Нора Робертс - Red lily

“Please get my baby.” Her eyes pleaded as she gripped Havers’s hand. “Please bring him to me.”

“There now, go on in, talk to Mrs. Harper. Ma’am, shall I serve tea?”

“Certainly not,” Beatrice snapped. “Shut the door.”

She walked to a pretty granite hearth and turned so the fire smoldered behind her, and her eyes stayed cold when the door shut quietly.

“You are—were,” she corrected with a curl of her lips, “one of my husband’s whores.”

“I’m Amelia Connor. I’ve come—”

“I didn’t ask your name. It holds no interest for me, nor do you. I had assumed that women of your ilk, those who consider themselves mistresses rather than common trollops, had enough wit and style not to step their foot into the home of what they like to call their protector.”

“Reginald. Is Reginald here?” She looked around, dazedly taking in the beautiful room with its painted lamps and velvet cushions. She couldn’t quite remember how she came to be here. All the frenzy and fury had drained out of her, leaving her cold and confused.

“He is not at home, and you should consider yourself fortunate. I’m fully aware of your . . . relationship, and fully aware he terminated that relationship, and that you were handsomely recompensed.”

“Reginald?” She saw him, in her fractured mind, standing in front of a hearth—not this one, no not this one. Her hearth, her parlor.

Did you think I’d allow someone like you to raise my son?

Son. Her son. James. “James. My son. I’ve come for James. I have his blanket in the carriage. I’ll take him home now.”

“If you think I’ll give you money to ensure your silence on this unseemly matter, you’re very mistaken.”

“I . . . I came for James.” A smile trembled on her lips as she stepped forward, arms outstretched. “He needs his mama.”

“The bastard you bore, and that was forced on me is called Reginald, after his father.”

“No, I named him James. They said he was dead, but I hear him crying.” Concern covered her face as she looked around the room. “Do you hear him crying? I need to find him, sing him to sleep.”

“You belong in an asylum. I could almost pity you.” Beatrice stood, the fire snapping at her back. “You have no more choice in this matter than I. But I, at least, am innocent. I am his wife. I have borne his children, children born within the bounds of marriage. I have suffered the loss of children, and my behavior has been above reproach. I have turned a blind eye, a deaf ear on the affairs of my husband, and given him not one cause for complaint. But I gave him no son, and that, that is my mortal sin.”

Color rushed into her cheeks now, all fury. “Do you think I want your brat foisted on me? The bastard son of a whore who will call me mother? Who will inherit this?” She threw her hands out. “All of this. I wish he had died in your womb, and you with him.”

“Give him to me, give him back to me. I have his blanket.” She looked down at her empty hands. “I have his blanket. I’ll take him away.”

“It’s done. We’re prisoners in the same trap, but at least you deserve the punishment. I’ve done nothing.”

“You can’t keep him; you don’t want him. You can’t have him.” She rushed forward, eyes wild, lips peeled. And the blow cracked across her cheek, knocking her back and to the floor.

“You will leave this house.” Beatrice spoke quietly, calmly, as though giving a servant some minor duty. “You will never speak of this, or I will see to it that you’re put in the madhouse. My reputation will not be smeared by your ravings, I promise you. You will never come back here, never set foot in Harper House or on Harper property. You will never see the child—that will be your punishment, though it can never be enough in my mind.”

“James. I will live here with James.”

“You are mad,” Beatrice said with the faintest hint of amusement. “Go back to your whoring. I’m sure you’ll find a man who’ll be happy to plant another bastard in your belly.”

She strode to the door, flung it open. “Havers!” She waited, ignoring the wailing sobs behind her. “Have Danby remove this thing from the house.”

BUT SHE DID come back. They carried her out, ordered the driver to take her away. But she came back, in the cold night. Her mind was broken to pieces, but she managed the trip this last time, driving in a stolen wagon, her hair drenched from the rain, her white nightdress clinging to her.

She wanted to kill them. Kill them all. Slash them to ribbons, hack them to pieces. She could carry her James away then, in her bloody hands.

But they would never let her. She would never take her baby into her arms. Never see his sweet face.

Unless, unless.

She left the wagon while shadows and moonlight slid over Harper House, while the black windows gleamed and all inside slept.

The rain had stopped; the sky had cleared. Mists twined over the ground, gray snakes that parted for her bare, frozen feet. The hem of her gown trailed over the wet and mud as she wandered. Humming, singing.

They would pay. They would pay dearly.

She had been to the voodoo woman, and knew what had to be done. Knew what would be done to secure all she wanted, forever. For always.

She walked through the gardens, brittle with winter, and to the carriage house to find what she needed.

She was singing as she carried it with her, as she walked in the damp air toward the grand house with its yellow stones alit with moonlight.

“Lavender’s blue,” she sang. “Lavender’s green.”

TIRED DOWN THROUGH the marrow, Hayley yawned until her jaw cracked. Lily’s head was heavy on her shoulder, but every time she stopped rocking, the baby would squirm and whimper, and those little fingers would clutch at the cotton tank Hayley was sleeping in.

Trying to sleep in, Hayley corrected and murmured hushing noises as she sent the rocker creaking again.

She knew it was somewhere in the vicinity of four in the morning, and she’d already been up twice before to rock and soothe her fretful daughter.

She’d tried at about the two A.M. mark to snuggle the baby into bed with her so they’d both get some sleep. But Lily would have nothing but the rocker.

So Hayley rocked and dozed, rocked and yawned, and wondered if she’d ever get eight straight again in this lifetime.

She didn’t know how people did it. Especially single mothers. How did they cope? How did they stand up under all the demands on heart, mind, body—wallet?

How would she have managed it all if she’d been completely on her own with Lily? What kind of life would they have had if she had no one to help with the worry, the sheer drudgery, the fun and the foolishness? It was terrifying to think of it.

She’d been so ridiculously optimistic and confident, and stupid, she thought now.

Sailing along, she remembered, nearly six months pregnant, quitting her job, selling most of her things and packing up that rattletrap car to head out.

God, if she’d known then what she knew now, she’d never have done it.

So maybe it was good she hadn’t known. Because she wasn’t alone. Closing her eyes, she rested her cheek on Lily’s soft, dark hair. She had friends—no, family—people who cared about her and Lily and were willing to help.

They didn’t just have a roof over their heads, but the gorgeous roof of Harper House. She had Roz, distant cousin and then only through marriage, who’d offered her a home, a job, a chance. She had Stella, her best friend in the world to talk to, bitch to, learn from.

Both Roz and Stella had been single parents—and they’d coped, she reminded herself. They’d better than coped, and Stella had had two young boys to raise alone. Roz three.

And here she was wondering how she’d ever manage one, even with all the help only an offer away.

There was David, running the house, cooking the meals. And just being wonderfully David. What if she had to cook every night after work? What if she had to do all the shopping, the cleaning, the hauling, the everything in addition to holding up her end at her job and caring for a fourteen-month-old baby?

Thank God she didn’t have to find out.

There was Logan, Stella’s gorgeous new husband, who was willing to tinker around with her car when it acted up. And Stella’s little guys, Gavin and Luke, who not only liked to play with Lily but were giving Hayley a hint of the sort of things she had coming in the next few years.

There was Mitch, so smart and sweet, who liked to scoop Lily up and cart her around on his shoulders while she laughed. He’d be officially here all the time now, she thought, once he and Roz got back from their honeymoon.

It had been so nice, so much fun, to watch both Stella and Roz fall in love. She’d felt a part of it all—the excitement, the changes, the expansion of her new family circle.

Of course, Roz’s marriage meant Hayley’d have to stop dragging her feet on finding a place of her own. Newlyweds were entitled to privacy.

She wished there was a place close by. Even on the estate. Like the carriage house. Harper’s house. She sighed a little as she rubbed a hand over Lily’s back.

Harper Ashby. Rosalind Harper Ashby’s firstborn, and one delicious piece of eye candy. Of course she didn’t think about him that way. Much. He was a friend, a co-worker, and her baby girl’s first crush. From all appearances, that love affair was mutual.

She yawned again, lulled like the baby by the rhythm of the rocking and the early-morning quiet.

Harper was, well, just flat-out amazing with Lily. Patient and funny, easy and loving. Secretly she thought of him as Lily’s surrogate father—without the benefits of smoochies with Lily’s mother.