The Vow (21 page)
Reiver stood in the doorway searching for Hannah, but she wasn’t among the dancers or the gossiping women lined up along the wall in chairs and fanning themselves, though the windows opened wide to the cool spring night.
He turned, peering over and around the sea of bobbing heads in the upstairs corridor beyond, but Hannah’s was not among them. Just as Reiver eased himself back into the crowd to search for her, Geoffrey Page, owner of a successful print shop in Hartford, stopped him by blocking his path with his own short, squat body.
“Enjoying yourself, Page?” Reiver asked, his eyes still scanning the throng.
“I always do at your shindigs,” he replied. “You’re not stingy with the vittles, and a man can relax and enjoy himself.”
Reiver smiled, still searching for Hannah, needing to ask her if she had seen the new thread samples he had brought home.
“I understand you’re off to Washington the day after tomorrow,” Page said.
Reiver nodded. “I’m going to try to convince our esteemed Congress to raise the import tariff on foreign silks.” Where was she?
“Do you think you’ll succeed?”
Lindsay Chase
“It’s hard to say. But if they want silk manufacturing to succeed in this country, they’re going to have to pass legislation to make us more competitive; otherwise we’ll never progress beyond thread and ribbons.”
Page nodded vigorously. “As a fellow merchant, I quite agree. Our government should help its own people, not foreigners. Washington needs a good dose of Yankee common sense.”
“I hope to give it to them.”
At the other end of the hallway, near the head of the stairs, a radiant Hannah glided into view, smiling and chatting with her guests as she wove her way between them to the ballroom. While not as enchanting as Cecelia, she did her husband credit in a blue-striped gown with fanciful knots of flowers in her hair.
Reiver excused himself.
Halfway down the hall, he raised his hand and waved in an attempt to catch Hannah’s eye, but she was conversing with a man who, though his back was to Reiver, looked oddly familiar. Reiver’s eyes never left her as he inched closer, so he saw the look that transformed her in the space of a heartbeat.
Reiver halted. He blinked several times as one coming out of darkness into blinding sunlight. When he focused on Hannah again, the look had vanished.
But he recognized lust in a woman’s eyes, no matter how fleeting.
And what of the man?
Turn around so I can see who is cuckolding me, damn you!
As if answering Reiver’s unspoken command, the man half turned, revealing his patrician profile.
It was Samuel.
The last guests departed at two o’clock in the morning.
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Reiver watched the carriage disappear down the drive, but his tumultuous thoughts were on Hannah standing at his side.
His wife and his brother…were they lovers?
Doubt and suspicion had gnawed at his insides like the rending fangs of a tiger ever since he had caught that look in Hannah’s eyes earlier that evening.
After the initial shock of betrayal had worn off, Reiver’s mind roiled with questions screaming for answers.
He would start with his wife. If she were guilty, she would surely betray herself.
Hannah closed the front door and leaned back against it with a contented smile. The people and laughter might be gone, but their collective conviviality lingered in the quiet, empty house.
Hannah looked at Reiver standing before the hall mirror and savagely yanking off his embroidered cravat as if it were strangling him. His blue eyes sparkled with social triumph, and he looked almost handsome in his somber black frock coat and high white collar. It was at times like this that she wished she could love him.
She stifled a yawn. “I’m going upstairs to bed. Will you extinguish the lamps?” She started past him, but Reiver placed a restraining hand on her arm, his face both grave and determined.
“Wait,” he said. “There’s something I have to say to you.”
She fought down panic.
There’s no way he can know about Samuel.
Hannah settled her mask into place with practiced ease. “It’s late, and I’m very tired.”
“This won’t take but a minute.”
She waited, praying that her guilty conscience wouldn’t betray her.
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Reiver’s eyes searched hers as if taking her measure for the first time. Finally he took her hand and brushed it with his lips. “Thank you, Hannah. You outdid yourself. All of our guests will be talking about this evening for a long time.”
The low intimacy of his tone startled her, for she heard it so rarely. She withdrew her hand, flustered. “No thanks are necessary. I want your friends and business associates to always feel at home here.”
“I know they do.” He smiled. “Why don’t you go to bed? I’ll join you as soon as I’m through down here.”
Puzzled by her husband’s sudden attentiveness, Hannah took the oil lamp from the hail table and hurried upstairs. When she reached the landing and looked back, he still stood there, watching her, a strange expression on his face.
Upstairs, Hannah stood before her mirror and pulled out her hairpins, studying her reflection by lamplight for any physical manifestations of the hardened adulteress. To her relief, she saw only an unhappy young woman.
She was brushing out her chignon when Reiver came to stand behind her.
“Do you need help undressing?”
She nodded, not trusting her voice to reply.
Reiver unhooked the back of her gown, his fingers adept from long practice, but his sharp gaze pinned her reflection to the glass. “I think Samuel has finally fallen in love.”
Her heart leaped into her throat. She couldn’t breathe. She must not faint.
“Oh? With whom?”
His finger stopped, for he had expected quite a different reaction from her.
“Patience Broome.”
A lovely, laughing vision of spun-gold hair and decidedly impatient green eyes flitted through Hannah’s memory. “She’s the youngest daughter of a gentleman farmer, isn’t she?”
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Reiver nodded, his fingers moving again, but his suspicious stare unwavering. “She’s pretty, sweet-tempered, and her father has enough money to buy Hartford. Samuel could do worse.”
Hannah gathered her hair over her left shoulder and tied the end with a ribbon.
“Samuel seemed very attentive to her tonight,” Reiver added, “and I’ve never known him to single out any woman for special attention. The rogue has always preferred variety.” When Hannah made no comment, he said, “I’m surprised we don’t have an irate father on our doorstep every week demanding that Samuel marry his daughter.”
“Reiver Shaw, what a terrible thing to say about your own brother! You make him sound like some tom cat on the prowl.”
He shrugged and grinned. “Well, it’s the truth Samuel always has been quite the ladies’ man. There was an onion farmer’s daughter from Wethersfield that he once fancied. I thought for sure he’d marry her, but he never did. She was probably too prudish for his tastes.”
Reiver finished unhooking Hannah’s gown, and she stepped out of it, glad that she still wore her petticoats to hide her shaking knees. “Perhaps he is ready to marry and settle down.”
“He’ll leave a string of broken hearts behind him.”
A string of broken hearts… Hannah felt an irrational stab of jealousy toward these faceless women, though she concealed it by stepping out of her stiff petticoats and making a great pretense of putting them away.
“I wouldn’t be too sure about Patience Broome.” Two could play at his little game. “I noticed Samuel lingering with the blacksmith’s daughter after church last Sunday.”
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Reiver frowned, but not at the thought of his brother’s interest in the blacksmith’s daughter. “How would you feel if Samuel did marry?”
My heart would break.
“I would be happy for him and welcome his bride as my sister-in-law.”
“Would you, now.”
“Of course. Do you think I would resent another woman coming into the family?” Before Reiver could reply, Hannah forced herself to smile sheepishly.
“Well, since I look upon Samuel and James as the brothers I never had, perhaps I would display a sisterly resentment toward the women they married.”
That seemed to satisfy him, for the taut lines of strain around his mouth vanished.
Reiver placed his hands on her shoulders and brushed her bare nape with his lips. “Enough talk about Samuel’s marital prospects.”
Hannah froze.
He slipped his hands beneath her bare arms, grasped her breasts, and pulled her back against him so he could whisper in her ear. “I want you to make love to me tonight, Hannah. And I’m going to tell you just how you can please me.”
She listened, red-faced, to his bold demands, but when Reiver stripped off his clothes and took her to bed, she did exactly what he wanted as her penance for loving Samuel.
Two days later Hannah and her children stood on the porch to see Reiver off to Washington.
He placed his hand on Benjamin’s shoulder. “You’re the man of the house while I’m away, so be sure to take care of your mother and little brother.”
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“And your little sister,” Hannah added as Abigail shyly peered at her father from the safety of her mother’s skirts.
Davey glared at his older brother. “I’m not little anymore! Ben doesn’t have to take care of me.”
Suppressing a smile, Reiver dropped down on one knee so he was at eye level with his two fractious sons. “Well, then both of you can take care of your mother for me.” He glanced up at Hannah. “And your sister.”
Hannah stroked her daughter’s downy head. An afterthought.
That’s all she
ever is to him, an afterthought.
Davey grinned in triumph, but Benjamin muttered, “No matter how big you get, I’ll always be older.”
“But Papa said I could—”
“I’ll not stand for any more fighting!” Reiver’s stern tone silenced them. “If your mother tells me that you’ve misbehaved while I was gone…” He let his threat hang in the air.
“How long will you be away?” Hannah asked. She thought of Samuel, waiting. Suddenly an image of Patience Broome, winding a long lock of spun-gold hair around her finger as if it were a prospective suitor, spoiled her daydream.
Reiver rose. “Two weeks, perhaps three. After I finish in Washington, I may stop in New York City for a few days.”
Patience, with her impatient green eyes, and Samuel…
“I thought I’d investigate the possibility of opening a sales office there,”
Reiver went on, his eyes scanning Hartford Road. Then he turned to Hannah.
“Well, the stage should be coming any minute, so I had better go.”
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He said his goodbyes quickly, even managing a pat on Abigail’s head.
Benjamin grabbed his father’s bags, one in each hand, causing Davey to try to wrest one away.
“What did I just say to you two about fighting?” At their father’s bellow, the boys halted their determined tussling. “Benjamin, you take one bag, and let Davey carry the other.”
Satisfied, the two boys each lugged their prizes toward the road, though Benjamin got there first.
Reiver stared after them and shook his head. “They remind me of me and my brothers at that age. Always fighting about something.”
“But you outgrew your childhood rivalries,” Hannah said, “and I’m sure Benjamin and Davey will, too.”
“There are some rivalries brothers never outgrow.”
Was he talking about himself and Samuel? Hannah held her breath.
Then he bade her goodbye again before following his sons down to the road.
Long after Reiver had gone, in the homestead’s quiet parlor, Samuel reached for Hannah. “I thought he’d never leave.”
She evaded his embrace. Samuel stopped and his arms fell to his sides.
“What’s wrong?”
Hannah hid her trembling hands in her apron’s deep pockets. “I—I can’t stay. I only came to tell you that we can’t…be together anymore. It’s far too dangerous.”
She would have fled if Samuel hadn’t grasped her arm. “Don’t run away,” he said softly. “Tell me what I’ve done to make you angry with me.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “I’m not angry.”
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“Annoyed, then.”
“I’m not—”
“Don’t deny it. You’re upset with me about something, otherwise you wouldn’t be keeping me at arm’s length with these irrational fears of discovery.”
A ghost of a smile touched his sensuous mouth. “If you weren’t, you’d be in my arms right now.”
She stared at the top button on Samuel’s shirt to avoid looking into his eyes.
“I’ve heard that Patience Broome is in the market for a husband.”
“What does that have to do with us?” Then he understood. “Surely you don’t think that I—” Samuel captured her chin between thumb and forefinger.
“Hannah, look at me.” When she did so, he said, “I do not intend to become Patience Broome’s husband.”
“She’s very pretty.”
“So are you.” Samuel’s hand fell away and he gave her an exasperated look.
“Who told you that I was courting Miss Broome?”
“Reiver. He said you were most attentive to her the night of the gala.”
“Goddamn him! I spoke to every woman that night, as I usually do, but it doesn’t mean I desire any of them.” Samuel drew her into his arms. “You’re the only woman I want.”
Even as Samuel’s impassioned declaration banished Hannah’s jealousy and doubts in a giddy rush, a more disturbing thought lit the fire of panic in her breast. She pulled away. “Samuel, I’m certain Reiver knows about us.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because after the gala was over, when we were undressing for bed, he acted strangely and said some very odd things.”