“Miss Young? Are you unwell?”
She looked up and gasped in surprise at Stockton’s sudden question. A small laugh she hoped would ease the tension did nothing but stir it. “Aye, indeed. I was…I was just pondering over my fan. I can’t think of where I might have left it.”
Giving the laugh another hopeful try, she shrugged and circled her fingers deeper into her muff, falling instantly backward to the pit that gaped behind her.
Joseph. Joseph, I am so sorry.
Perhaps if he had come back as she’d hoped he would those many years ago…if her father hadn’t shunned her and forced her from town…if she had told Joseph of their child.
Perhaps then all of this would have been nothing but a bitter dream and she would wake in the morning wrapped in the arms of the man she loved.
But ’twas not a dream.
And she could only hope the rest of what awaited her that eve would not crush what remained of her spirit. For the night had only just begun.
* * *
Joseph stared, his arms and legs heavy and numb. He tried to swallow, to dislodge the emotion that clogged his throat. But it wouldn’t move.
Again he lifted the tiny, soft booties, shock so consuming him he could hardly form a single thought but the memory of Hannah’s mouth forming the words he couldn’t believe she spoke. Our son.
Why hadn’t she told him?
He turned back to the dressing table and yanked open the drawer in full. There must be something else—a journal, a letter perhaps. Something to answer the questions that writhed through him. Privacy be hanged.
There, in the center of the drawer atop a folded cloth, sat something he hadn’t seen since that night ten years ago—something, to own the truth, he hadn’t even remembered. Though now that he looked at it, the memories crashed against him like a wave, dragging and pulling him under.
Joseph rested the booties on the table and took the ring in his fingers, the touch of the metal opening a sacred closet, one he’d locked but not forgotten. With this ring he’d asked for her hand. And she’d accepted.
He breathed out a soft breath, thick with hurt…and love. Not enough money to purchase a more fitting semblance of the marriage they wished for, he’d made it that morning. Rolling it between finger and thumb, a pain-filled grin pulled at one side of his face. How she’d smiled when she’d seen it, begging him to slip it on her finger. How she’d loved him then.
The stabbing he’d felt from the time Philo told of Hannah’s hatred of him throbbed, the wound never having healed.
But she’d kept it. Why? It seemed foolish to keep such a trinket that would only remind her of what they had lost, if she truly hated him as much as Philo had claimed.
Lost.
Joseph groaned deep in his chest and shook his head. To bury a child all alone? How had she endured such grief? If he had known, nothing in heaven, earth, or hell would have kept him away. Didn’t she know that of him? Was his unfailing devotion not so profoundly felt?
“Joseph?”
The deep voice from the parlor tapped at his shoulder, bringing him around and rousing his mind just enough to respond.
“Aye?” He paused to rest the ring and booties in the drawer and went to the top of the stairs. “Oh, Sackett.” He descended almost too quickly, needing to move his body and force away the blinding confusion. “The barrels are finished?”
“I figure we w
ill be done just in time to make the delivery.”
“Excellent.” Joseph slipped his arms into his greatcoat, enough anxiety in his limbs to give him the strength to run the ten miles to Duxbury. How would he ever endure the three-hour wait? “Stockton informed me I should make the drop alone, but you know that, of course?”
Sackett nodded, almost chuckling. “I’ve no trouble with that.”
“Good.” Flinging open the door, Joseph marched out with Sackett following, grateful for the weighty distraction. The delivery, the raid, and the evening’s ball were enough to keep his mind and his body engaged without combustion. But only for tonight. For tomorrow would come. And with it the realization that more sorrows lay between him and the woman he loved than he had ever known.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Aw, we’ve finally arrived.”