Hannah's Promise

by Cheryl Anne Porter

  Isabel shoved back in her chair and flittered from one to the other of them, patting a shoulder here, a hand there, and cautioning, “Now, let’s not quarrel so. Forget the stupid party. What do I know? I’m just a silly old woman.”

  But Hannah ignored her in equal measures with Slade as they shot daggers at each other. The first one to speak or look away … lost. Papa’d taught his girls that—and he should know. J. C. Lawless’d survived more than a hundred battles of guns and wills. Even as fear pounded at Hannah’s heart, her stubborn Lawless streak demanded she rise to his dare. And she would, if only she could first remember how to rise from her chair.

  An image of Jacey and her bravado came to Hannah’s aid. She placed her napkin beside her plate. Slade did likewise. No man threatened a Lawless, be he husband or not. She wasn’t unequal to his black-eyed glare, and she would leave this room. Hannah put her palms flat on the table and began pulling herself to a stand. So did Slade. They could’ve been two gunslingers at high noon on a dusty Western street as they stood straight and tall, never looking away from each other.

  Except momentarily when the door from the kitchen opened. A tremendous rattling of dishes heralded the entrance of the ever-shuffling Pemberton, followed by the quick-stepping Serafina, who balanced in her hands and against her paunchy little stomach a silver tray laden with covered plates. “Make way!” she bellowed irritably to the ancient butler.

  He did. She made for the table, crashing her load down with a sigh. Apparently oblivious to the tension in the room, she went smiling and humming about her job, placing a steaming dish at each setting. And placing herself in great danger between the two combatants, who again glared at each other.

  Exhibiting a death wish of his own, Pemberton came to stand by Serafina, overseeing her efforts. Equally oblivious to the sight of Hannah and Slade standing, and to the sight of Rowena and Isabel Garrett backed up against a wall, each gripping the cowering Esmerelda’s collar, the butler waited.

  When Serafina stepped back, happy with her efforts, he then placed himself in the line of fire at the table’s head. Staring dramatically at the far wall, he announced, “The main course … is now being served.”

  No one moved. No one spoke. Hannah’s peripheral vision noted that Pemberton cut his gaze from her to Slade and back to her. “Oh, I say.” And then he stepped back one giant step before repeating, “The main course … is now being served.”

  After a second’s hesitation, he stepped back again and added, “To the survivors, at any rate.” No one moved. No one spoke. He took another step back. “Providing there are any.”

  The silence glared on for another moment before Isabel came crashing back to the table, noisily drawing her chair out and sitting down. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’m hungry. You two can kill each other on a full stomach as well as you can an empty one. Now, this is my house, and I say sit down and eat.”

  Esmerelda padded up to the table. She seconded her mistress’s sentiments by barking loud enough to startle angels in heaven. And to rouse Hannah and Slade. By mutual and tacit agreement, the newlyweds blinked and sat down as well.

  Shaking with angry emotion, Hannah quietly ate her meal, keeping her head down and her gaze on her plate. She had no idea if Slade ate or didn’t eat. She had no idea if he stared at her or kept his head down, too. And furthermore, she didn’t care. Nor did she have any idea what she ate as she went through the motions from habit.

  It wasn’t until she stabbed her last bite of—she focused on what dangled from her fork—roast beef that she became aware of the conversation going on around her. She looked up, staring in disbelief. Isabel was detailing the fabulous menu she wanted served at her dinner ball.

  * * *

  “You miss Olivia’s help, don’t you?” Slade spoke softly, but immediately his voice changed, became testy. “Dammit, Hannah, I don’t know why you bother with this infernal contraption.”

  In only her unmentionables, hands to her waist, her back to her husband as he unlaced her corset, Hannah ignored his outburst. And the gooseflesh bumping her skin as his warm touch traveled down her back. “I miss her more than her help. She’s been gone four days. Are you sure she didn’t say where she was going?”

  His hands stilled as he finished. “Yes, I’m sure. But I’ll look into it tomorrow, if it’ll make you feel better.” He slipped the long laces free of the garment and pulled its hard ribs aside. A gasp preceded his outburst. “Look at your back. It’s all red and gouged by this damned thing. How do you breathe, much less eat?”

  Without warning, he grabbed a side of the corset and whirled her in a complete circle as he divested her of the object of his anger. He turned with it in hand and stalked over to the hallway door of his room.

  Her arms crisscrossed over her breasts, Hannah’s mouth opened in proportion with her eyes. “What are you doing? Come back here with that, Slade Franklin Garrett.”

  “Don’t you call me that. Makes you sound like Isabel. And that’s not an image I want in my bedroom.” He commenced muttering to himself. “Never should have bought the damned thing to begin with. But that magpie of a dressmaker was so scandalized that I wasn’t buying one…” His mumblings carried him to the door, which he opened long enough to toss the corset out onto the hallway floor.

  Hannah’s hand covered her mouth, just thinking of her corset being found by an unsuspecting Garrett domestic. Quickly, she tugged on her bedgown and sent up a prayer that the discovery wouldn’t send the poor unfortunate to an early grave. In her head, she pictured the ancient domestics. Well, a grave, at any rate.

  But obviously her errant husband had no such qualms. Closing the door with a solid thump, he started across the room, dusting his palms together as if rubbing dirt off them. “There. Never have liked those damned things on my women—” Halfway across the room from her, his feet stopped and his eyes widened. A sickly, new-husband-who-just-forgot-himself grin lit his features.

  Fighting her own grin at his expression, Hannah crooked a knee and folded her arms. With her head cocked at an angle, she teased, “Your women?”

  His eyebrows shot up. Darn him, he saw she was trying not to grin. But still he stayed in place and lied. “No. I said ‘woman.’ I don’t like those damned things on my woman. That’s you. Are you hard of hearing, my sweet?”

  “I am not your sweet, and no, I’m not hard of hearing. But you will be—once I box your ears.”

  Now his mouth opened. “Hannah, are you jealous?”

  Awareness that she actually was tore through her, spinning her around to face his bed. She spoke over her shoulder at the big oaf. “No, of course not. I just won’t allow you to make a fool of me by being seen in the company of—”

  He grabbed her arms, spun her around and pulled her flat against his chest. He grinned in triumph just before planting a big, wet kiss on her mouth.

  Hannah suffered through his passion. All the way to her curled toes and thrumming womb. But the moment he broke their kiss, she picked up, a mite breathlessly, where she’d left off. “Fast women or ladies of the night.”

  His mouth wet with her kiss, his black hair slanting over his high forehead, Slade ran his hungry gaze over her face as he informed her, “Same thing.”

  Lost in his black-lashed eyes, his high cheekbones, and sensual mouth, she stared up him. “I know.”

  His gaze sobered as he looked down at her. “Are you sore?”

  A scoffing noise escaped her. “At you? Always. I could take my pick of topics. There’s that remark you just made about your women. There’s the dinner party you won’t discourage Isabel from planning. There’s your high-handedness with me at supper, daring me to leave and saying you’ll tie me up if I try. And—”

  “Not that.” He gripped her tighter, wrenching her to him again. Hannah sucked in a breath as her nipples grazed his stiff shirtfront. “What I meant was”—he chuckled and shook his head—“are you sore from this afternoon … in the music room?”

  “Oh.” Hann
ah exploded in a molten flush. Embarrassed tears sprang to her eyes. She bobbed her head as she bit at her bottom lip. She was sore and swollen, even following a thirty-minute soak in a warm bath earlier. A single tear escaped to roll down her cheek.

  “Sweet Hannah.” Slade’s grip turned affectionate as he leaned down to touch his forehead to hers. “Sweet, sweet Hannah.” A rippling shudder shook him. He exhaled a warm, brandy-tinged breath and settled nipping kisses on her cheek, neck, and shoulder.

  The heavy heat between them was almost unbearable. Near to buckling to the floor, Hannah closed her eyes in surrender, only to have Slade release her and turn away abruptly. He took several steps away from her, stopped, and stood with his back to her, a knee bent, his hands to his waist. His head hung forward, and he took deep, deep breaths.

  Biting at her bottom lip, Hannah curled her toes into the thick carpet and clutched at her gown, wadding it unmercifully. What was wrong with him? As if in answer, he straightened up to his full height and tilted his head back. A sudden cry, more like a growl, escaped him. Hannah blinked and stiffened. When he looked back at her, his expression trapped her breath in her lungs.

  She’d seen this look once before. On the faces of a wolf pack which was rebuffed by an enraged mother buffalo defending her calf. The wolves’ faces and cries, just like Slade’s, served notice that the reprieve was temporary. The wolves then howled out against being denied. Hannah suspected something similar was wrong with her husband. But still, she was too new at this sexual game to be sure. She decided it couldn’t hurt to ask. “Are you sore, too?”

  “Am I—?” Slade looked at her as if she’d just spoken in an unintelligible language. He then ran his fingers down his chin, jaw, and neck.

  Hannah’s pulse picked up guiltily. Maybe it hurt men, too, and you weren’t supposed to ask because it made them feel … less manly. Feeling awful, she shook her head and quirked her mouth up regretfully. “I’m sorry if I hurt you … in your music room. I didn’t mean to.”

  Slade stared at her and then exploded into laughter. He bent over, hands on his knees, and guffawed like a jackass, in Hannah’s insulted opinion. She crossed her arms, hoping to high heaven that she had hurt him. And if she hadn’t, she may yet. But not in the way he wanted.

  Lucky for him, he recovered quickly, straightening up by walking his hands up his thighs. Standing tall again, he wiped at his eyes and chuckled. “You didn’t hurt me in my … music room. But you’re killing me there now.”

  Well, what did that mean? They were nowhere near the music room. Hannah poked out her bottom lip threateningly. And sucked it in when he advanced on her.

  When he reached her, he spun her around and smacked her bottom, giving her a push toward her own bedroom door. “Go now, while I’m strong. It’s off to our own chaste beds for tonight.”

  Hannah stopped exactly where her momentum from his push played out. She turned back to him and caught him watching her with frank yearning in his eyes. Still uncomprehending, she looked down, watching herself pick at her fingernails as she spoke. “I thought … Well, my parents always slept in the same bed. I thought we would, too.”

  Hearing his forcefully exhaled breath, she looked up. His expression was now one of naked hunger, which he tried to scrub away by running a hand over his jaw and mouth and then both hands through his hair. “Dammit, Hannah. You’re standing there sore and half-naked. If you’re in this room at the end of ten more seconds, you’ll be naked by then—and one hell of a lot more sore tomorrow morning. In fact, you may not even be able to walk. Because we won’t be doing any sleeping, baby. Not if we’re in the same bed.”

  “Oh.” It was more of a yelp than a word. “Uhm, good night, Slade.”

  “Good night, Hannah. One. Two. Three. Four—”

  Four was the last number Hannah heard as she turned tail and ran for the door that connected her room to his. Jerking it open, she flung herself into the unlit room and slammed the door behind her. Breathing rapidly, feeling the least bit silly for her girlish flight, she leaned her back and her head against the wooden barrier that was the door.

  “Lock it, Hannah.”

  She screeched and whipped around. His voice came from just the other side of the door. In the room’s total darkness, she fumbled for the key, found it, and turned it in the lock.

  Slade’s chuckling laughter accompanied her skittering feet and groping hands all the way to her bed, which she scrambled onto with no thought to dignity or decorum. No sooner was she atop it, on her knees and yanking at the protective covers, trying desperately to pull them down—than the door from the hallway opened. Hannah jerked around with a cry and fell on her back, freezing in place atop her bed.

  There stood Slade, his tall, heavily muscled self framed in the rectangular opening. Hannah’s heart lurched as she pulled herself up onto her elbows and bent her knees, sending her bedgown up around her hips. She peered at him through the vee her exposed legs made. Watching him, seeing him, wanting him as she did, a sudden pride in his rampant masculinity seized her heart. This man owned his ground, as surely as did any half-naked Cheyenne warrior standing atop a jagged cliff.

  The filtered light from the hallway sconces behind him cast him in deep shadows, playing over him like cloud-cloaked moonlight. He leaned a shoulder against the jamb, bent one knee, and crossed his arms over his powerful chest. But Hannah wasn’t fooled by his studied pose. She didn’t even have to see his eyes to know the wolves were back on the scent.

  After a mouth-drying, heart-pounding moment, he finally spoke, his deep, resonant voice sparking a purely delightful shudder over Hannah’s nerves. “Eight. Nine. Ten.” Done counting, he straightened up, stepped into the room, and closed the door. The room plunged again into absolute darkness. “I owe you an apology, my sweet.”

  “For what?” She bit at her bottom lip, cursing herself for sounding like a bleating sheep. He didn’t answer. Hannah raised her head, straining her hearing, listening for any sound he might make. There was none. Darned carpet. Not knowing his whereabouts in the room raised the hair on the back of her neck.

  He was coming for her. She knew that, as surely as she knew she was a woman. He was coming for her. Closer and closer. Like a scared deer, she didn’t move. But she knew he’d find her. Like a wild predator, he could sense her. He didn’t need light. He didn’t need touch. He only needed her scent.

  With no warning, with no darker-than-black shadow extricating itself from the surrounding thick velvet, a large, warm hand settled unerringly on her knee. Hannah gasped. It slid slowly down the inside of her thigh. Hannah gasped again, lying back in white-hot need.

  “An apology for what? For not warning you to lock that other door.”

  * * *

  Hannah rose stiffly from her bath’s tepid water, watching the rivulets sluice down her. Slade was right when he said she’d barely be able to walk today if he was in her bed last night. He was in her bed last night. And she could barely walk today.

  She stepped out of the tub and reached for her towel. A sudden sensation, as if Slade still touched her, brought lurid images to her mind’s eye. She’d never known a man could … kiss a woman … down there. Almost spasmodically, as if the motion could erase from her memory the feel of his mouth on her, Hannah reached up to shove an errant curl under the satin ribbon that secured her upswept hair. She winced with the effort. Last night, she’d used muscles she’d never known she had.

  That stilled her hand. She was certainly quick to give up girlish pruderies for womanly pleasures. She began a vigorous drying of her body. Well, what choice did she have, given the lusty male she’d married? Married. Hannah went limp, allowing the thick towel to hang from her fingers.

  After she’d exacted her family’s revenge on Cyrus, what then? Would she still be married? Well, of course she would. She looked around the elegantly appointed bathroom. She couldn’t stay in Boston. She was needed at home. She’d promised her sisters to return. But how could she leave Slade? She loved
him. Defeat tugged at her heart. Not one word had passed between them about that coming day.

  Sighing over the depth of her problems—revenge was certainly convoluted—Hannah decided she’d write another letter to Glory and Jacey once she was dressed. Things were happening so quickly that each day saw a whole new situation arising. What in the world would her sisters think when she wrote she was married to Slade Garrett? And possibly carrying his child?

  Hannah stiffened, clutching at the towel, remembering his words about needing an heir. She splayed her hand over her belly. Never. He’d have to kill her to separate her from her baby. If there was one. Hannah brought the towel up to her mouth and closed her eyes. She loved him. A Garrett. The son of the man who’d tried to force himself on her mother. The son of the man who’d changed her mother’s life forever. Hannah took a sighing breath. For the better, though. He’d changed it for the better.

  Mama and Papa never would have met, if not for John Garrett’s rash and drunken behavior. Slade and his poor mother suffered so much more at John’s hands than her mother ever did. Hannah opened her eyes. What a coil this was. Fearing she’d give herself a headache if she kept on in this vein, she finished drying, laid the towel over the tub’s rim, and reached for her white cambric wrapper, which hung from a peg on the back of the bathroom door.

  A knock sounded against the same door, startling Hannah and momentarily stalling her hand in midair. Then she shook her head at her own silliness. Slade had her jumpy about doors. “One moment.”

  No one called back, but Hannah thought nothing of it as she hastily donned the garment and closed enough of the hook-and-eye fastenings to render herself decent. Well, it couldn’t be Slade. He wouldn’t knock. Or wait.

  Besides that, about an hour ago, she’d shoved him bodily out of her bedroom, telling him to go take care of his business in Boston. Or go see Dudley. Or ride Champion. Or toast their marriage at his club. Anything to give her some peace. Chuckling again at his petulant expression as he’d left, she sang out, “Is that you with my breakfast, Serafina? I’ll be right out.”