The Vow (23 page)
That day he had no trouble finding the fashionable Washington Square house he sought, one built of red brick with steep, break-your-neck steps and a doorway trimmed in white. He hesitated only for a second before ringing the bell. When a butler answered, Reiver handed him the note he had composed in his hotel room just an hour before, then got into his hired carriage and ordered the driver to wait at the end of the street.
He waited. And waited.
Just when Reiver was about to admit defeat and signal the driver to move on, the carriage door swung open.
194
The Vow
He leaned forward and extended his hand. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”
Cecelia gave him her hand, and he noticed that her fingers were trembling as much as his. “I shouldn’t have.”
“Then why did you?”
He hadn’t seen her in so long. When he thought of what he ached to do to her to make up for lost time, he felt as though he would explode.
She seated herself across from him and settled her wide skirts gracefully around her in a rustle of stiff crinoline. “When I read your note and realized that you were right outside…” She shrugged helplessly. “You always were my weakness, Reiver Shaw.”
He closed the carriage door and told the driver to drive anywhere, then he sat back and let his starving eyes feast on Cecelia.
“You’re still as beautiful as ever,” he said, staring at the chestnut richness of her hair, her soft brown eyes, her petite figure with its tiny waist.
“And you’re just as brash and devilish as I remember.” She smoothed her skirt with a nervous gesture. “Has Shaw Silks become the biggest silk mill in America yet?”
“I didn’t come here to discuss Shaw Silks.”
She raised her brows. “That doesn’t sound like the Reiver Shaw I used to know.”
“You’ve changed as well. I don’t remember you being so sad.”
“You are mistaken.” Cecelia’s smile was forced. “Amos is ever the generous, attentive husband, and the Good Lord has even blessed me with another child—
a daughter.”
He thought of Abigail. “She should be mine.”
195
Lindsay Chase
Cecelia made a move to rise. “This is madness. I promised myself that I would resist you. I never should have come.”
He placed his hand on her arm. “You came because you’re unhappy.”
“Why do you keep saying that? I am quite the happiest woman on Earth.”
“Are you trying to convince me, or yourself?”
She balled her hands into exasperated fists. “I am quite content.”
“Cecelia, if you truly were, you wouldn’t be sitting here, your eyes begging me to take you.”
He couldn’t tell who moved first. Perhaps they both did. Suddenly Cecelia’s arms were entwined about his neck and he was stroking her breast while his tongue plundered her willing mouth that tasted as heady as apple brandy.
Now, back home, he savored the brandy in remembrance and stared up at the hot blue sky. The day his daughter died, he had been making Cecelia his mistress and planning more trips to New York. He couldn’t help himself. He loved her. It was going to take more than distance and her whey-faced husband to keep them apart.
He rubbed the place where Amos had shot him and took another deep swallow of brandy. This time no one would find out.
196
Chapter Ten
“Mary, why are you crying?”
Hannah stopped on her way to the mill’s small library when she noticed the tears streaming down Mary Geer’s plump face.
“It’s my brother Jake, Mrs. Shaw,” Mary replied, keeping her eyes on the looms’ spinning bobbins even as she cried.
“What’s happened to him? Is he ill?”
“No, ma’am. He’s run off to California.” She sniffed. “To find gold.”
Ever since gold had been discovered at Sutter’s Mill last year, the trickle of people heading out to California dreaming of striking it rich had turned into a virtual flood. Every person Hannah spoke to knew someone who had joined the
“forty-niners”—the blacksmith’s son, Benjamin’s teacher, the miller on the other side of town. Even Nate’s brother Zeb had deserted tobacco farming at the prospect of such wealth, breaking Aunt Naomi’s heart.
Mary added, “We’re all so worried about my brother. He’s taking a ship around South America. I’ve heard the storms down there are worse than hurricanes.” She took a deep shuddering breath. “And even if he gets to San Francisco, what if he finds gold and some claim jumper kills him for it?”
Hannah patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Mary. I’m sure Jake will be fine.
He’s young and resourceful,” was all she could think of to say.
After delivering new books to the library, Hannah left the mill, relieved that her sons were too young to succumb to gold fever. She pulled her black shawl more closely about her against the chilly October morning and walked
Lindsay Chase
resolutely, stopping only to pick a spray of bright orange bittersweet growing in wild profusion against a split-rail fence. When she arrived at the cemetery, she lay the bittersweet down on Abigail’s grave.
I still miss you
, she thought, tears sliding down her cheeks.
You weren’t perfect,
but you were a child of my body and blood, and I love you.
She thought of Reiver and how she could never forgive him for repudiating Abigail. He hadn’t shed a single tear for his child; perhaps if he had, Hannah wouldn’t have felt so alone and bereft.
But I’m not alone
, she amended.
I have Samuel.
And Reiver doesn’t know.
For the first time her betrayal of Reiver gladdened rather than shamed her, the thought of it bringing an overwhelming desire to pay him back, to hurt him as much as he had hurt her by rejecting their daughter.
Smiling, Hannah touched Abigail’s tombstone in farewell and left.
Hannah stared out of the parlor window at the first snowstorm of the season, watching the raw, blustery November wind drive the large flakes through the air like a flock of wooly sheep. In the hall Reiver put on his coat, then wound his blue knit scarf several times around his neck.
Hannah watched him tug on his leather gloves. “Are you sure you want to go to Hartford today? This snowstorm could get worse.”
“James needs those parts right away, and if someone doesn’t go after them, three looms will be down. We can’t afford that.” He settled his broad-brimmed hat on firmly. “If I get snowed in and the stage doesn’t run, I’ll stay in Hartford overnight.” He smiled. “You needn’t worry about me.”
Hannah went into the hall to see him off. “I won’t.”
198
The Vow
Reiver kissed her perfunctorily on the cheek, then lifted his scarf over his mouth and nose until only his eyes showed. He opened the front door, letting in an icy blast of air that swirled around Hannah’s wide skirts and made her shiver.
She waved goodbye, then closed the door quickly and returned to the warm parlor, where she stood at the window and watched Reiver trudge down to Hartford Road until the slanting snow blurred his dark, shapeless form into nothingness.
She waited until the stage pulled up, then drove away.
She stood at the window and kept waiting. Minutes later a dark form materialized out of the swirling snow, hatted head bowed and shoulders leaning into the wind, his open mouth emitting clouds of gray vapor.
Hannah smiled and hurried to the front door. This time when she opened it, she didn’t feel the cold at all, just the sweet warmth of anticipation.
“Hurry,” she said to Samuel. He climbed the front steps, stomping his feet to shake the snow clinging to his boots.
The moment the door closed behind him, they flew into each other’s arms.
Hannah pressed her warm lips to Samuel’s cold, stiff mouth, then sought to heat it with her tongue. His arms tightened about her in response and she could feel his arousal through his heavy layers of clothing.
When they finally parted, she warmed his cold face with her hands. “He’s gone. He won’t be back until late this afternoon, unless he decides to stay in Hartford for the night.”
“And Mrs. Hardy is still tending her sick friend?” His eyes roamed over her face.
Hannah nodded. “The boys are at school, and James is down at the mill.”
Samuel grinned. “We’re alone and we have the house all to ourselves.
Perfect.”
199
Lindsay Chase
She entwined her arms around his neck and kissed him fervently again.
“Perfect.”
They hurried upstairs, both impatient to undress and enjoy another sweet, illicit union, for they hadn’t been able to meet secretly for weeks.
When Hannah entered the bedroom she shared with Reiver, Samuel balked on the threshold, his jubilant mood sobering. “Why this room?”
“Because I need to make love to you in my husband’s bed,” she replied. “I need to repay him for not loving Abigail, and for betraying me with Cecelia Tuttle.”
Samuel removed his hat and peeled off his gloves. “But Reiver will never know that we used his bed.”
“I’ll know.”
He raised his brows. “Just when I think I know you, you surprise me.”
“Why? Because I’m capable of wanting revenge?”
“It’s just that I’ve never seen such a…calculating side to you before.”
“I’m not a saint, Samuel,” she said defiantly, plucking the pins from her hair and shaking out her chignon.
He watched her thick brown tresses fall down past her shoulders like a glossy spun-silk waterfall. “Oh, I know that, especially when you’re in my bed.”
She stared at him intently, as if measuring his mettle. “Will you do this for me, Samuel?”
He stepped across the threshold.
Later, when they lay naked beneath the covers, Samuel warmed himself against Hannah’s smooth, pliant body and kissed the pulse in her neck. The familiar surge of excitement made his blood sing, though the idea of loving his brother’s wife in his brother’s bed filled him with a strange sense of unease.
200
The Vow
He cast his reservations aside. Hannah needed him to do this. He had seen the desperate pleading in her eyes when she led him to this room. She had to repay Reiver in her mind to satisfy some inner demons, even if he never knew.
Samuel would do anything to lay her demons to rest.
And Reiver would never know.
Shivering uncontrollably, Reiver swore under his breath and shuffled through the snow. Over an hour ago and two miles back, the stage had glided off the slippery road into the gutter and broken a rear wheel, panicking the passengers and effectively canceling his plans to get to Hartford today.
Now he could see the dim outline of his house silhouetted against the fiat gray sky, its white clapboards almost annihilated by the thick, shifting curtain of falling snow. He smiled when he thought of dry stockings, a roaring fire in the parlor, and a cup of hot apple brandy to warm his insides.
Wouldn’t Hannah be surprised to see him walk through the door…
But when he entered the foyer, no Hannah came to greet him.
He listened. No light footsteps, no telltale swishing skirts heralded her arrival.
She must be in the kitchen, he thought, quickly shedding his hat, gloves, scarf, and coat and hanging them on the coatrack by the door. Then he removed his wet boots.
“Hannah?” he called.
Upstairs, Hannah froze and stilled Samuel’s exploring hand. “What was that?” When he frowned in puzzlement, she whispered, “I thought I heard someone call my name.”
201
Lindsay Chase
Samuel listened, then smiled. “It’s only the wind. Reiver’s halfway to Hartford by now.”
Downstairs, when Reiver didn’t find Hannah in the kitchen, he went upstairs, his stockinged feet making no sound on the carpeted stairs.
In the upstairs hall, he was just about to call Hannah’s name again when he heard soft voices.
Reiver crept down the hall toward his bedchamber, the floorboards silent beneath each careful, calculated step. The sounds continued, deep, masculine groans this time. The door was ajar, so Reiver peeked inside the bedchamber and wished he hadn’t.
Hannah lay in bed with another man, his dark head outlined against her bare white breast.
Reiver stood there, unable to believe his own eyes.
His wife and his own brother were lovers, just as he suspected.
Suddenly Reiver burned with blinding, white-hot rage. He flung open the door so hard that it ricocheted against the wall with a resounding crash.
Hannah’s eyes flew open and she stared at the doorway in disbelief. No, it couldn’t be.
“Reiver!” This was a Reiver that she had never seen before, a stranger with the livid face of doom and murder in his eyes.
“Bastard!” He was on them in three strides, his clawing hands whipping the coverlet away, then dragging Samuel off her and flinging him out of the bed. “I ought to kill the both of you!”
Samuel scrambled to regain his balance, then faced his brother fearlessly, unmindful of his own nakedness and vulnerability. “You touch her and
I’ll
kill
you
!”
202
The Vow
Without warning, Reiver swung at Samuel, sending his fist into his brother’s jaw with a sickening crack. Samuel’s head snapped back as he recoiled from the blow, crumpling to the floor, where he lay limp and motionless.
“Dear God! Samuel!“ Hannah screamed, bounding out of bed. She nearly reached his prostrate form when she felt her shoulder gripped in painful, punishing fingers, and Reiver flung her back onto the bed.
She lay there, trembling on her back, waiting to feel Reiver’s hands on her throat, but he merely let his scornful gaze rove up and down her body as if she were no better than a whore.
“Get dressed,” he snapped, “and get my brother on his feet. If you’re not down in my study in five minutes, I’ll throw the both of you out just as you are.”