So Pure a Heart (Daughters of His Kingdom 4)

At the door, she stopped when her empty hand reminded her of its lost companion. “Oh…I’ve forgotten my fan.”

“What was that, my dear?” Stockton cocked his head sideways.

She twisted and motioned up the stairs. “Forgive me. I’ve forgotten my fan. I’ll not be a mo—”

“Allow me.” Joseph stepped backward. “Where shall I find it?”

Hannah’s chest fluttered at the shielded love in his stare. “In the drawer of my dressing table.”

With a nod he bound up the stairs and disappeared into the room.

She turned politely to Stockton. “Forgive me for the delay.”

“’Tis nothing.” His response was airy, as if he hadn’t really heard her. And likely not, for the way his gaze still crawled up and down her frame.

Hannah glanced to the stairway, when panic drained all blood and feeling from her head and limbs. No. Oh heavens, no. What had she been thinking? If Joseph opened that drawer…

“Joseph!”

Gripping her petticoat, Hannah raced through the parlor and up the stairs, praying beyond hope he would see the fan and nothing else.

Halting with a jerk at the open doorway of her bedchamber, Hannah’s lungs heaved with terror as fear tackled her forward. She gripped the door to keep from losing her strength. No, no, no. Lord, no!

Back to her, Joseph stood motionless in front of the dressing table. His broad shoulders were drooped, his head slightly bowed.

Hannah’s hands went clammy, her breath shallow. “Joseph?”

He remained still, every passing second making her blood pound harder in her ears.

She tried again. “Joseph, I—”

“What is this?” He moved at the waist, peering to her over his shoulder, his voice deep and quiet.

Hannah swallowed, willing her strained voice to produce words, sound, anything. “I…” Her throat cut off her words. Lord, help me.

His face had lost a sheen of color, and his strong brow pinched low. Lifting the booties in his hand, he asked a second time, though now his tone was darker. “Hannah, what is this?”

She could neither think nor feel. The truth she longed to share was branded on the inside, and she yearned to show him her scars, yet somehow her lips had no strength to move.

His throat worked, and he looked down at his hand, finally turning the rest of him to face her. Gaze gripping like an iron vice, his voice cracked, and the muscles of his face flinched. “You had a child.”

Eyes burning, Hannah held the doorframe harder, the apathetic wood giving no comfort to her failing strength when by grace alone, the answer slipped free. “Our son.”

“Miss Young? Is everything all right?”

The clomp of Stockton’s shoes echoed up the stairway, and she turned to the hall, the effort it took to move and speak without weeping as painful a thing as she’d ever known. She smiled down at Stockton, where he’d stopped halfway up the stairs. “It seems my fan cannot be found. I shall go without it.”

He nodded, smiling. “Of course.” Hand extended, he waited for her to come to him.

Though her eyes burned with an unquenchable fire of grief and regret, she blinked away the rising moisture. She wished nothing else but to throw her soul at Joseph’s feet, reveal everything and beg him to forgive her. But with Stockton’s unfaltering stare upon her, she could not show the emotion that threatened to slay her soul—could not peer even one last time at Joseph as he stood beside her dressing table, holding the treasure of their child in his strong hand.

Lord, give me strength.

Descending, she took Stockton’s arm, and he led her down the remaining steps and out the door. She had to remind herself to breathe, but even forcing air in and out took strength she didn’t possess. ’Twas a dream. Or so it seemed from the way the world moved in and out around her, the way the sounds of voices and shoes and doors seemed far away as Stockton helped her into the carriage. All she could hear, see, feel, was Joseph. His hurt, and pain, and shock stabbed through her very bones.

The carriage moved, but she was too numb to feel it. Joseph had loved her that morning—did he still now? The memory of the lack of life in his eternal blue eyes drained more of her strength. He thought her selfish, cruel for keeping such a thing from him. And mayhap she was.

Hannah pressed a palm to her chest and closed her eyes when the paper between her breasts shifted, and she wrenched her spine straight. Her eyes sprung open. The note. A groan built in her throat, and she closed her eyes again to force it away. She had meant to give it to Joseph before they’d left. Oh! Hannah dropped her head in her hand. She’d failed. She was no spy. All the work they’d volunteered for would come to naught.