Hearts Awakening (15 page)
Jackson frowned. “No ribbons. Ribbons aren’t for boys. Take something else.”
Silent as always, the three-year-old simply shook his head, tightened both fists, and looked straight to Daniel for help.
Daniel stated the obvious. “Ethan wants the ribbons.”
“He’s not asking to wear the ribbons,” Ellie offered. “He just wants to hold them.”
Jackson sighed. “Fine. But put them into your pocket for now,” he said reluctantly.
Daniel climbed over the bunk to help Ethan stuff the ribbons into his pocket.
“Let’s wait for your father outside,” she suggested. “While he changes, you two can see if those gumdrops from Mrs. French taste as good as they look.”
Daniel accepted her invitation by turning and racing straight for the door, right ahead of Ethan.
“Thank you,” Jackson said as she passed by him.
But she did not reply.
She simply walked out the door.
Surrounded by silence, save for the creak of her rocking chair or an occasional crackle of wood, Ellie sat in front of a low fire burning in the hearth in the great room later that night and continued to pray.
For patience.
For understanding.
And for the grace to know that this was truly where God wanted her to be.
When Jackson finally came back downstairs and closed the door at the bottom of the staircase, she kept her gaze on the glowing embers that cast only slivers of light into the room as she twirled the wooden ring on her finger. “We need to talk.”
The floorboards moaned a bit as he approached her. “I wasn’t certain you’d still be here when I got back downstairs.” He sat down in a straight-back chair next to her.
She looked at him and shook her head. “Where would I go at this hour? It’s nearly eight o’clock at night, and it’s so dark outside, I’m not certain a firefly could find its way back to the city.”
He shrugged, but the strain of the day’s troubles simmered in the depths of his dark blue eyes. “I don’t know. I figure you’d like to be anywhere but here with me after what I did to you today.”
She caught her breath and held it for a moment. “Do you want me to leave?”
His eyes widened. “Of course not, but—”
“That’s good, because I don’t really want to leave,” she said, glancing back to the fire.
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“Why?”
She braced her feet on the floor to keep the rocking chair still. If she expected him to be honest with her tonight, then she had to be honest with him, too. Besides, she had spent several miserable months keeping Cousin Philip’s secret and refused to make a mistake like that ever again. After drawing in a long breath, she met his gaze and held it. “If I leave here, I really have nowhere else to go,” she admitted, although it pained her to let him know how desperate she would be if he ever decided to have their marriage annulled.
He furrowed his brow. “What about your cousin Mark? I know he wasn’t pleased with your decision to marry me, but I can’t believe he’d actually refuse to take you in if you wanted to leave here.”
“Believe it,” she argued. “Cousin Mark made it very clear I couldn’t return to his household if I decided to stay married to you. He doesn’t want me any more than Cousin Philip did.”
He cocked a brow. “You have another cousin?”
“Philip. He’s Cousin Mark’s brother. I lived with him and his wife in Philadelphia up until a few weeks ago, when he refused to let me stay within his household any longer,” she admitted. She nudged the floor with her feet to get her chair rocking again in hopes the creak of the rocker would chase away the echo of her Cousin Philip’s parting words.
When Jackson did not offer a comment or a question, she glanced over at him. “Wouldn’t you like to know why I had to leave?”
He moistened his lips. “Only if you want to tell me. To be perfectly frank, I don’t see why what happened in Philadelphia has anything to do with our misunderstanding today.”
“Then you’d be wrong,” she stated.
“It wouldn’t be the first time today.”
“That’s true, but there wouldn’t have been any misunderstanding today if you and I had been completely honest with each other before we decided to get married.”
“Fine,” he snapped. “What happened in Philadelphia?”
She gripped the arms on the rocking chair to keep from twisting her hands together. “I moved in with Cousin Philip and his family after my mother died. Mostly, I helped around the house and such, but some months ago, Philip asked me to help out at the store he operated with his partner so he could spend more time calling on new customers.”
“What kind of store?”
She cast him a glance of frustration. If he kept interrupting her, she would never have the courage to finish her story, let alone get him to open up about his past.
He grimaced and raised one hand in surrender. “Fine. I suppose it doesn’t matter. Go on. You were working in his store . . .”
“Yes, but I left early one day to deliver a package his partner’s wife had forgotten at the store earlier that morning. When I got to her home, I discovered she wasn’t there alone. My Cousin Philip was there, and they were . . . that is, he was . . . Well, he wasn’t calling on new customers like he was supposed to be doing while I was working at the store. That was just an excuse he’d used to see his partner’s wife more often.”
Nearly overwhelmed by reliving the memory of that awful day, she blinked back tears and rocked a bit faster. “Apparently he’d been having an affair with her for some time, but once I found out, I refused to be a party to it. I told him that if he didn’t end the affair, I’d have no choice but to tell his wife as well as his partner.”
When she looked at Jackson again, he was sitting forward in his chair, staring at her. “Did he end it?”
“He promised he would, and I believed him, so I didn’t tell anyone. I only discovered later that he had continued the liaison and secretly contacted his brother here in Harrisburg, my Cousin Mark, to arrange for me to live with him. I had no idea I’d be leaving until half an hour before the stage was set to depart, but by then it was too late to tell anyone.”
“Then your cousin Mark knows why you had to leave Philadelphia.”
“Oh, he knows, which is precisely why he contacted Reverend Shore and offered to have me volunteer to be your housekeeper for a few weeks. Walking back and forth from the city to your home and working all day for no payment at all was supposed to be my penance, although Reverend Shore had no idea of my cousin’s intentions.”
Jackson snorted. “Your penance? For what? For standing up for what is right and decent?”
“For interfering with family matters that didn’t concern me.” She locked her gaze with his. “I didn’t volunteer to come here, as you assumed, but I didn’t come here unwillingly, either. I was hoping to do well enough that you’d give me a reference so I might find a decent position in a household somewhere so I could support myself. As it turned out, I didn’t think I’d get much of a reference after failing so miserably with that cookstove of yours. But then I married you instead.”
“Because you had no other real option,” he murmured.
“Other than returning to the city and begging Cousin Mark to allow me back into his home? None, but you suspected as much and practically told me so, remember?”
He straightened his back. “I remember, although I had no idea that your situation was quite so desperate. Why didn’t you tell me when you first arrived that it wasn’t your idea to volunteer here in the first place? I wouldn’t have expected you to continue or to—”
“I’m afraid I rather liked your admiration. I still do,” she admitted, “which only makes your behavior today all the more horrid. I didn’t do anything to deserve how you treated me today, but unless you tell me why you overreacted and why you were so angry when you discovered that I’d left your stall, I’m afraid you’ll do it again.”
“I promised I wouldn’t,” he insisted and sank back into his chair. “But you’re right. You deserve more than just an empty promise.” He stared at the fire as if it held all the secrets he had kept from her. “I’ve told you that my marriage to Rebecca was difficult,” he began. “She went to market with me each Wednesday, but she didn’t stay to work with me or to keep an eye on the boys. Market Day for Rebecca meant a full day of shopping for more pretties, and when I saw the package you were carrying, I recognized it as one of Mrs. French’s, and all I could see after that was Rebecca, laughing at me for complaining about how much she had spent or for ignoring the boys all day. I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry. I wasn’t really angry with you today. I was angry with Rebecca.”
“But you’re angry with her for doing more than just overspending or avoiding her responsibilities to the boys,” she prompted. “She betrayed you. Mrs. Fielding said as much today, but, Jackson, it wasn’t the first time I’d heard that gossip. Cousin Mark’s wife told me the same thing when we stopped to collect my things.”
When he looked up at her, his expression was hard and his gaze was cold. “Rebecca’s betrayal is not something I care to discuss.”
Ellie turned in her chair to face him more directly. “I have no intention of judging you or Rebecca, for that matter, but now that we’re married, I have a right to know how she died or why there was any scandal surrounding her death. And I’d rather hear about it from you right now so neither one of us has to be constantly on guard, waiting for someone to tell me what you should have told me yourself.”
He narrowed his gaze but continued to stare into the fire. “Last February, Rebecca was crossing the river to come back home from the city on a rickety raft late one night when a sudden storm hit. The raft apparently tipped and tossed her into the river, and she drowned. We didn’t find her body for nearly a week,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion.
Ellie caught her breath. “How awful! B-but I still don’t understand why there’d be any scandal attached to her death. It was a tragic accident.”
His gaze grew even darker, and she could see he was struggling to keep his anger under control. “Rebecca wasn’t alone. Some workmen found her body lying on the shoreline just south of town, along with the body of the man who had been her lover.”
Horrified, Ellie clapped her fingers to her lips.
“I’ll never know whether he was simply escorting her home or if she was returning with him for the boys so she could take them with her when she ran off with that scoundrel. The gossipmongers, however, prefer to think the latter, which means the man you married wasn’t even man enough to keep . . . to keep his own wife from abandoning him.”
Ellie clasped the handles of the rocker as she tried to come to grips with the depth of Jackson’s humiliation. As scandalous as the circumstances of Rebecca’s death had been, it was nothing like the scandal that would have ensued if Rebecca had chosen to leave him and take his children with her.
Her heart trembled. Cousin Mark’s wife was right after all. Jackson had asked her to marry him precisely because of who and what she was: a plain, very ordinary spinster woman few other men would want as a wife and no man would ever consider as his mistress.
“Now that you know the whole ugly truth, are you still so certain you’d like to stay?”
Ellie blinked hard, so lost in her own thoughts she barely realized he had spoken to her. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
When Jackson reached out to still her rocking chair, she lurched forward and realized she must have been rocking very, very fast. “I asked if you’d still like to stay married to a man like me, especially now that you know the real nature of the scandal attached to me and to anyone who carries my name.”
She moistened her lips, met his gaze, and held it. “I’d like to stay, but not unless you can promise to be totally honest with me in the future. There can’t be any more secrets between us. Ever.”
“Or burnt desserts,” he replied, clearly relieved enough by her answer to tease her.
“One might hope,” she grumbled, but it was only later, when she laid her head on her pillow, that she realized he had never actually agreed to be honest with her in the future.
Foolish man.
Or was she the foolish one for believing this marriage of theirs had any chance at all to succeed?
