Hannah's Promise
Page 17
Hands gnarled together in her lap, like the twisted roots of an ancient oak, Isabel stared quietly at them. After a moment, a ragged sniff shuddered out of her. “Hannah, I’m so sorry.”
Hurting for her mother, for herself, and for Isabel, hurting for Slade and for the tortured man who was his father, Hannah gathered Isabel’s frail body close and kissed her forehead. “I’m so sorry for you. It must have been awful.”
“It was awful. Still is, I’m afraid. My family—or yours—never quite recovered. I wish I could’ve been a better mother to John.”
“Don’t say that, Isabel.” Hannah rested her cheek against Isabel’s soft, white hair. “You can’t blame yourself. It sounds to me like your John loved my mother very much, and did something stupid when he was drunk. He suffered terribly, I’m sure, for loving her so much, and for not having her return it.”
Hannah blinked, hearing her own words. Why was she making excuses for John Garrett? She should be reviling him. What he’d done then was still playing hell with peoples’ lives twenty-five years later—through his son. Thus conjured, the darkly handsome face of Slade Garrett smiled mockingly at her. Hannah stiffened, and welcomed Isabel’s distracting words.
“You’re very generous to say that. But still, I’ve never understood how a son of mine could.…” She let her voice trail off and then gently tugged herself out of Hannah’s embrace. “I’m fine, dear. Thank you.”
Hannah thought the subject was done, but apparently there was more, because Isabel continued on. “After Catherine left, we thought John would die from regret and his broken heart. He continued drinking and behaving irrationally. But right away, a shy girl he’d never paid the least bit of attention to—Mariel Whittington was her name. Her family’s since moved to New York—stepped forward to comfort him. John married her within a month. And nine months to the day later, Slade was born. Their only child.”
Hannah smiled. “There. You see? A lovely ending, Isabel.”
“No.” She shook her head. “John never, ever got over Catherine. He made Mariel miserable, belittling her, comparing her unfavorably to your mother. No matter how the poor girl tried, she couldn’t be Catherine. She came to hate your mother’s memory, and John finally drove her to hate him and to take to her bed with feigned illnesses. She died of a broken heart when Slade was ten. He was devastated, but John barely noticed she was gone.”
Isabel fiddled with her skirt a moment. “John was a failure as a husband and a father, but he had a brilliant head for business. When my Herbert died shortly after Mariel did, John threw himself into managing the Garrett affairs. And was tremendously successful. But all his life—and Slade’s—he cursed J. C. Lawless, laying on your father’s head all his own failures. He especially hated him for possessing the one love he could never have.”
Now tears stood in Hannah’s eyes for the sad, lonely little boy that had been Slade Garrett. She dabbed at the wetness with her shawl’s ends. “I understand so many things now, Isabel. Thank you for telling me.”
“You’ve every right to know, dear. I raised him, seeing what his parents were like. I just hope I’ve succeeded with him where I failed with John.”
Hannah clutched Isabel’s hands in hers, gripping them with no small amount of emotion. Her heart ached for this woman. “You did a wonderful job with him, Isabel. He’s a good, strong man, worthy of being admired.”
“Thank you.” Isabel smiled tremulously and freed a hand to pat Hannah’s shoulder. “He’s also worthy of being loved. That’s all I want before I die—to know that Slade is happy and loved. Do you love him, Hannah?”
* * *
Later that evening, Hannah sat alone in her delicately furnished bedroom. She faced the oval mirror mounted in the cherry vanity, but paid not the least bit of attention to her own reflection. Dressed for bed in white cambric, and deep in thought, she absently brushed her unbound hair. She focused on a chocolate-brown curl when it wrapped itself around her fingers.
Did she love Slade Garrett? Her sigh rent the silent air. Isabel was correct—he did deserve that much. Hannah set her hands in motion again, brushing and brushing, but a moment later, her hands stilled yet again. This whole affair was her own fault. Pretend to marry? Pretend to be happy and … going about the business of producing a baby?
Producing a baby. She was a grown woman with normal desires and yearnings, and she lived on a ranch. Yes. And had … seen things, with the cattle and horses and all. So she knew the … baser particulars of producing a new life. But was it really that violent and … and that messy for humans? Hannah grimaced, telling herself she certainly hoped not.
But then, unbidden came her mother’s words to her and her sisters about love and marriage. She’d said it was sacred, beautiful, that she wished for each of her daughters a strong, loving husband. Mama’d said there was nothing more beautiful between a man and woman than the physical side of their love. So maybe it was different for humans.
Well, all she knew of it was how Slade Garrett made her feel. And not just in her heart. Gasping at these racy thoughts, and still clutching her silver-backed brush, Hannah jumped up. Possessed of a restlessness she couldn’t name, she began to pace, tapping the brush against the palm of her other hand.
She couldn’t go through with her own plan. To make it work, she and Slade would have to sleep together. No! They would pretend to sleep together. Merciful heavens, what made her think she could get Slade Garrett to pretend to anything? Well, he had agreed to her plan. Yes, but why? She saw the way he looked at her. Those dark eyes of his had already possessed her. The rest was a mere formality. Did she really believe she could get him to play parlor games with her at bedtime?
Hannah stopped her pacing and put a hand to her mouth. Such deception she was practicing. She saw Isabel’s hopeful face, asking her if she loved Slade. Slade was right—she’d be more hurt than anyone when she found out they weren’t really married. Or in love.
In love. She’d been spared answering the bald question when Esmerelda’d presented herself with an uprooted shrub in her mouth, which they’d had to pry out of her jaws and replant. But love … how could she know? Who could she ask? She’d never been in love before.
She knew only what she felt in her womanly places when he was near, when he touched her. But was that love—or the same thing the cattle and horses felt? Hannah gripped her brush harder, wanting to throw it against the wall. This was unbearable. She needed a distraction.
A sudden scratching and whining at the closed door that connected her room to Slade’s jerked Hannah around and swirled her wrapper’s folds about her legs. Her first thought was of Slade. But then she realized what she was hearing. Esmerelda. Her heart pounding out its tremendous relief, she crossed to the closed door and began talking as she opened it. “You want out. You want in. You’ve got me completely trained, haven’t—
“You,” she completed. Esmerelda was not alone. With her was a disheveled, madly grinning duo. Slade Garrett and Dudley Ames. They reeked of spirits and each had an arm around the other’s shoulders. Behind them stood a young, sober-appearing, bespectacled man of the cloth.
Hannah couldn’t seem to settle her gaze on any one of the three men. Was this their elopement charade? Were Slade and Dudley really drunk? Was the preacher a real one? Not sure of anything anymore, except that she was eternally grateful that they hadn’t awakened the ancient household, Hannah whispered, “What are you doing?”
“We’re gettin’ mar-married,” Slade slurred out. Without releasing Dudley or even looking behind himself, he reached his other hand back and unerringly snagged the poor preacher by his already crumpled lapel. As one, the threesome stumbled into the room, forcing Esmerelda through the door ahead of them and Hannah backward several steps.
Dudley belched airily and announced, “Yeah, we’re … gettin’ married. Not me an’ S-S-Slade.”
That struck the two drunks as tremendously funny. They clutched the poor preacher between them and hung all over hi
m as they bellowed out their hilarity. Nearly buckling under the combined weight of the two much larger men and their eyebrow-singeing breath, the middle man’s spectacles fogged. He made a horrible face, looking as if he might promptly be ill on the carpet.
Hannah sympathized completely, breathing as she did the same air he was. She wrinkled her nose and stepped back. Well, that answered one question—they were really drunk. Hannah knew she should stop this madness, but how? She’d never dealt with a liquored-up man before. Perhaps the preacher could.… She eyed the suffering young man. No, he wasn’t much bigger than she. He’d prove no help. In an agony of indecision, she put a hand to her mouth and remained frozen in place—even when Slade shoved the holy man forward a step.
“Look, Hannah—we brought a rev—A rev-rer—A preacher.” Then, making a supreme, serious-faced effort, he pushed himself off Dudley and tried his best to straighten up and smooth his own clothes some. Dudley followed his cue. The two succeeded only in mincing and staggering around and pulling out things that needed tucking in.
“Please, miss,” the heretofore silent preacher begged. “Can we just do this so they’ll let me go?”
Hannah finally uncovered her mouth, lowering her hand to her heart. “You do know I’m not really marrying him? He told you that, right?”
Clutching his Bible to his chest, the poor preacher swallowed hard and made a face, as if his own saliva tasted bitter. “Yes, miss. He told me you’d say that. I understand.”
Relief nearly buckled Hannah’s knees. This was the charade, the pretend ceremony with Dudley as a witness. She’d no more than let out her breath than Slade recaptured her attention with “Well? We’re … we’re ready.”
Hannah and the holy man stared at the dangerously bobbing and weaving twosome, who swayed like two saplings in a stiff breeze. She exchanged a look with the silently pleading, desperately hopeful preacher. And then she looked down at herself. Beyond horrified at what she saw, she clutched at a handful of white cambric, holding it out as proof. “But I’m not dressed and—”
“Iss white, ain’t it?” Dudley waved a hand erratically in her direction. “You look gor-gor-jis-ness.” He frowned mightily. “I mean beaut—beaut-fidul.” Slade slapped him hard on the back. “You look pretty.” Supremely proud to have gotten it out, the senator’s son grinned and emitted a ferocious hiccup, forceful enough to stagger him.
Hannah cut her gaze over to the preacher. He shifted his Bible, holding it against his skinny chest. He then raised his joined hands prayerfully to her. “Please, miss. I beg you. They pulled me out of bed and … and—You don’t know the places I’ve been tonight, before they remembered what they were about and where you were. I’ve seen things and been forced to—”
Hannah held up her hand. “Say no more. Get it over with. Come on, before they wake the dead.”
“The dead? I’m afraid it’s too late. You see, we’ve already been to the cemetery. We went there after the … after the—pardon me, miss—the den of iniquity.” The preacher spoke as if he knew his soul was forfeit.
“Sweet Jesus.” Hannah shook her head and stepped forward to place herself between the two totally despicable men. Looping an arm through each of theirs, she made a face to match her disgust and said levelly, “Say the words, so we can all go to bed.”
To her right, Slade straightened up and reached around in front of her to poke Dudley in the chest. “See, my drunken frien’? I tol’ you she wanted me.”
* * *
Slade jerked awake to the sound of loud snoring. On both sides of him. He blinked against the dry scratchiness of his eyeballs. As the fog began lifting from his brain, his body told him he was lying on his stomach—on a narrow bed but mashed in a hot, sweating heap between two other bodies. His face was pressed against the softness of a damp pillow, and his mouth was slacked open.
Slade blinked again, marking that the room was blanketed with the thick grayness of an ungodly hour. He then made the mistake of smacking his mouth open and closed as he worked his tongue. His breath burned his nostrils and forced a grimace on him. “Gee-sus,” he croaked. “What the hell is going on?”
Having invoked both heaven and hades, he attempted to roll onto his back. But the only thing that rolled was his stomach. He groaned and flopped back to his original position. Someone who lay up against his back sounded a hellacious snarking snore. Slade felt his head swell. Groaning, he stretched his face muscles into an unnatural contortion.
Then the door from the hallway burst open and swung back to hit the wall behind it. Slade and his dark-shrouded bedmates all popped their heads up off the pillows. Haloed in bright light was the cheerfully smiling, happily striding Hannah. Fully dressed, she crossed the room and came to stand at the bedside. “Good morning,” she chirped—in an unnecessarily loud voice. “And how are we this morning?”
The other two succumbed, flopping limply back onto the pillows. Slade spared them not even a glance as he braced himself on an elbow, narrowed his eyes—at the light, at the noise, at her—and told her in very vulgar and no uncertain terms how “we” were this morning.
Hannah shook her perfectly coiffed head. “Such language on the first day of our marriage.”
Slade wondered if she’d always been this obnoxious. “Whose marriage? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Ours,” she chirped brightly, gushing out her words. “Mine and yours. Now, don’t tell me you don’t remember our beautiful ceremony and our two lovely attendants?”
Slade didn’t move a muscle, but he did repeat himself. “What the hell are you talking about?”
She cocked her head at a coquettish angle and put her hands to her narrow waist. “You don’t remember?” Her smile suddenly became an angry snarl and her eyes glittered. “Well, then, my dear husband, allow me to refresh your memory.”
Belatedly recognizing her cheerfulness as the ruse of a towering temper, Slade watched her stomp around the bed and head for the draperies. He stretched out his arm—marked that he still had on his coat—and sucked in a huge breath. “I swear to God, Hannah! Don’t!”
Too late. She yanked the draperies open, revealing the full and bright glory of God’s most magnificent creation—the yellow, golden, blazing … sun. Its burst of light instantly illuminated the room’s remaining shadows and sent Slade, eyes closed tightly, into a sickening thump back onto his stomach. He made a noise like a dying animal and buried his face in the pillow. Around him, his mystery bedmates made similar noises.
“Oh, no you don’t,” the angry woman said. “We need to talk, mister.”
“Idon’twannatalk,” Slade garbled directly into the pillow.
He next felt the bedcovers being ripped back. Without moving his head, he made a grab for them, but came up with air. That was quickly followed by him and his bedmates being pummeled repeatedly with a pillow by the angrily grunting woman. “Get up! I want you wide awake when I kill you. Get up!”
Fine. He was as close to death without actually going over as he’d ever been, so why fight back? Defeated, Slade joined his companions in rolling over onto their backs. If he could just grab that pillow from her, all would be right with the world. He raised a hand in supplication. Next to him he heard a groggy groan that begged for mercy. On his other side, a lazy woof. Woof?
Slade popped up to a sitting position, his fully clothed legs and still-booted feet spread out before him. The pillow pummeling stopped. Next to him, Dudley—Dudley!—snapped to, his red hair spiked up at odd angles. He turned his slack-jawed head to stare at Slade.
Slade grimaced. “Geez, man, do you know what you look like? Like warmed-over sh—”
“Then we came out of the same chamber pot. What are you doing here?”
Slade thought about that. “I live here.” He sought corroboration from Hannah. Frowning like a demon, she stood at the foot of the bed with the pillow raised over her head. “Don’t I?”
“Oh, yes. You live here. You’re going to die here, too.”
“Do tell. Then I find my presence here somewhat odd.” Dudley hung his red head limply forward and stared at his lap. He fingered the burned hole in the crotch of his pants. And then pointed to it. “What’s this?”
“The same thing it’s always been. That’s your—”
“Gentlemen!” The angry woman spoke very loudly. “There’s a lady present.”
Slade joined Dudley in turning their painful attention back to her. Grimacing, he and his boon companion each held an arm up and out, as if collectively they could block out the sun’s dazzling brightness. Slade spoke for them. “We see you, Hannah. And I’ll give you a thousand dollars to quit shouting and close those draperies.”
“Keep your money, Garrett. But thanks to you, it’s mine now, anyway. Besides, I’m not the lady I referred to. Look to your right.”
Slade exchanged a look with Dudley. Then, as if performing a carefully choreographed sequence, they obediently complied, gawked wide-eyed, and jumped off the bed as if shot out of a sling.
Dudley whipped around and pointed accusingly at the body in question. “That’s a—that’s a dog! Esmerelda’s in our bed.”
Hannah thumped the reclining dog with her pillow. The mastiff stretched mightily and raised her head. She blinked twice at Hannah and lay back down. “No, Mr. Ames, Esmerelda’s in my bed. Ask me why.”
“I can’t—I feel ill.” He doubled over and went in a headlong search for the wall. Reaching it first with his outstretched hand, he held on to it and slid down to a knees-drawn-up, sitting heap.
Slade made his own headlong, stumbling dash for the connecting bathroom door. “When I come out, if any of you three is in here, I’ll shoot all of you.”
* * *
Hannah paced in the music room. It was too late. There was nothing she could do about it. She was married to Slade Franklin Garrett. Legally. Lock, stock, and barrel. Oh, no, that was no pretend ceremony last night. Oh, no, it was as real as Slade’s and Dudley’s drunken stupor. The whole thing—it was real.