“We committed a sin and it must be made right.”
“Nonsense. It was madness, brought about by the excessive heat and the restlessness we both shared. If you wish to take a wife, you need only look about you for someone of equal standing. Someone who shares your faith.” She waved her free hand. “I don’t share the depth of your belief.”
A flicker of disapproval crossed his face, so brief anyone could miss it. But she didn’t. There was a sense of being let down, disappointment, as if she’d expected him to say it didn’t matter. Of course it mattered. It was too great a part of him.
“Our actions have taken away all other considerations for us.” He paused and compressed his lips. “Other couples start with less. We can learn tolerance and make an unequally yoked marriage work.”
“Oh.” She was too stunned by his resigned pragmatism to say more. Every part of her recoiled from a marriage where extreme tolerance would be needed to make things work. Just the very words conjured up an image of two strained, unhappy people gritting their teeth and ignoring each other. It wasn’t what she wanted. She’d seen warm, happy marriages here. She wanted one for herself. If she wanted to merely be at a man’s beck and call, she’d have let Mr Boger continue to sell her to other men.
Thomas would always hold her input as something inferior, not to be respected. He would never be able to forget her past. Nor would he be able to accept her lack of conversion to his faith. Not every Goodman in New Balcombe was as devout as Thomas. Some of them were quite lax in their devotion to religion and warm to their wives and children. She preferred marriage to a man like that. No matter what her heart wanted in the meantime.
“No, I will not marry you,” she said flatly.
Chapter Three
His jaw tensed. “Rose, you place me in a very difficult position. With your denial to wed with me, you make a sinner of not only yourself—but me as well.”
“Well, in your eyes, I was a sinner before, an actress. I cannot believe God will use this one event to tip the balance. As for you, I assume a lifetime filled with goodness will not be totally eradicated by one night’s forgetfulness.”
His eyes frosted. “I seek to find a solution, to avoid unpleasant consequences to our lapse, and you mock me.”
“I’d do anything to put you off a marriage between us and for you to leave me in peace.”
He looked stunned, as if she’d slapped him. Then his expression grew remote once more and he walked away.
She leaned against the wall of the meetinghouse. She hadn’t thought of how their laying together would affect his conscience. She had hurt him. Struck him to his deepest levels by successfully tempting him into sin.
The knowing settled like a layer of stones against her heart. She would never, ever want to hurt Thomas of all people.
She had hurt the man she loved. Seduced him into sinning against his beliefs.
On an inward moan, she closed her eyes and balled her fists, digging the nails into her palms. If she could take it all back, she would—wouldn’t she? Or would the joy of knowing him prove once again too tempting, no matter how fleeting?
But if the price for enjoying the pleasure was marriage for life to man who didn’t value her then she didn’t want to pay.
Suddenly, she didn’t like herself very much.
* * * *
It was Monday. Goodman Rockwell and Mistress Jameson’s wedding day. Hannah was keeping company with the other girls of her age and Thomas had found a place apart from the others, towards the back row of benches placed on the lawn in the hot summer’s evening.
The sun lay on the lowest point on the horizon, a huge yellow ball. Two red ringlets that escaped her cap blazed like flame in its light. Those fetching tendrils framed her heart-shaped, sun-bronzed face with its sprinkling of freckles across her nose.
She looked so different now than she had that first day in London. Dressed in a sad shade of dark purple homespun gown and her white cap, she looked natural, earthly, beautiful.
She looked like someone’s wife.
She was laughing, her mouth open. He couldn’t see her eyes, but he knew they would be dark, velvet brown and sparkling.
She was looking up into the face of Goodman Johnson’s eldest son, a young man positioned to inherit a farm twice the size of the one Thomas was leaving.
After he left, Rosalind would surely marry but never young Johnson or someone like him. Yes, wherever she went in town, men’s eyes followed her. But she had no dowry. Johnson’s father would never agree.
Only someone like Thomas, a widower, an established householder, could have the freedom of will to marry a penniless outsider like Rosalind.