Rose didn't remember falling asleep.
She opened her eyes, and the shadows in the room had changed. Orange autumn sunset light streamed through the window.
Her head pounding, she got up and drew the curtains, shutting out the light.
She had been dreaming. She couldn't remember what had happened in her dream, but something about it had left her heart fluttering around in her chest like a trapped bird.
She didn't want to look at the sunset. Her dream had been filled with the light of the setting sun. Inexplicable sadness rushed through her as she tried to recall its significance, and she decided that she didn't want to remember.
Suddenly cold, shivering, Rose pulled a shawl around herself and stepped into the shadowy hallway. Cal had left several days earlier on a week-long business trip to Chicago and she hadn't been sad to see him go. She knew he was still having problems with the status and security of his family's business and lately he had been more irritable than usual; when she'd asked about it he had brushed her off, almost laughed at her for wanting to know, and she found she didn't have the energy or even the interest to press further.
But now his absence seemed pervasive and odd. She had grown accustomed to having him as her only company, and with all the servants out of sight, she felt as though she were the only person around for miles.
Any other man in his right mind would have left you to die in the streets, you little slut.
Didn't you realize that I loved you?
She hesitated at the door of Cal's study, then slipped inside and shut the door behind her.
His dark, heavy wooden desk stood in the corner, bathed in shadows, like some hulking beast ready to pounce the moment she drew close enough.
She sat down and pulled at the top drawer, expecting it to be locked. To her surprise, it slid open.
Files, lists of money sums and investors' names, business papers and contracts, all carefully marked and labeled alphabetically in Cal's spiked handwriting. A sinister-looking form postmarked from the end of May that began Valued Patron, Due to the lack of stable revenue generated on behalf of your investment, we regret to inform you that your firm will be delisted by the Philadelphia Stock Exchange within ninety (90) days. However, if your firm is able to return its revenue to acceptable levels within the allotted time, we will happily void this notice and continue to value your participation.
Rose looked in several other drawers and found the same in all of them. She didn't quite know what she was searching for or what she had imagined she would find. Something more than files. Something that might offer her more insight than what Cal himself was willing to give.
Footsteps in the hall made her freeze and slam the drawer shut. She looked to the door, waiting for Cal to come storming in, home early from his trip.
But the door remained shut and the footsteps faded away.
Just a servant.
Rose exhaled the breath she had been holding and got up to leave. A very narrow drawer, for storing pens and ink bottles, caught her eye. The force of slamming the file drawer shut had caused it to slide open several centimeters. A sliver of deep violet showed through the opening.
She reached for the drawer.
The violet object was a silken scarf. Rose recognized it as her own; she had worn it often when she'd gone out with Cal or her mother, and it had once been one of her favorites, although by now she had forgotten all about it.
She moved the scarf aside and withdrew several other items. There was a bundle of letters, a postcard that Rose remembered having sent home to herself while they were in Paris, and a photograph. It showed her standing beside Cal in front of the Kingsway Hall Hotel where they had stayed in London; although both of them were smiling in the photograph, neither of them looked happy.
Rose turned over the bunch of letters and recognized her mother's handwriting.
She undid the string that held them together and sifted through them. They had all been exchanged between Cal and her mother. All of them were postmarked April and May of that year.
She opened one and unfolded the papers inside.
It was addressed to Cal, written by her mother. The date at the top was April twenty-first. Rose skimmed the letter. It touched on the tragedy of the Titanic's sinking, stated that she was mourning the premature death of her daughter and that her continued debt made all of it almost impossible to bear.
In his reply Cal had offered his condolences, implied that he was in mourning himself, apologized for the fact that he would no longer be able to secure her financial situation.
The next letter was dated from the middle of May. It was a simpering thank you from her mother to Cal. I am forever indebted to your kindness and cannot possibly begin to express the extent of my gratitude, she wrote.
The tone of Cal's response was a little brusque. I hope that you find closure in my assumption of your debt and I wish you well in life. With all due respect, I can see no real value in prolonging our communication. You are a painful reminder of my gravest loss.
Rose stared at the letter in her hands and the imagery of her dreams came flooding back to her.
Jack…
…I'm flying.
For a moment, she was on the bow of the Titanic again, wind rushing around her, safe in Jack's embrace.
Any other man in his right mind would have left you to die in the streets, you little slut. Cal's voice echoed in her mind.
Didn't you realize that I loved you?
*****
"I hate feeling ignorant," said Rose.
Edith didn't respond; her back was turned as she prepared Rose's afternoon tea. Cal would have scoffed at her for sitting at the servant's table, in the kitchen—a room normally quarantined for servants only.
"It's like everybody in my life has teamed up to try to protect me from myself," she went on. She sifted absently through a stack of mail that stood on the table, not looking at the postmarks. "No one trusts me with information," she said.
Everybody. No one. All of those were code words for Cal.
Edith set the tea tray in front of Rose. "Will that be all, Miss Rose?" she asked, as if Rose hadn't spoken a word.
Rose ignored the question and stared at the letter in her hand. The return address read Philadelphia Stock Exchange. She remembered seeing that name somewhere on the sinister-looking notification she'd found in Cal's desk. "I don't know what this means," she said, narrowing her eyes at it, "but I should. A marriage is supposed to be a partnership based upon honesty and shared experience."
That was a lie. Marriage was supposed to be a deep emotional connection formed permanently between two people who could manage to become both lovers and best friends.
"I almost miss Cal. I almost want him to come back," Rose said. Edith still stood waiting to be dismissed, her arms crossed. "Ridiculous, isn't it? Especially since I know that when he gets home this evening we'll probably be at each other's throats as usual." She glanced at Edith. "I feel dead in this house," she said. "Everyone is always sweeping past me as if I'm invisible."
"We've all been instructed by Mr. Hockley to avoid interaction with you, I'm sorry to say," Edith said, turning toward the door.
"Cal—what?"
"I myself believe he's doing you a great disservice." Rose knew the disapproval on Edith's face was not for her but for Cal. "Though of course he claims it's for your own good."
"Why—"
"Miss Rose, at the risk of my dismissal, I will be honest with you. We may be servants, but we are neither stupid nor ignorant. None of us are blind to what goes on between you and Mr. Hockley."
Rose's chest tightened. This was exactly what she had been looking for, but now that she was hearing it for herself she wanted to shut her hands over her ears and run from the room before Edith could say another word.
"Of course it's no concern of mine, and forgive me for postulating, but whatever has taken place from the date of your departure to Europe up ‘til now is no great mystery to those of us who live and work here. You're intelligent and inquisitive enough to deserve the truth, in my opinion, so that you can at least be spared a bit of your dignity."
Heavy rain drummed against the roof outside, mindless white noise that agitated Rose. She was upset—sober and disturbed, disoriented. Something like an emotional panic attack. It made her want to curl up into her dead mother's loving embrace and cry like a baby until she found relief in sleep, but that was purely instinctual because her mother's embrace had never been loving.
Please don't let anything happen…please…Cal…
Memories tried to surface—a dark room, delirium, the nauseous feeling of pain numbed by medicine—and the free thrill of flying that had stopped her heart and her mind when she let herself slip and fall to the foot of the grand staircase.
Nothing…is going to happen to you.
Maybe trying to keep her sheltered was Cal's only way of following through on a promise she didn't even remember him making. Maybe he thought she was too delicate to handle the burden of being half of a partnership.
No one has ever wanted anything but the best—
*****
She wanted to barricade the door of her bedroom and let servants ride things up to her window via a pulley system. None of them would ever again set eyes upon her physical form and in time she would fade from their memories until she was nothing more than dust.
It had been months since she'd given even a passing consideration to anything half so drastic.
*****
She met Cal at the door of his study when he returned that night. She took one glance at him and knew he wouldn't want to visit with her just then—his hair and jacket were wet from a dash through the rain and he looked bitter and oblivious, in the mood to get mildly drunk and storm around the mansion in search of servants to abuse. But she didn't care.
"I wanted to have tea sent up for you," was the first thing she said. "But I'm afraid I'll get an innocent maid in trouble if she's caught anywhere near me."
"What are you going on about?" Cal pushed past her and tossed his briefcase aside. He seemed halfway oblivious to her as he collapsed behind his desk.
Very gingerly, Rose pulled the study door closed. Cal looked over at her but didn't protest, so she took it as an invitation to sit down and make herself more comfortable.
She opened her mouth to speak, and faltered.
She hadn't known what exactly she was going to say to him, but seeing him in typical ill temper instantly put her off. What had she wanted? To cry about how sick she was with shame? To plead with him to take her away from here, from everyone and everything, to some distant place where they could both start over and leave this whole tangled mess behind?
Uncomfortable silence set in as Cal flipped through the mail that had arrived while he was gone. When he came to the Philadelphia Stock Exchange letter, he threw it in the wastepaper basket without bothering even to open it.
Rose reached for it, thinking it must be something important and that Cal had only thrown it out in a moment of frustration, but he grabbed her arm to stop her. "Leave it," he said. "I'm already familiar with the content."
His voice sounded more level than she would have expected. She looked up into his face and saw that his angry expression had faded into a mask of resignation and indifference.
He let go of her arm without breaking eye contact. Suddenly self-conscious, Rose cleared her throat.
"Do you understand the position you've put me in?" Cal asked in a low voice. "Do you have any frame of reference?"
Rose's mind went blank.
"I've estranged my father in your defense, when he was my strongest and arguably only means of financial security. I draw unnecessary attention to myself every time I brush off questions about you. And what have I gotten in return? I'm accused, disowned, doubted, at risk of a future bankruptcy—all for you, my dear."
"I—"
"You're my only drive, my only inspiration. It's categorically insane of me to alienate the people who act as my collateral, but I have anyway—I told you early in the summer, Rose, that any other man would have left you to die in the streets—"
—you little slut—
"—and that had damn well better mean something to you because I am destroying myself on your behalf even though I'm more than aware that it won't get me what I want from you."
Cal reached for the brandy and poured himself a glass.
"Let me ask you something, Rose," he said. "At what point does it pay off?"
He tossed back the shot and watched her across the desk.
Why did she feel like she had just been punched in the gut?
She rescinded into her memory, where all she could feel was her hand scrawling words across a sheet of stationery.
Darling…now you can keep us both locked in your safe.
The sentiment had been crafted in the heat of her rebellion. Her note pinned to the portrait signified not only their broken engagement, but also the fact that she had broken free of him and the world he represented. They were words of an ultimate liberation—the liberation of her mind, her body, her spirit, her life.
She knew her words would mock him. They would anger him. It was what she'd wanted—to tell him, in the clearest way possible, that he had lost. And here, darling, is your consolation prize.
Rose shut her eyes and saw the mean, sideways half-smile he had shot her right after slapping her across the face that night.
She had begun to accept by now that he did feel something toward her beyond the superficial. Though it was a selfish and possessive love, rooted in his desire to own her and to influence her, she thought it was about as much as she could ever hope to see from him. After a lifetime spent being programmed by the wrong people, it was the only kind of love he knew how to feel.
It had never occurred to her to think about whether she might have hurt him with her contemptuous rejection. Insulted, yes, enraged, of course…she had intended those things. He'd abused her, he'd treated her like an object, an ornament, a slave to his every whim. He was cold and ignorant and soulless and he had earned her worst.
And now? What might he have thought when he looked at her now—as he sacrificed for her, as he tried his best to understand what it took to make her happy, even if he seemed to realize that ultimately he would never be able to…she was carrying another man's child, a child he would have to face every day for years to come as a reminder of it all, a child he would have to claim as his own and pretend to care for even through his hatred.
Whether or not his motives were genuine, the injury and insult must have been agonizing.
"It pays off," Rose managed at last, "when you learn to respect me as an equal."
Her throat was dry, her voice scratchy. She swallowed several times.
"I didn't want to find out that all of our servants have been ordered to avoid me…in case one of them slips up and says the wrong thing." She swallowed again to oil her throat. "I don't like seeing you crushed under the stress of problems that you won't even try to explain to me. A marriage is supposed to be a partnership…based upon honesty and shared experience."
Cal just raised an eyebrow.
"And I know our marriage is a long way from typical, but I don't see any reason why we can't strive for some degree of—of normalcy…and if you want my respect, then you're going to have to give me yours in return."
"Nothing has ever been good enough for you, Rose," said Cal. "Nothing."
They stared at each other in silence.
At last, Cal broke eye contact to pour another shot. "I'm not Jack Dawson," he went on, sounding almost bored.
"I know that," Rose replied, unwilling to react to the comment.
"I shouldn't have to keep on proving myself. The sacrifices I've already made for you are disproportionate."
She didn't understand. Here she was, reaching out to him—explaining to him the simple change he had to make if he wanted their relationship to rise above the plateau it had already reached…did he really think he had any room to be stubborn?
"It's late. I'm tired. We'll talk more about this later."
Something about the way he said it made Rose nervous. All of a sudden, she couldn't wait to be by herself in her own room, where she could clear her mind without any distractions. "All right," she said.
She took one last look at him as she slipped out the door—he snatched at the letter he'd dropped into the wastepaper basket, almost smirked at it, as though he had lost his mind and found it somehow amusing. As she watched, he tore it into several pieces and let them scatter across the carpet.