The Vow (11 page)
Hannah picked up Reiver’s lawn shirt and resumed sewing, focusing on stitching a small tear in the cuff so she wouldn’t be distracted by Samuel’s perfect profile and his calm, focused energy.
“If Elias Howe has his way, all women will do their sewing on his sewing machine,” Samuel said, “though I doubt that any machine could duplicate your stitches. They’re so fine, they’re almost invisible.”
Hannah stared down at her husband’s shirt. For all the times she had darned its tears, Reiver had never once complimented her on the fineness of her stitches.
“Wouldn’t such a machine put thousands of seamstresses out of work?” she asked.
“That’s one point of view. But Reiver thinks it could also help them do more work faster. And if seamstresses use more thread, Shaw Silks will have to produce more to keep up with the demand. More demand means more profits.”
“Reiver never mentioned that to me.”
Samuel said nothing, just set down his stick of charcoal and held his paper at arm’s length to study David’s likeness, but Hannah could feel the tension in him as palpably as the sluggish summer breeze stirring the leaves overhead.
“Are you happy here, Hannah?” he asked.
She looked down at the cherubic David, who started and suckled in his sleep, and she smiled. “I have two beautiful, healthy children, and I’m content.”
“And are you just as content with my brother?”
“He’s my husband.”
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Samuel placed his hand on her arm, forcing her to stop sewing and face him.
“He may be your husband, but I know you don’t love him.”
Hannah glanced at the house nervously, searching the windows. “Please don’t. Someone will see you and make false assumptions.”
He removed his hand with great reluctance. “No one will see me. Mrs.
Hardy took Benjamin to feed the ducks, and James went to Hartford to see about using belts to run his machines. Reiver won’t be back from Northampton until early evening. We can speak freely, Hannah, and it’s time we did.”
As he leaned back in his chair, with one long leg stretched out and the other ankle crossed at the knee, Samuel’s casual demeanor would have fooled the most suspicious observer, who would assume brother- and sister-in-law were having the most innocent of conversations as they enjoyed each other’s company on a lazy summer afternoon.
Trembling inside, Hannah forced herself to look away. “Perhaps we should not speak at all, lest we say something we’ll both regret.”
“I must,” he replied, keeping his voice low so as not to wake the sleeping child. “I’ve kept silent for so long, I feel fit to burst.”
“Samuel—”
“No. You must hear me out.”
Seeing the fire of determination in his ghostly eyes, Hannah sat still and listened.
“When my brother first married you,” Samuel began, “I accepted you as his wife. I welcomed you into the family as I would a sister.” His brow furrowed.
“Over the years I’ve watched you trip over yourself in your haste to please Reiver, and I’ve watched him treat you with nothing more than exquisite courtesy.” He paused. “Even giving him two sons hasn’t won you a place in his heart, has it?”
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She reared back in her chair, stung. “Reiver loves Ben and Davey!”
Samuel’s gaze didn’t waver. “I’m not disputing that. But does he love their mama?”
Hannah turned away. “I’m twenty-three and a matron with two children, not some schoolgirl of sixteen waiting for a Lochinvar to carry her off. Love doesn’t matter.”
He rested his hand lightly on her arm again, his touch as warm and vital as Reiver’s was impersonal. “You can’t fool me, Hannah. I just have to look into your eyes to know that love does matter to you.”
He was right, of course. His damnable artist’s all-seeing eye always read her mind and saw deep into her soul. As much as Hannah loved her children, they could not fill that empty corner of her heart left by their father’s indifference.
She bowed her head in defeat. “I can’t force Reiver to love me. I must make the best of what the Good Lord has given me.”
Samuel withdrew his hand. “That’s settling. No one should have to settle.
Life should be lived to the fullest and savored like a sumptuous feast.”
“Fine for you to say, Sam Shaw. You’re a man. Women have to settle. They have no other choice.”
“And what would you do if you did have a choice?”
Hannah cut her thread with her teeth. “I’m a practical woman. It’s futile to engage in daydreams.”
“Hannah, Hannah…” he said softly. “You’re not as practical as you think you are. Inside, you want a Lochinvar to sweep you off your feet.”
She said nothing because she feared he was right.
He added, “You’re practical because it helps you to survive my brother’s indifference. You don’t have to remember that he wasn’t by your side when Benjamin and Davey were born, or when you lost those two other children. You 92
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think that by filling every waking minute with raising your children and keeping house you can make up for what your marriage lacks. But you can’t.”
Samuel set down his pad, rose, and leaned his graceful frame against the tree trunk. Several gold coins of sunlight spilling through the trembling leaves above crowned his tousled hair.
He looked away, frowning. “I never was one to keep my feelings to myself.”
He turned, his eyes daring her to look away. “I love you.”
Hannah’s heart stopped and she balled her hands into fists. “You mustn’t say that, Sam. You mustn’t!”
“Why not? It’s the truth.”
“But I’m your brother’s wife.”
“Not in the ways that matter.”
Panic forced her to her feet. She had to pick up Davey and flee to safety before Samuel inferred the truth that would destroy them all.
“Don’t run from me, Hannah,” he said, without making a move to stop her.
“Please hear me out.”
The torment in his voice drew her back, and she sank down into her chair.
“I didn’t mean to fall in love with you,” he began. “It just happened slowly, over time. In the beginning I sought to make up for Reiver’s neglect by offering you friendship, nothing more. But as time went on and I came to know you…”
He shrugged. “Against my better judgment I found myself falling in love with you.”
Hannah shook her head in dismay. “Oh, Samuel…”
“Look at me, Hannah.” Again, he didn’t move, but compelled her to do his bidding with his voice. “I would have kept silent if I thought you didn’t return my feelings. Lord knows the last thing I want to do is open a Pandora’s box and
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destroy the family.” He paused. “But I know that you love me, even if you won’t admit it.”
She looked deeply into his eyes and tried to lie for all their sakes. “I don’t love you. You’re imagining it.”
Samuel smiled wryly. “Don’t try to be noble. Hannah. I’ve seen the way you look at me, the way your face lights up when I come into a room.”
Hannah’s cheeks burned. Then she panicked. “Have the others…?”
“Noticed? I doubt it. Reiver is too sure of himself to think that his own brother would risk his wrath by coveting his wife, and James thinks only of his steam machines. And if Mrs. Hardy suspects, she isn’t saying. Our secret is safe.
For now.”
For now…
Feeling like a cornered animal, Hannah rose, her long skirts brushing the sleeping baby, but not waking him. She knotted her long fingers together to keep her overtaxed self-control from shattering. “Let sleeping dogs lie, Samuel! No good will ever come of dredging up matters that are best left unsaid.”
He moved away from the tree, and for one horrible, thrilling moment Hannah feared he was going to take her into his arms. But he stopped just in time. “You’re right.”
She relaxed as the danger retreated into its hidden lair.
He said, “Do you know that this morning I was planning to ask you if you would run away with me to Europe?”
Hannah’s eyes widened.
“I could support us quite comfortably with the sale of my engravings, but I decided that I couldn’t bring myself to demand such a choice.” He glanced down at Davey, now stirring, and smiled ruefully. “I know you would never leave your children for any man, especially to live in sin.”
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“Even if I could leave my children, you could never betray your own brother. You’re too honorable.”
Samuel’s troubled eyes darkened. “Don’t be too sure of that.”
Davey spared her from replying by opening his sleepy blue eyes, struggling to sit up, then extending his chubby arms to his mother as if demanding that she choose him.
The choice was no choice at all. Hannah knelt down, picked up her grinning son, and hugged him, breathing deeply of his warm, clean scent. “There, there, my little sleepyhead. Mama’s here.”
She will always be here.
From a distance a small, high-pitched voice called, “Mama! Uncle Samuel!”
and Hannah looked up to see four-year-old Ben come racing across the lawn toward them, with Mrs. Hardy struggling to keep up. Tall for his age, Ben resembled Hannah’s own father more than the Shaws, with golden hair and a winning grin.
I wanted him to be my child
, Hannah thought,
but he is so like his father, curious
and bold. But Davey is mine, gentle and sensitive.
When Ben reached them, he said, “The old mallard tried to peck my hand, but I ran away from him.”
“Did he quack and chase you?” Samuel asked, swinging the boy into his arms.
“Yes, but I ran faster,” Ben said proudly.
Puffing hard, Mrs. Hardy joined them. “That little rascal is too fast for these old legs.”
Ben laughed and his uncle set him down. “I ran away from Mrs. Hardy, too.”
Hannah gave him a stem look. “That was very naughty of you, Benjamin Shaw. You mustn’t run away from Mrs. Hardy ever again.”
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“Yes, Mama.” But by the defiant twinkle in her son’s eye, Hannah feared he was merely appeasing her, as his father was wont to do.
“What are you drawing, Uncle Samuel?” Ben demanded, reaching for the sketchpad.
“Davey sleeping,” Samuel replied, showing him the drawing.
The slow clopping of hoofbeats and rolling of wagon wheels in the drive distracted them for a moment, and all turned to see the peddler’s wagon pull up in front of the house.
“The peddler! The peddler!” Ben squealed with excitement, the drawing forgotten. He tugged at Hannah’s skirts. “Can we see what he has today, Mama?”
Hannah smiled, for she looked forward to the peddler’s monthly visits as much as her son did. “Let’s see, shall we?”
But she suspected that this time, looking through the peddler’s collection of pots, pans, needles, and ribbons would not erase Samuel’s passionate declaration from her mind.
Later, after the peddler had departed a few dollars richer and Hannah was alone in her bedchamber, dusting the furniture and watching the late-afternoon sky turn an ominous pewter gray with an approaching summer storm, she found herself haunted by Samuel’s confession.
Hannah opened a window to let a cool breeze into the stuffy room. What had he said, that he hadn’t wanted to open a Pandora’s box? Well, he had. In a few seconds he had shattered the pretense of Hannah’s existence.
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She leaned against the windowsill and closed her eyes. How she wished he had never told her he loved her. Now that she knew, how could she spend day after day pretending that she was satisfied with her empty marriage?
She straightened. “You will do it for your children. No one will ever know about your feelings for Samuel.” She glanced at the bed. “Especially Reiver.”
Hannah listened to the first distant rumblings of thunder and wished her husband would return home soon.
When a train of the newly opened railroad line from Springfield, Massachusetts, pulled into Hartford an hour later, Reiver did not catch the stagecoach leaving for Coldwater, but instead went to Cecelia’s house, eager to tell her about his trip to Northampton, where he had spent the last several days learning from another manufacturer the intricacies of dyeing silk.
He knew something was amiss the moment he walked into Cecelia’s foyer and she did not break into a welcoming smile or fling herself into his arms.
He set down his valise and took off his hat. “What’s wrong?” Noticing her white cheeks, red, swollen eyes, and downcast expression, he took a step forward, intending to enfold her in his arms, but stopped when she stepped back. “Cecelia, why have you been crying?”
She dabbed at her watery eyes with a handkerchief and sniffed. “Come into the parlor, Reiver. I have something to tell you.”
“That sounds ominous.” He followed her into the neat parlor and stopped, watching her take a position near the fireplace. “Why are you suddenly treating me like a leper? You were delighted enough to see me two weeks ago.” He thought of their wild, breathless, bed-shaking lovemaking. “Ecstatic, in fact.”
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She took a deep, shuddering breath, causing her chestnut ringlets to tremble.
“Amos Tuttle has asked me to marry him. And I’ve accepted.”
He stared at her in disbelief. “I must be going deaf. What did you say?”
Cecelia squared her shoulders like a brave soldier facing battle. “I said, I’m marrying Amos Tuttle.”
“Tuttle? The banker’s son? Why, he’s just a whey-faced boy!” Reiver smiled and strode toward her, intending to take her in his arms. “You can’t mean it.”
Determination hardened Cecelia’s soft brown eyes. “I most certainly do.
Amos Tuttle has asked me to marry him, and I’ve accepted his proposal.”
Reiver stopped in his tracks and spread his hands helplessly. “Cecelia…you can’t. We love each other.”