"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.
Chapter Fourteen
Six-year-old Mercy Hollingsworth worsened as the night faded to dawn. Her fever raged, dampening the gold ringlets at her brow, and everything Tessa tried merely slowed the fever, did not stop it. Mercy's lungs filled until she couldn't draw more than the faintest of breaths.
The reverend prayed beside the father and mother at the foot of the bed while Tessa worked. She crushed herbs and made poultices and compresses intended to bring down the fever and loosen the congestion in the lungs. Nothing worked. Not one thing.
"I cannot lose her," Susan sobbed.
She and Susan had gone to school together and had been in the same class. They had grown apart when Tessa's mother grew ill and she no longer attended school or socials or parties or regular meetings. Mother had needed her, but Susan had always remained kind, unlike many others.
Glancing around the small parlor where the child's bed had been brought down close to the fire, she saw the touches of a loving family-finger painted masterpieces by the little girls tacked on the walls, a doll on a bench in the corner and beneath it toys huddled in a small pile. Such a priceless life Susan had.
Pain wedged into an unyielding ball in her throat and Tessa blinked away unwanted tears. Mercy coughed, and Tessa held her gently. Susan crept close and she handed the child to her mother, the poor thing so fevered she did not know who held her.
"I can see it in your eyes, Tessa." Susan's face crumpled. "I'm going to lose her."
"I can't lie to you." Tessa's throat ached with sadness. "I can think of only one thing to try, a stronger dose of blackbale root. 'Tis a dangerous level, but at this point she'll not recover anyway."
"You know we can't afford a surgeon, but if that would save Mercy-"
"Nay, he wouldn't get here in time. Besides, I have never noticed much improvement from bleeding. If it comes to that, I can do it myself." She hurt for Susan, for this precious child she stood to lose. "She needs more cool compresses. Like this."
She showed Susan how to apply them, then hurried to the kitchen to crush more roots into powder. As she worked, a tiny girl crawled down the ladder in her flannel nightdress, her cap askew revealing bountiful gold curls.
"Whatcha doin'?" the child asked as both stockinged feet hit the floor.
"Making medicine for your sister." Tessa knelt down, her roots forgotten, to admire the child, still plump with baby fat, her eyes as blue as berries. "Is your other sister up in the attic sleeping, too?"
A serious nod. "Julia's a slug 'cuz she won't get outta bed."
"I see." Tessa spied a crock and peered inside it. Just as she suspected. Cookies. She snatched two and held them out for the little girl. "Why don't you go sit at the table and eat these? I need to talk to your mama."
"Thank you." Delight shone in those eyes, for what a treat cookies were before breakfast.
But 'twas the only thing Tessa could think of to keep the child from the sick room. "Susan?"
The woman sat on the bed, leaning over her dying daughter, applying die cold cloths to her fever-raged body. She looked up and, as if she could tell from the tone in Tessa's voice, tears welled. "No, not my other girls."
"Julia is upstairs. I need to go check on her. I want your husband to take little Judith over to your mother's house and keep her there in isolation. She doesn't yet look flushed. Mayhap she will not fall ill."
"Zeb!" She flew at her husband, panic sharp in her voice, for she knew this illness could take all her children.
Tessa checked on Judith, who was just starting in on her second cookie, and then quietly climbed the ladder. She spied a small lump in the bed. "Julia, I hear you are feeling poorly."
"Aye, is that you, Mistress Tessa?"
" 'Tis. Remember when I tended your fever last winter?"
"I do. You made me better."
"Aye. Let me feel your forehead now."
The child's brow was indeed warm.
Tessa smoothed Julia's unruly curls, sadness filling her. A deadly illness was sweeping through the village. Her problems felt small in comparison.
Dawn teased at the curtains in Andy's room, a gray dreary light that promised a rain-filled day. Jonah dusted the slivers of bark from his shirt and straightened away from the hearth as the flames greedily licked at the new wood.
"Where is Tessa?" Andy asked from his bed. "I'm surprised she is not here to torture me with more of that evil brown powder."