Caroline took Hannah’s hand in hers. “I had received your letter, but…’twas so secretive, I dared not reply.”
“You were right not to.” Eyes dry of tears, Hannah breathed out a bitter laugh. “I am a fool. ’Tis my fault alone that I am in this position. I should not have insisted upon returning.” The last came out as a reprimand that she’d intended to keep silent. “I should not have allowed myself to look twice at him.”
Caroline seemed to cradle the tender confession, examining it in her quiet before her eyes slanted to Hannah, her question reverent. “Do you still love him?”
Love.
Those four letters curled through the air and into her chest, circling her heart until the truth she’d never revealed began to flow like water from a tipped pitcher. “In truth…I never stopped.” She looked up, claiming her cousin’s kind gaze and finding the strength to release the rest of her harbored pains. “I know I told you before—how my father said Joseph came to the house the morning after he’d discovered our sin, saying Joseph wanted to see me, but I’d gone out. My father told me Joseph had wanted to reveal to me by his own mouth that he was sorry for what happened, but that he’d come to realize married life was not his wish, that he didn’t want to be tied to only one woman. And though he cared for me, he didn’t care enough to make good on his promise to marry me. He wished me well but didn’t want to hurt me further by seeing me again. With that, he left and never came back.”
Saying it aloud made the past seem almost unreal, as if she told someone else’s story and not her own. ’Twas easy to relate it to Caroline. One who knew most of what had happened, she being a friend to both her and Joseph during those years.
Hannah looked to her confidant, the next words heavy, dragging like an anchor against the bottom of her heart. “I never told him about the child.”
Caroline’s light-blue eyes rounded gradually, as if her mind was slow to understand what Hannah had spoken. “You never told him?”
“How could I?” She spoke quickly, to relieve herself of the residing guilt as well as to remind herself why she’d done it. “If he truly didn’t care to marry and wished to move on, how could I tell him of our child, and what difference would it have made? ’Twould have only hurt me further, and that I could not have borne.”
Grip tightening in tenderness, Caroline’s gaze drifted down, her dainty eyebrows folding in the middle. “I knew something was amiss. Hannah, I didn’t believe it then, and I still do not.” At that, her gaze rose again. “He loved you more than I have ever seen any man love. The only way for you to be certain of his feelings—to be certain of what happened—is to ask him.”
“I cannot do that.”
“You would live with this burden?”
She shot back with more force than she wished. “Have I a choice?”
“Have you a heart that aches? Have you a mind that will not rest?” Caroline shifted sideways, her strong hands holding hard. “It might pain you to your very bones, but you cannot let the rest of this go unspoken. Not when he clearly still cares for you.”
Another breathy laugh popped from her chest. “He sees me as someone who he must care for during our mission—and I will concede that he…” Her words began to slow, but she pressed them through. “He is as kind and generous as he ever was, but I fear now that ’twas not for me he insisted on coming, but for Eaton Hill.” She leaned her head back with a hard sigh. “What a fool I was. I saw one path, and I took it. Joseph was right. I didn’t think it through, and now I am suffering for it.”
Caroline straightened, her features rising in polite contradiction. “You acted bravely and in the right. Do not belittle yourself so.” With a quick squeeze to Hannah’s hand, she stood to face her, as if to impede any additional streams of self-deprecation. “Though I understand you are upset over the spying, I still do not believe what you say of Joseph caring only for Eaton Hill. He cares for you Hannah. I do not doubt it.”
“Caroline, please—”
“I have never doubted that.” She spun away, her skirt whirling behind her as she circled in full. “Why must you keep so much inside, Hannah? Tell him!”
“I cannot!” Hannah stood, lowering her voice for fear the others belowstairs would hear her. “I have risked too much of my heart to once again lay it out to be trampled on.”
Caroline gripped Hannah at the shoulders, the soft angles of her face hardening with sincerity. “You may not have seen him for these many years, but I have. And never has he looked at another woman—”
“You can’t know that—”
“When he lost you, he lost the light in his eyes, the truth in his smile.” Caroline’s gentle fingers brushed down Hannah’s arms, and she took her hands. “Part of him died when he lost you.”
Hannah twisted away, a vain attempt to allow the words to bypass her, but they enclosed around her like a hopeful embrace as Caroline continued. “We do not know why he bought Eaton Hill or why he kept the truth from you, but one thing is certain, and that alone you must place your trust in. He has done nothing but protect you. Does he not deserve your understanding?”
“Understanding?” For a moment she neglected her volume. “What if I tell him I had a child? I never thought to see him again—I was almost certain he had forgotten about me, that he indeed wished to have other women, as my father claimed, since he never even attempted to write to me…” Her throat began a slow-burning ache. “If I allow myself to believe him good, if I even let my heart so much as peer past the wall I have built, that would be enough for me to unravel all the mending I have tried to do.”
“But you must give him a chance.”
“I told him I was leaving, and he did nothing to stop me.”
“Of course he did not.”
Caroline’s almost frustrated tone brought Hannah’s head around.
“Do you think he would force you to do something you wished not to do?”
“Well…I suppose—”