She dabbed quickly at her face, and his suspicions were confirmed. Dear Lord, what should I do?
Before even a clear answer came, he spoke. “Hannah, I am so sorry. I only just learned your father was here. Had I known I would have—”
“Nothing to be sorry over.” She raised her chin, her tone brittle. “I should have supposed he would come when he learned of Ensign’s passing. Only I cannot figure how he might have heard of it. We have told no one.”
Joseph’s heart ached upward to his shoulders, cramping his already tight muscles. The need to hold her was too great. He reached out for her, but she swiveled away, as if she knew he would touch her.
He swallowed, sorting through a stack of responses before deciding on one be hoped would suffice. “Do not concern yourself. We can speak of it later.” He stepped backward to the house, knowing full well he would never let her out of his sight until she once again returned safely indoors. “I shall give you the solitude you seek.”
He turned but stopped when a fragile thread reached out to him. “Joseph?”
“Aye?”
The silvery moonlight reflected in her tear-moistened eyes, and it took every measure of strength, down to his very bones, not to reach forward and brush his fingers against her skin, to vow he would do all he could to ease every pain she suffered.
She licked her lips and darted her eyes away, as if she wanted to be sure they were alone before pinning them on him. “I…I have decided to leave Eaton Hill. After the ball.”
Struck in the gut, he tried to be pleased at the news, but instead his insides roiled. Wasn’t that what he’d wanted—her to be away from Stockton? The truth exploded through him with each thump of his pulse. Nay. He wanted her here. With him.
“Where will you go?”
Studying her fingers a moment, she nudged her chin forward. “I shall go to Caroline’s.”
He nodded, working his jaw back and forth as he gnawed on the emotions he resented. ’Twas right for her to go. Had he not stated such this morning? After a breath that brushed away the fog, he spoke. “’Tis wise to stay away until the conflict is over.”
Hannah tucked that stray hair around her ear and looked back to t
he graves. “I…I shall not be coming back.”
“Not coming back?” That familiar pang, one he remembered all too well, one he loathed and resented, breathed back to life in his chest after so many years of being secreted underground. “Why not?”
She shrugged a single shoulder. “I have nothing for me here. I see that now. And as the new owner will want to run the foundry and care for the land as he wishes—and with Ensign gone, I see no reason to return.” Lifting her pained eyes to his, her soul all but reached for him through her darkened gaze. “Do you?”
Aye, so many. A hundred answers flocked to his tongue, ready to fly across the vastness between them, at last to give life to the very thing he couldn’t say. Everything slipped to the background while his mind chased after the answer he knew he would never catch. Should he tell her? At last bare the burden he’d carried across his shoulders since the moment he and Ensign had spoken? But if he did, would she despise him even more—think him selfish for purchasing something she loved so well? Perhaps she would believe he did it only to get close to her, to force himself back into her life?
He cleared his throat, answering how he should, not how he wished to. “You must do what you think best.”
The delicate sinews in her neck jostled, and it seemed another rise of emotions consumed her, for she nodded too quickly and turned away.
Not since that day Philo revealed Hannah’s anger had he felt this depth of pain, this raw, biting agony that ripped him clear through.
He started for the house, mindless of the cold, looking over his shoulder one last time. Opening his heart was one thing. Offering it, another. And it seemed God was trying to spare him from more grief, for surely that was all that awaited him. And he’d had enough of that to last a lifetime.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The sun was reluctant to rise, as sleepy, it seemed, as she was awake. A few stars still sparkled around the edges of the perse horizon, where the pale light had yet to reach. Hannah tiptoed belowstairs, her thick wool stockings itching her legs as she hurried into the kitchen. She must leave before the men were up. Bending, she scratched the loathsome necessity. Irritating as they were, the stockings she’d knit last winter would keep her legs from numbing on the ride.
Snatching the basket of day-old cakes, she covered them with a cloth and rested her swiftly penned note beside it. So consumed she’d been since her father’s abrupt arrival and Joseph’s tenderness last eve at the graves, sleep refused to beguile her. And though she knew she could not yet leave for good, she must do this. Now.
A sound creaked from above, and she froze. Joseph was the last person she wished to see. Though somehow, he was the only person her mind seemed able to fix upon. She swallowed and looked upstairs, one part of her wishing for him to enter the kitchen and plead with her not to go, the other wanting never to see him again.
Sure at last that no one descended to meet her, she slipped out the door and dashed across the yard. Twenty miles on horseback—alone—was nothing when the company of Caroline was the only remedy for what ailed her.
When the horse was saddled, she mounted and exited through the back of the barn, lest Joseph had awoken and come down to the kitchen in the few minutes since her leaving. If he saw her, he would no doubt attempt to stop her, perhaps might even follow once her note was discovered. He would be livid. But that was an inevitability she was willing to endure for a few moments with her cousin.
Winter’s grip tightened around her, as did the reality of her impetuous act. Joseph would be right to be upset when he learned of where she’d gone. Traveling to Sandwich was foolhardy. But was not all of it? Spying, scribing…allowing her spirit to once more fit itself alongside the man she was supposed to have long since forgotten?
With a quiet “yaw” and firm kick, Hannah raced along the snow-covered road, part of her alive in a way it had not been in so very long. But more alive from the solitude, than from him, she promised herself. Caroline would help her see more clearly. ’Twas a feminine perspective she needed—a listening ear and understanding heart. The ride would take only a few hours, less if the roads were more favorably conditioned. After revealing her sheltered aches, the secrets even her own heart seemed unsure of, she would begin the journey home and return before supper.