He grinned, his eyes sparkling as they roved over her appreciatively. “You’re still a beautiful woman, Hannah. Of course I’d want to share your bed.”
Now that Cecelia wasn’t here.
“We don’t love each other, and I doubt if we ever will.” She drew her hand away. “I won’t sleep with a man I don’t love.”
The light died in his eyes. “We can learn to love each other.”
“But I don’t have to.”
And Reiver knew why.
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Hannah adjusted her parasol and started back to the house. She fully expected him to explode and rail at her, but to her surprise, a subdued Reiver fell into step beside her, his hands clasped behind his back.
“I’ve been a fool. I’ve had a treasure under my nose all this time, and I’ve thrown it away.”
Hannah stopped and faced him. “What nonsense is this?”
“I suppose I can’t blame you for being so suspicious of my motives, but this time I am sincere.” He bowed his head. “You’ve stood by me, Hannah. You’ve borne my sons and. raised them into fine young men. You even adopted my illegitimate daughter.” He looked beyond her. “I can’t even fault you for the way you’ve run the mill.”
“Coming from you, that is a high compliment.”
“All I want is a second chance.”
She resumed walking. “I’ll have to think about it.”
“You’re the kind of woman who needs a man,” he said, his voice low and seductive.
She shivered as if he had physically caressed her. “I have my children and the mill. Why should I need a man?”
Reiver smiled slowly, his gaze languid. “Don’t you remember what it felt like when I kissed your neck and licked your breasts?”
Cheeks flaming, Hannah stopped and glared at him. “That will be quite enough!”
He just smiled. “Do you remember how you’d guide my hand to where you wanted me to touch you, and—”
She drew back her hand, but before she could slap him, Reiver caught it and pressed her wrist against his lips.
Hannah yanked her hand away. “Don’t you dare touch me again!”
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His eyes held a mocking twinkle. “But I like touching you. Your skin is as soft as Shaw silk.”
“Why don’t you go to a whorehouse and leave me alone? I’m sure they’d welcome your patronage.”
Reiver laughed, for he had been doing just that. “I had forgotten what a little Puritan you can be.” Then he raised his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry if I offended your great sense of propriety with my bawdy talk. I shan’t do it again unless you give me your permission.”
“That will never happen.”
Reiver increased his stride. “Don’t be too sure,” he called back over his shoulder, and disappeared down the path.
By the time Hannah got back to the house, her head was pounding and she felt jittery, so she went upstairs to lie down.
“All this talk of making peace…” she muttered to herself as she unbuttoned her dress. “This is just a plan to get the mill back.”
Reiver’s words echoed through her mind:
I’ve been a fool. I’ve had a treasure
under my nose all this time, and I’ve thrown it away.
Hannah shook her head. Did he really think she was so—so gullible as to believe such sentimental twaddle?
She stripped down to her chemise and pantalets and was heading for her bed when she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. She stopped and stared, wondering if Samuel would still find her desirable.
Even though she was a thirty-four-year-old matron, her body was still supple and slender, though her breasts were fuller—hardly a flaw in any man’s estimation. Hannah thought the tiny lines radiating from the corners of her eyes 312
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added character and maturity to her face. Not one strand of silver marred her hair.
You’re still a beautiful woman, Hannah
, Reiver had said.
Of course I’d want to
share your bed.
Hannah sat down on the edge of the bed Reiver wanted to share and placed her aching head in her hands. Uncertainty niggled at her. What if her husband really had changed? What if he finally desired her as a woman? Shouldn’t she give him a second chance?
“Don’t fool yourself, Hannah,” she said aloud, lying down. “That conniver will do anything to get the mill back. Even pretend that he loves you.”
As she dozed off she dreamed of a man making love to her again, but it was Samuel’s gentle hands caressing her, not Reiver’s.
“When are you going to surrender?”
Hannah surveyed the dining room, ravaged from the crush of Shaw Silks employees and their families who had been invited to the main house to partake of refreshments and welcome in the first day of 1857. “I wasn’t aware that we were at war.”
Reiver leaned against the mantel and smiled slowly. “You know we are.” He saluted her with a raised glass of claret. “You’ve been able to resist me so far, but I will win you in the end.”
Hannah pretended to examine the glass punch cups for chips, but inside she felt the tense foreboding of a wild animal who hears the hunter’s footsteps drawing inexorably closer.
Reiver had been stalking her. There was no other word to describe his calculated pursuit.
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She gathered her skirts and headed down the hallway. Reiver followed, ever the hunter.
“That shade of green is very becoming on you,” he said. “It’s too bad it’s imported French silk and not our own.”
“I thought the color complemented my jade pendant,” she said, absently fingering the dragon. This past Christmas Reiver had given her matching teardrop-shaped jade earbobs, another extravagant gift.
Hannah went to the front door and peered out through the sidelights.
“Where is Mercy? She’s supposed to clean up tonight.”
Reiver stood too closely beside her. “It’s New Year’s Day. Give her a little time.” He paused. “Why are you so skittish tonight, Hannah? Am I making you nervous?”
She turned, her taut nerves finally snapping. “I’m tired of your badgering!”
He raised his brows in affronted innocence. “Badgering? I think of it as courting my own wife.”
“I don’t wish to be courted! I want to be left alone.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute,” he said, his voice soft and low. “Every woman wants to be wooed with soulful looks and sweet compliments.”
“It’s too late for soulful looks and sweet compliments,” she replied, trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice and failing. “The time to woo me was when we were first married. I would have appreciated it then.”
“Don’t be such a crosspatch, Hannah. This is a new year, a time to look forward, not back to the past.”
I mustn’t let him wear me down
, she told herself.
I must resist him. I must.
Yet as loath as she was to admit it, when Reiver exerted himself, he could be damn near irresistible. Tonight, with the severe black of his frock coat 314
The Vow
accentuating his fair coloring and that sensual, teasing gleam in his blue eyes, he looked dangerously attractive.
Like a true predator, he sensed her thoughts changing direction and her weakening resolve. “What’s 1857 going to hold for us, Hannah? Is it going to be another year filled with the same bitterness and blame, or are we going to write a new chapter in our lives?”
She stepped away from the door and ran her hands up and down her arms as if to warm them.
“Cold?” he asked. Before she could reply, he set down his wineglass, grasped her hands, and warmed them with his own, his compelling blue gaze trapping hers.
Standing there mesmerized, Hannah thought of the coming year, another year spent alone in her cold, empty bed, another year of barricading her emotions behind a wall of hard resolve, and she wavered. What could be the harm in accepting what Reiver offered?
Don’t be a fool! a little voice inside her cried. He only wants his mill back.
Reiver’s mouth hovered perilously close to hers. All Hannah had to do was close her eyes and surrender.
The thought was like a dash of cold water in her face. She pulled her hands away. “I think I hear Mercy now,” she said. “If you’ll excuse me…”
She left Reiver kissing air.
“Just you wait, Hannah,” he said to himself as his furious eyes followed her retreating form. “I’ll have you before the spring buds start to bloom.”
Yet by the time spring came, Reiver still hadn’t won his wife.
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Hannah and Georgia sat in the private display room of Miss Zenobia Zola’s Hartford dress shop, sipping tea and admiring bolt after bolt of colorful Italian and French silk brought out for their inspection. Although Hannah had been feeling out of sorts all morning, she had promised Georgia a visit to the dressmaker and didn’t want to back out at the last minute, especially since James wanted his bride-to-be to have an extensive wardrobe befitting her new status.
Hannah fingered a soft blue slubbed silk enviously. “I long for the day I’ll wear a gown made from Shaw Silks.”
“Why can’t we make cloth now?” Georgia asked, holding up a length of flattering forest green jacquard against her and admiring the effect in the long pier glass.
“The tariffs on imported silk are too low,” Hannah explained. “If Congress would raise them, we’d be able to compete.”
Georgia sighed. “It’s all too complicated for me to understand. I just like wearing silk.”
Hannah smiled in spite of the persistent sore throat that was spoiling her afternoon.
“What do you think?” Georgia held up the forest-green silk, then a dark brown one.
Hannah assessed one, then the other. “Both accentuate your coloring, but the dark brown is much too drab. I think James would prefer to see you in something more colorful, like the green.”
Georgia’s face lit up with childlike delight. “I think so, too.” Then she frowned at Hannah. “Why does your voice sound funny?”
Hannah dismissed her sore throat with a wave of her hand. “It’s nothing.”
Georgia looked guilty. “Why did you agree to come with me if you’re sick? I could have waited.”
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Hannah smiled. “I’m not sick. I merely have a slight sore throat. And you need a little time away from Elisabeth. She’s a darling little girl, but she’s been running you ragged.”
“I don’t mind.”
Miss Zola entered the room carrying a contraption that caught her customers’ attention immediately.
Georgia said, “Is that one of the new hoops that all the ladies are wearing?”
“
Oui, mademoiselle
,” Miss Zola said. “By wearing one of these beneath your skirts, not only do you give them a graceful bell shape that the gentlemen admire, but you also don’t have to wear several layers of heavy crinoline.”
She lifted her own skirt to demonstrate the advantages of the new collapsible hoop that resembled a bird cage. While Georgia exclaimed over the ingenious new invention, Hannah felt herself growing uncomfortably hot.
She fanned herself with her handkerchief. The weather was so unseasonably warm for late April.
Georgia looked at Hannah. “Do you think we should get one?”
“Of course.” Hannah dabbed at her sweating brow with her handkerchief.
“We may live in a small town, but that’s no reason for us to be unfashionable.”
“You must be careful when you sit down,” Miss Zola warned them, “or the hoop will fly up in your face and display your unmentionables for the world to see.” She placed her hand on her cheek in an attitude of dismay. “Most embarrassing, no?”
Georgia giggled.
“And,” the dressmaker went on, “you must be careful going through doors.
If your skirt is too wide, you may become stuck, and the gentlemen will have to push you through. Most embarrassing, no?”
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Georgia squinted at Hannah. “Are you sure you’re all right? Your face is so flushed.”
“I’m fine. Now, shall we order some dresses and be on our way?”
By the time they finished at Miss Zola’s, Hannah was racked with chills that grew worse all the way back to Coldwater. By the time the carriage pulled up to their front door, she was so dizzy she could barely stand and had to rely on Georgia to help her.
The minute they stepped into the hallway, Georgia called out, “Someone help us. Please!”
Mrs. Hardy, who had been dozing in the parlor, scowled at them. “Quiet down, will you? It’s too noisy in here.”
Georgia glared back at her. “You selfish old lady! Can’t you see that Hannah’s ill?”
Mrs. Hardy hoisted herself out of her chair, her wrinkled face furious.
“Selfish, am I? See here, you snippy little upstart, I—” She stopped abruptly when she saw Hannah swaying on her feet. “Let’s get her upstairs.”
With Georgia on one side and Mrs. Hardy on the other, they managed to navigate the stairs and get Hannah into her bedroom, where she sank down on the edge of the bed.
“I—I feel so weak,” Hannah murmured.
“You go for Reiver,” Mrs. Hardy said to Georgia. “I’ll undress her and get her into bed.”
“Don’t worry, Hannah,” Georgia said, flying out the door in a flutter of ribbons. “You’re going to be all right.”
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That evening the family gathered in the parlor to await old Dr. Bradley’s verdict.
Reiver stood at the window with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out of glazed, unseeing eyes into the darkness. James sat with Georgia on the settee, stroking her hand, while the boys sprawled on the floor. Mrs. Hardy occupied the wing chair by the fire, knotting her fingers together in her lap. No one said a word, but the silence stretched as taut as a wire.
Finally Benjamin said, “Father, is Mama going to die?”
“Of course not, you idiot!” Davey snapped, punching his brother’s shoulder.