “What in God’s name has my brother done to you?”
“Nothing! Nothing at all. Just forget I said anything.”
Hannah turned and walked toward the door, but the feel of Samuel’s hands dropping lightly onto her shoulders stopped her as effectively as a brick wall.
“How can I forget?”
She turned back to him. “I came to you because I needed someone to talk to, someone to comfort me. I didn’t come here for a—a dalliance!”
More’s the pity.
“I know that.”
“I don’t want to come between you and Reiver.”
Ah, but you already have.
“You won’t,” he lied to banish the guilt tightening her face.
She relaxed. “Good, because if that ever happened, I would never forgive myself.”
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“I don’t want to frighten you away,” he said gently. “I never want to make you feel that you can’t come to me for companionship or comfort.”
She smiled. “I value your friendship, and would hate to lose it.”
He reached for her hand and brought it to his lips. “You never will.”
She withdrew her hand and headed for the door.
He called after her, “Let me know what Reiver decides to do about your idea.”
“I will.”
He waited until her light footsteps died away on the stairs, and waited for the emptiness to follow. Then he went to the window. Seconds later Hannah emerged and walked up the hill to her own house, the greedy April breeze tugging at her skirts.
“I know why he’s not sleeping with you, Hannah,” he said heavily, “and it’s not because of Abigail.”
He didn’t want to be around when she finally learned the truth. Or maybe he did.
When Hannah reached the top of the hill, she turned and looked back at the homestead, trying to ignore the pull of her heart.
I value your friendship
, she had said to him. Who was she fooling? She didn’t want Samuel to be her friend, she wanted him to be her lover.
“Oh, Samuel,” she muttered to herself, “how can I go on resisting my feelings for you?”
But she had to. So she would go on pretending that all she wanted from him was simple friendship, that her heart didn’t ache with longing every time she
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saw him. Perhaps if she told herself those lies often enough, she would even come to believe them herself.
Two days later Reiver told Hannah he would try her idea.
“We’re going to call our thread ‘Milanese Silk Thread’. If the name helps us to sell more, it will remain.”
Hannah could hardly contain her excitement. “When will you know if it’s a success?”
“By the end of summer, I suspect.”
But as early as the end of June, the tremendous increase in orders for Milanese Silk Thread proclaimed Hannah’s idea a success.
Reiver smiled as he studied the pile of orders that had just come in that morning. At this rate he would need to add more looms and hire more girls, but that was a welcome dilemma.
Now he felt like a fool for discounting Hannah’s idea at first, but at the time it seemed so preposterous. After all, what did she know about the silk business?
Her sphere was the home, as it should be.
Still, he was magnanimous enough to admit when he made a mistake, and he would tell Hannah so at the first opportunity.
Through the open door of his study, Reiver heard the front door open and a hoarse voice shout, “Shaw? Come out and face me like a man, you coward!”
He rose and stepped into the hallway. He took several steps forward, then stopped and stared at an Amos Tuttle he barely recognized.
The banker’s son had aged ten years, his boyish face drawn and haggard, his soft mouth nothing more than a thin, hard slash. The moment Reiver looked into 138
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the boy’s devastated eyes and saw the hatred blazing out, he knew why Tuttle had come.
“
Bastard!
” Tuttle reached beneath his coat and pulled out one of Colt’s revolvers.
Before Reiver could even think to dive for the floor, Tuttle aimed and fired.
Hannah was upstairs putting away yesterday’s laundry when the explosion startled her. She froze for a heartbeat, eyes wide like a frightened doe as the sound reverberated through her skull and died.
Screaming Reiver’s name, she dropped the laundry, hiked up her skirts, and ran.
She was halfway down the stairs when she saw Reiver sprawled facedown on the floor. “Reiver!” she screamed, catapulting down the rest of the stairs so fast her legs almost got tangled in her petticoats.
She stopped at the foot of the stairs when she saw Amos Tuttle standing in the hall, a pistol hanging at his side, the air acrid with the smell of burned gunpowder.
“Why?” she cried, kneeling by her husband’s body. “Why did you kill my husband?”
Dull, dead eyes bored into hers. “Because the bastard was nailing my wife.”
“Liar!” Hannah rolled Reiver over, blanching at the dark red stain spreading over his white shirt just above his trouser’s waistband like an obscene blossoming flower. Her fingers frantically ripped a square of cloth from the hem of her petticoat, and she stuffed it against Reiver’s side to stanch the flow of blood.
She felt his neck and sobbed with relief when she found the barest throbbing of a pulse. “Thank God!”
Help. She had to get help. Samuel. James. Anybody.
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Hannah scrambled to her feet and flew down the hall past Amos Tuttle and out into blinding sunlight. She sobbed in relief when she saw Samuel and James running up the hill, and stumbled toward them.
“Hannah, what happened?” Samuel demanded, reaching to stop her headlong flight. “We heard a gunshot.”
“Amos Tuttle shot Reiver!” she cried. Her chest hurt. She couldn’t breathe.
“
Hurry!
”
James swore and ran, with Samuel and Hannah following close at his heels.
They raced into the hallway. Reiver still lay where he had fallen, and Tuttle sat on the stairs, legs akimbo and arms dangling from his knees. When he raised his head and looked at them, his smooth cheeks were slick with tears and he looked like a lost little boy.
With an incoherent growl, James launched himself at Tuttle and dragged him to his feet by his shirtfront.
“Don’t waste time on him,” Samuel snapped, kneeling to tend to Reiver. “Go find the doctor!”
James flung Tuttle against the wall. “If my brother dies, so do you.” He ran down the hall and out the door.
Tuttle slid down the wall, whimpering like a child.
Samuel said, “Hannah, get that bastard out of my sight before I shoot him myself.”
With shock came a certain detachment that allowed Hannah to take Tuttle’s arm calmly and lead him to the parlor, where she made him sit down on the settee.
Just as she turned to leave he grasped her hand. “You must understand.
Your husband has been committing adultery with my wife. That’s why I had to shoot him. I had to make him pay. I had to.”
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Hannah snatched her hand away. “How dare you blacken my husband’s good name with your filthy lies! Reiver would never do such a thing.”
“Then you don’t know your husband as well as you think you do. He’s been doing it for years.”
“I’m sick of listening to you. My husband needs me.”
He cradled his head in his hands and his shoulders shook. “How could she betray me like this?” he moaned. “My beautiful Cecelia…”
Hannah left the parlor, followed by the sound of Tuttle’s sobbing.
“Your husband is a lucky man, Mrs. Shaw,” Dr. Bradley said sometime later.
“The bullet didn’t do much damage, and with rest and diligent nursing, he should recover.”
Hannah sagged against Samuel. “Thank God!”
Dr. Bradley patted her arm. “I’ll leave instructions for his care with Mrs.
Hardy.”
“May I see him now?”
The doctor nodded.
Hannah took a deep breath to steel herself. Later she would face Amos Tuttle’s accusation fully, but now she couldn’t afford the luxury. Praying for strength, she walked into Reiver’s room.
He was lying in bed, his face almost as white as the single sheet drawn up to his chest that was rising and falling gently.
Hannah went to his bedside and gently placed her hand against his cheek. It felt smooth and warm. Reiver stirred at her touch but didn’t open his eyes.
Hannah sat down in the chair by the bed and held her husband’s hand, thoughts clamoring for attention through the numbness of shock. What would
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she tell the boys? What was she going to say to Reiver when he regained consciousness? What would happen to Amos Tuttle now?
Was her husband an adulterer?
Not Reiver.
She didn’t leave his side until darkness fell and Samuel came for her.
“Hannah,” he whispered, “supper’s ready.”
She didn’t take her eyes off Reiver. “I’m not hungry.”
“But you’ve been sitting here all day. You must be exhausted.”
“He’s my husband. My place is by his side.”
Samuel knelt beside her chair and looked up at her. “The boys have been asking for you. I told them that a crazy man shot their father, but I assured them that he’s going to be all right.”
Hannah closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. “Didn’t Benjamin want to know why someone would want to kill his father? He’s very intelligent.”
“He’s also just a little boy. Right now he and Davey are frightened and need their mama.” He rose. “Go to them, Hannah. I’ll stay with my brother.”
Hannah rose, smoothed her untidy chignon into some semblance of order, and went to her children.
Later, when she returned, she found Samuel with his brow furrowed and his handsome face reflecting some inner turmoil.
“How are the boys?” he asked softly.
“They were afraid for their father, but I told them they must be strong and brave for me, and they calmed down.” Hannah knotted her fingers together.