Break of Dawn by Rita Bradshaw Read Free Book Online Page A

husband, and that he had merely been respecting their wishes, that he had never – would never – keep anything from her in the normal way of things, that he had only been thinking of her tender emotions and the pain such a revelation would cause to one brought up as sensitively as she had been.
    Mary had listened to his explanation in silence, her eyes gimlet hard and her face stony with condemnation. Then she had made the pronouncement which even now, two weeks later, had the power to make him squirm.
    ‘You have betrayed the trust my uncle placed in you when he introduced us, in the worst possible way. You are a false man, Jeremiah Hutton, and it gives me no pleasure to say so. I shall not disclose your cruel trickery to the bishop, nor to my parents or the rest of the family, not for your sake but for theirs. But do not expect me to condone such deceit by absolving you of your crime because I will not.’
    Crime
. Jeremiah ground his teeth. He had been made to feel like a criminal in his own home, sure enough. And now his sister’s bastard was to be raised in this house, a constant reminder of his fall from grace in Mary’s eyes.
    Did she expect him to continue begging and pleading for herunderstanding in the coming weeks and months? Probably. Certainly she was displaying a spitefulness of which he would not have thought her capable, disguised under a pietistical facade which made his blood boil often as not.
    He wouldn’t be able to stand it if this state of affairs continued. He stared into the blackness, self-pity choking him and causing him to swallow against the lump in his throat. He was a good husband. Mary had had no cause to complain in twelve years of marriage, and he doubted if there were many women who could say that in this town. And now, when he was asking for just a drop of the milk of human kindness, she had none to give. Well, so be it. He now knew where he stood. If she wanted to drive a perman ent wedge between them, she was going the right way about it. He’d had enough, more than enough, in the last weeks. Mary would see another man to the devoted husband she was used to over the next little while, and she had no one to blame but herself. If she had thought to crush him with her attitude, she was in for a shock. He would not be browbeaten in his own home and neither would he plea for her understanding again.
    And as for the living evidence of the trouble which had ripped their family apart, he would continue to pray each day that the child born of sin would not see its first year. Every time he looked at it he would see and hear Esther as she had been the night she had come home, brazen in her shame.
    His guts writhed and he lay for a moment more before quietly sliding out of bed. By feel he found his dressing gown on the chair by the side of the bed and put it on, but he left his slippers where they were and crept barefoot out of the bedroom. Once on the landing it was possible to see shapes and shadows, the large landing window being uncurtained, but he still had to watch his step as he made his way downstairs.
    He would make himself a drink of warm milk and take it to his study where he could work on his sermon for Sunday in peace, he told himself as he reached the kitchen door. There had still been a good fire in there last thing; it wouldn’t have gone out yet and a couple of logs would soon bring it to a blaze.
    He opened the door as silently as he had come downstairs and stood for a moment, his eyes fixed on the raised laundry basket in front of the glowing range. It was only then he acknowledged the real reason for the midnight sojourn, the thought that had been there from the second the child had taken breath. His heart began to race, pounding in his ears.
    He took a step into the room, then another, unaware of the icy chill from the stone flags under his bare feet, and then he froze as a rustle and sigh from a black mound by the kitchen table caused his gaze to shoot down. For a