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Hannah darted through the parlor to the kitchen, and alarm raised the tiny hairs at her neck. The entire house appeared untouched. Even the biscuits she’d placed in the basket that morning were as she’d left them. But the note was missing.
She spun back around, looking toward Stockton’s room and called for him, but again silence mocked her. Panic increased the pace of her lungs. No one was here. She peered through the window toward the foundry, which looked equally abandoned. Her hands began to slick with sweat on the swooped handle of the candlestick.
The stale scent of the neglected fire brought to mind a hundred frightful scenarios. She grabbed her petticoat and raced up the stairs to check the rooms and nearly choked with despair as another, more frightening thought cut her at the knees. Perhaps Joseph had been discovered? Perhaps even now he was—
The sound of an approaching horse snapped her thought in two, destroying her composure. Greene.
Within seconds the handle of the door jostled, light at first, then after a pause, violently, followed by a hard pounding. She held her breath, a stream of prayers rising to the heavens as she stared at the door. There was no place to run, no place to find safety.
The pounding persisted. “Hannah? Hannah, are you there? Let me in.”
“Joseph?” Fragile and fractured, the voice that left her barely reached beyond the first step.
She flew down the stairs and placed the candle on the table. Unlatching the door, she hurled it open and gasped as relief stole her strength at the sight of his tall silhouetted frame.
Pressing a hand to her chest, she stepped back to allow him in, trying to rein in her runaway pulse. “I’d feared you’d been taken.” The confession blurted from her mouth, sounding far more self-serving than she’d wished.
“You feared I’d been taken?” He entered, stare trained upon her, boots stomping against the floor. His height seemed even taller as he stopped inside. Candlelight shadowed the angles of his jaw, the downward arch of his nose.
Little compassion laced his words. Instead, his own relief was speckled with frustration. “What in God’s name were you thinking?” He entered the rest of the way and closed the door with a gruff motion. Leaving one hand upon the wood, he pointed with the other in the direction of Sandwich. “Traveling such a distance? Have you gone mad?”
Pride all but shattered, her attempt at valiance in the face of her failing was futile. She stepped into the parlor, unable to answer, her frame trembling more as the walls of her carefully constructed calm began to crumble in large chunks. What had she been thinking? She couldn’t speak it aloud. Would he believe her even if she did?
The flameless hearth cried mournfully for heat, and she went to oblige—more to ease her own need for occupation than anything else. She couldn’t long stand motionless, or she might give in to the need to spin back and put her arms around him, tell him all she’d rehearsed those twenty miles home—how she’d wished things would have been different, how she had never stopped thinking of him. Tell him of their child.
“Hannah.” Joseph’s firm timbre stopped her midstep.
She needn’t turn to know his face was etched with questions, lined with the same vexation that knit his voice.
“Why would you do that? Why would you leave? You cannot be so ignorant of the danger. ’Twas foolish.”
Gripping her from behind, his tone knocked free the last stone of her hiding place, leaving exposed every piece of her.
“Did you not remember what happened with Greene?”
She grappled for strength. “I needed to speak with Caroline.”
“About what? What was so urgent that could not wait?” His boots stomped behind her. “Heavens, woman, our people are at war. You and I are working toward something far greater than ourselves. We cannot—”
“I went to talk about you!” Chin quivering, she circled back, a flood of long-concealed hurts consuming her as they unwillingly spilled from her heart to her lips. “For years I have endured this pressing on my heart, and with you now here to make my pains even greater, I was desperate.”
His head jerked back, as if her words had struck him. “Your pains?” His throat bobbed, but he didn’t speak. His jaw ticked, but he didn’t move. The blueness of his eyes faded in the wan light of the solitary candle. “Tell me how I have grieved you, so I may find a remedy.”
Spurred by his humble petition, Hannah trembled all the more, the rest of her splintered soul willing her at last to pull free the shards of hurt and reveal what she’d harbored so many years. But she could not, the familiar agony of her prison more inviting than the unknown.
She moved to the fire, but his voice reached out to grab her as real as a grip on her arm.
“If you wish to leave Eaton Hill…I will not stop you. In truth, you must leave as quickly as you can.” He stepped forward and tugged her to face him, his expression tender, pleading. “I have learned more of Stockton’s nature, and I will not have you here a day longer.”
Unsettled by how the closeness of him weakened her knees when it should rally her hurts to anger, Hannah swallowed to moisten her parched throat and covered the past she’d been so near to revealing. “I cannot leave. Not yet. You say you do not wish Stockton near me, but if I do not attend the ball, I fear his suspicions will be even greater. I owe Ensign this.”
“Stockton planned to have a woman hanged, and I refuse to submit you to this any longer.” He paused, his chest rising. “Higley petitioned me to take you away.”
“Take me away? Does he think Stockton will do me harm? I do not believe it.”
His gaze roamed her face, his fingers light at her sleeve. “Once it is discovered we have betrayed him, he will stop at nothing until we are killed.” His dark brow dipped. “I could not live with myself if anything were to happen to you.”
Joseph’s rich voice and the tenderness in his firm touch began to undo her. She moved her arm free from his grasp but hadn’t the strength to do the same with her gaze. “What of Eaton Hill? What is to become of it?”
