The Vow (25 page)
“Then take me with you.”
He shook his head sadly. “As much as I want to, I know you won’t go.”
“You’re right. I could never live without my children.” She drew away and covered her trembling mouth with one hand. “But how am I going to live without you?”
“Day by day, as will I. Your strength will help you.”
“Will you at least write to me? Let me know how you are?”
“I don’t think that would be wise. I’ll write to Benjamin instead. Surely my brother won’t have any objection to that.”
“Surely not.” With superhuman effort, Hannah pulled herself together. “I—I should go now. If Reiver finds me here, there’s no telling what he’ll do.”
“Wait. There’s something I want to give you.” He went over to his chest of drawers, took out a piece of paper, and handed it to her.
It was a sketch of Abigail.
“I made it just before she—”
“It’s beautiful. She’s laughing, just as I’ll always remember her.”
She ran from the room without so much as a backward glance.
Three days later Hannah saw Samuel for the last time when family and servants gathered in the parlor to bid him farewell and wish him luck in the California goldfields. She tried to draw on that strength he had always claimed she possessed, but inside, she was nothing but an arid wasteland.
When it came her turn to say goodbye, she pressed her cheek to Samuel’s, then hurried from the parlor.
212
The Vow
Davey said, “Papa, why is Mama crying?”
“She’s just sad because Uncle Samuel is leaving,” Reiver replied.
Never to see him again.
One cold morning in December, three weeks after Samuel’s departure, Hannah thought she felt him beside her, solid and warm, but when she awakened alone and shivering, she realized she had only imagined her lover curled against her.
She closed her eyes and fought down the bitter disappointment before flinging back the covers and rising.
Without warning, her insides clenched and waves of nausea sent her running for the basin. When she finished retching, she laughed for the first time in weeks.
She was going to have a baby.
Samuel’s child. Or Reiver’s.
No, she had always used her sponge and vinegar when sleeping with Reiver, so it had to be Samuel’s. She smiled. He had left her with part of himself after all.
Brushing her hair and dressing, she felt her despondent mood lifting. When she went downstairs to the warm, fragrant kitchen, where Mrs. Hardy and Millicent were chatting like squirrels and preparing breakfast, her benevolent mood even extended to Reiver sitting at the table and finishing a stack of griddle cakes.
He looked at her warily, for she had been decidedly cold to him ever since he banished Samuel. “Good morning,” she said brightly. “Mrs. Hardy, is there enough hot water for tea?”
213
Lindsay Chase
The housekeeper bobbed her silver head. “I’ve just made a fresh pot, but once that’s gone, it’s every man for himself.”
Hannah poured herself a cup and sat down across from her husband, who now looked frankly puzzled.
“You look happy this morning.”
“I am.” She sipped her tea, gazed out the frost-covered window, and watched the rising sun spread its fire across the shadowed blue crust of snow.
“May I ask why?”
She shrugged. “No particular reason.”
Mrs. Hardy ladled batter onto the griddle, where it sizzled and steamed, filling the kitchen with its enticing aroma. “I miss that Samuel. But I guess we’ll have to get along without him and face the future.”
Reiver’s blue eyes held Hannah’s. “Is that why you’re happy this morning?
You’re facing the future?”
“Yes.”
I’m creating a new life that will be part of me and part of Samuel.
“It’s for the best,” Reiver said quietly.
Yes
, Hannah thought,
you’ll forget Samuel as if he never existed. But I will never
forget him.
Reiver drained his cup, rose, and went to give Hannah a kiss on the cheek, but she ducked her head at the last minute and his lips brushed her hair. She wasn’t quite ready to forgive him.
Anger flared in his eyes, then disappeared. “I’m going to open the mill,” he said, and left.
Later that morning, after most of her household tasks were done, Hannah bundled herself up and went down to the homestead. James now lived there alone, but she was hoping to find some lingering trace of Samuel, so she went upstairs to his studio.
214
The Vow
When she walked through the door, she stopped in shock. The room had been picked as clean as a turkey carcass. His worktable, which had been strewn with sketches and engraving tools, was gone. Pristine stretched canvases were no longer propped haphazardly against the wall. The old settee where they had first made love had disappeared, doubtlessly sold to one of the grateful mill girls for a pittance.
All traces of Samuel had been eradicated as if he had never existed.
Tears sprang to Hannah’s eyes. “How I do hate you, Reiver Shaw!”
And then she smelled it, a mere whisper of turpentine, a remembrance of Samuel that nothing, not even Reiver, could destroy. Memories flooded through Hannah’s mind as sharply etched as one of Samuel’s engravings, and she laughed.
But her triumph was short-lived.
She was on her way back to the main house, picking her way carefully up the path the men had cleared through the snow, when a sharp, searing pain cramped her insides, stopping her cold.
Her baby!
Hannah staggered forward as another grinding pain sent her gasping. Then she felt the rush of her child’s lifeblood leaving her body, and she screamed in denial. She managed to stagger a few steps closer to the house before collapsing, leaving a trail like red roses in the snow.
Hannah awakened to the keening of her own heart. A few hours. She had only a few hours to love it.
“The doctor says you’ll be fine.”
215
Lindsay Chase
She turned and found Reiver sitting beside her bed, his brow furrowed and his face grave.
“Fine?” Her laugh sounded half-mad to her own ears.
Reiver stared down at his tightly folded hands. “Was the baby mine or Samuel’s?”
“I hope it was Samuel’s.”
“But you’re not sure.”
“No,” she uttered through clenched teeth.
Satisfied, he rose. “The doctor says you must rest now.” When he reached the door, he turned. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry, Hannah.”
“Then bring Samuel back to me.”
“Rest now. We’ll talk later, when you’re stronger.”
He waited two weeks before telling her that she had lost far more than Samuel’s child.
216
Chapter Eleven
He couldn’t put it off any longer.
Reiver found Hannah in the warm kitchen, assiduously rolling out the top crust for a dried-apple pie, her smooth hair hidden beneath a neat white cap.
He hesitated in the doorway. “You shouldn’t be working so hard. You should rest.”
She touched her forehead with the back of one hand, leaving a smudge of flour, then returned to her rolling without so much as a glance at her husband. “I can’t afford to loll around in bed all day. I have work to do.”
Work kept her from missing Samuel so much. Work soothed the heartache.
Work kept her sane.
“Let someone else do it.” He walked over to the table so she couldn’t ignore him. “Hannah, you’re killing yourself. You’re as white as quicklime.”
She dragged the rolling pin across the dough, tearing it. “I’ve lost a baby.
How do you expect me to look?”
“Would you come into the study for a moment?” he said. “There’s something I have to tell you.” And how he dreaded it.
Her mouth hardened into an exasperated slash. “Can’t you see that I’m in the middle of my baking?”
Be patient with her. “Your baking can wait,” he said gently. “What I have to tell you is more important.”
Eyes flashing, Hannah yanked off her apron and wiped her hands. Then she preceded Reiver into his study.
Lindsay Chase
She turned around. “What is it you have to tell me?”
“You’d better sit down.”
“Reiver, I—”
“Damn it, Hannah, sit down!”
She sank into the nearest chair.
Reiver leaned against his desk and gripped the edge. “I don’t know any other way to tell you this, except straight out.” He took a deep breath. “The doctor said you can’t have any more children.”
What little blood there was left in her cheeks drained away, leaving her as white as sun-bleached bones, her eyes wide and glazed with shock. Her jaw worked, but no words passed her lips.
Reiver knelt before her chair and grasped her cold hands. “I’m so sorry.”
She stared at him as if he were a stranger speaking a foreign language. “I don’t understand.”
He touched her cheek. “You can’t have any more children.”
“No!” Hannah knocked his hand away and bolted from her chair. “It’s not true! It can’t be!” Dazed, she took several steps toward the door. She couldn’t endure it, losing Samuel’s child only to be told she could never have another.
Surely God couldn’t be so cruel. She whirled on Reiver. “The doctor is lying.”
He swung to his feet. “I wish he were.”
She howled in agony, raking her nails down her own cheeks in madness and despair. Reiver swore, maneuvered behind her, and pulled her close against him, pinning her arms helplessly to her sides. Hannah screamed and struggled.
“Hush,” he crooned, even as she flung her head back to butt his jaw. “Easy, Hannah, easy.” In spite of the pain that made his eyes tear, he kept up wordless, soothing mutterings until her struggles ceased and she finally went limp with exhaustion.
218
The Vow
Reiver swung her into his arms and carried her upstairs.
He laid her on the bed, then mixed a sleeping draft the doctor had left. He turned back to find Hannah shivering and hugging her knees to her chest, her hair loose and streaming out wildly across the pillow. Her eyes were open wide but glazed and unseeing; her lips moved soundlessly in a conversation only she could hear.
“Drink this,” he said, managing to hold the glass to her lips. “It will help you to sleep.”
After Hannah drank, Reiver moistened a cloth and gently cleansed the angry red scratches scoring her cheeks like an Indian’s war paint.
“You needn’t worry that they’ll leave scars,” he told Hannah. “Mrs. Hardy will put her special salve on them and they’ll disappear.”
Suddenly Hannah’s vacant stare sharpened and focused on Reiver with such malevolence that he instinctively recoiled. “You did this to me!”
“No, you scratched yourself, remember?”
She fought against the powerful sleeping draft. “You didn’t want me to have another child of Samuel’s, so you and the doctor did something to me so I couldn’t.”
Reiver reared back. “You think that I…?”
Her eyelids fluttered, then closed.
Reiver rose, breathing hard, feeling as though she had just accused him of murder.
How can she possibly think that I would do such a thing to her?
The answer hit him like a physical blow. She had lost her mind. Reeling, Reiver staggered from the room.
Hannah heard faraway voices.
219
Lindsay Chase
“…Samuel gone, then she lost our child. And now I fear the shock of learning that she can’t have any more has driven her mad.”
Mad? Was this gray corner of her mind where the soothing snow quietly fell madness? She retreated, letting the snow envelop and warm her, but a second voice intruded.
“Your wife can’t afford the luxury. Her husband and children need her. No, Mrs. Shaw has had a terrible shock, but she’ll soon be herself. Give her time.”
Would she? Samuel was gone. She had lost their baby. And now she could never have another to fill the loneliness inside. God was punishing her swiftly and surely.
Hannah let the snow drift higher and higher around her until the voices grew fainter, and fainter, then died, smothered by the snow.
Reiver sat at his desk and watched the snow fall listlessly outside his window. He tried to concentrate on his accounts, but he couldn’t stop thinking of Hannah.
Their lives had changed so much in the two weeks since she retreated into a world where no one else could follow. Mrs. Hardy now distracted Reiver from important mill business with petty, annoying household matters that had once been Hannah’s province. The boys fought constantly, as if their fractiousness could startle their mother from her waking sleep. And Reiver, who had always taken his wife for granted, found to his surprise that he missed her.
He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and sighed. He hated feeling so helpless.
A knock sounded at the door, and it opened to reveal Mrs. Hardy, her solemn silver eyes matching her expression.
220
The Vow
“No change, Mrs. Hardy?” Reiver asked.
“None. She just sits there by the fire and doesn’t hear a word I say. I wash and dress her as if she were a rag doll. At least the scratches have healed, so she won’t be ugly.” The housekeeper coughed. “Is she going to stay that way for the rest of her life?”
“We can only pray that she doesn’t.”
“She needs Samuel.”
Reiver searched her wrinkled face for any sign that she knew Samuel and Hannah had once been lovers, but saw only innocence.
Mrs. Hardy added, “Samuel always could make her laugh. Maybe he could bring her back to us.”
“My brother must have reached South America by now. There’s no way a letter could reach him until he arrives in California. Hopefully Hannah will be well by then.” His voice sounded unconvincing to his own ears.
Mrs. Hardy’s hand dipped into an apron pocket. “We may not be able to write to Samuel, but he’s able to write to us.” She handed Reiver a letter. “This came in the post today.”