The Vow (44 page)
“As much as I love you, I can’t resume our affair knowing it will have to end.” Tears filled her eyes. “We have no future together, Samuel. We have to accept it.”
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“I can’t accept it, not when I’ve found you again.” Furious, he strode out of the parlor, grabbed his coat, and stormed out the front door, letting it slam behind him with a bang.
Hannah was just about to go after him when a terrified wail resounded through the downstairs.
“I’m coming, Lizzie.” Hannah turned and went upstairs to banish the child’s nightmare.
In late April of 1859, almost one year to the day that Reiver and Benjamin left for Japan, Martha Hardy died in her sleep.
Hannah stood weeping behind her black veil in the cemetery, clutching Elisabeth’s hand as mourners threw a handful of earth onto the pine box before leaving.
“Reiver said she would outlive us all,” she said to James, standing on her left.
He touched her elbow. “She was seventy-seven years old. She lived a good long life.”
Three-year-old Elisabeth looked up at Hannah out of wide, somber eyes so reminiscent of her father. “Is Mrs. Hardy in heaven, Aunt Hannah?”
“Yes, Lizzie.” Sharp tongue and all.
Hannah smiled at the thought of Mrs. Hardy confronting Saint Peter. “There must be some mistake, you old fool,” she would say. “I must belong in the other place.” But he’d let her in, anyway.
Davey swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand when he thought no one was looking. Hannah wondered if he was thinking of all the times Mrs. Hardy smuggled him cookies.
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As the family walked from the cemetery back to the main house, where funeral meats awaited the mourners, Georgia said to Hannah, “How are you going to tell Reiver?”
“I can’t. I don’t know where he’ll be, and letters take so long to arrive that we can never be sure if they reach him.” The last letter she had received from him at Christmas was from California, though he was sure to be in the Hawaiian Islands or even Hong Kong by this time. “I suppose he’ll just have to wait until he’s home to learn that Mrs. Hardy is no longer with us.”
At the mention of Reiver, Samuel’s back stiffened as he walked ahead of Hannah. She knew his expression would be dark and fierce, for ever since Hannah had rejected him the night he had returned from Washington, he seethed with a frustration that often manifested itself in a Mrs. Hardy-type cantankerousness.
When the mourners returned to the main house, with its somber black funeral wreath on the door and sepulchral silence inside, Samuel drank only one glass of sherry, then excused himself to leave on business for Shaw Silks in New York City. He told James to say goodbye to Hannah for him.
He was never absent from Hannah’s thoughts.
She spent a sleepless night, wandering restlessly from the window facing the homestead to her bed, where she tossed and turned. The following morning she told Davey and Georgia that she had to go away for a few days on business and scandalized her son by traveling alone on the next train bound for New York City.
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Hannah endured curious and disapproving stares in the plush lobby of the Union Square Hotel for three hours before she saw a tired-looking Samuel walk through the door.
She rose. He saw her at once and stopped, a look of disbelief on his face.
He walked up to her. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see you.”
“I just called on the sales office, and they’re doing—”
“I don’t care about the sales office.” She took a step closer. “I’m here to see you.”
Suspicion darkened the depths of his pale eyes. “I thought we’ve said all we had to say to each other.”
Hannah glanced around the crowded lobby and lowered her voice so they wouldn’t be overheard. “Is there somewhere we can go that’s more private?”
“Only my room.”
“That will be perfect, for a variety of reasons.”
Samuel’s mouth tightened. “Don’t toy with me, Hannah.”
“I wouldn’t think of it. Now, shall we pretend we’re husband and wife so the management doesn’t think I’m a woman of easy virtue soliciting its patrons?”
Samuel didn’t smile, just extended his arm to her and took her valise.
Once upstairs in his room, he closed the door and turned to face her. “Now, why are you really here?”
She clasped her hands tightly in front of her. “Do you know what I thought about yesterday when we buried Mrs. Hardy? Abigail and the child I lost that I believed was yours.” Her voice quavered. “I had them for such a short time, and then they were gone, lost to me forever.”
“Hannah, don’t inflict such pain on yourself. Please.”
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She made a dismissive motion with her hand. “No, I have to say this no matter how much it hurts. Back at the house after the burial, I thought about how we’ve been so estranged these last few months. I lost you when Reiver sent you away, and you almost died in that mining disaster. Miraculously, you were returned to me.” She shrugged helplessly, her eyes filling with tears. “Now I have the chance to love you again, and I’m just throwing it away.”
Samuel stood very still. “You said you couldn’t bear the thought of giving me up when Reiver returns.”
“I still can’t, but now I’m ready to live for the moment, because I don’t know when it will ever come again. That is, if you’ll still have me after the way I’ve treated you.”
“Oh, Hannah…” Samuel extended his arms to her.
This time she went to him without reservations, and when Samuel kissed her, she thought not of endings or consequences, but a perfect moment not bounded by past or future.
When they parted, Samuel stroked her cheek. “Are you sure? We’ll be betraying Reiver.”
Hannah sighed. “Reiver has always loved someone or something more than me and he always will. First Cecelia, then the company. I’m tired of always being second best.” She took his hand. “I may have the boys and control of Shaw Silks, but I feel so empty inside.”
Samuel hugged her. “I’ve felt that way ever since that day I left you.”
“Then let’s fill those empty spaces.
“My beloved Samuel.” Hannah took his face in her hands and stared deeply into his pale eyes that were igniting passion. She drew his head down toward her waiting mouth, and when their lips met, her spirit soared like a caged bird finally set free, and she welcomed his tender possession of her mouth. Behind her closed
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lids, tears stung her eyes at the sweet, familiar taste of him and the years of heartbreak and separation retreated to the past, where they belonged.
When they parted, breathless and trembling, Hannah said shyly, “I hope my body doesn’t repulse you.” How to explain to him that her breasts lacked their youthful high carriage and her waist would never measure nineteen inches again, even with the tightest lacing? “I’m no longer a lissome girl, you know.”
“Need I remind you that I’m no longer a young man? And I don’t have a hand, but I can still love you.”
Samuel’s reassurances notwithstanding, Hannah still felt awkward as he unbuttoned her bodice dexterously, his eyes following every square inch of exposed flesh. When he finished, he stepped back, and a blushing Hannah stripped down to her chemise and pantalets.
She risked a quick look at Samuel as she stepped out of the tangle of black silk on the floor, and caught her breath when she saw the look of raw yearning twist his handsome face.
“Your turn,” she whispered, her trembling hands helping him remove his frock coat, shirt, and trousers, leaving only his drawers. Hannah swallowed hard, for her fingers itched to touch his chest and shoulders, to feel the heat and smoothness of his skin and the hardness of muscle and bone beneath it, to inhale his masculine scent, but she held herself back.
Patience. She didn’t want to rush this after waiting so long.
Samuel whispered, “May I see you? I’ve waited an eternity…”
Hannah pulled down her chemise straps and bared her breasts, fearing the worst. She had worried needlessly. The look in Samuel’s ghostly pale eyes told her quite plainly that to him, no matter what toll time took upon her, she would always remain twenty-six.
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He cupped her heavy, warm flesh, catching the dusky nipple between his fingers and arousing it until Hannah became dizzy with the pleasure unfurling within her. She groaned and swayed, grabbing Samuel’s shoulders to keep herself from falling. “Samuel!”
“Do you like this?” he asked, his voice hot and ragged. His eyes never leaving her face, he performed the same erotic magic on her other breast.
“Yes, oh, yes. Please, more.” Forbidden pleasure, white hot and exquisite, seared through her like a jagged lightning bolt, tingling her whole body right down to the ends of her fingertips and toes.
“As you wish.” He grinned wickedly and lowered his head to draw his tongue across one nipple, then the other, back and forth, tasting her until Hannah thought she would expire right there.
In loving retaliation, she ran her hand down his chest in a light, teasing caress and came to rest between his legs. Samuel straightened and sucked in his breath with a startled hiss. “Wanton.”
Hannah’s eyes sparkled mischievously. “Mrs. Hardy was right. All you need is a good stiff—”
“Hannah Shaw, such bawdy language from a lady!” But Samuel was laughing even as he admonished her. Then he sobered. “I think it’s time you removed my drawers.”
“If I can,” she retorted. “They’re very tight.”
Samuel chuckled at that, slipping his arm around her waist and drawing her to him for another long, leisurely kiss. “We’ll manage,” he said against her mouth.
When Samuel finally stood naked before her, Hannah touched him, needing to prove to herself that she still had the power to arouse him. Samuel closed his eyes, shuddered, and groaned, moving against her hand.
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He entwined his fingers in her hair. “If you keep this up, my love, I won’t be much good to either of us.”
Hannah brushed her lips lightly against his mouth. “Then let’s make up for lost time, shall we?”
Lying in each other’s arms, they loved each other slowly, as if every touch, every sensation, had to be savored and stored away like some precious memento.
“I missed you so much,” Hannah whispered, her eyes filling with tears.
Samuel brushed a lock of hair away from her face. “There have been so many times over the years that I missed you so much, I just wanted to die.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
When he parted her thighs and entered her welcoming warmth, Hannah felt as though a missing part of herself had finally been returned. Moving in love’s ageless dance with Samuel, she let their passion sweep her to the heights, where she shouted his name in exultation, and made a vow that someday they would be together forever.
When they returned to Coldwater, they remained secret lovers, sharing trysts whenever they could, though Hannah dreaded the day Reiver would return.
As the months flew by with no word from Reiver or Benjamin, Hannah feared that her husband and son would never return, especially after the abolitionist John Brown was hanged for the massacre at Harpers Ferry in December, 1859 and talk of secession swept through the land like a raging fever.
A year later, when South Carolina seceded from the Union and Reiver and 388
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Benjamin still hadn’t returned, Hannah wondered if she would ever see her husband and son again.
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Chapter Twenty
On April 16, 1861, Reiver and Benjamin returned home after a three-year absence.
Hannah stood on the platform in the Hartford train station with the other Shaws, her heart relieved that her son and husband had arrived in New York City unscathed in spite of the long siege of Fort Sumter. Insurrection or not, they were safe. That’s all that mattered.
But every beginning heralded an ending.
Hannah exchanged soulful looks with Samuel.
We’ve lived for the moment
, his seemed to say,
and now our moments together are over.
They had both become resigned to the hopelessness of their love and stopped dreaming of ever being together.
“Isn’t that their train?” Davey asked, his voice devoid of enthusiasm, for he had thrived without the competition of his older brother and wasn’t looking forward to resuming his place in Benjamin’s shadow.
“Right on time,” James said, brushing his graying hair out of his eyes and yearning to be back home with Georgia and their third child, a new baby girl to civilize their boisterous twin boys.
The train slowed and finally stopped in a loud swoosh of steam and an earsplitting screech of wheels. Doors swung open and passengers poured out onto the platform. Hannah craned her neck, searching the crowd of unfamiliar faces for the two she knew best.
“Mother!”
The Vow
The familiar voice didn’t match the tall, lanky young man hurrying toward her, but when Hannah saw the near image of her father’s face smiling back at her, she recognized her older son. Enfolding him in her arms, she hugged him as fiercely as when he was a little boy.
He stiffened. “Mother, please. You’re embarrassing me.”
She stepped back, eyes wet with tears of joy. “You’ll have to forgive your sentimental old mother, but it’s been such a long time since—” Hannah’s eyes widened in shock when she saw the fine angry red scar running along his cheekbone. “Benjamin Shaw! What happened to your face?”
He touched the scar with obvious pride. “Oh, that…it’s nothing. Father and I walked right into the middle of a Chinese war.” Before Hannah could comment or swoon, Benjamin moved away to greet his uncles and brother.