She felt numb clear to the bone as she folded the soiled towels and set them by the door for Anya to gather in the morning. And that numbness grew as she blew out the candle and crept through the room. A glow from the dying fire tossed light at her feet and she stepped out into the unlit corridor, her mood just as dark.
She heard footsteps on the staircase, tapping slowly. Jonah's gait, Jonah's step. Her pulse drummed in her ears, fast and hollow. She listened to the knell of his boots against the floor silence outside Andy's chamber, then progress down the corridor.
'Tessa?'
She turned toward the chest of drawers. A spear of lightning flashed, and a second of white light illuminated the wooden handle of the hairbrush. Darkness returned and her fingers curled around the worn handle.
'May I ask what you heard?'
'Enough.' She flicked her braid over shoulder and tugged at the ribbon. The bow loosened.
'I'm sorry for what I said. I'm glad you are my wife, regardless of what you heard.'
'I bet you are.' She dropped the small bit of ribbon on the chest of drawers and ran her fingers through the plaiting to loosen it. 'Your father is well. 'Tis what you wanted. What you bartered your future for.'
'That's not true and you know it.' His voice twisted, rang low and solemn. His footsteps drummed on the floor, then whispered on the braid carpet 'I am well pleased with you. Surely you know that.'
'I don't know what to believe.' She shook her hair out.
'You can believe that I care about you.' His hands curled around her shoulders, possessive, as if he were afraid to let go of her.
'Fine. You care about me. You care that I tend your father.' She shrugged away from his touch and faced him, the numbness in her heart remaining, but anger was starting to smolder. 'I would have stood by him anyway, without being married to you. But I suppose you couldn't understand that, not the great Jonah Hunter, not a man who can buy anything he wishes. Who thinks he can
'There's only a certain type of affection for sale, and that is the kind I wanted to avoid.' His jaw was set, but his eyes, how tenderness lived there and regret as black as midnight.
'What of Violet Bradford?' he demanded. 'Do you think I'd rather have one such as her? She caught up to me in Mistress Briers' stable to make an indecent offer. Nay, I don't want a shallow woman, no matter how young and beautiful, to look at me and see only their betterment.'
' 'Tis what you gave me in exchange for other services.' Let him try to be rational, to explain, to regret she had learned the truth. She walked around him, fisting her hands, trembling and torn between wanting to rail at him and wanting to leave. 'You took me into your bed, Jonah. When all you wanted was a nurse.'
'Nay, I won't let you do this. I made love with you in this bed and I'll not erase what happiness we've found here. I gave you what heart I have, and 'tis far more than I have given any woman.'
'New clothes, a servant, a fine house to live in-'
'Nay.' Rich as midnight that voice, as inviting as dreams. He stood behind her but did not touch her, though his presence burned like an ember, smoldering first, then licking hotter.
Still, her heart remained numb, as if a physical injury had left her unable to feel. Shock, 'twas all. And then, in time would come the pain. 'Do you deny it?'
'Deny what? Wanting you the way a man wants a woman? You know I did before I proposed to you.'
'You thought I had a lover and was experienced to your advances. Your indecent advances.' The quaking low in her midsection spread and grew.
'I wanted you then, Tessa, and I want you now. Naught has changed. Father was a hair's breadth from dying, and you know how close. So I decided on a standard, that is all. And 'twas stupid, I agree. But it led me to you.'
'A standard? I thought you married me because-' She paused. 'Because you loved me.'
'Aye. And I am learning. Give me time, Tessa. I'm only beginning to learn.'
Apology rang low and sincere in his voice. He thought he'd done little wrong. And mayhap, to another, what he'd done could be easily forgiven. But he had fed her dreams, made her believe…
She squeezed her eyes shut. 'You chose to marry me because you also thought I could not love. Is that right?'
'Aye. I don't want to lie to you. 'Tis one of my greatest flaws and I never wanted you to know.'
'I see.' A tuft of pain scratched inside her chest and she fought it, tamped it down, turned off her heart.
She would not let him know how foolish she'd been, just how much he'd duped her. Nay, she'd duped herself.
Believing a man as handsome and wondrous and envied by all could love her, a horse-faced, sharp-tongued spinster, according to many who had no problem telling her the truth.
'Tessa?' Thomas' knock on the door drew her around. 'The reverend is in the parlor. Seems a little girl at the Hollingsworth household is burning with fever. He has come to request your help.'
'Of course I'll come.' Her decision was clear. She could not look at Jonah as she snatched the ribbon for her hair. 'Let me grab my basket. Thomas, please tell the reverend to meet me outside.'
'Tessa, we must finish this. I don't want you to leave like this.'
'A little girl needs me. Truly needs me. Unlike you.' She could not bear to look at her husband, at the man she had foolishly thought could love her. She turned and walked away.
The storm faded, and with every passing hour the silence felt more ominous. Jonah sat in the parlor, the dark broken only by a beam of moonshine through the part in the curtains.
'Conscience troubling you?' Thomas shouldered into the room.
'I thought you were upstairs.'
'Nay, I could not sleep. I checked on Andy, then I went to the stable to think.' A loose floorboard creaked as Thomas ambled closer. 'You hurt her, Jonah.'
'Aye. She wasn't meant to hear those words. I should not have spoken so freely.' He steepled his hands, resting his elbows on his knees. 'In time, she'll understand.'
'A woman doesn't understand something like that. They are emotional creatures.'
'Tessa is sensible. She will forgive me.'
'Jonah, many in this village are bitter. Many a father had hoped it would be his daughter living in this house married to the rich and heroic major. Many feel Tessa unfairly took their chance away. You know what they have been saying. She has, too, and probably believes it now.'
'I know.' And he despised anyone who spoke against his wife, his good-hearted wife. Before her, he had forgotten what happiness felt like, that there was goodness in the human heart.
'She will be exhausted when she returns.' Thomas pulled back the edge of the curtain and peered outside. 'I would think on that, if I were you.'
' 'Tis my plan.' As long as he lived, he would make this up to Tessa, prove to her he wanted her and no other for his wife.
But as the hours ticked by, it began to feel as if she wasn't returning, as if she would never come home again.
Chapter Fourteen
Six-year-old Mercy Hollingsworth worsened as the night faded to dawn. Her fever raged, dampening the gold ringlets at her brow, and everything Tessa tried merely slowed the fever, did not stop it. Mercy's lungs filled until she couldn't draw more than the faintest of breaths.
The reverend prayed beside the father and mother at the foot of the bed while Tessa worked. She crushed herbs and made poultices and compresses intended to bring down the fever and loosen the congestion in the lungs. Nothing worked. Not one thing.
'I cannot lose her,' Susan sobbed.
She and Susan had gone to school together and had been in the same class. They had grown apart when Tessa's mother grew ill and she no longer attended school or socials or parties or regular meetings. Mother had
