…
With Josiah’s help, Anne managed to deliver her berries in time for the morning meal. He declined to join them, though he had been invited, and she did not see him again until late that afternoon. She was hanging linens to air when he appeared round the side of the inn, a bundle of green reeds in hand.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Attempting to repair the shutters,” he replied. “They will not survive nails in their current condition. The wood will split and they would fall in pieces.”
“And what will you do with the reeds?”
He grinned and eased open a shutter, still closed from the previous day’s storm. Carefully, he bound an existing blind with the reed so that it held the pieces like rope. “It is a simple solution,” he said, “but it costs nothing and will do until I can build them anew.”
“My mother will greatly appreciate your effort,” Anne said, “as will my father. His hands hurt him terribly—I am afraid much more so than he says. He can no longer grip things tightly, so these repairs have gotten away from him.” Admitting her father’s weakness disturbed her, though she knew Josiah would keep from gossip. The saddest thing was it was not the expenses that had the inn leaning into disrepair, but her father’s physical failings. Without the necessary upkeep, in time, the expense would become more than they could bear.
Her father rarely said as much, but she knew he ached for his lost boy, who would have been the one to help. Anne did her part as well as she could, but she could not act as both daughter and son, though in many ways she tried. Perhaps that was why she shunned the confines of her role in the household. She was content to help with the wash, but was just as capable of threshing crops as any man. Her father was far more tolerant of those gender indiscretions than was her mother, but because stepping outside her role could cause scandal, Anne tried to maintain propriety—at least publicly. The exception was her travels to and from Salem Village, but she would not give up the connection to her friends. Salem Village had been her home.
And now Josiah had brought a piece of her old life home to her. He brought her joy in a way she had not experienced in so very long, and not just because he reminded her of happier times. After months of preparing for the possibility of marrying an acquaintance—someone she would tolerate and could only pray she might grow to love—the hope that she could instead marry Josiah made her want to burst. Though he had not asked her formally, for he would not ask until he had secured her father’s blessing.
Josiah wove together the reeds with fascinating ease and precision. Watching him work brought her much pleasure. She spent a moment lost in the careful, steady ministrations of his hands before she spoke. “Tell me where you went when you left Salem.”
He looked briefly from the shutter on which he worked. “Cambridge, to attend school.”
Anne’s father had once told her Congregational ministers were trained in Cambridge. “Is it your hope to become a minister?”
Josiah snorted. “It was my father’s hope to remove me from his home. Schooling offered an option that did not result in lengthy queries on my behalf.”
Shock thundered through her. “He wanted to send you away?”
Josiah did not answer, but stared in the distance. When he did speak, it was not in response to her query. “How long did you remain in Salem Village after you lost Samuel?”
She was curious over his change of topic, but did not press him. “A few months.” She draped the last of the linens over the drying line and settled onto the grass a short distance from him. “Mother could not seem to heal. Neighbors had lost children and had managed to move on from their grief, but Mother grew more despondent with each day. Father was quite worried and believed a fresh start would benefit her, so we moved here from the home where we lived with Samuel. Doing so offered a new start, but it also brought Mother closer to my brother.”
Josiah’s hands stilled at his task. After a moment, he said, “It surprises me she would want to be here, so near where he was lost.”
She lifted her shoulders, as unsure of the answer as Josiah. “Closer. Away. It seemed to be everything at once. His body was never found. Perhaps she feels closer to him this way, nearer to the water. But she never goes there.”
Josiah said nothing, just methodically wove thin reeds into a braid. He had already secured one of the shutters, though he had a great many to go. He glanced up and caught her watching. “And what about you? How do you fare?”
It was the second time since his return he had asked how she felt about her brother. The question seemed out of place, but she somehow knew what he meant. “I miss him. I always will, but many years have passed and I have come to accept things as they are.”
“I am grateful to know that,” Josiah said. But he did not seem settled. His work on the reeds had paused, and he simply stared at his hands as if they were unfamiliar to him.
“What about you? When your father died, I expected you might return to Salem.”
His countenance, already somber, turned dark. “His wife wanted nothing of my presence.”
“But did you not want to say good-bye? Or to see to the burial?”
Josiah froze, the reeds falling from his hands. His arms tensed. “That particular farewell had long been said, and I was not needed for the task.”
“He was your father,” she said softly. “He loved you.”
Josiah’s deep amber eyes filled with sorrow. “He blamed me. There was no forgiveness. No love left.”
“Surely he would not cast aside his own son over an accident. Samuel—”
“Not for Samuel’s death,” Josiah said quietly. “For my mother’s.”
Anne’s mouth fell open. Josiah was responsible for his mother’s death?
Before she could find her voice, her mother’s call broke through the lingering silence. Anne looked toward her mother, then back to Josiah. Walking away from his confession was gut-wrenching, but she dared not draw her mother’s scrutiny.
Josiah’s expression offered no explanation, and her mother sought her.
Answers would have to wait.
Chapter Seven
Try as she might, for the remainder of the day Anne could not find time alone with Josiah. Still, he remained foremost on her mind. How could he possibly shoulder the blame for the loss of his mother? As she understood it, he had been just a babe when she died—too young for guilt. She wanted desperately to know what he meant by his admission, but she thought twice about asking him. The subject seemed to have left him in a state of latent sorrow. It had quickly become apparent that all matters of Josiah’s past had the same dreary effect on him, leaving him subdued, dark, and unhappy.
Despite the force of her curiosity, it was not a state to which she wanted to send him.
Anne sighed. If only she could confide in her mother. She was of Salem Village—maybe she had known Josiah’s mother and the circumstances of her death. But Anne could not confide Josiah’s identity to her mother—not until her mother had a chance to see he was a good man. Perhaps only a few more days were needed, for he worked steadily and had in his short time accomplished a number of tasks that had previously languished. If her mother saw how hard Josiah worked—of how loyal he had remained all these years—she would surely feel differently.
Anne straightened. Had she gone about this all wrong? Rather than keeping quiet about Josiah’s past, should she tell her mother? Or would doing so stir up too many memories? There was no clear answer, but the question followed her mercilessly.
Until she overheard her parents talking late that night. She did not intend to listen, but her mother’s urgent tone caught Anne’s attention as she passed by their bedroom door. Once Anne realized they spoke of her, she stopped and listened in earnest.
“She is of age,” came her mother’s voice through the door. “Her eye wanders. We need a good match to ensure she stays on the right path.”
“Worry not,” said her father, sounding at ease. “She will ma
rry well. We will see to her welfare.”
“We cannot hope for such,” Susannah said. Anne could practically see her mother’s arms flung skyward with the proclamation. “She is a rogue child. She wanders the roads and pays no mind to her role. What respectable man would want for a wife who so callously runs about?”
Anne bristled. No mind to her role. She tended her role just fine and did her chores without dispute. Just because she had an independent nature…
“We will have little trouble finding her a suitable husband,” her father said.
“The way she carries on?”
“Worry not. There is a fine young man who has expressed interest in her just as she is.”
Her father’s reassuring tone did little to ease Anne’s growing angst. With the help he needed around the inn, she did not expect he would rush to send her away. And she was barely old enough to marry. Yet her mother spoke as if she was in danger of leading a spinster’s life.
If only they knew.
“Who is he?” asked her mother. “What do you know of him? What are his lines?”
Anne strained to hear the answer through the door.
“Susannah,” her father said. “Do not worry yourself. Anne will be well taken care of. Have faith.”
Anne stood a moment more, but no further sounds escaped to the corridor. From elsewhere in the inn, muffled snores cracked the silence, but her parents’ conversation had ceased. She wondered briefly if Josiah made such a racket in his sleep. She smiled, curious enough to consider a walk downstairs to where he slept.
Dare she? She listened briefly at her parents’ closed door, but it revealed nothing but silence, hinting they had retired for the evening. Her heart raced. Josiah’s room was located just off the kitchen—a space she had visited often enough in the night. This should be no different.
But it was—a fact she reveled in as she descended the stairs. Her heart beat unevenly, spreading warmth deep into her belly. Uneven sensations left her deliciously off balance, but her direction remained true.
Josiah.
Ever since he had returned to her life, Anne held an entirely new appreciation for Prudence’s ceaseless talk of the opposite sex. Her friend was always thick in the gossip, and as such, she served as a veritable catalog of who had been seen sneaking out to the barn with whom…and thusly made Anne privy to every detail. Salem Village’s population was small in number—a few hundred, perhaps—but even founded in Puritan faith it remained ripe with sin. Before Josiah had come back, Anne had not understood what would bring an unmarried couple to fornicate, though verily they did, for a surprising number were known to be with child before their weddings.
She wondered no more.
Now she craved the forbidden taste of his kisses. His work-roughened hands had merely grazed her skin, but the tenderness of his touch left her weak with want. New sensations lit fire to pieces of her now needy and desperate for his touch. Already she was wholly, thoroughly smitten and could not imagine anything greater than the feelings coursing through her.
Anne paused outside Josiah’s door, her thoughts still adrift. Prudence had entertained a dalliance or two of her own. Her tales had left Anne shocked and sputtering with disbelief, but now she could only admit curiosity. Dare she experience a man’s desire in such a way? It would not be right to share intimacies with one who was not to be her husband, but her desire was not driven by want of a mere affair. She wanted to know Josiah, a man who had been chosen for her by God’s own hand.
Not a man her father had chosen for her, but one Anne had chosen for herself.
Josiah’s door was drawn, but not latched. Anne cast another glance in the direction of the stairs. She fully expected to be caught standing outside his bedroom, but the house remained still. Carefully, she pushed open the door. As soon as her eyes adjusted to the deeper darkness, she stepped inside and quickly closed the door behind her.
Josiah lay on his back, shirtless, with one hand tucked under his head. His dark hair was tousled and his face serene in sleep, but her attention did not linger there. Instead, she was drawn to the wide expanse of his chest, to his narrowed abdomen and the plane of his belly from which a line of hair trailed and disappeared into the waistband of his breeches.
Entranced, she took a step closer, then another. Pale moonlight made him almost ethereal, but there was something so real about him. From the innocence of sleep, something powerful and raw emanated from this man. Something carnal.
A light sensation tickled her hand. She looked to see his fingers grazing her. “Am I dreaming?” he murmured, his voice thick with sleep. He wound her fingers with his, and before she could answer he tugged her to sit on the edge of his bed.
In their joined solitude existed the most incredible intimacy Anne had ever known. The worry and thrill of being caught with him were far overshadowed by the feel of his skin beneath her fingertips. Never had anyone looked at her as he did.
In the dark and the quiet, her day-long preoccupation with his mother’s fate was lost.
His voice barely above a whisper, he said, “Countless nights I have closed my eyes and dreamt of the beautiful girl I knew you to be. And though I knew your beauty would only grow in time, I am still struck by the woman you have become.” He reached for her with his free hand, cradling the side of her face. “Have you any idea how stunning you are?”
Anne slowly shook her head, genuinely taken aback by his words.
“If my last breath on this earth was in this moment,” he said quietly, “I could not ask for anything more.”
Her fingertips fell to his chest, and when the intensity of his look overwhelmed her, her gaze followed. The rise and fall of his breath quickened, a rhythm matched by her racing pulse. That she could affect him in such a way left her unsteady, but he grounded her in a way no one else had. She cared not for the proximity of her parents or for the consequences of being caught in Josiah’s room. She wanted to feel.
Her thundering heart might awaken the entire inn, but that did not deter her from wanting to know him. Her belly awash with flutters, she flattened her hand on his chest and reveled in the gallop of his heart. A sharp intake of breath affected her to her toes, though she knew not if it was hers or his.
He withdrew his hand from her face, allowing his fingertips to trace her cheek before they trailed a path along her neck. They settled briefly on her collar bone, then drifted lower, just brushing the swell of her breast. This time she knew the breath was hers, and though her reaction jolted a smile from his lips, it quickly dissolved into such a somber, serious countenance that she worried something might be wrong.
But no, not in that moment. It couldn’t be.
He drew to a sitting position, his torso lining up inches from hers. Her hand slid from his chest when he moved, but he caught it and gently pressed his lips to her fingers. When she squirmed from the splendid pleasure of his touch, he captured her, drew her in. And just as gently as the night existed around them, he softly kissed the corner of her mouth.
Time did not freeze so much as it waited. And when he nuzzled the spot behind her ear, time shattered.
Propriety splintered into tinder for the fire he lit inside her, and as hotly as it burned, she wanted more.
He seemed to sense the inferno raging, for the gentle trace of his lips against her throat intensified. While he had cradled her gently before, he now held her fiercely. Her breasts ached from the needful pressure of his body pressed to hers, and she wanted nothing more than to feel his entire length against her. How easy it would be to fall to the mattress—for their hands and their bodies and their lives to join in a single moment that would mean everything.
His thoughts must have mirrored her own, for in a swift motion he repositioned her so she straddled his lap, her skirts left asunder by the sudden shift. Slowly, in great contrast to their rapid breaths, he pushed his palms up her thighs, not stopping until he gripped her from behind and pulled her tight against his pelvis. The forbidden sensation of
his arousal against her womanhood was so exquisite she had to bite her lip to keep from moaning.
She raked his hair. Clutched desperately at his back. Found it was she who moved against him, for he had eased his grip in favor of taking fierce hold of her breasts. In the dark and through her clothes, he put his mouth over first one, then the other. Desire toppled her sensibilities until she was left arching her back, every part of her begging to be closer. Begging for the kind of fulfillment she knew in her heart only he could deliver.
Begging until he broke free.
Breathing heavily, he bathed her in the lopsided, boyish grin she had long adored. “Your father will see me to the gallows for this,” he said in his low, husky voice.
Though the logic of his words found her, she wanted not for sensibilities. She wanted Josiah. “My father sleeps upstairs.”
Josiah took a deep breath. “It is not often I wish to be a lesser man,” he said, “but a lesser man has a certain advantage when a beautiful woman comes to him in the dark of the night.”
A beautiful woman. Anne had never imagined such a description could belong to her. “You could never be a lesser man.”
“Rest assured, if you return to my room in the dark of the night, I will be nothing more.”
Though his tone was light, she did not miss its undercurrent. His serious nature made his words all the more thrilling, for they left little doubt as to what he wanted—or how badly he wanted it. She could not keep the smile from her voice as she asked, “Are you saying I need only walk from the room for a minute’s time to make a lesser man of you?”
“I would like to think myself more honorable, but I make no promises in my current state.”
“Perhaps we should test that supposition.”
He grinned and leaned in, kissing her softly. “As much as I ache to know every inch of you,” he said, “it is not my desire to make off with your honor like a thief in the night.”
She splayed her fingers across his warm, bare chest and took a deep breath of courage. “You have long stolen my heart. My honor will not be far behind.”
An Unexpected Sin (Entangled Scandalous) Page 5
