Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Cal tossed back another shot of brandy and slammed the empty glass onto his desk, laughing to himself as the room spun around him. He stared at the telegram in front of him but couldn't focus his eyes well enough to read. It made no difference. He had already read it too many times.
She was alive. She was, as she had put it…in a tight spot.
Cal laughed again, louder. Of course. Of course. The little slut had tried to make herself disappear, hadn't been able to—did she honestly think she would get anywhere, a child with no money and no connections in the big city?—and now. Now she was probably half dead in the streets, and now she was crying for help.
His anger subsided as he gulped down another shot. No. This was too much. He had tried to move on, tried to accept the loss, tried to wash his hands of her, and now.
Damn her.
But God, she was alive.
Rose.
Rose.
Bile rose in his throat as he crumpled the telegram in one hand.
I would like a chance to explain myself but I've almost run out of resources and I'm in a tight spot. I await your response. Rose.
*****
He had to see her.
He desperately wanted to touch her, to hear her speak, to smash her pretty face with his fist—
You unimaginable bastard.
*****
He sent no word return, only money. Enough for a train ticket to Pittsburgh. She would know what to do with it.
If she had never responded it wouldn't have fazed him. Until he saw her with his own eyes, she was still dead and that telegram a joke. He almost preferred to imagine it that way.
But she sent one more message, letting him know that she would be there the following Thursday unless he wrote back and told her not to come.
He didn't reply.
The train from New York City was scheduled to arrive Thursday evening at eight. Cal stood on the platform and watched it pull in. Orange-gold light from the setting sun bounced off its windows.
He scarcely recognized her when she stepped off.
Her hair was stringy, her dress stained and torn. She was thinner and grayer. Still Rose, but at the same time someone else altogether—someone without any of the fire or vitality that had once made her both addictive and insufferable.
She glanced across the platform. Her eyes fell on him.
She raised one hand in greeting.
Cal felt slightly ill as she crossed over to him. His heart began to race.
For a moment she terrified him.
That moment was quickly swallowed up by the bitterness and frustration he had come to feel when he thought of her.
"What in God's name is wrong with you?" he growled before he could think better of making a scene in public. "Do you have any idea what you've done to your mother? What you've done to me? We thought you were dead—"
She stared at him with a horrible vacancy in her eyes. Sunlight caught in her hair, touched her ashen face, breathed temporary life into the empty shell of her body.
"Rose—" he said, his voice faltering.
Still she just stared.
Cal cleared his throat. "Well," he said, "come along then."
Across from him in the car Rose gazed out the window, clutching her filthy, ragged satchel to her chest.
Neither of them spoke.
Cal retreated to his study when they arrived home after entrusting Rose to one of the maids. Get her cleaned up, he said.
Rose didn't protest.
Cal collapsed at his desk and reached for the brandy bottle.
*****
"Your mother has been inconsolable."
Something like hate flickered over Rose's face. "Have you told her?"
"That you're alive? No," said Cal. "I wanted to see you first myself."
She looked better. A little better, at least. She had bathed, changed her dress—a maid's dress, probably all that was on hand—but it was clean.
A pale shadow of her former radiance, of course.
But an improvement.
She looked down at the cup of tea in her lap.
She seemed to want to look anywhere but directly at him.
"I don't profess to understand any of your actions or your choices," Cal went on. "But if you wanted to play dead, then why—"
"I'm pregnant."
So she had given herself to Dawson, actually allowed him to—
—Of course.
In Cal's mind, the pieces of the puzzle began falling into place even before she spoke again. Now he understood. Now he knew why she had contacted him.
"I need your help."
Cal flashed her a patronizing smile. "That much is obvious," he said humorlessly.
She raised her eyes. "Is that all you have to say to me?" she asked.
He wanted to smack her.
"I'm not going to do this with you, Rose," he bit out. "You're requesting my help and you had damn well better be grateful because any other man in his right mind would have left you to die in the streets, you little slut."
"How dare you—"
"How dare I what? How dare I demand respect from the person who comes to me for charity?"
"I don't want charity," Rose replied, some of the anger fading from her voice. She stared at the tumbler in Cal's hand rather than at Cal himself. "I want to make a proposition."
"What?"
She took a deep breath. "You help me and I'll help you in return."
The corner of Cal's mouth flickered upward. "Your…help…was never what I was after," he said. "You have tactically very little to offer me."
"Well, I'm willing to—to give you what you wanted before."
What did she mean by that? Sex?
"I'll marry you so that you can inherit your company," she said, "if you'll allow me to raise my child in a safe, stable environment."
"Oh. I see. You found the gutters unsuitable for childrearing."
"Please don't," she said.
She was looking at him, finally. Unblinking.
Cal took a drink. "The thing about that," he said, "is that Hockley Steel will be signed to my name one of two ways. Marriage is the quickest answer, but once Nathan is dead it will fall automatically into my possession. He's years past his prime…I have half a mind to help him along and skip marrying altogether. It would certainly be easier."
"You disgust me, Cal," Rose whispered. "You are pathetic."
—unimaginable bastard—
"You can be sure that you were a last resort. I telegrammed you out of desperation." Her knuckles were white, gripping her teacup. "I had nowhere to go and no one to turn to. I couldn't find work. There was some money in your coat pocket, but not enough to make a difference. And when I realized that I was going to have a baby I knew I had to do something—I couldn't just—keep wandering—"
Her voice cracked.
"I accept your proposition," he heard himself saying.
This wasn't what he wanted.
This wasn't ever what he had wanted.