Free The Vow by Lindsay Chase Page B

she might not survive it.
    “Mrs. Hardy!” Reiver bellowed as he slipped his arm around Hannah and guided her toward the stairs. When the housekeeper appeared in the doorway,

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    he snapped, “It’s time. Don’t just stand there. Find Sam and tell him to go for the midwife. My son is about to be born.”
    “Don’t get excited,” Mrs. Hardy said. “He won’t come for hours yet.”
    Hours later Reiver’s child still had not yet arrived.
    Banished from his wife’s lying-in chamber by women determined to do women’s work without masculine interference, Reiver paced back and forth outside the door until Hannah’s groans drove him back downstairs to where Samuel and James were keeping a vigil.
    Reiver circled the parlor, running his hands through his hair. “I wish there was something I could do.”
    Samuel poured half a glass of apple brandy and pushed it across the table in his brother’s direction. “There’s nothing you can do. Hannah has to do this alone.”
    Reiver grabbed the glass and downed it in two swallows, savoring the burn as it slid down his throat. He stared at his brothers. “What if she dies?”
    Then you can marry your precious Cecelia , said the look in Samuel’s accusing eyes.
    Reiver’s gaze fell away in shame.
    “Hannah won’t die,” James said, tinkering with a piece of machinery. He rose. “I’m going for a walk. Call me when the baby’s born.” And he left.
    Reiver spent the next few hours pacing the parlor while Samuel sketched the brandy bottle sitting on the sideboard. Both men stopped whenever Hannah’s screams of agony filtered down.
    Reiver regarded Samuel with desperation in his eyes. “This has been going on too long. I’m going upstairs, and they had damn well better let me in.”
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    Suddenly the door flew open and James stood there, white-faced and panting, a lantern in hand. “Reiver! A cat got into the rearing shed. The worms…” Words failed him and he gestured helplessly.
    Reiver swore loudly enough to shake the walls. He bolted for the door, his wife and child forgotten as he and James went running through the darkness, the wildly swinging lantern casting eerie arcs of light on the grass.
    When he stormed into the rearing shed, the ominous silence seemed to scream disaster and made Reiver want to retch. Overturned trays, mulberry leaves, and dead worms were scattered all over the floor. The surviving worms squirmed in pathetic confusion.
    He whirled on James. “Where in the hell is that miserable, useless Freddie Bates?”
    “H—here, Mr. Shaw,” came a wee frightened voice from the doorway.
    He looked around James to see Freddie, a tired-looking little boy of ten, standing there, quaking in abject terror.
    Reiver was on the boy in two strides, cuffing him before he could dart out of range, sending him sprawling. “Damn you, you little idiot! What do you think I pay you five cents a week for, to sleep on the job?”
    Freddie sat up. “N-no, sir.”
    “I hired you to keep an eye out for cats and rats so they don’t attack the worms. So what do you have to say for yourself?”
    The boy scrambled to his feet and dusted off the seat of his trousers. “I—I’m sorry, sir. I guess I fell asleep and a cat got in. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
    Reiver took a menacing step forward. “When I find that cat, I’m going to put you and it in a sack filled with stones and drop the miserable pair of you into the brook!”
    That was too much for Freddie. He turned and ran for his life.

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    James said, “Weren’t you a little hard on the boy?”
    Reiver whirled around. “Hard on him? Skinning him alive would be hard on him.” He looked around at the devastation and swore again. “A whole crop of cocoons is gone. Lost. Ruined. And all because one goddamn stupid little boy fell asleep.”
    “Maybe we can salvage something,” James