A knock on the front door drew them apart. She hated moving away from him, but she'd given Anya the afternoon off. "I had better answer that before Samuel decides he feels well enough to do it."
"Aye. Let me." He pressed a quick kiss to her brow and then marched away.
Tessa searched through her basket and laid out the crocks on the counter, one by one. She heard the door open and a woman's voice talking fast and high. It sounded like Prudence Bowman.
"Tessa." Jonah pushed through the door, his face tight. "Someone is here to see you. She says her daughter has fallen ill."
A foreboding drew tight in the pit of her stomach. "Send her in-"
"Tessa!" A pale faced woman, dressed in a fine gown and cloak, pushed past Jonah in the threshold and tumbled into the kitchen, windblown and rain specked. "Thankful woke up yesterday saying she didn't feel well, and now she has a fever. She is coughing and fretful."
"What have you been treating her with?" Tessa grabbed up the water pail from the back door and pulled a chair out from the table, motioning Mistress Bowman to sit.
"Honey and tea. My mother swears by it, but it has been of no help." Worry wobbled in her voice as she dropped into the offered chair. "I don't know what else to try."
"I will come take a look as soon as I'm done here." Tessa hefted the heavy pail and poured. Water sluiced into a small kettle. " 'Twill take only a few minutes."
"I fear Thankful's fever is far too advanced. I should have asked for your help earlier, but I was sure it was just from the change in weather and all this dampness."
"Jonah, will you see after Andy?"
While concern narrowed his eyes, he nodded gently. "Thomas has not dragged me out into the fields yet, so I have the time. You want me to give Andy tea?"
"Just plain tea and honey, and he is to drink it all up after he takes this powder. Just this much." She grabbed a spoon from the holder and measured out a quarter teaspoon. "He's to put it right on his tongue. It will taste nasty, but it should ease his pain. If I'm not back by suppertime, make sure he has another cup of tea but no more powder."
"I will." Jonah's hand curled around the kettle handle. "Have Thomas saddle Father's bay mare for you. And Tessa? Try to be home before dark."
A gentle light of caring shone in his eyes, and it moved her, touched her as nothing ever had. He would miss her when she was gone. Her heart filled to brimming. 'Twas a good thing to be loved.
The sun had set by the time she rode into the stable. The mare was as soaked to the skin as she was. 'Twas a gentle animal, with big friendly eyes and a gentle nature. Friendly, as if the poor animal didn't have anyone to ride her much. Tessa uncinched the saddle and vowed to take the animal out for a run one day soon.
"There you are." Thomas splashed into the stable, wearing a dripping jacket and cap, carrying a small lantern, a tiny beacon against the gathering darkness. "Jonah nearly sent me five different times to see to your safety. He feared the horse had thrown you and left you hurt in the middle of the road."
"I hope you told Jonah I know how to care for myself." Although it warmed her to know her husband worried over her welfare. "Where is he?"
"Putting Father to bed. I saw you ride up." He hooked the lantern on a nail. "Here, let me rub down the mare."
"I was planning on taking her back out again." Tessa gave the horse's neck a gentle pat. "Thankful Bowman complained of a headache yesterday and today she is very ill."
"Andy has a headache." Thomas' jaw tensed. He was a burly man, broader than Jonah through the chest, but not as tall. His somber nature made him seem just as powerful as Jonah, though in a different way. " 'Tis not a good sign."
"Nay. I wanted to take some medicines to Mistress Briers. She complained of a headache today too, and I think 'twould be best to medicate this fever before it hits and settles into the lungs."
"The storm is too miserable. I will take the medicines. All you need to do is write the instructions for the seamstress, and I will see that she gets both."
"You would do that?"
"Aye. Jonah would have my head if I let you back out in that storm. Besides, we fear Andy needs your care now."
Thomas spoke sense, and 'twas good to be needed. And 'twas good to be treated like this, with respect and caring. She imagined this was how good families behaved toward one another, and how nice it was. She knew Thomas, as Jonah's brother, didn't need to come out into the rain to help her or run her errand. But he had.
"Thank you." The words caught in her throat because they were so hard to say.
"For what?" He looked up from grabbing a linen towel from a dark shelf. "For saving you from getting more soaked than you already are?"
"Nay. For accepting me into your family, for treating me so well. 'Tis more than my own family has done." She watched the surprise on his face, and mayhap a bit of confusion. Embarrassed, she ran out into the drumming rain and let the cold wetness sluice away the heat from her face.
"Tessa?" Thomas gazed out at her, framed by the dark threshold, backlit by the single lantern's gentle flame. "I am glad you're happy here with us. We appreciate you more than you know."
Aye, 'twas good to belong. To truly belong. She smiled, not trusting her voice, and hurried to the house. Warmth and the sweet scent of steeping tea met her as she rushed inside. Water dripped from her cloak's hem.
"Mistress." Anya spun from the hearth. "We've all been worried. The storm is so severe."
"No need to worry, for I'm well. Has Andy shown any signs of fever?"
"Nay, but he has been coughing." The girl stuffed her hands behind a pretty but plain apron. "Colonel Hunter said that since I was looking around in the attic as you told me to do, I should take whatever I might need. Like this apron."
Tessa knew Anya had come with only the clothes on her back. "Did Samuel climb the attic ladder by himself?"
"Aye. He tried to swear me to secrecy, but I told him I would not lie to my mistress." A small nervous smile flickered across her pale face. "If this is too much, I can put it back."
"Nay, an apron is sensible. And we must clothe you. Think of how indecent it would be if we did not." On a smile, Tessa shrugged out of her cloak and hung it on a wall peg to drip dry. "Do you like your room?"
" 'Tis very comfortable. With a real bed. The colonel said I might borrow a book to read at night from the library after my work was done. If I am careful with it. Is that all right?"
"Of course. I would let you go now, but I need help with an onion poultice for Andy."
"Let me go down cellar and fetch some onions. How many will you need?"
"Four will do." Tessa reached up into the cupboard and found a small empty crock. The girl had already slipped into the pantry. The cellar door squealed a protest in the small room.
Tessa measured out a good amount of crushed yarrow leaves, sweetgrass, dried bearberries, cottonwood bark, and mint. She set Anya to peeling, then slicing the onions. Thomas knocked at the back door, and she handed him a small packet with instructions, wrapped in leather to protect it from the rain. She thanked him again, and he was gone, blending into the shadows of the thunderous night.
She chose cottonwood bark to steep with Andy's tea and then headed upstairs. The house seemed quiet with the parlor dark and the colonel asleep.
At the head of the stairs, a thin light drew her to Andy's chamber. The door was ajar. She could see a bed centering the room where a down comforter was drawn up to Andy's chin. A fire crackled in the small fireplace, the light glancing over Jonah to illuminate the sleeping man propped up by pillows.
"How is Mistress Thankful?"
"Not well. Her malady seems similar to your father's. Is Andy worse?"
"Aye, he started coughing after supper. Not hard, and he doesn't have the rattle in his chest Father had." Lines furrowed across Jonah's brow. How tired he looked, how worried. He'd pulled his dark hair back into a leather tie at his nape. If he were not in a sick room, he could be mistaken for a pirate, or mayhap a spy for the French. His hand caught hers and fire skidded across her skin. Desire built in her blood. "I didn't send for you because I knew Mistress Thankful was more ill."
"Anya is slicing onions for a poultice. It will help keep his lungs clear." Tessa watched Jonah rise and tower his full height over her. She stepped into the shelter of his arms, against the wondrous comfort of his chest. She could hold him forever just like this with their hearts beating together.
"Andy will be ecstatic. He sleeps now, but when he was awake he complained mightily of your awful tasting headache powder." His hand on her back caressed slow circles at her spine. "I scared him into taking it by saying I would fetch you from the Bowmans."
She tilted her face upward, and his smile became a kiss, fiery and possessive.
"I missed you this evening." His fingers brushed over her hips. How dark his eyes were. Was he thinking of the last time they'd made love? How she straddled him, brushed by only candlelight and his hands, and took his hard shaft inside her?
"Tell me how ill Andy is." How rough his voice sounded, low and intimate. Aye, he was thinking of it, too. "Then we'll see what comes next between us."
He stepped away, and the ache for him low in her belly grew heavier. She craved him, like air and water and sleep. She wanted to make love to this man who'd given her not just a home and a place to belong, but his love. 'Twas all she had wished for, prayed for, dreamed of.
Tessa drew the chair up to the bed and set the burning taper on the nearby stand. Light washed Andy's face, slack and younger looking in sleep. A slight blush pinkened his cheeks. The color was high, near his eyes, and a faint trace of it painted his brow.
"He doesn't feel overly warm, but the fever has begun."
So, there would be no pleasure this night. She would do all she could to help Andy fight the fever, which like Thankful Bowman, struck more swiftly than with the colonel. 'Twas why she feared it would be all the more dangerous. "I'll need another candle, Jonah. And wood for the fire."
A muscle jumped in his jaw. His beautiful shoulders tensed. "As you wish, my lady." He kissed her brow, tenderly this time, so infinitely tender.
'Twas going to be a long night.
He heard the outside door close down below, for the kitchen was beneath Andy's room. The fire burned low, in need of more wood, its orange-red glow lashing the fine cut of Tessa's back and the slender shape of her shoulders. The back of her neck, bent over her work, looked vulnerable. Dark curls that had escaped her braid gathered there, ebony silk against creamy satin.
"What do you need from the kitchen?"
"I could use more clean dish towels."
"I'll be right back." He pressed a kiss to her forehead. A warm feeling beat in his chest as he stepped away. She returned to her work, checking the poultice smeared on Andy's chest.
The hallway was cool, the parlor damp and cold. Spring came stubbornly this year, holding back its warmth. "Thomas, is that you?"
"Aye. I've brought in more wood."
Jonah studied his brother, face lined and brow furrowed, and recognized that dark brooding look. "I thought you had gone to bed."
"Andy is my brother, too." Thomas knelt before the wood box, instead of nosily dumping his armload, and quietly filled the copper tub stick by stick.
"You looked troubled. Is it Andy? The fever is a serious one." Jonah bent to help.
"Aye, Andy's illness does worry me, but something else also troubles me." He set the last chunk of maple into the box, then dusted the slivers of wood, bark, and moss from his gloves and jacket. "Do you know what Tessa did today?"
"She did many things." Jonah turned to sort through the shelves beneath the work counter.
"She thanked me."
"Thanked you?" He spied the towels and grabbed a couple. "Pray, tell me 'tisn't so! It must have tortured you. What did you do to deserve such treatment?"
"Offered to take medicine to Mistress Briers for her, because of the storm." Thomas walked to the window just as lightning split the sky, flashing behind the curtain. Thunder rolled overhead, angry and ear splitting. "But that wasn't all she thanked me for. She's grateful for how well we treat her. For how I treat her."
"So, you feel guilty, is that it? Do you feel bad for wagering Andy five pounds over my choice in a wife?"
"Do not tease, brother. I'm not proud of myself. I only meant to jest. Why, Tessa is an honest woman, but there isn't one man in all of Connecticut Colony who could see the Tessa Bradford you married. I have come to like her, and I respect her for what she does."
"As do I."
"She brought our father back to us, when the surgeon had no hope. And now Andy is ill, and she is up there right now at his side, no matter that 'tis midnight and she's had little sleep to call her own."
"You're telling me what I already know."
Lightning flashed, thunder rattled the windowpanes. Thomas hefted the curtain away from the glass and stared out at the black sheets of rain. "She thinks we treat her well, and my conscience bothers me. How it bothers me. But what troubles me more is that my brother, the great heroic Major Hunter, reported to save innocent colonists from marauding Indians, is using this good-hearted woman."
"I am not using her." Defensive rage flared in his chest, more striking than the lightning searing the night.
"Then what do you call it? You should have hired a nurse, Jonah. Not married that poor woman. She thinks you love her," Thomas scolded over the raging thunder.
"I do happen to care about her." Jonah tossed down the towels to clench his hands. "She's my wife, and none of your concern."
"What goes on in front of my nose is my concern." Thomas spun from the window, and a single bayberry candle illuminated the fight in his eyes. "She has done naught but care for every member in this family since she arrived here. Aye, and she even cares for a penniless servant. She believes you love her, Jonah, and new dresses and decent treatment do not excuse how you lie to her and deceive her. She thinks she has your heart."
"Aye, but how can I say such a thing to her?" Troubled, Jonah faced the window, studying the night-black windowpanes and his own reflection within. "It would hurt her terribly, and that is why she can't know. I may have chosen to marry her because she could take care of Father, but that's not why I want her to stay. I-"
Something clattered to the floor behind him. A silence settled on the room. Not even the thunder above dared to intrude. Jonah felt her presence like a touch to his back, like a mark on his conscience.
"Look how clumsy I am." She knelt to the floor, retrieving the fallen bowl. She turned away so that the nighttime shadows cloaked her face. Her hands worked quickly. "Jonah, you took so long for the towels. Tis time to take the paste off Andy's chest."
Her hands shook as she set the bowl on the counter.
Damn his stupid tongue. "Tessa." He stepped forward.
She sidestepped. "I need only a bit of wash water." She poured water from the lukewarm kettle into her shallow bowl. Her voice sounded thick with unshed tears. "Whilst there is still no fever, 'tis best to be cautious."
"Tessa, you misunderstand. I did not mean those words the way they sounded." He had only wanted to keep her from hurting, to protect her caring heart.
Tessa was a person, his wife, with feelings deep and true, and he had been wrong to think an unwanted spinster who worked for a roof over her head would be merely glad to live in a big house and have a life of ease. She had dreams and needs and a heart large enough to spend her days and nights caring for those in the village who were ill or dying. Many accepted her help only to tease her or judge her when it suited, and all without payment, without reward.
She was a woman who had offered to care for his dying father out of gratitude, out of a kindness Father had shown to her mother many years ago.
Those were not sensible actions, but deeds of a deeply feeling heart.
"Tessa, let me explain." He could make this right, he knew he could. He was not using her. Not for his pleasures in bed, not as a nurse for his family. Tessa was his wife and he was both proud and pleased with her. He would give her more-his whole heart-if he had it to give.
But she scooped up the towels and the basin and hurried off, her gait efficient and sensible.
"I don't think she will forgive you," Thomas predicted.
As if in agreement, lightning split the shadowed light between them and thunder shattered the night.
Her hands trembled as she cleaned the dried mash of onions and herbs from Andy's chest. He woke with a murmur, then went back to sleep. Not yet sick, but a fever on the way. She dried his chest and covered him well. She could do no more for now.
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 buy affection."
"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.