The Vow (18 page)
“He may not show it, but Reiver deeply regrets what he did.”
Anger hardened Hannah’s tears to glass. “I don’t think he regrets it at all.
Reiver’s a selfish man. He thinks only of himself.”
Samuel caressed her white knuckles with his fingertips. “So what are you going to do now? Leave?”
She sighed. “Where would I go, back to my aunt and uncle? I’m sure they’d welcome me with open arms. And I have to think of my children.” Hannah withdrew her hand and rubbed her arms as if they were cold. “No, I’ll stay, but any feelings I had for Reiver are dead.”
“They’ll return. Give yourself time.”
She shook her head vehemently. “No. He’s hurt me too deeply. Mr. Tuttle may have forgiven his wife, but I’ll never forgive my husband.”
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The first drops of rain fell, rustling the tobacco leaves.
Samuel looked up at the darkening sky, which seemed to mirror his emotions. “We should get back before we’re soaked.”
She looked at him defiantly. “I don’t ever want to go back.”
“You have to.”
“Ah, yes. Duty,” she said bitterly.
Samuel slid off the wall and retrieved his horse that was grazing placidly at the side of the road. He swung into the saddle and extended his hand to Hannah.
She didn’t move, their gazes locked. Finally she climbed down and Samuel lifted her up to sit in front of him. The feel of his hard right arm firmly holding her around the waist and the solid wall of his body against her back did more than soothe and comfort her.
Samuel made his horse walk slowly down the dusty dirt road darkly spotted with intermittent raindrops. Hannah leaned back, letting the rain wash away dried tears, her cheek touching Samuel’s.
She looked at him, savoring the long clean lines of cheekbone and jaw. “Do you remember that day years ago when you asked me to run away with you?”
He smiled wistfully and nodded.
“I wish I had.”
He jerked the reins, causing his startled horse to fling back its head with a snort of protest and dance in place. Samuel looked at Hannah, his pale gaze bald with yearning, his lithe body taut with tension. “Don’t do this to me.”
Hannah turned and pressed her lips to his. They were as warm and inviting as they looked, and after a moment’s resistance, so responsive.
Samuel finally tore himself away, anger replacing the yearning in his eyes.
“Was that to get even with Reiver?”
“A little. But more for myself, to stop this terrible hurt inside.”
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“Good. Because I won’t be a substitute for any man.”
He hugged her and sighed dismally, his breath warm against her ear.
“Hannah, Hannah…you make it so easy for me to forget I’m Reiver’s brother.”
“And you make it so easy for me to forget I’m still his wife.” They rode the rest of the way in silence, each refusing to acknowledge that they flirted with disaster.
Several weeks passed before the sting of Reiver’s betrayal lessened in Hannah’s heart. She found that assuming more duties in the mill helped to clear her mind and keep her from dwelling on her husband’s affair with the lovely Cecelia Tuttle.
When bottles of indigo, cochineal, and other assorted dyestuffs arrived one morning, she made note of their delivery and brought them to the dye house herself rather than wait for Reiver to do it.
The moment Hannah entered the dye house, a large, spacious building lined with tall windows to let in as much light as possible, she wrinkled her nose at the acrid odor of dye emanating from the copper tanks, or barcs.
She stood in the doorway and looked for Giuseppe Torelli, the dye master that Reiver had gone to great lengths and expense to bring over from Italy, and she saw him by one of the barcs, examining five skeins of freshly died silk hanging from a long dyeing stick.
“Mr. Torelli,” she called.
He looked up, smiled and nodded, and handed the dye stick to one of his sons.
“Good morning,
signora
,” he greeted her in broken English, with a courtly bow.
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“Another shipment of dyestuffs,” Hannah said, handing him her collection of bottles.
“
Grazie.
Thank you.” He took them over to a wide table, where he set them down and began taking a pinch of this and a spoonful of that and blending the dyes with the skill of a wizard mixing some magic potion while Hannah watched in amazement.
She shook her head. “How do you know how much to use?” Giuseppe Torelli tapped one indigo-stained forefinger to his forehead.
Hannah’s eyes widened. “From memory?”
He nodded.
Enrico, his youngest son, passing by with several soft muslin bags of boiled silk now ready for dyeing, smiled and said proudly, “My father’s formulas are carefully guarded secrets. Only he knows how much dye to mix for each color.”
Hannah stared at him. “Enrico, you don’t know? No one else knows this except your father?”
Enrico nodded, smiled, and blithely went about his work, leaving Hannah to wonder what would happen to Shaw Silks if their dye master were to die tomorrow.
Later that evening Hannah cornered Reiver in his study. “I learned something very alarming today,” she said.
He kept his eyes trained on his ledger, for relations between them were still strained. “What is it?”
“Did you know that Giuseppe blends the dyes from memory, that no one else knows the formulas and they’re not written down?”
Reiver gave her a condescending look. “Of course I do. A dye master’s formulas are closely guarded secrets. They don’t write them down, otherwise 154
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they could be stolen and sold to a rival silk house. When I hired Torelli, he brought his secrets with him.”
“But what do we do if something happens to him?”
“Find another dye master.”
Hannah’s voice rose in exasperation. “Wouldn’t it be so much simpler to have his formulas written down and locked away somewhere, especially the one for black dye?”
Black was the most difficult color of all to achieve and always in demand because black thread was needed to sew mourning clothes. Giuseppe Torelli’s black was always rich and consistent, his scarlets and crimsons from cochineal more vibrant than any Hannah had ever seen.
Reiver leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know if Torelli will want his secrets written down. These Italian dye masters are pretty tight-lipped.”
“There must be something you can do to persuade him.”
Reiver looked thoughtful. “You have a point. If something were to happen to Giuseppe—”
“The quality of our threads would suffer, not to mention all the time you’d lose finding a new dye master.”
The following day Reiver struck a bargain with Torelli: he would teach his secret formulas to his son Enrico, and if either of them left Shaw Silks for a competitor, they agreed to pay Reiver all costs he incurred finding a new dye master.
Hannah suspected the Torellis would be faithful Shaw employees for a long, long time.
155
Chapter Eight
One cool morning in June, Hannah took her tin pail and headed for the blueberry patch on the west end of Shaw property, for she had promised Benjamin and Davey blueberry cobbler when they returned home from school.
Life was slowly returning to normal. The flame of the Shaw scandal burned a little less brightly in Coldwater these days. Conversations ceased less frequently when Hannah walked down Main Street, and fewer surreptitious, speculative looks came her way. Benjamin’s taunting at school dwindled and died.
But Hannah’s wound was deeper and slower to heal. Mercifully Reiver kept his distance and made no demands. He went to the mill before six o’clock in the morning and didn’t return until eight o’clock at night, when his conversations with Hannah were polite but still strained. At night they retired to separate bedchambers.
She reached the blueberry bushes and picked to the slumberous accompaniment of bees humming, unable to resist tasting a handful of the sweet fruit herself. The ping-ping-ping of the first berries hitting the bottom of the pail sounded as soothing as falling rain. Her pail was one quarter full when she noticed a man leaving the road and walking toward her.
It was Nate.
The years had thickened and coarsened his stocky body and drawn his fleshy face into slack jowls. He lumbered closer, like a bear sighting its dinner, and with every step he took toward Hannah, she resisted the urge to take one step back.
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Instead she smiled politely when he reached her. “Good morning, Nate. I’m sorry to hear your stepfather is so ill.”
Nate’s white shirt was grimy and reeking of sweat. More than his odor, the maliciousness glittering in his eyes made Hannah’s stomach queasy.
“Sorry, are you? That’s a lie. You’re one of the high-and-mighty Shaws. You look down your nose at the likes of us.”
Hannah plucked a cluster of berries and threw them into her pail. “That’s not true. We went to your wedding last year, and I’ve asked Aunt Naomi to the house many times. She’s always sent her regrets.”
“If you’re so high and mighty, Mrs. Shaw,” he jeered, “why has your husband been”—he thrust his hips back and forth—“with the banker’s wife?”
Hannah’s face burned, her fingers tightening on the pail’s handle. “Do you know why I’d never have you in my house, Nate Fisher? Because you’re so common and crude.”
He turned crimson, then his dirty hand shot out and grasped her wrist.
“Why don’t we see just how crude I am under these here bushes?”
“You lay a finger on me, and my husband—”
“Your husband will do what? He doesn’t care about you. All he cares about is nailing his doxy.” Nate’s scornful gaze roved over Hannah, and he flung her away. “What man would want a cold, stiff piece like you, anyway? You’re not even good enough for breedin’, with your idiot girl. If it’s pleasure a man’s after, he’d get more taking a sheep to his bed.”
Hannah was too outraged to be shocked. Without thinking, she lifted her bucket and dumped it on Nate’s head, then gathered her skirts and ran for her life. She heard his muffled bellow of surprise and rage, but she didn’t risk looking back.
She kept running.
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Finally, when she realized that the only footsteps pounding the hard earth were her own, Hannah slowed down, her corset stays squeezing the breath out of her. She stopped and turned. Nate had disappeared.
Hannah crossed her arms and shivered in the warm sunlight. No matter how much the boys wanted blueberry cobbler, she would not return to the berry patch today.
She turned and walked toward the house, but Nate’s taunting words rubbed old wounds raw.
Hot tears stung Hannah’s eyes, and her step slowed. No man had ever desired her for herself. Nate wanted only her body. Reiver had married her for the river land, and he came to her bed for physical release or to sire children, not because he wanted her.
But men desired Cecelia with her porcelain prettiness and chestnut ringlets.
Reiver wanted her enough to risk scandal, and her husband wanted her enough to cause one. But would anyone fight to possess Hannah?
She reached the homestead, nothing more than a blur, and leaned back against the rough bark of the oak tree’s wide trunk. She was still standing there moments later when Samuel came striding out of the house toward her.
“Hannah, what’s wrong? I saw you running across the field like the devil was after you.” He was painting today, not engraving, for a dab of blue smudged one high cheekbone and dark brown spots freckled the backs of his hands and forearms where he had rolled up his shirt sleeves.
“I’m just feeling sorry for myself.” She wiped away her tears and managed a brave smile, but when she thought of Nate’s vicious, hurtful words rending her fragile confidence to shreds…
Samuel frowned, his pale eyes always seeing too much. “What has my brother done to you this time?”
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“Not Reiver. Nate.”
“Naomi’s gargoyle?”
“He came over while I was picking blueberries, and he said—he said—”
“Come inside and tell me.”
Hannah followed him into the hushed, empty house and upstairs to his studio. Welcoming sunlight flooded the room. The vigorous smell of turpentine, the assortment of brushes and engraving tools scattered on his worktable proclaimed this room Samuel’s domain.
He smiled. “Now, what did the gargoyle say?”
Hannah suddenly became tongue-tied and shy. “I don’t know if I should tell you. It wasn’t very flattering. Quite humiliating, in fact.”
“Then you must tell me,” he said gently, “so that I can refute his lies.”
So Hannah went to the window, took a deep breath, and told Samuel everything.
Everything.
When she finished, she turned around to face him. She expected him to express indignation on her behalf, and sympathy, for he was her friend and champion. But Samuel appeared curiously unmoved, his handsome face shuttered.
“Naomi’s gargoyle is wrong, and I would like to prove it to you.” He crossed the studio to the door and grasped the key, only his trembling lingers revealing the crack in his outward calm. “If you want to leave, Hannah, you must leave now, otherwise I’m going to lock you in and make love to you.”
His declaration stunned her. She couldn’t breathe. Excuses rushed to her lips unbidden.
I am married. I have three children. This is wrong. We mustn‘t. Someone will
catch us.
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Yet the words remained unspoken. Reiver’s infidelity had left her feeling so hollow inside, so unworthy of love. And she realized with blinding clarity that she also wanted Samuel for reasons that had nothing to do with filling that void.