The Vow (28 page)
When she drew away, her eyes sparkled with happiness. “Goodbye, my love. Until we meet again.”
He grasped her hands and brought them to his lips. “Take care.”
“I shall.” She put on her bonnet, tied the broad satin ribbons beneath her chin, and drew the black veil over her face so she was hidden from him. Then she was gone.
He watched from the hotel window as she climbed into a carriage and drove away.
Now, standing at his bedchamber window and looking out into the black, moonless night, Reiver watched a shooting star streak across the heavens, then die, leaving only a memory of its brilliance.
Sick with dread and foreboding, he padded back to bed, wondering if he had seen Cecelia for the last time.
August found Hannah sitting in the study with tears coursing down her cheeks. Sniffling, she blotted her eyes with a handkerchief and blew her nose.
Grief shook her shoulders and turned sniffles into sobs.
The study door opened and Reiver walked in, startling her, for she wasn’t expecting him back from New York for another two days. He stopped and snapped, “Why are you crying?”
Then he turned gray. “Has something happened to one of the boys?”
Hannah shook her head, dried her eyes, and waved her book in the air. “It’s
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
. I’ve just finished the part where Simon Legree has poor Uncle 240
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Tom flogged to death.” Fresh tears sprang to her eyes and she rose from her chair. “I can’t believe that there are people in our own country who would be so cruel to other human beings.”
“Well, there are,” Reiver replied, loosening his cravat against the wilting August heat. “I’ve heard more and more talk that something’s got to be done to free the slaves. And that means war.”
Hannah stared at him, aghast. “War? With our own countrymen? Brother fighting against brother?”
For once Hannah was grateful that Samuel was far, far away.
He nodded absently and walked over to the window. For the first time Hannah noticed the dark circles under Reiver’s red-rimmed eyes and deep grooves of strain bracketing his mouth.
She set down her book, poor Uncle Tom’s painful demise forgotten.
“Reiver?”
“Cecelia Tuttle is dead.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said she’s
dead
, damn you!”
The vehemence of his outburst made Hannah flinch and she turned away.
The beautiful Cecelia, her rival, now dead…images flowed unbidden into Hannah’s mind: Cecelia at the dinner party, vivacious and charming, Reiver lying on the hallway floor after Amos Tuttle had shot him, and poor Benjamin coming home crying from school in the shameful aftermath of his father’s infidelity.
Seven years had passed since Reiver broke off his affair with her, and now she was dead.
Hannah turned back to her husband. “What happened?” she said gently.
“Was she ill?”
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“No. She died in childbirth.”
“How horrible.” Hannah shook her head. Though the woman had caused her much heartache, Hannah felt nothing but pity and sadness for her now. She knew how devastated she would be if Samuel died. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll fetch you a glass of cold cider.”
He nodded numbly and sat down.
When Hannah returned with a tankard of cider, she found Reiver cradling his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking with muted sobs. He raised his head to look at her. Reiver had never been good looking, but now grief distorted his features into homeliness. He took the proffered cider with trembling hands and gulped it down without once pausing for breath.
He set the empty tankard down. “I loved her.”
His careless words slit like a blade reopening an old wound. “Reiver, I’m sorry that Mrs. Tuttle is dead, but I think it’s rather callous of you to make such an admission to your own wife! Let’s leave her in the past where she belongs, shall we?”
“I can’t.”
Long-slumbering anger and resentment awoke deep in Hannah’s breast. “If you have any consideration for my feelings, you will.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand. There are…things about me and Cecelia that I must tell you.”
“Well, I don’t wish to know them.” Her head held high, Hannah whirled on her heel and marched to the study door. Reiver’s wail of anguish brought her up short.
“Please, Hannah! You must listen to me. I’m begging you.”
She turned to stare at him in puzzlement. Reiver never begged; he commanded and expected to be obeyed. She hesitated. What could be the harm 242
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in listening to her husband ramble on about his late mistress? Surely she could put her own feelings aside to ease his pain.
She walked over to the chair opposite him and sat down.
He smiled wanly and rested his elbows on his knees. “Cecelia died giving birth to my child.”
In spite of the sweltering heat, a bone-chilling coldness stole through Hannah. She rose calmly and stood behind her chair as if she needed a physical barrier between herself and her husband.
She grasped the back of the chair so hard, she thought her knuckles would pierce the skin. “
Your
child?”
His gaze slid to the carpet and he nodded.
“How do you know this child is yours?” she asked with a deceptive calmness. “For that to be true, you and Cecelia would still have to be—”
“Lovers.”
And then Hannah understood all too well. “I see. So these trips you’ve been making to New York City all this time…they haven’t been to visit the sales office.
You’ve been meeting Cecelia secretly.”
“They were to conduct business. But also to see her.”
“And what of her husband? After all this time poor Mr. Tuttle never suspected anything?”
“Never. We were very careful.”
A knot of bitter loathing uncurled in Hannah’s belly. “You sanctimonious, hypocritical bastard! All the while you were condemning my love for Samuel, you were carrying on with your mistress!”
He stared at her, his cheeks flushed with a rare display of shame.
Knees wobbling, Hannah staggered over to the open window and breathed in great gulps of the tepid summer air to keep herself from collapsing.
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Reiver rose. “Don’t you see! I couldn’t help myself! I’ve always loved her, and she’s always loved me. I couldn’t give her up. We had to be together.”
Hannah whirled around, mimicking him savagely. “Don’t you see? I couldn’t help myself! I loved Samuel and he loved me. I couldn’t give him up, either. I had to be with him, but you sent him away.”
“I suppose I deserve that.”
“I’ve heard quite enough.” Hannah started to make good her escape, but Reiver blocked her path.
“You said you’d listen.”
“What is there for me to hear? You’ve just told me that you’ve fathered an illegitimate child by your mistress. I’m sure I’ll endure this scandal just as I endured the previous one.”
“Please listen. The situation is much more complicated.”
Hannah hesitated.
“While Cecelia lay dying of childbed fever she told Tuttle that the child was mine. You recall the telegram that arrived for me several days ago? It was from Tuttle, informing me that he wanted to see me; that’s why I went to New York.
“I was reluctant to go at first. He had already shot me once, and I wasn’t eager to repeat the experience.”
“I can hardly blame him now, can you?” Hannah snapped.
Self-righteous anger flared briefly in Reiver’s eyes, then died. “No, I suppose I can’t. But when I got there, all I found was a broken man, grieving for his wife.
He had the nurse show me my daughter.”
Hannah’s blood stopped in her veins. Cecelia had given Reiver a daughter.
Suddenly Reiver smiled, a great warmth and tenderness suffusing his sad expression. “She is so beautiful, Hannah, so perfect. She has the biggest blue eyes you ever saw. Right now she’s as bald as an egg, but—”
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Hannah drew back her arm and slapped him with all her strength. She watched with grim satisfaction as his head jerked to the side, his body recoiling from the blow.
“That’s for Abigail.”
Rage simmered Reiver’s eyes to a dark blue as he recovered, cradling his stinging cheek in one hand, but he made no move to retaliate.
Hannah clutched at her skirts to keep from striking him again. “I don’t want to hear one more word about your little bastard, do you hear me? Not one word!
After the despicable way you treated your own daughter, never giving her one little crumb of affection…” She trembled. “I wish Amos Tuttle had killed you.”
She made an attempt to brush past Reiver, but he caught her wrist. “Tuttle won’t have anything to do with her.” He took a deep breath. “She is my own flesh and blood, Hannah, and I want to raise her in this house, as a Shaw.”
The cold, deadly calm returned, giving Hannah strength. “What you’re saying is that you expect me to raise your bastard as if she were my own. Well, I will not!”
“Hannah,” he murmured, his voice cajoling, “she is so tiny, so helpless. Once you see her, I know you’ll fall in love with her. Surely you won’t blame an innocent babe for its parents’ sins.”
“I had a daughter and she died. I will not raise your bastard to take her place.”
“If I don’t take her, Tuttle is threatening to send her to a foundling home.”
“Then install a nurse in a little house somewhere and let her raise it.”
“I don’t want my daughter to be raised by strangers. I want her to know her father and her half-brothers, to never feel the scorn of illegitimacy.”
“You should have thought of that before you resumed your liaison with your mistress. Quite frankly I don’t care what happens to her child.”
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His eyes narrowed and hardened into blue glass. “This is my house, and my word is law. If I wish to do this, you won’t stop me, Hannah. I can make life deuced uncomfortable for you if you don’t agree.” He let his blatantly sexual gaze rake her up and down.
Hannah raised her chin a stubborn notch. “I swear to God that I’ll go to Samuel and leave you with three children to raise.”
Her threat took him aback for a moment, then he dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “You’re bluffing. If you wouldn’t leave the boys to run off with my brother, you won’t leave them now.”
“They were younger then. Now that they’re old enough to understand…”
She bared her teeth in a ghastly parody of a smile. “I wonder how long your own sons will hold their father in such high regard when they learn that he drove their mother away?”
The blood drained from Reiver’s face, making the print of Hannah’s hand stand out in bright crimson relief. “You wouldn’t do that to your own children.
You couldn’t be so heartless.”
“Don’t test me, Reiver.”
And without another word, she flew out of the study.
This time he knew better than to try to stop her.
She had to get away.
Hannah left the house and walked faster and faster. She resented the hot, placid day, with nary a breeze to stir the listless leaves. Her rage demanded a wild, howling storm with scudding black clouds that conquered the sun and a high wind to break the trees’ backs.
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She didn’t stop until she reached Nate’s tobacco field. Unmindful of the sun beating down on her bare head, Hannah sat on the stone wall and looked out over the tobacco plants. She cried herself dry, then wiped her wet cheeks with the back of her hand.
She remembered the day an eternity ago when Amos Tuttle had shot Reiver and Hannah had learned of her husband’s infidelity. Humiliated and furious, her emotions in turmoil, she had come back to this field to decide her future. And that’s where Samuel had found her.
If she closed her eyes, she could feel his arm tightening about her waist so he could lift her into the saddle, and the hardness of his body against her back. She had kissed him defiantly, and he had returned that kiss against his will. Hannah moistened her lips as if she could still taste him, but there was only the whisper of a memory.
She sighed. Dreams were all well and good, but she had to contend with the present.
“What am I going to do?”
She knew she couldn’t stop Reiver. He wanted his child to be raised as a Shaw and he expected Hannah to comply with his wishes like a dutiful wife. But she couldn’t, not after the way he had treated Abigail. And what about Benjamin and Davey? What would happen to them if this child replaced them in their father’s affections?
Hannah rubbed her arms, feeling suddenly cold in spite of the heat. She frowned. There had to be something she could do to thwart Reiver. She rested her chin in her hand and stared at the horizon as if she could find the answer written there.
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Half an hour later she smiled in triumph and slid off the stone wall. This time there was no Samuel riding down the road like a white knight to comfort her. She was alone, and she prayed for the courage to fight her husband.
Along the western horizon, black clouds gathered like a flock of crows.
Perhaps Hannah would have her storm after all.
She found Reiver still in his study, seated at his desk and pressing the heels of his hands into his tired eyes. He looked up expectantly.
Hannah closed the door and faced him. “I will agree to raise your daughter—”
“Hannah, I don’t know what to say.” He sprang to his feet, his eager face alight with a mixture of relief and gratitude, and started toward her, his hands extended. “I knew you couldn’t abandon a helpless infant.”
She stepped back and raised her hand to ward him off. “I haven’t finished.”
Reiver stopped, his expression darkening with suspicion. “As I started to say, I will agree to raise your daughter. But on two conditions.”