Hearts Awakening (8 page)

Ellie tried not to let her cousins’ angry words detract from her purpose here or dissuade her from believing she had made a wise decision. Turning about, she met Cousin Mark’s gaze and held it. “I’m sure your wife will be fine on her own. Jackson and the boys need me more, and I . . . I need more. He’s offered me something that neither you nor Philip were willing to do. He’s gladly offered me a home. A real home.”

Cousin Mark put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “At the very least, you should have consulted me first before you married him. Once you know the real truth about the man—”

“I’m a thirty-one-year-old spinster. Or I was until today. I shouldn’t need to ask anyone’s permission, but if I can’t have your blessing and well-wishes, then I would simply ask that you accept my decision and refrain from spreading any gossip about my husband.”

“At least she’ll be living outside of the city on an island and not the man’s Sunday house, even though it’s on the far side of the city,” Mark offered to his stricken wife.

“But people won’t be able to forget they’re married. He comes to the city for Market Day on Wednesdays, and we’ll no doubt see them on Sunday when they come for services, which means the entire congregation will see them together.”

He grunted. “Smith hasn’t been to services much since his wife died.”

Olivia sniffled. “They’ll be there.
She’ll
make certain of it,” she whined, as if Ellie were not standing right there.

Cousin Mark stared at Ellie for several long moments before he let out a long sigh. “It’s not too late to change your mind. I’ll speak to Reverend Shore myself. Since the marriage hasn’t been consummated yet—”

“Please step out of my way,” Ellie said firmly, wondering what either one of them would say if they discovered that her marriage was destined to remain unconsummated forever.

Her cousin hissed under his breath. “If you leave now, you leave for good. Don’t come running back here when you learn the truth about that man or discover that you won’t be welcome in decent homes any more than that husband of yours is.”

“I won’t. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to leave. The boys are hungry. I promised we’d stop for a picnic on the way home, and Mr. Smith . . . my husband wants to work for a few hours in the orchards before it grows dark.”

Cousin Mark and his wife stepped aside. “Fine. Stay married to him. Our reputations as godly people are strong enough to weather the storm of gossip your marriage will ignite,” he said and snickered as she passed by them. “Now that I think of it, I couldn’t have fashioned a better punishment for you than to have you discover the bitter truth of why Smith actually married you.”

She paused and turned to face him. “What truth would that be, Cousin?”

“That he married you because you’re so miserably plain and unattractive, he knew no other man would ever want you.”

Olivia nodded in agreement. “Which means, of course, he’ll never have to worry that you’ll betray him like Rebecca did.”

Seven

For the second time in his life, Jackson Smith returned to Dillon’s Island with a bride he did not love.

And for the second time on his wedding day, he yearned for the woman who had stolen his heart and still kept it, long after she had rejected him for another, instead of the woman who now carried his name.

He waved farewell to Michael Grant, who had helped to ferry them back across the river, and drove the buckboard from the landing at the northern tip of the island toward home. The wagon wheels crunched over the narrow dirt path through the woods lining the eastern shore of the hundred-acre island, carrying him farther away from the sights and sounds and smells of the city and the still-painful memories his marriage today had brought back to the surface.

He drew in a long breath, inhaling the woodsy scent laced with a subtle apple fragrance that reassured him all would soon be right with the life he had created for himself here. Like the apple trees his father-in-law had planted and nurtured for over forty years, Jackson had planted himself here eight years ago and established his roots.

Here he had found the stable home he had been searching for, and here his sons would grow to manhood with strong roots and a solid family to guide them. He shook his head and let out a long sigh. After losing his heart to a woman who had spurned him, he had thought he would be able to create that safe haven here with Rebecca, but he had misjudged her, too. He only hoped he had not repeated those mistakes by misjudging the woman he had just married.

The canopy of trees overhead blocked the sun, and the air was cooler than it had been back in the city. He glanced down at his two sleeping sons, curled up together like a pair of newborn puppies on the well below the seat, looked up at the new Mrs. Jackson Smith, and smiled. She appeared to be dozing, too, apparently quite recovered from the rather cold reception she had received from her cousin and his wife when she told them of her marriage.

Unfortunately, she would face criticism just as severe from many others as news of their marriage spread throughout the city, and he could only hope that she was as immune to gossip as she had claimed to be. He gave the horses free rein to follow the path they knew so well, but he tightened his hold on the narrow strips of leather themselves in case something spooked the animals and he needed to control them.

Given the opportunity to observe Ellie unnoticed, he could not help comparing the two women he had married, however unfair that might be. Life, however, was not always fair, a lesson he had learned when he had been orphaned not long after his eighth birthday.

He looked at Ellie again. Where Rebecca had been a petite, vivacious, but volatile blonde with mischievous blue eyes, Ellie was a solidly built, no-nonsense woman who was nearly as tall as he was.

She also seemed to be a stable, settled, easy-to-please woman, although he still wondered if all she owned had really fit into that small travel bag of hers. He had needed three trunks when he had packed up Rebecca’s things and stored them away in the attic.

Rebecca’s personality was bolder, too. During the seven years of their marriage, Rebecca’s impetuous temperament had not softened with age or motherhood. But he had few regrets. He had married Rebecca out of obligation to her father, and he would do it again, given the circumstances of his life.

After hiring Jackson, James Gladson, Rebecca’s father, had treated him as the son he had never had. Marrying the man’s daughter and giving him grandsons to carry on the family line seemed little enough to do to repay him, especially when Jackson had no interest in ever marrying anyone other than Dorothea—the first and only woman he had ever loved . . . and then lost to another man.

“Dorothea,” he whispered and tightened his hold on the reins. Just whispering her name fanned the embers of passion and desire that had once consumed him, indeed blinded him, to any thoughts other than claiming the raven-haired beauty as his own. Yet still they remained, despite the fact that she was now married to another.

Startled out of his reverie when the buckboard hit an unexpected rut in the road and bounced hard, he instinctively reached out one arm to keep his boys steady. He took a quick glance down at them and chuckled. They had not even woken up; in fact, Daniel’s arm was still locked protectively around his younger brother.

The jolt did, on the other hand, rouse his new wife, who grabbed the seat with one hand to keep her balance and simultaneously swung her arm out over the boys. When her hand inadvertently touched his, he grasped it until the wagon settled. “We’re steady now,” he assured her and freed her hand.

Blushing, she looked around as if trying to get a sense of where she was. “I-I’m sorry. I must have dozed off.”

He chuckled. “Riding in a buckboard can rock most people to sleep, especially when the roadway isn’t very flat. We’re not that far from home now.”

Her eyes widened and her blushed deepened. She dropped her gaze to look down at the boys again, as if to make sure they were all right after she had neglected watching over them. “I’ve been dozing that long?”

He chuckled again. “Don’t look so upset. You haven’t committed a crime. As you can see, the boys are fine. Just plain tuckered out,” he offered, rather pleased that her first concern was for the boys. Rebecca would have pitched herself into a fit of hysterics as soon as the jolt woke her up, right after she lambasted him for driving so poorly.

“Poor babes. It’s been a difficult day for them,” she crooned as she brushed a lock of hair off Ethan’s pale cheek and tugged Daniel’s hat back into place.

“It’s been a momentous day for all of us,” he countered. Despite her nurturing sweetness, which simply appeared to be part of her nature, he had no illusions about the woman he had married. He had been fooled once too often to completely trust any woman, especially a woman he had known only for a few days, but he had no worry that this very plain woman could inspire even a wisp of desire that might distract him.

Nevertheless, he planned to hold a tight rein of authority over her in the coming days. Living an isolated life on the island would make that fairly easy to do without raising the hackles of independence he sensed just beneath the surface of her acquiescent demeanor.

He glanced down at his sons and swallowed hard. He also had no illusions about the adjustment both of them would have to make now that they had a stepmother. He had every intention of stepping back and simply watching how his new wife met the challenge of winning the boys’ trust and affection, but he was fully prepared to intervene on their behalf and usurp her authority, if necessary, to protect them.

Despite Rebecca’s inconsistent interest in her sons, which ranged from doting to indifferent, depending on her mood, both Daniel and Ethan had adored their mother. Indeed, they still did, and they would not take to Ellie easily.

He turned to Ellie and told her so. “Unfortunately, the boys can’t fully grasp the reality that their mother is . . . that she’s dead and that she won’t ever be coming home again,” he explained.

“Daniel’s made that very clear, and I can only assume Ethan feels the same way,” she replied and paused for a moment. “I’m not trying to pry for curiosity’s sake, but if I’m going to help Ethan, especially, I wonder if you would answer a question for me.”

He stiffened. He should have expected she would have questions about the circumstances surrounding Rebecca’s death, but he had yet to come to terms with them himself. By all rights, he should have been totally honest with Ellie before she had agreed to marry him, but if she insisted on knowing now, he would simply have to tell her the entire ugly truth and hope she would not regret her decision to marry him. “I suppose that would depend on the question.”

“Did Ethan stop talking as soon as he learned his mother had died, or did he always have difficulty speaking?”

Relieved that her question was not about the circumstances surrounding Rebecca’s death, he swallowed hard. “No, he spoke fairly well, when Daniel gave him the chance, but within the first week after his mother passed, he just stopped talking. Dr. Willows assures me there’s nothing physically wrong with Ethan, but the longer it takes for him to start speaking again . . .”

“He’ll speak when he’s ready, or when he feels he needs to talk. I won’t rush the matter,” she reassured him.

Jackson checked the road ahead, saw that it was clear, and looked down at his sons again before mentioning something that needed to be settled before they woke up. “I’m not certain how either one of them will take to calling you . . . that is, it might be too soon to expect them to call you Mama. It might be easier if they continued to call you Miss Ellie for now,” he suggested and urged the horses forward when they attempted to stop for a snack at a stand of young saplings.

“I’ve waited many, many years for a child to call me Mama. A few more weeks or months wouldn’t matter, but perhaps you could answer another question for me, since the boys are still asleep and we have a few more minutes before we reach home.”

He tightened his jaw. “If it’s about Rebecca—”

“No,” she said, a bit too quickly, and her blush reappeared. “I grew up on a small farm outside of Philadelphia, but your farmstead is quite unlike anything I’ve seen before,” she noted and shifted in her seat.

“Obviously, there’s not much different about the house itself, although it’s far bigger than what I’ve been accustomed to. I’ve been to the root cellar behind the house, and I suppose it isn’t all that uncommon to have to use an outdoor entrance, but other than the abandoned bake oven, a sadly neglected herb garden, and a small smokehouse, I didn’t see any other outbuildings. No barn or . . . or chicken house. No animals, for that matter,” she said, as if truly confused.

“That’s because I need to spend all of my time with the orchards. Those were my father-in-law’s passion, I’m afraid. Now they’re mine, and someday, I hope, that’s where Daniel and Ethan will devote most of their energies.”

She furrowed her brow. “Then you must depend on the Grants for most of what you need, since you obviously can’t purchase and store everything you’d have to buy at market in the city.”