33

Jake sat for almost a full minute, wrestling with the implications of her words. Some man raped her? One minute Hattie had been clinging to him, all sweet, soft cooperation; then the next she was fighting him off in obvious terror—and she said she’d been raped?

Ah, God, please. Tell me I’ve misunderstood.

But Jake knew he hadn’t misinterpreted, misread, or misconstrued a damn thing. Murderous rage pumped through his veins, while nausea churned acid in his gut. He jumped to his feet and yanked his pants up, dancing cautiously in place as he buttoned them. Christ. He’d learned the hard way about lockjaw, yet here he was running around stocking-footed in a stable? It seemed the instant he’d recognized Hattie as his mystery rider, his common sense took off for parts unknown and his emotions and damn traitorous body ruled each subsequent move.

Out in the yard, Hattie kept darting panic-stricken glances over her shoulder as she raced for the house. But Jake wasn’t in hot pursuit as she’d feared. Knowing didn’t dampen her roiling emotions. She flew up the porch steps and slipped inside the kitchen, maintaining just enough restraint to resist slamming the door behind her. She maintained enough wits as well to step over the third riser in the staircase to avoid its telltale creak, though God alone knew how, given her state of mind. Moments later she closed her bedroom door behind her. She stood in the middle of her room, chest heaving as she panted for breath. Oh Lord, she had to get ahold of herself. She was so far out of control—

Her door whipped open.

Hattie screamed. Clamping a hand over her mouth, she cut it off mid-cry.

Jake stepped into the room and closed the door. Leaning against it, he worked to get his breathing under control. His instinct was to grab Hattie and shake some answers out of her. He retained just enough good sense to know approaching her at all would be a mistake. Her eyes were huge with near hysteria, and she looked like she’d fly to pieces if he took so much as a half step in her direction.

“Did I understand you correctly?” he asked with forced softness. His skin felt as though it might split at any moment trying to contain all the emotions swelling and clawing inside him. “Some man forcibly relieved you of your virginity?”

Her eyes grew impossibly larger and she didn’t say a word behind the fingers pressed to her lips. But she didn’t have to; he read the truth in her face. His last hope that he’d somehow twisted her words to mean something other than what she’d intended sank without a trace. “Who?” he demanded in a raw voice and took a step toward her.

She removed her hand from her mouth and pointed her finger at the door. It shook badly. “Get out.”

“Hattie, please . . .”

Her voice rose hysterically. “Get out!” She was trembling all over.

“All right,” he said in a placatory voice. “It’s okay, baby, don’t be upset. I’m leaving.” He backed toward the door, reaching behind him to fumble for the knob. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

Her voice was expressionless, her eyes icy. “We will talk never.”

Jake paused, wanting to argue the point but knowing this was not the time. Hopefully she’d be calmer in the morning and he could get some answers then. He opened the door and turned to leave.

Only to very nearly bowl over Augusta, who stood on the other side of the threshold.

For the first time in his life, Jake saw no vestige of warmth in his mother’s eyes. She looked at him as if he were a stranger—and not one she cared to know.

Then her gaze went to Hattie. She pulled her bedtime braid from the collar of her robe and tugged her lapels tighter across her chest. “Are you all right, dear?” She turned to Jake. “You will wait for me in the parlor,” she said with cold authority and turned her back on him, crossing the room to take Hattie in her arms. Hattie immediately clung to her guardian.

Feeling sick, he stared at them an agonized moment before obeying his mother’s order.

It felt like he waited hours, even though he only had time to build up the fire and down a thimbleful of brandy before Augusta joined him. She accepted a sherry but the look on her face when she regarded him spread a chill throughout his entire system. “How is she? Is she okay?”

“Of course she is not.”

“Maybe if I go talk to her—”

“No,” Augusta interrupted firmly. “You have done quite enough for one night.”

Jake winced. “Look, I can explain.”

“Can you, Jacob? I should like to hear.”

He opened his mouth to defend himself, then realized, in truth, he could not.

Augusta watched him for a moment, growing progressively angrier as she thought of the girl upstairs she had just bundled into a fresh nightgown. Finally, she asked coldly, “Can you explain the straw in Hattie’s hair, Jacob? Or her swollen mouth or the whisker burns on her face and her—” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word, but the hand she swept across her own chest and breasts said it for her. It was a measure of her fury that she did not blush one iota when she finally did speak the unspeakable. “Can you explain your seed upon her thighs? Will you still be explaining in a month or two if she swells with your child?”

The thought of Hattie carrying his baby jolted something deep and primordial within Jake. But before he could respond, Augusta said with implacable authority, “This isn’t the first time you’ve dallied with that girl, Jacob Murdock, but it is, by God, the last.”

Shock tightened all his muscles. He was so staggered learning his mother had knowledge of that other shameful episode following Jane-Ellen’s death he nearly missed her next words. Then he went cold all over with another kind of shock when he tuned back in to hear her say, “—will post the banns at church in the morning. You will marry the girl in three weeks.”

Jake did not respond well to orders. Before he gave himself an instant to measure the wisdom of replying out of frustration, hurt, and pain, he’d already uttered the unforgivable. “Isn’t that demand usually reserved for the man who takes a girl’s virginity?”

The force behind Augusta’s openhanded blow turned Jake’s head. “Don’t you dare be flippant,” she said in a low, venomous voice. “Hattie did not offer her virginity—it was forcibly taken from her. If you think I would place her welfare in the hands of a man who delighted in brutalizing her, then I did a pretty poor job of raising you.”

Jake felt as if he were being torn into a thousand pieces. “I’m sorry, Mom,” he said in a raw voice. “I’m a little confused. How long have you known about this, and who the hell else knows? I can’t believe nobody bothered to tell me.” His work-roughened hands clenched helplessly at his sides. “Christ, how could she have been raped? How could she have gone through something so life changing without me knowing? How did I not suspect a thing?” he demanded raggedly. “You’ve known for some time, clearly, but this is all new to me. It kills me to know she has been brutalized this way. And I don’t know who . . . or even when.”

“What would you have done had you known?”

Jake’s dark hazel eyes met his mother’s squarely. “I’d have killed him.”

Augusta looked at her handprint welting red against her son’s bloodless cheek as he thrust his fingers through his hair. “Which is precisely the reason you were never told,” she replied, and responded to the uncomprehending anger in his eyes with rage of her own. “Do you think you’re the only one who would like to see this animal punished—who wants revenge? But at whose expense, Jacob? Win, lose, or draw, Hattie is the one who pays. Not me, not you: Hattie. If it comes out she was raped, she’ll be ostracized. It won’t signify that up until the moment he brutally rent it apart, she possessed a maidenhead. Won’t matter that by the time he was done she was bruised, battered, and terrorized. It won’t even matter that before he could conclude the act, she sank a pair of sewing scissors into his arm. She will be ruined regardless.”

She looked directly into the eyes of the son she’d always taken such pride in and said, “I could not do anything to correct the wrong done to Hattie before. But I damn well aim to see the right thing is done by her in this instance. You had your pleasure on her this night—”

“Please, Mom, let me talk to her. Let me make this right. I know her scream is probably what woke you, but I swear I did not force myself on her.” Had he? God, she had been so willing, but then she’d suddenly been so afraid . . .

“If I thought for one moment you had, Jacob, I would shoot you myself and weep while I reported it as a rifle-cleaning accident. Hattie told me the responsibility was equally hers. I find that difficult to believe—you’re eleven years older and worlds more experienced than she. Would you have me believe she seduced you?”

“No.” Only by her responsiveness.

“Then I can only conclude you took your pleasure without giving a moment’s consideration to the repercussions it might have for Hattie. Such being the case, you will damn well accept the consequence of your actions. You will marry her in three weeks’ time.”