Free A Midsummer's Sin by Natasha Blackthorne

repulsed. She’d seen the horrible look on his face, the disgust he couldn’t hide.
    It was like dying. Truly it was. For she loved him and nothing would ever be the same in her life after he was gone. All her dreams of being a helpmate, a wife, were gone now. There would never be another man for her.
    But what now, then?
    She had no idea. Well, she’d always survived. She’d survive even this. Perhaps she would return to the theatre life, go to Paris or Italy. But she loathed the very idea.
    The clopping thud of approaching horse’s hooves on the road sent her running to the window. The man was riding like a fury. But she recognised the tall, wiry man and the black gelding.
    Jacob, a fellow bondslave of Goody Wilson.
    A curl of dread wound around the pit of her stomach. She hurried outside and met him halfway as he rushed up the walk.
    His face looked grave. Like death. “Jacob!”
    “It’s Hannah. She’s taken ill.”
     
    * * * *
     
    Thomas sat in the kitchen, head in his hands. Exhausted. Reverend Shepard and his eldest daughter were with Hannah. Thomas had to believe the man’s previous medical training would make a difference. He and Rosalind had just barely kept ahead of Hannah’s illness.
    Rosalind had given so much of herself so freely to his child. She had shrunk from the more gruelling aspects of the illness. She’d been so gentle, so kind, caressing the hair from Hannah’s forehead and singing softly to soothe her fretting.
    He shouldn’t compare.
    He couldn’t help but compare.
    Patience had never been easy with illness. She had let the maid nurse their children through sickness while she’d read aloud from the Bible and prayed. He had thought nothing of it. With a houseful of servants, his mother had been much like that.
    In his overtired mind, the memory of the full horror and pain of the night his infant son had died on the Abigail hit him full force.
    He had touched Patience’s shoulders. She had slumped down and evaded his touch. She had looked up at him , her grey eyes strangely calm. She had clutched her open Bible, her lips had been moving.
    He had been unable to hear her. His heart had pounded too loudly. Pure rage had pounded through his blood. Why had God taken his innocent son? If someone had to die why hadn’t it been Thomas himself? He’d lived a sinful, indulgent life. He’d partaken of much. His son had known nothing of life’s joys.
    Patience had pulled back from him, holding the Bible up to him. She’d been almost shouting now. “Please, husband, read with me and take comfort in the Lord’s wisdom.”
    “I can’t,” he’d replied. “I just can’t. Not now.”
    She had lowered the Bible and looked at him with a studied expression of sympathy, her blonde brows drawn together, her high forehead wrinkled. But her eyes had been frosted with disapproval. Maybe even a touch of superiority.
    He had hated her in that moment. God help him, he had hated her.
    An image blazed across his mind. Hannah with her cheeks flushed and her braids swinging as she ran happy and free with the other small children at the last corn husking played in his mind. Her happy laughter echoed in his ears.
    “I cannot lose her!”
    “Oh, Thomas…”
    He started. He had forgotten Rosalind’s presence. He blinked hard and her face came slowly into focus. He realised, with some shock, that he was blinking away tears.
    Her brows were drawn together and her forehead was wrinkled.
    “I shall not lose her.”
    “It shall be God’s will.” Her voice was like a soft, soothing blanket. Warming him.
    Anger surged through him, resisting the comfort.
    “Damn it, woman, do not say such things!” He sat down, bent his head and raked his hands through his hair. “If I lose her, I do not know what I shall do. I shall have nothing, nothing worth living for.” He covered his face.
    Her touch fell on his hair, gently.
    “If God takes her, I shall never forgive him.”
    “You mustn’t speak like that.”