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He tugged on the reins, pulling the horses to a stop.
“What is it?” Sure her emotions were buried once more, she looked to him. “Why have we stopped?”
His eyes trailed over her, and his brow twitched down. Reaching behind her into the wagon, he felt for something. “I fear you are becoming too cold. We’ve only ten more miles before we reach the inn.” He retrieved a large blanket and handed it to her. “This should provide a measure of extra warmth.”
She took the offering, careful not to meet his gaze or allow her fingers to brush against his. If only he weren’t so kind. This venture was rife enough with conflicting emotions. She needn’t the chafing cloth of his generosity to rub her raw. “Thank you.”
Unfolding it, she carefully tucked the heavy covering around her knees and behind her back, watching the thick snowflakes land upon her lap, as if the large white flecks felt the need to blanket her as well.
When the wagon didn’t immediately roll forward, she turned, and her gaze collided with his. She couldn’t breathe, and yet her heart beat a frantic rhythm. All the strength she willed to pull her eyes away betrayed her, keeping her face toward him. Sweet heaven, but he was handsome. The years had not marred him but enhanced his rugged appeal, adding to the steep angle of his jaw and broadening the shape of his muscular frame. Not only was he pleasing to the eye. He was kind, strong, and as sincere as he had always been. She felt herself slipping, a gradual slide that would gain strength and pull her down a never-ending slope if she had not the strength to grip her nails into the mound and strain with her might against it.
A painful throbbing pushed tears through the crack in her heart. What happened, Joseph?
Putting a tight smile to her mouth, she tugged herself free from the power of his stare and faced forward, tucking her hands beneath the blanket. Shielding herself from his arrows of sincerity with a curt nod to the road, she questioned, “Why do you wait?”
Again, he didn’t answer, his unyielding stare heating the side of her face. “Joseph, come now. This is foolishness.” She flung another look, and his arsenal splintered to pieces the shield she’d so hastily constructed. His eyes, as endlessly blue as a summer sky, seemed to cup around her, holding her motionless as he studied her.
Determined to keep herself alert by the hurt that pricked, she huffed a light breath. What right had he to stare—to ignore the vast chasm that gaped open between them? “Why do you wait? We shall freeze here.”
“Why have you not married?”
All the world stilled. Even the flakes drifted slower. He had not actually dared ask such a thing.
She blinked, her movements slow and words hushed by the disbelief that gripped her. “What did you say?”
He finally released her from his gripping stare and turned to the road with an irritated shift of his jaw. “Why have you not married? ’Tis a simple question.”
Pins pricked her chest and the back of her eyes. “I need not answer that.”
“I am in earnest, Hannah.” He twisted toward her again. “We are to be cousins—not strangers. I would know this of you and more if I am to have a ready answer when asked why such a lovely woman has no family of her own.”
Lovely woman.
Hannah lowered her gaze and turned away. What right had he to speak to her that way? To compliment her under the guise of only doing his duty for the cause they undertook instead of the honest truth of his curiosity?
Shame burned from the crown of her head down to her neck. She blamed him, but she was no innocent party. Deep down she’d wanted him to say everything that ripened on the air between them, for she hadn’t the strength to reach for the low-hanging fruit of truth. Such a coward she was.
Sighing, she knotted her hands beneath the blanket, praying she could douse her sparking emotions with at least a cupful of truth. “My need to care for my family took my time and devotion.” Which was true. Aunt Bea had always been of frail health, and after the heartbreak of losing the one thing that might have brought her and Joseph back together, Hannah had needed the distraction from her own woes by caring for the needs of another. The weight of memory pulled her vision to her lap. “And I suppose…I suppose I could not marry, since I did not love.”
“You did not?”
The rich bass of his timbre lured her face to his and she stilled. Not since you. Numbed by all that was unspoken, the words streamed from her mouth. “Did not you love? Why have you not married? I should know the same of you, should I not?”
His gaze trailed over her face, then drifted to the road. After a breath he straightened, reins in hand. “I never cared to marry.”
With a flick of the reins, they jerked forward, Hannah’s heart leaving a trail of crimson on the snow behind them. She clutched her knitted fingers so tight she feared her bones would snap. Neck cording, she made sure to breathe in long, steady strokes. All these years, she’d wished not to believe it. But so it was. Just as Father had said. He is done with you, Hannah. He is not the marrying kind. You had best move on and forget him.
* * *
Forget it, man. Leave it be.
Joseph ground his teeth. Such an easy thought for an impossible task.
Glancing to Hannah, he noted the pinch of her mouth, the rise of her chin. The woman had sat so rigid these days past he’d feared at every bump she’d fall from the bench.
Letting out a slow, quiet exhale, Joseph reined in the growl that nearly got away from him. Why have you not married? How could he ask such a thing? He hadn’t intended to of course, but the question had whirled so harsh in his mind that his lips had begun speaking before he was able to stop them. Though as he considered it, his excuse was valid. They did need to have their histories straight, or their quest would be over before it began.
As he stared at the white road ahead of him, the flakes dotting the horses’ backs as they walked, he submitted to the siren song of memory. Why she’d refused to see him after that night they’d become one burned like a winter bonfire, hot and high and fierce. Was it true what she said? That she’d never loved? He blinked, straining to focus on the snow that fell on the road, but his mind snatched him away to the night his heart had been taken. Nay, not taken. Given. Freely and with passion. Their vow to marry had not been taken lightly. Not by him. And he’d thought, not by her.
