Hidden Affections (20 page)

He hesitated for a moment while he counted up the number on the fingers of one hand. “There were three others before him. Four, if you count poor Trent, but he didn’t leave her by choice. He died rather suddenly four years ago, just when he was about to propose, according to Vienna.”

“How awful. His family must have been devastated to lose a son so young.”

He shook his head. “Trent didn’t have any family left. At eighty-seven, most lifelong bachelors don’t.”

Annabelle gasped. “Eighty-seven?”

“Indeed,” Philip replied with a chuckle. “He left his considerable fortune, which Vienna had hoped to inherit, to a number of charities that included a foundation he established, naming me as executor. This did not endear me to her.”

“Is that why you return to Philadelphia from time to time?” she asked.

“In part. There was so little left in the foundation at this point, my trip here now was critical. Without additional donations, the foundation would have had to fold.”

Annabelle shifted in her seat and wished she had thought to bring her knitting to keep her hands busy. “You’ve obviously gotten the donations you needed, or you wouldn’t have spent the afternoon telling me about your ideas.”

He smiled. “I have one substantial donation I received just the other day from my cousin. I was reluctant to leave just yet because I have two very promising prospects that may yield even more, which is just as well, since I’ve learned that I can’t leave Philadelphia at all.”

Surprised to learn of Harrison’s donation, she was puzzled by Philip’s words. “You can’t leave? Why not?”

“There hasn’t been a ship able to break free of the ice to set sail since early this week. Unlike the roadways in and around the city proper, all the ones north are impassable. They’re either covered with ice or buried under snowdrifts, which means I’m a prisoner here, along with anyone else who wants to travel north—at least until the first thaw, which some say may not come until early spring.”

Annabelle’s heart nearly stopped beating, and she drew several deep breaths of air until she felt it start pulsing again. If Philip could not leave, then neither could Eric. The thought that her former husband would remain here for months was so terrifying she had to fold her hands together and hide them in the folds of her skirts to keep Philip from seeing how badly they were trembling.

Just when she thought there was nothing else that would upset her, Philip did just that. “Since I’m here and we seem to have some time left alone before supper, I should probably tell you about Elizabeth Warren and Alicia Partridge, unless Harrison has told you about them already.”

She swallowed hard. “No, he hasn’t. Who are they?”

“They’re two young women you’re likely to encounter who will not be friendly toward you.”

“Are they friends of Vienna’s?”

He cringed. “Right now, I’d have to say they’re more allies than friends of hers, but they have only one thing in common: Harrison was quite attentive to each of them before he turned his attention to Vienna. More important, they each now have a common target, and I’m afraid that would be you.”

Before she had the wherewithal to digest the horrifying prospect that there were now three women who wanted to destroy her, thanks to her husband’s past exploits, she heard a coach driving up the curved driveway and looked out the window. “Harrison’s home early,” she murmured.

“Good! I need to tell him that I’ll be extending my stay indefinitely,” he said, helping himself to another cookie.

While he satisfied his sweet tooth, Annabelle stayed seated right where she was to control her temper before she welcomed her husband home.

When Harrison finally entered the parlor, he took one look at Philip, stopped dead in his tracks, and scowled. “What are you doing here? I thought you were getting ready to leave for Boston.”

“He can’t leave, which turned out to be fortunate for me,” she suggested. “He was just telling me about Elizabeth Warren and Alicia Partridge.”

He stared at her for a moment before he glared at his cousin, who raised his hands in surrender. “Since you didn’t tell her, I only said something because I thought she should know.”

“Is there anything else you presumed to tell my wife that you thought she should know?”

“Only about my plans for spending the donation you made to the foundation.”

Harrison snorted. “She doesn’t need to know about that. Is there anything more you divulged during your visit?”

“Nothing at all. Did you enjoy spending today with your friends at Petty’s Island? I’m certain she would love to hear about that, too.”

Annabelle rose so quickly she almost lost her balance. “Since the two of you are talking about me as if I’m not here, I’m going to my room, where I plan to have a quiet supper alone so you can feel free to discuss me at your leisure.” She looked directly at Philip. “Thank you. I enjoyed spending my day with you, and I hope we can do it again very soon.” Then she slowly walked out of the room with as much dignity as she could muster.

She could hear them continue to argue as she walked up the staircase.

“You spent the entire day with my wife?” Harrison charged.

“You spent the entire day with your friends,” Philip countered. “If you’re that concerned about your wife, perhaps you should spend time with her instead.”

She blocked out the rest of their words by humming a tune until she reached her room. Once inside, she closed the door, wondering what she would do if she could end this marriage just as easily as she had blocked out the sound of the two men’s banter.

Every aspect of the life he had led for the past eight years was changing so fast, Harrison had no idea how to regain control, especially when the past kept rising up to haunt him and further complicate his life.

He climbed up the staircase to the second floor just before midnight, after spending hours alone after Philip had left, to try to find a way back to normal. If he thought it would make a difference, he would pack a travel bag and leave at first light for one of the five properties he had inherited, with the exception of the one in western Pennsylvania he had left only a few weeks ago.

Only two things kept him from acting on his impulse to leave: his responsibility to his late brother, Peter, and his obligation to Irene.

Although he was satisfied he had been able to establish some new rules with Philip during supper where Annabelle was concerned, he doubted he would get any real sleep until he apologized to Annabelle for his behavior this afternoon. Only then could he ask for her help.

When he reached the upstairs hallway, he walked straight to the library. He was about to open the door when he caught a glimpse of dim light peeking from beneath the bottom of her door. He was surprised Annabelle was still awake at this hour, since she typically rose before dawn, but he was quickly learning that this woman was a bundle of surprises that caught him off guard more often than not.

Hopeful he might be able to apologize before taking to his own bed, he knocked on her door. When she did not answer, he grew worried that she might have fallen asleep without dousing the oil lamp and eased the door open. He slipped into the room hoping to extinguish it and leave without waking her, but he found her sitting at the lady’s desk, her back to him.

Apparently she was so engrossed in what she was writing that she had not heard him knock or enter the room, so he shut the door just loud enough to let her know she was no longer alone. When she still acted as if he weren’t there, he cleared his throat. “I thought you might have finished responding to all those invitations by now.”

“I did,” she replied, without bothering to stop or turn to look at him.

He took one step closer to her. “Are you writing down all the treasures of the day in your diary?”

Without responding or lifting her head, she pointed to the table next to the bed where the monogram on her diary caught the glint of the dying embers in the fireplace. Rather than venture another guess, which would probably prove to be wrong again, he decided to be more straightforward and took another step. “What are you writing that’s so important you need to do it at midnight?”

He heard her sigh. “A list.”

Overtired, overtaxed, and overwhelmed by a totally miserable day that was close to being one of the worst he had ever had, he let out his own sigh. “Answering my question with only two words or less is not merely frustrating. I find it rather rude.”

Finally she set down her pen and turned in her seat to face him. “Then you know precisely how I felt when you and Philip were talking about me this afternoon as if I weren’t there.”

In the ambient light he could not see her features clearly, but judging by her raspy voice, she had either been crying or she was as fatigued as he was. He opened his mouth to argue the point, but he knew he was on shaky ground and abandoned the idea, in part to avoid adding to her distress. “You’re right. I’m sorry. If it matters to you, I apologized to Philip, too,” he offered, still unaccustomed to apologizing to most anyone for his behavior.

When she nodded her acceptance of his apology, he looked past her to get a better look at what she had been writing, but he was too far away to see anything more than the corner of the paper. “What kind of list are you making?” he asked as he closed the final distance between them.

She turned and folded up the paper. “If you must know, I’m making a list of things I don’t want to forget to take with me when I leave,” she explained and got to her feet.

When she crossed in front of him and stored the list in her knitting bag, he noted she was wearing that awful wooden knitting stick. “You seem to wear that treasure at your waist more often than not. Perhaps you’ll tell me what makes it so important to you.” He sat down in one of the two chairs sitting in front of the dying fire and hoped she would not ask him to leave.

She covered the entire piece of wood with her hands and kept it from his view until she sat down across from him and it disappeared in the folds of her skirts. “Did you really come here at this hour of the night to ask about my knitting stick?”

“It’s not even on the list of all the things I need to discuss with you, but it’s definitely the safest,” he admitted. Finding it hard to express his thoughts or feelings to her as openly and honestly as she expected him to do—or oddly enough, as he found himself wanting to do—he instinctively rubbed at the scar that encircled his wrist.

“First tell me why you’d want to keep the pieces of those horrid handcuffs.”

He narrowed his gaze and stared at the glowing embers that were slowly being buried under gray ash. “They aren’t a sentimental treasure. They’re evidence. I turned them over to my lawyer in case we needed to prove that we were coerced into marrying one another.”

“The scars on your wrist should be enough to prove that,” she pointed out.

He flexed his wrist before he met her gaze again. “In a court of law, more evidence is always better, or so I’ve been told.” He nodded toward the wooden stick hidden by her skirts. “I assume your treasure has a more pleasurable sentiment attached to it than either the handcuffs or my scar.”

To his surprise, she removed the knitting stick, in which she stored up to four knitting needles at a time, and handed it to him. The wooden tool was very light and only slightly wider than his thumb. When he laid the wider end, which was wrapped by a band of metal, at the base of his palm, the tapered end, inscribed with the year 1792, extended just beyond his middle finger. Down the center of the tool, hand-carved letters spelled out a woman’s name: June Gibbs.

“Was she your mother?” he asked.

Her gaze grew misty. “My father carved that knitting stick for her while they were courting. She gave it to me shortly before she died.” Her voice was thick with emotion, and she dropped her gaze. “I was hoping to be able to give it to a daughter of my own someday, but I doubt I’ll ever marry or have a family of my own. Not anymore. As far as society is concerned, a divorced woman is . . . how did you put it? ‘Beyond redemption.’ ” Her words were so soft he almost did not hear her.

Beyond redemption.

If he were able to take back any two words he had said over the course of his entire lifetime, those would be the ones he would choose. Deeply troubled by the tears she was trying hard to blink away, he handed her treasure back to her.

Even though he could not name a single man who would risk the social stigma of marrying a divorced woman—even a woman as intriguing as she was—he felt compelled to ease the distress he had caused her. “Forgive me. Just because I’m a total cad for using those words doesn’t mean I’m right. Or that you should give up hope that one day you might find a man who would fully understand the circumstances that led to our marriage and divorce and would still want to marry you.”

“You may not have been very tactful, but at least you were being honest. Don’t you . . . do you ever think about having your own family someday?” she asked as she toyed with the knitting stick, turning it over and over again in her hand.

He swallowed hard. “I think perhaps I did at one time. Very much so.”

Her hand stilled. “But not now.”

“No,” he admitted.

“Is that . . . is that because of the stigma of our pending divorce?”

Anxious to move past the subject of his shattered dreams, along with their current legal difficulties, he answered her as honestly and tactfully as he could. “From my perspective, life is far too unpredictable to consider marriage at all. Having a wife and children is simply risking disaster. I wouldn’t want to bring children into this world and leave them orphaned, like my parents did, and have my children raised by someone hired to do the job, like my brother and I were. I’d also prefer not to die with my wife and my children, like my brother did,” he admitted, still troubled by memories that had resurfaced so suddenly again today.

After drawing in a deep gulp of air, he continued. “It’s easier to avoid all of that by remaining single, and if you doubt what I’m telling you, you might want to ask some of the women at the Refuge if they enjoy the misery they’re mired in because their husbands died or abandoned them, leaving them virtually homeless, with broken hearts and fatherless children and no way to support themselves.”

When she looked at him, her eyes were glistening with sadness. “You can’t isolate yourself from life’s troubles. No one can. If you’d take the time to talk to some of the women like I have, you’d learn that they all have one thing in common beyond their reduced circumstances. It’s something you’ve given them because of your support to the Refuge, even though you don’t like to discuss it.”

He waved his hand to dismiss her words. “If you’re referring to the firewood, then I assure you I only had it delivered because you’re so adamant about volunteering there. I really had no other option, unless I wanted to take the risk you’d fall ill. That building was uncommonly cold.” He got up and added a log to the fire, since the sleeping room was turning chilly.

She leaned forward in her seat. “Your motive isn’t as important as your actions,” she argued. “Whether you deliberately intended to help those women or not, all they know is that you cared enough to have firewood delivered or that you paid for the knitting tools and yarn they need to help themselves. What they have in common now is that you restored their faith, and you gave them hope. That’s what they need to face the future.”

He snorted. “For how long? A week? A month? Sooner or later, they’re bound to lose hope again or have their faith tested over and over again until it’s gone. Wouldn’t it be easier all around if they faced that reality? Isn’t that all any of us can do?”

Her eyes widened. “Only if we give up and try to live without faith in God, who fills us with hope every time we lose our way.”

“As I see it, faith in God just isn’t enough, and hope is just a temporary reprieve from heartache . . . which is why I need to talk to you about Irene.”

Annabelle stiffened. “What about her?”

He let out a long breath. “I need to talk to her tomorrow morning about a very personal matter. I think she’d find it comforting if you were there with me when I did.”

“Why? What’s happened?” she asked, and her eyes flashed with alarm.

He retrieved the letter he had received that afternoon from his pocket. “Since you and Irene have become friends, I don’t think she’d mind if I shared this letter with you. It was addressed to my father,” he said and handed it to her. “Once you’ve finished reading it, I think you’ll understand how difficult it will be tomorrow when we have to tell her that her only child, Ellis, is dead.”