Blooming: Veronica (7 page)

Finally, terror for her baby prompted her to say to this complete stranger, “Between my legs. I am bleeding between my legs.”

“Vaginal bleeding,” he muttered and raced lopsidedly along the hallway for her room.

She tossed her head back and forth. “Robert! Where is Robert?” She looked up into a beardless face, and a dull memory competed with a sharp pain for a foothold.

Why, she knew him. He was the staring gentleman from the book reading. Why was he here?

“Put me down!” Twisting like a snared rabbit in his arms, she thrashed her head frantically back and forth. “Stay away from me. You walk with a cane, sir.”

“A walking stick,” he corrected, placing her on her bed. Without ceremony and regardless of propriety, he flung her wrap up to her chin, yanked down her bloodstained drawers, and splayed her legs wide while she squealed. “No no no.”

“Miss Cooper, this is no time for offended modesty. This bleeding must be staunched.” He hiked her knees up in the air and bent his head to her privates.

She felt faint. “My baby. Please, sir, do what you must to save my baby.”

As something tore away inside her and she gushed hot and wet below, the stranger’s head popped up from between her knees. He placed his cane aside, stripped off his coat, and rolled up his sleeves. After pouring hot water from the bedstead’s pitcher into the washbasin, he dunked his hands and furiously scrubbed them with soap up to the wrist.

“Where do you keep your menstruation rags?” he asked.

“My bureau, top drawer,” she cried as agony squeezed her belly and darkness mercifully moved in.

Chapter Eight

Four months later, Maynard Cooper held a shaking finger in front of Veronica’s nose. Though her father had never raised his voice to her before, he shouted at her now. “You will do as I say, daughter. You will wed Mr. Talbot Bowdoin, for you have no other choice. Your reputation is in tatters.”

Too upset to be still, Veronica paced the floor in her father’s library while twisting a hanky in her hands. The square of embroidered linen was not there to catch her tears. She had done no crying these past weeks. The hanky served as a prop, something to wring in frustration.

“Sorry, Papa, but I cannot obey you. Someone…indeed, a man…will soon come for me. He will take me away.”

“If you are referring to Robert McDougal, that scalawag will do nothing of the kind. Not only is he your social inferior, the man has no honor or integrity. You are well rid of him.”

“He loves me.”

Her papa’s face grew florid, as if he were on the verge of having an apoplexy. “Loves you? Bah! He used you.”

“What do you mean he used me? Used me how?”

“I never wished to tell you, never wished to hurt you this way, but you leave me no alternative. That evil piece of offal came here, to this very room, and tried to extort money from me.”

She stopped her pacing. “Why?”

“Robert McDougal is a union activist involved in rabble rousing at the port. Countless strikes against shipping companies like mine owe their inception to him and to men just like him. These insurrections will be the downfall of sea commerce yet.”

Her father sounded so bitter. She feared for his health when he crashed a fist down on a nearby bookshelf.

“The colossal gall of that man,” Papa exploded. “Cooper Enterprises pays a fair wage and offers those men who unload company ships decent working conditions. But no. That was not enough. Give an inch, and these Irish immigrants will steal a mile.”

“But, Papa, what did Robert
do
?”

“McDougal tried to bully me into making the union additional concessions, using his involvement with you as leverage. He threatened to besmirch your good name and blacken mine if I refused his demands. When I did refuse his blackmail, he succeeded in both.”

Bile rose in her throat. “You must be mistaken. Robert would never do any of those despicable things.”

“You were to be his meal ticket. When he saw he would get no extortion money out of me, McDougal abandoned you in your hour of need. That above all is what I cannot forget or forgive. Now you are ruined. Marrying Talbot Bowdoin is your only option.”

Papa was only doing what he thought best. Despite the embarrassment she had caused him, he was determined to rescue her through an arranged marriage to a complete stranger.

She was just as determined to stand on her own two feet. “I think I should get away from the city for a while. I quite need a change of scenery.”

“I agree. A quiet wedding to Mr. Bowdoin provides you with that opportunity.”

“No arranged marriage! I need to go by myself.”

“Where?”

She plucked at her hanky. “Somewhere. Anywhere.”

“I am willing to provide for you, Veronica. It is a question of your happiness, not a question of money.”

“I cannot accept any further financial help.”

“Damnation! You will need support!”

“I need nothing of the kind.” She lifted her chin. “I shall support myself.”

“How? How will you support yourself?”

“My writing. Other female authors have been self-supporting based on their book earnings.”

“May I remind you that you have not put a pen to paper since your unfortunate illness—”

“Not illness. You refer to my recent miscarriage. And subsequent low spirits.”

“I do not mean to be cruel, dear, but—”

“You could never be cruel, Papa,” she quickly interjected.

“There are realities to consider. At present, you have scant earnings. No prospects. No suitors. In the eyes of society, you are disgraced. Furthermore, since your physician said you are unlikely to conceive again, what man will offer for you?”

“The one you expect me to marry. This Talbot Bowdoin.”

“So take his offer, go away for a time, and allow this scandal to die.”

Dear God. The helpless look in her father’s eyes cut her to the quick. She had put him through so much already with her book, an erotic work he had gritted his teeth and accepted. Because he loved her. Her writing must have humiliated him, yet he had stoically kept his embarrassment to himself and encouraged her writing. How many fathers would do the same?

And how could any loving daughter put a father through any more?

And he was right—if she left town now, where would she go? Limited funds, no will to write—how would she live? Apart from an overactive imagination, she had no other talent, no other skills. If she also refused her father’s financial support, she would end up on the docks, servicing men far worse than Robert McDougal.

“Veronica, my dear child, I love you.”

“And indeed, Papa, I love you.”

“Please understand, this is not something I undertake lightly. This marriage is a solution to your difficulties, one I refused initially.”

“
Initially
?”

“Mr. Bowdoin approached me as this scandal was breaking, and I refused him. In my arrogance, I thought I could cover the story up, but I failed. And now, look at you. Hollow cheeked and pale. So melancholy you no longer write.”

“I have not made Mr. Bowdoin’s acquaintance. Why would he offer for me, used goods?”

“He said he read your book and fell immediately and hopelessly in love with your exuberant zest for life. A wild infatuation he cannot escape. He knows everything, including the doctor’s prognosis.”

“I see. And still he proposed. Some infatuation,” she said glumly. “He must have a self-destructive streak to take me on. Or be completely mad. ”

“Nothing of the sort. These things happen, my dear. Though not of our social class, he is nevertheless a solidly wealthy man, a respected member of the community and a pillar of society. Apart from that, he has sent weekly notes to this house inquiring over your recovery. In my last reply, I agreed to give him your hand. Your marriage will put this whole sordid episode behind us.”

She sighed. “I sincerely apologize for hurting you, Papa. I was thoughtless. And selfish. See to the marriage legalities. I hereby comply with all terms. My days of free and independent thought are finished.”

“I am very relieved, child. Now, there is a condition.”

“What is it?”

“Mr. Bowdoin has asked that any specifics about him or his background be discussed between the two of you without a third-party filter. In other words, me. So I cannot go into details with you about him.”

She reached over and hugged her father. It was time to mend fences, to make amends. Between her scandalous book and her scandalous behavior, she had made her father’s life a living hell. Shame and gossip had confined more than her to the house. In these past weeks, her poor father had become a prisoner of gossip too. He had lost friends and business due to her. Guilt by association had just about ruined him too.

One last kiss on his florid cheek, and she straightened. “I trust you, Papa, and I abide by your decision in this. In regard to Mr. Bowdoin’s background, I really could not care less. I shall make him the best wife I know how, no questions asked.”

Chapter Nine

Talbot faced his new bride across the table, an intimate dinner for two at Linwood, his country home at Pride’s Crossing on the North Shore. His bride still wore her dark brown traveling suit, the short coat revealing a stark white blouse and a black ribbon tie at the throat. If not for her removing her Gibson girl straw boater hat after their train ride out from the city, he would have thought her stay temporary, for a wake, maybe. She looked tensed to flee and not remotely festive.

To her mind, Talbot supposed, the occasion warranted no celebration. Their wedding ceremony that day, if one could call the rushed affair that, amounted to a minister mumbling a few words in haste in the front parlor of her Beacon Hill home, her father in attendance, servants doubling as witnesses, no guests, and not even a slice of plum cake eaten afterward. The groom—that would be him—was in attendance, naturally, but only as an unwanted afterthought.

No, Talbot supposed, from his bride’s perspective, she had no reason to rejoice. But from his perspective, there was everything to celebrate.

He had never experienced the profound feelings others attributed to falling in love and had doubted the existence of such a notion. Then he read her book. Now he knew for sure. Love did exist and it was a powerful force.

Unfortunately, not even the power of love could make him a different man.

He was who he was, and that was a standoffish man not comfortable around people. The challenge lay in snapping his melancholy bride out of her sad cocoon while remaining firmly lodged in his own.

Wallowing in sadness would never get her second book written, the work of literary erotica he intended to publish someday. The challenge lay in getting
her
involved in life again while
he
remained deeply entrenched in his own remoteness.

Talbot fingered the stem of his Waterford crystal. The goblet’s diamond-cut edges looked sharp and angular, yet felt smooth to the touch. Was this how his bride’s face would feel within his cupped palm, or would her brittleness nick him?

Alas, having never touched her face, there was no way for him to know.

Certainly, she had suffered. Misery had stolen the former girlish roundness at her jaw, sharpening the roundness to a crystal’s angularity, especially when in profile as she was now. Her loss of weight was particularly apparent across the cheekbone, the high-sculpted contours more pronounced than before. Though she looked as delicate as Waterford, he sincerely doubted she had the fragility of glass. This was a woman not easily broken. Misfortune might etch a crack here and there on the surface, but nothing life threw at her would wound her at the core.

By all rights, he should have done this at the outset of their dinner, and with flutes of nose-tickling Laurent-Perrier champagne rather than this classic nineteenth-century Bordeaux, but better late than never, and better a substitute than nothing.

He raised his glass for a toast. “To you, Mrs. Bowdoin, and to the beginning of a mutually beneficial relationship.”

There. That should suffice. The benign acknowledgment marked the date and lent weight to their altered circumstances.

In return, his bride sent him a look of weary resignation and said nothing, which made him vow to break out the bubbly on their first wedding anniversary, a date that would hopefully coincide with the release of her next novel. Then later, much later, perhaps on their fiftieth, he vowed to apologize for the part he had played in her look of entrapment now.

“I know you see me as a cripple, your husband only by token of filial duty. Believing you let down your beloved father, you entered this marriage in recompense.”

“I could not have put it better myself.”

Talbot grimaced. “Not terribly appealing or complimentary to be seen as an act of contrition, as a hair shirt, but the truth is the truth, I suppose. Do your penance and itch all you like, but the vows we exchanged this afternoon bound us together for life.”

“Some expiations take longer than others.”

Not using his wife’s first name in the toast had been deliberate, a ploy to allay her fears over their approaching wedding night. Her miscarriage was a fairly recent event. A body might recover physically from a trauma in the space of four months, but the mind was a different matter entirely. It could take years for emotions to heal. Her stiff upper lip, her stalwart refusal to acknowledge the loss, delayed the repair.

Best give her a push.

Sex would rouse her from her lethargy quick enough. And besides, delaying the inevitable would do her no kindness. He was a man; they were duly wed, which meant she would need to satisfy his prurient desires at some place in time. Why torture her by leaving an ax hanging above her neck indefinitely? Better to let her know at the outset what she could anticipate from him.

He got the ball rolling. “The staff outdid themselves this evening. I finished every morsel of quail and asparagus on the plate.”

“Thank them for me, please. Everything was excellent, sir.”

As he sipped the excellent vintage, he watched his bride over the rim, then placed the glass beside his plate. The rolling ball had done gone far enough.