Black Rose

discreet.

 Now this.

 He arrived home this evening and requested that I come to the library so he could speak to me privately. He told me he had impregnated one of his mistresses. This is not a conversation that should take place between husband and wife, and when this was my response, he brushed it aside as if it was no matter.

 As if I am no matter.

 I am told that I will be required to create the illusion that I am expecting. I am told that if this creature delivers a son, it will be brought into our home, it will be given the Harper name and raised here. As his son. As my son.

 If it is a girl, it will be of no matter. I will have another “miscarriage” and that will be that.

 I refused. Of course I refused. To take a whore’s child into my home.

 Then he gave me this choice. Accept his decision, or he would divorce me. One way or the other, he will have a son. He prefers that I remain his wife, that neither of us are exposed to the scandal of divorce, and he will compensate me well for this one thing. If I refuse, it will be divorce and shame, and I will be sent away from the home I have cared for, the life I have made.

 So there is no choice.

 I pray that this slatern delivers a girl child. I pray it dies. That she dies. That they all burn in Hell.

Roz’s hands shook. Though she wanted to read on, she stood first, walked to the terrace doors. She needed air. With the book in her hand, she stood outside, breathing in the early morning.

What kind of man had this been? To have forced his illegitimate son on his wife. Even if he hadn’t loved her, he should have respected her.

And what love could he have had for the child, to have subjected him to a woman who would never, could never, care for him as a mother? Who would always resent him? Even despise him?

And all to carry on the Harper name.

“Roz?”

She didn’t turn when she heard Mitch’s voice behind her. “I woke you. I thought I was quiet.”

“You were. You just weren’t there.”

“I found something. I started reading through some of the journals. I found something.”

“Whatever it is, it’s upset you.”

“I’m sad, and I’m angry. And I’m surprised that I’m not surprised. I found an entry . . . No, you should read it for yourself.” She turned now, held the book out, open to where she’d stopped. “Take it into the sitting room. I just need another minute here.”

“All right.” He took the book, then, because there was something in her eyes that pulled at his heart, he cupped her chin in his free hand and kissed her softly.

She turned back to the view, to the grounds and the gardens going silver with oncoming dawn. The home that had been her family’s for generations. Had it been worth it? she wondered. Had the pain and humiliation one man had caused been worth holding this ground under one name?

She walked back in, sat across from Mitch. “Is this where you stopped?” he asked her.

“I needed to absorb it, I guess. How cruel he was to her. She wasn’t an admirable woman, not from what I’ve read in her own diaries. Selfish, self-absorbed, petty. But she deserved better than this. You haven’t given me a son, so I’ll get one elsewhere. Accept it, or leave. She accepted.”

“You don’t know that yet.”

“We know.” She shook her head. “We’ll read the rest, but we know.”

“I can go through this, and the others, later. Myself.”

“No, let’s do it now. It’s my legacy, after all. See what you can find, will you? I’m going down to make coffee.”

When she came back, she noted he’d gotten his reading glasses. He looked like a rumpled scholar, she thought, pulling an all-nighter. Shirtless, jeans unbuttoned, hair mussed.

That same tenderness floated over her, like a balm over the ache in her heart.

“I’m glad you were here when I found this.” She set the tray down, then leaned over, kissed the top of his head. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“There’s more.” He reached up for her hands. “Do you want me to summarize?”

“No, read her words. I want to hear her words.”

“There’s snippets here and there, her thoughts on this worked into daily entries. Her humiliation and the rage under it. She made him pay in the only way she knew, by spending his money lavishly, by shutting him out of her bed, taking trips.”

“A stronger woman would have thumbed her nose,” she said, pouring coffee, “taken her children and left him. But she didn’t.”

“No, she didn’t. Times were different for women then.”

“The times may have been different, but right’s still right.”

She set down his coffee, and this time sat beside him. “Read it, Mitch. I want to know.”

 “He brought the bastard home, with some trollop of a wet nurse he brought in from one of his country holdings. Not the mother, he says, who remains in the house in town where he keeps her. He has his son at last, a squalling thing wrapped in a blanket. I did not look at it, and will not. I know only that he has paid the doctor to keep him quiet, and that I am required to continue to remain in the house, receiving no callers for another few days.

 “He has brought this thing home in the dead of night, so the servants will believe I delivered it. Or will pretend to believe it. He has named it. Reginald Edward Harper, Jr.”

“My grandfather,” Roz murmured. “Poor little boy. He grew to be a fine man. A kind of miracle, I suppose, given his beginnings. Is there anything on his mother?”

“Not in this book, though I’ll go through it more carefully.”

“There will be more, in one of the other journals. She died here, Amelia did. At some point Beatrice must have seen or spoken with her, or dealt with her in some way.”