The Heir Who Wasn't Mine

I was still holding the last leather strap of his breastplate when the two men came through the study door. I remember the weight of the brass buckle against my palm, the smell of neatsfoot oil and salt from the sea air drifting through the open window. I remember thinking that the strap needed one more hole punched into it, because Julian had lost weight over the winter and the armor hung loose at his shoulders. "Let me finish," I said. "The fit is wrong. It will rub." He crossed the room and took my face in both hands. His palms were warm. His thumbs pressed gently against my cheekbones, and for a moment, I thought he was going to thank me. That is what I get for thinking. "You have been good to me, Cassandra," he said. "Better than I deserved." The apologetic tone should have warned me. It was the same tone he used when he told me he had sold the chestnut mare I loved, the same tone he used when he told me his mother would be moving into the east wing and I would need to give up my sitting room. The hands on my face turned hard. Two of his men materialized from the hallway, and before I understood what was happening, I was on my knees on the Persian carpet, my arms wrenched behind my back. "What are you doing?" I tried to twist free. The taller man, Halloran, pressed his knee into my spine until I stopped moving. Julian produced a small brown bottle from inside his coat. He uncorked it with his teeth, which struck me as obscene, some intimate gesture performed in the wrong context. "Wren has been formally acknowledged," he said. "The lawyers finished the paperwork this morning. She is my daughter, and she will be raised here, in this house, with the name that belongs to her." My mouth opened. I could not make words come out. Wren was the child of a woman he had known before me, a woman who had died two winters ago, and I had known about her, of course. I had known, and I had forgiven him, because he had sworn the girl would never set foot in Belle Harbor. "She cannot be upset," Julian continued. "The doctors say her nerves are fragile. A new baby in the house would be too much for her. She has waited long enough for her place." "She is twelve years old," I finally managed. "She is not an infant. She can—" His hand closed over my jaw. The bottle tipped against my lips. I bit down. I bit down hard, and I tasted glass, and I tasted blood, and then the liquid flooded into my mouth, bitter and thick, and I could not breathe without swallowing it. "Don't make this difficult," Julian said. "You always make things difficult. Be reasonable for once." I gagged. I spat. Some of it went onto his shirtfront, and I saw his jaw tighten, the way it did when the household accounts did not balance. One of the men pinched my nose shut. I had to swallow, or I would suffocate, and so I swallowed, and I swallowed, and the room tilted. When they let go of me, I fell sideways onto the carpet. The fibers scratched my cheek. I could hear my own breath rasping in my throat, and beneath it, a pulse that seemed to be slowing, or maybe that was only my imagination. "The physician will look in on you in the morning," Julian said. He was already walking toward the door, adjusting his cuffs. "I am sorry, Cassandra. Truly. But this is what is best for everyone." "I am your wife." My voice came out as a whisper. "I am carrying your child." He paused at the threshold. He did not turn around. "You were," he said. The door closed. I lay on the floor of his study for a long time. The lamp burned down. The tide went out. I could hear the ocean through the window, pulling away from the shore, and I thought, with a clarity that surprised me, that I was going to die in this house. I was not going to die in this house. I got my hands under me. I got to my knees. I vomited onto the carpet, and then I crawled to the desk and pulled myself up by the edge of it, and I stood there swaying, my hand pressed to my stomach, while the blood ran down my chin and dripped onto my nightgown. The pain started in my back. It spread around to my front, a low, grinding ache that I recognized, because I had felt it before, in the early months, when I thought I might lose the baby and the doctor had told me to rest. I was not going to lose this baby in Julian Whitmore's study. The servants' stair was at the back of the house. I took it. I do not remember most of that walk. I remember the cold stone against my bare feet. I remember the door at the bottom, the one that opened onto the garden, and the smell of the sea, and then I was outside, on the gravel path, and the gate was in front of me. I fell. I fell on the path, and I lay there with my cheek on the cold stones, and I thought about Wren. I thought about the girl who had been given my name, my house, my husband, the life I had built with my own hands over seven years. "She cannot be upset," I whispered to the gravel. "Fine." I got up. I walked through the gate. I did not look back, because I knew if I looked back, I would stop.