The Vow (8 page)
He wanted his mistress to have them, not his wife. The significance of his gesture was not lost on either of them.
Cecelia slipped them in her earlobes, then took Reiver’s hand. “Come upstairs. Now.”
“Where is your maid?”
“Visiting her mother. She won’t be back for hours.”
He grinned and followed her upstairs.
Once they were in Cecelia’s bedroom, Reiver flung the heavy drapes aside to let in winter’s cold watery light, for he wanted to see every curve and hollow of her supple ivory body as he made love to her, needed to watch her rising passion
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darken her brown eyes to onyx and see her rosy lips part in abandon. When he turned, he found Cecelia standing at the foot of her bed, one delicate hand curved around the turned maple post, only her bright eyes betraying her impatience.
He crossed the room and started undoing the tiny buttons running down the back of her gown, his excitement rising as he worked. When he was through, he slid his hands beneath the unsuspecting Cecelia’s arms and grasped her breasts, pulling her against him so she could feel his arousal through her petticoats.
“Reiver!” she gasped, and shuddered when he thrust his tongue into her ear, mimicking other intimate invasions to come.
“Sweet Cecelia,” he whispered, squeezing her breasts harder, frustrated because he couldn’t feel her nipples beneath the thick corset cover. When he released her, she was trembling and so weak-kneed that she had to grasp the bedpost for support.
Almost delirious with desire, Reiver stripped himself quickly, his skin too hot to notice the room’s slight chill, for the fire had long since died in the grate.
Cecelia shrugged out of her gown, but he became impatient with her slowness, so he ripped off her petticoats and unhooked the offending corset for her.
This time he wanted her to ache sweetly from his lovemaking so his passion would linger in her memory long after his departure.
When they were both naked, he tangled his hands in her soft chestnut ringlets and brought his mouth down hard on hers, his questing tongue possessing her and demanding absolute surrender. Cecelia complied with a soft whimper, pressing herself greedily along his length, her eager fingers clutching his smooth muscular shoulders.
He moved away, his hands cupping her breasts, teasing the erect nipples with the callused balls of his thumbs. As he squeezed and tugged he reveled in 64
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the way Cecelia arched her back in blatant invitation while she tried to stifle her moans and failed.
“Dear God, Reiver, have mercy!”
“Not this time, my love.” He replaced his hands with his mouth, sucking and nipping with wild abandon until Cecelia shrieked and almost swooned with pleasure. Reiver laughed in triumph as he swept her into his arms and carried her over to the bed, where he flung her down on the smooth scented sheets and dived in after her, imprisoning her body with his own.
Their mutual passion ignited beyond bearing, the lovers devoured each other with feverish hands and mouths, their rising groans shattering the room’s stillness. When Reiver finally took her, he turned Cecelia over on her knees despite her feeble protestations. Watching her voluptuous curved flanks bounce and rock with his every thrust and her hands clench helplessly at the rumpled sheets, he felt on the verge of exploding.
His head tipped back and he howled his own release just as Cecelia screamed his name and shuddered along his length.
Later, when they had slaked their desire with each other’s body, they lay with their limbs entwined beneath a cloud of warm, deep quilts. Reiver wished she would at least congratulate him on the possibility of fatherhood, but she didn’t and wouldn’t. Cecelia had put his other life with Hannah out of her mind.
To her, it no longer existed, and he had to respect her need to deny it.
Reiver propped himself up on one elbow and drank in Cecelia’s delicate loveliness, her heart-shaped face and rosebud mouth. “It’s getting late. I have to go.”
“Must you?” she murmured, running her small hands over his muscular chest.
“I suppose I could stay a little longer.”
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And he did.
On Christmas morning, while the rest of the family was at church services, Hannah took one last look at her gift to Reiver—the framed engraved portrait of herself that Samuel had done—before wrapping it.
She stared at it in wonder. Surely the beautiful woman regarding the world through grave eyes was not her.
When she had protested to the artist that he had misrepresented her, Samuel smiled enigmatically and said, “But that is how I think you will look one day.”
Hannah ran her fingertips along the smooth wooden frame. Is this how Samuel saw her, as a beautiful woman with such a worldly, knowing air far beyond Hannah’s limited experience of life? She didn’t feel particularly worldly or knowing.
A sudden bout of the nausea that had been plaguing her all morning—
indeed for the past month—sent Hannah running for the washbasin. When she finished retching, she rinsed her mouth and lay dawn for a while, then returned to wrapping her husband’s gift.
No sooner did she take it downstairs than she heard the front door open and the rest of the family came trooping in, stamping their feet noisily to shake the snow from their boots and mumble, “Brrr!” and “Damn, it’s cold outside!”
“How was Reverend Crane’s sermon?” Hannah asked.
“So boring I fell asleep,” Reiver replied.
Samuel laughed. “You have to learn to sleep with your eyes open, as I do, then no one would glare at you so disapprovingly.”
Mrs. Hardy said, “We saw your aunt and uncle in church.”
“Did they ask after me?” Hannah said.
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Reiver replied, “They bustled off before we could speak to them.”
“Just as well,” Hannah said.
James removed his hat and unwound his scarf. “Are you feeling better, Hannah?”
“Much better,” she replied, collecting coats. “I was sorry to miss the service.”
“If the Good Lord can’t forgive you under the circumstances…” Mrs. Hardy brushed some snow from her silver hair. “Now, let’s sit down to Christmas dinner, shall we?”
After a sumptuous feast of roast goose, the family gathered in the parlor to exchange gifts.
Hannah was delighted to see that James and Samuel were pleased with the wool stockings she had knit for them, and she in turn loved the leather-bound edition of Ivanhoe that they both had given her. But she nervously watched Reiver open her gift to him.
When he looked at the framed engraving, a peculiar expression flitted across his features and was gone in an instant, leading Hannah to believe she had imagined it.
He held up the portrait for all to see. “Look what my brother has done for me…a lovely portrait of my wife.” He bowed his head. “She has already given me the grandest gift a man can hope for.”
Then Reiver handed Hannah a package and kissed her lightly on the top of her head. “This cannot compare with the gift you’ve given me, but I hope you’ll like it.”
When Hannah tore the paper off, she found a serviceable gray wool shawl.
“It’s just what I need to ward off a chill on these cold days,” she said, slipping it around her shoulders.
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Later Reiver followed Samuel out to the barn. At first the darkness blinded him, but as his eyes became used to the dimness redolent of fresh hay and horseflesh, he saw his brother in the back, saddling his horse. The horse threw up his head and whickered softly, warning Samuel of someone’s approach.
Reiver stood before the stall, feet slightly apart, head lowered like a charging bull. “What in damnation did you think you were doing?”
Samuel fitted the saddle on his mount’s back. “What am I supposed to have done now?”
“Don’t play the innocent with me!” Reiver scoffed, the barn’s cold air turning his furious breath into clouds. “That portrait you did of Hannah…it doesn’t look anything like her.”
Samuel stopped and turned. “It’s quite an insult to tell an artist he can’t capture a subject’s likeness.”
“Well, you didn’t. You made her look too—too—”
“Sensuous?” Samuel tightened the saddle cinch. “I draw what I see in a person. I can’t help it if we don’t see the same qualities in Hannah.”
“Don’t mock me, Sam.”
His brother stared at him coldly. “You’re making something out of nothing in your usual thickheaded way. I offered to do Hannah’s portrait as a Christmas gift to you, and I captured what I saw. I’m sorry if you don’t like it.” He took his horse’s reins and led him out of the stall. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going visiting.”
Reiver watched his brother mount his horse in the barnyard and ride off, graceful and erect in the saddle.
Women swooned over Samuel’s looks and his attentiveness. Could he be trying to woo Hannah?
“He’s my brother,” Reiver said, dismissing that thought at once.
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He turned and walked back to the house.
Spring came early the following year, and Hannah felt in harmony with the season of rebirth, always so welcome after a harsh New England winter. Just as the maple and ash trees sprouted tight green buds, Hannah blossomed with her unborn child.
Round and cumbersome now, she spent her days napping and dreaming of a little boy sledding down Mulberry Hill, or she sat by the window and watched the world turn greener as April slid into May. It wouldn’t be long now the midwife had assured her.
The day came sooner than she expected.
A nagging backache had plagued Hannah all afternoon, and by early evening the dull pains had crawled around to gnaw at her belly like a starving beast.
She heaved herself out of her wing chair and lumbered across the parlor to where Reiver sat, his brow furrowed and head bowed over the account books.
She placed a trembling hand on his shoulder. “You had better send for the midwife.”
He took one look at Hannah’s face and turned gray. “Dear God, are you sure?” When she nodded, he jumped to his feet, almost sending his chair toppling in his haste to assist her.
If another pain hadn’t gripped her, Hannah would have found Reiver’s concern touching. But all she could think about was her upcoming labor and the primitive female fear that she might not survive it.
“Mrs. Hardy!” Reiver bellowed as he slipped his arm around Hannah and guided her toward the stairs. When the housekeeper appeared in the doorway,
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he snapped, “It’s time. Don’t just stand there. Find Sam and tell him to go for the midwife. My son is about to be born.”
“Don’t get excited,” Mrs. Hardy said. “He won’t come for hours yet.”
Hours later Reiver’s child still had not yet arrived.
Banished from his wife’s lying-in chamber by women determined to do women’s work without masculine interference, Reiver paced back and forth outside the door until Hannah’s groans drove him back downstairs to where Samuel and James were keeping a vigil.
Reiver circled the parlor, running his hands through his hair. “I wish there was something I could do.”
Samuel poured half a glass of apple brandy and pushed it across the table in his brother’s direction. “There’s nothing you can do. Hannah has to do this alone.”
Reiver grabbed the glass and downed it in two swallows, savoring the burn as it slid down his throat. He stared at his brothers. “What if she dies?”
Then you can marry your precious Cecelia
, said the look in Samuel’s accusing eyes.
Reiver’s gaze fell away in shame.
“Hannah won’t die,” James said, tinkering with a piece of machinery. He rose. “I’m going for a walk. Call me when the baby’s born.” And he left.
Reiver spent the next few hours pacing the parlor while Samuel sketched the brandy bottle sitting on the sideboard. Both men stopped whenever Hannah’s screams of agony filtered down.
Reiver regarded Samuel with desperation in his eyes. “This has been going on too long. I’m going upstairs, and they had damn well better let me in.”
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Suddenly the door flew open and James stood there, white-faced and panting, a lantern in hand. “Reiver! A cat got into the rearing shed. The worms…” Words failed him and he gestured helplessly.
Reiver swore loudly enough to shake the walls. He bolted for the door, his wife and child forgotten as he and James went running through the darkness, the wildly swinging lantern casting eerie arcs of light on the grass.
When he stormed into the rearing shed, the ominous silence seemed to scream disaster and made Reiver want to retch. Overturned trays, mulberry leaves, and dead worms were scattered all over the floor. The surviving worms squirmed in pathetic confusion.
He whirled on James. “Where in the hell is that miserable, useless Freddie Bates?”
“H—here, Mr. Shaw,” came a wee frightened voice from the doorway.
He looked around James to see Freddie, a tired-looking little boy of ten, standing there, quaking in abject terror.
Reiver was on the boy in two strides, cuffing him before he could dart out of range, sending him sprawling. “Damn you, you little idiot! What do you think I pay you five cents a week for, to sleep on the job?”
Freddie sat up. “N-no, sir.”
“I hired you to keep an eye out for cats and rats so they don’t attack the worms. So what do you have to say for yourself?”
The boy scrambled to his feet and dusted off the seat of his trousers. “I—I’m sorry, sir. I guess I fell asleep and a cat got in. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
Reiver took a menacing step forward. “When I find that cat, I’m going to put you and it in a sack filled with stones and drop the miserable pair of you into the brook!”