The Vow (47 page)
Hannah crossed her arms. “I’m still numb inside from the shock. Reiver and I may have had a stormy marriage, but now that he’s dead, I find that I miss him.” She smiled wanly. “Odd, isn’t it?”
“No, not at all.” Samuel stood there quietly for a moment. “Reiver’s death is going to cause so much change in your life.”
“It’s still too soon for me to even think about it.”
His pale eyes regarded her somberly. “Do you know what my first thought was this morning? That now you and I are finally free to be together. Then this terrible feeling of guilt overpowered me, and I wept for my brother.”
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Hannah went to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve had the same thoughts, but it’s still too soon. We have to finish grieving for Reiver before we can start thinking about spending the rest of our lives together.”
Samuel hugged her. “You’re right.” Then he extended his arm and escorted her out of the studio. “I think the time is right for me to go to Washington and make another bid for a higher tariff.”
The mill…how it eased her pain and fortified her.
“But there’s a war going on.”
Samuel’s eyes shone. “Exactly. The government needs money desperately to pay for it. Well, we manufacturers are going to tell the government that we can’t afford to pay unless we receive protection from foreign competition in the form of war duties.”
The mill is getting into his blood, too
, Hannah thought.
When they reached the dining room, Samuel searched through his papers.
“You’ve heard of the Cobden Treaty?”
“That was the treaty enacted last year allowing French silks to be sold in England duty-free.”
He nodded. “Mark my words, that treaty sounded the death knell for the English silk industry, but it’s only going to help us.” Samuel stuck his hand in his pocket. “You’re going to see an influx of skilled English weavers into this country, and when those English manufacturers fail, don’t be surprised to see their machinery on the market.”
Hannah caught his excitement. “We would be able to buy ready-made looms to make silk cloth and jacquards.”
“For a very low price.”
“When do you leave for Washington?”
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“Tomorrow.” Samuel hesitated. “I feel odd going so soon after Reiver’s death. It seems disrespectful somehow.”
Hannah shook her head. “Reiver wanted this tariff as much as you do. You must go.”
Two weeks after Samuel’s departure, Hannah was in the study doing accounts when Benjamin appeared in the doorway.
“Mother, I have to speak with you.” With his head lowered belligerently in imitation of his father, Benjamin strode into the study, closed the door behind him, and stood facing Hannah with his hands clasped behind his back.
Hannah put down her pen. “What is it?”
“I want you to give me the controlling interest in Shaw Silks.”
Dumbfounded, Hannah stared at him.
Benjamin’s blue eyes flashed with anger. “Father told me how you tricked him out of the company.”
Hannah tried to maintain her composure, but she couldn’t control her trembling hands. “I did not trick your father out of anything. We made a bargain fair and square.”
“You call that a bargain, Mother? That was no bargain. You swindled him!”
Shaking with fury, Hannah rose. “Don’t you ever raise your voice to me, Benjamin Shaw! Your father had an illegitimate daughter by his longtime mistress, and then he expected me to raise that child as if she were my own.”
“Any man would. She was his daughter. A good wife would have done anything to please her husband without asking anything in return.”
“You know nothing about it, so don’t presume to judge me.”
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Benjamin placed his hands on the desk and leaned forward. “All I know is that Father was stunned you could take advantage of his weakness to gain control of his company. His company, Mother!”
“And what about me? Did your father concern himself with how I would feel, forced to raise his mistress’s child?”
He stood back and dismissed her with, “You love Lizzie, so why would it matter?”
Hannah took several deep breaths. “It’s pointless arguing with you, Benjamin, since you’ve already taken your father’s side and refuse to consider my point of view.”
“Father would have wanted me to have the company. I’m his eldest son, and he taught me a great deal about silk manufacturing when we went to the Orient together.”
“You’re still very young.”
“I’m twenty!”
“Your father was twenty-five when he started the company.”
Ben glared at her. “You’re a woman. Women don’t run silk mills.”
“Well, this woman does, and quite capably despite the handicaps of my sex.”
Which were mostly ignorant men.
He clenched his hands into fists. “I want my birthright, Mother. Are you going to give it to me, or not?”
“No. You’re too young and you don’t know enough about this company to do your father’s memory justice.”
“Then I’m enlisting in the army.”
Hannah’s heart gave a sickening lurch, and she stared at him, stunned. “The army?”
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“If you’re going to cheat me out of what’s rightfully mine, I may as well seek a military career.”
Hannah thought of poor Artemus blown to pieces by cannon fire at Bull Run, and her blood ran cold, but when she saw her son’s sly, expectant look, she realized he was probably bluffing.
“Do what you must, Benjamin,” she said.
He glared at her before turning on his heel and storming out of the study, leaving Hannah staring at the open door.
Later, when her thoughts returned to some semblance of order, Hannah realized that Benjamin hadn’t said anything about her affair with his uncle Samuel. If he had known, he certainly would have thrown it in her face.
Reiver must never have told him.
Blackmail. Hannah’s son was blackmailing her. If she didn’t agree to turn over controlling interest in the company to him, he would enlist in the army and risk death.
Several days after Benjamin delivered his ultimatum, Hannah bundled herself up and walked over to the mill, where she stood until her feet were so cold, she thought she might get frostbite.
He was her son. She had a mother’s responsibility to keep him safe. And why shouldn’t he have his birthright? Reiver intended for his sons to have Shaw Silks one day.
Yet the company was part of Hannah, too. She had made it what it was today just as much as Reiver had. People depended on her for their livelihoods and she had a responsibility to provide them with decent working and living 412
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conditions. Why should she turn it over to Benjamin just because he wanted it, like some toy he insisted on having?
Hannah prayed Benjamin’s childish threat was nothing more than a bluff to pressure her. If it wasn’t, she would lose her son forever.
Two days later Hannah made her decision.
She couldn’t risk losing Benjamin. Despite her reservations, she would agree to turn over controlling interest in Shaw Silks.
She was leaving the study to find him when the front door suddenly opened, and Samuel walked in.
Just one look at his face told Hannah all she needed to know. Grinning, she ran down the hallway into his open arms. “We won!”
He swung her around and around. “We got it.” He set her down. “Do you know what this means, Hannah? We can make silk cloth to rival the best of France and Italy. We can make American silk manufacturers the envy of the world!”
Hannah hugged him again. “Congratulations, Sam. This is wonderful news.”
It didn’t make her decision any easier.
After Samuel left, Hannah called Benjamin into the study.
“Well, Mother?” he demanded, flopping down on the settee with studied insolence. “Are you going to choose the mill, or me?”
Hannah folded her hands on her desk. “Before we discuss my decision, there’s something else I have to tell you.” And she told Benjamin all about his uncle’s efforts to have the import duty raised. “Do you know the ramifications of this legislation?”
Benjamin shrugged, his boredom evident. “We’ll make more money.”
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Hannah rose. “Yes, we’ll make more money, but you don’t know how, do you? Or why? Your father would have known, and so do I.” She smiled sadly. “I must admit that in a moment of weakness, I considered giving in to your demands, but I decided against it. You’re too inexperienced.”
He turned livid, his scar standing out in an angry slash across his cheek, and he jumped to his feet. “You selfish—”
“Bitch?” his mother finished for him. Hannah raised her head proudly. “Yes, Benjamin, this time I am going to be a selfish bitch. I’m going to do what I want, not what someone else expects me to do. I married your father because my uncle wanted me to, but I am going to keep control of Shaw Silks because I want to. I know I can make it the success Reiver dreamed of.”
“Fine,” he snapped, “keep your precious company. I’m leaving tomorrow to enlist, and when I die, it will be your fault!”
“If you want to be childish, then I can’t stop you. There will always be a place for you here, if you should ever decide to come back.”
“I won’t.”
“Godspeed, then. Be careful.”
And always remember that I love you no matter
how much you hurt me.
He left without a backward glance.
Hannah stood at the study window, watching Benjamin shake hands with Davey before boarding the stagecoach.
“You did the right thing,” Samuel said, wrapping his arms around her and drawing her close. “Turning the mill over to Ben would have been disastrous.”
Hannah nestled against him and tried to keep from crying.
“In my mind I know that to be true, but in my mother’s heart…”
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“He’s a grown man, Hannah, and he’s been acting worse than a two-year-old. He had no right to blackmail you. Besides, he chose to go. He could have stayed.”
“Still, I feel as though I’m sending him to his death.”
“No, you’ve made a man of him in ways that matter.” He turned her around to face him. “Hannah, you have a responsibility to your workers, too. With someone as inexperienced as Ben running the company, what would their futures be?”
She sighed. “You’re right.”
“And you know he wouldn’t take your advice if you tried to help him.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t. He’d be just as bullheaded as his father and want to do things his way whether they were right or not.”
Samuel traced the curve of her jaw with his finger. “Now that you’re a widow, and your children—with the exception of Lizzie—no longer need you, will you finally marry me?”
“Yes, Samuel Shaw, I’ll finally marry you.”
Her eyes filled with tears, but this time they were tears of joy.
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Epilogue
They had dubbed Coldwater “Silk Town”.
I never dreamed I’d live to see it
, Hannah thought, leaning heavily on her silver-headed cane and surveying her kingdom from the top of Mulberry Hill.
She never thought she’d live to see the turn of the century, either, but here she was, an old lady of seventy-eight getting ready to attend the wedding of Lizzie’s youngest daughter on June 7, 1900.
Her eyes misted over with pride as she counted eleven long red brick buildings housing Shaw Silks. These days they didn’t make thread or ribbon but elaborate silk jacquards and velvets that surpassed any in the world. Not only did Shaw Silks have a sales office in New York City, but also in Chicago, to keep up with all their orders.
Hannah walked slowly across the crest of Mulberry Hill. Passersby tipped their hats and nodded respectfully at the familiar figure always dressed in pale blue Shaw silk, with her serene wrinkled face and snow-white hair always arranged in a chignon at the nape of her neck.
She stopped to talk to several of the workers’ children who were playing in the front yard of the house their parents owned thanks to low mortgages funded by their employer. Throughout the years, when many factory owners throughout New England were exploiting their workers for their own gain, Hannah held fast to her belief that workers should be well paid and treated decently, even if it kept their employer from becoming too rich. As a result, though the workers came
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from Ireland, England, Scandinavia, and Poland now, generation after generation went to work for Shaw Silks.
Feeling too tired too quickly, Hannah said goodbye to the children and made her way back to Mulberry Hill. Now five mansions surrounded by great oaks lined its crest, two of them designed by the famous architect Stanford White, a close friend of Davey, who was now president of the company his father founded. Benjamin, who had survived the Civil War intact to become the family’s lawyer, lived in one of them with his wife and four of his six children.
James had given up the Bickford farm and moved into one of the mansions when his beloved Georgia died of tuberculosis. He had never fixed another loom again and died in his sleep a year ago, clutching a faded lock of his wife’s ginger hair.
All of his ten children were scattered across the United States as if they found the close Shaw family ties their parents’ treasured unbearably stifling.
Hannah stopped at the main house and looked down toward the homestead.
She watched as a man came out and sauntered off toward the mill, his carriage and stride so familiar to her. For a moment she thought it was Samuel coming for her at long last, and her heart sang with happiness. Then she realized that it couldn’t be, her beloved husband had died in her arms of a heart attack fifteen years ago.
“But it won’t be long now, my love,” she said to herself. “Be patient.”