"You simply can't go running off out of town overnight by yourself, without talking to me first."
Cal shoved the note at her—the note she had slipped under his study door. I've gone to Philadelphia to visit a friend, it said. I'll return tomorrow. I don't dare ask your permission. I know that you'll never grant it to me.
"I won't be controlled, Cal," said Rose softly. "I will not be controlled."
He wanted to grab her and shake her, shake her hard until she understood reason. Couldn't she see that it was in her own best interest to behave? Why did she insist upon drawing needless attention to herself, reflecting poorly on him and putting herself at risk? Every time she did something rebellious she made him look like an incompetent fool who couldn't keep any order in his life.
"You've made me look like an idiot. When your mother showed up and wanted to know why she couldn't see you I had to inform her that you'd run away while I was out—"
"Is that all you care about? How bad I make you look?"
"Goddamn it, Rose!"
He felt he was dangerously close to losing his temper. He didn't want to fly into a rage, overturn furniture or strike her, but she couldn't seem to understand that there was a certain point at which she needed to stop trying his patience and be quiet for the sake of peace.
"You said yourself that you didn't want to be my antagonist," said Rose. "If you really mean that, then you'll stop trying so hard to control every little thing about me and give me some breathing room."
"Yes, but you just ran off. By yourself. After you'd been in bed for a week recovering from a serious injury. You should have asked me first and you should have had a maid with you—"
"Would you have let me go?"
"I don't even know who you were with or where you stayed—"
"I went to visit with Molly Brown," she said, and then asked again, "So, would you have let me go?"
Cal couldn't help but sneer a little. "I didn't realize you were in touch with that woman."
"As a matter of fact, she saw my name written up in the paper after I married you and sent me a letter," said Rose.
"I never saw anything addressed to you—"
"Of course you didn't. I took it from the mail when you were away."
Cal decided he was going to ignore that. "Next time you plan to go somewhere," he said, "you will consult me first."
Anger flitted across her face.
"I don't understand your petulance," he went on, leaning back in his chair as he lit a cigarette. "You asked me not to let you engage in any more reckless behavior—"
"I did nothing of the sort! Are you so obsessed with controlling me that you've imagined conversations between us?"
She didn't remember that night.
For the best, he supposed. Memories of all the things he had done and said made him cringe. He'd been a little harsher toward her the last few days, even, attempting to cancel out the moment of uncharacteristic tenderness between them.
"You've been quite antisocial since you returned, Rose," he said, changing the subject. "People are beginning to talk."
"I don't care."
"You can't keep refusing to attend any party or function that comes up. You'll be thought of as a recluse."
"Cal," she spat. "I. Don't. Care. I don't care what anyone thinks of me, least of all you."
She stormed from the room.
God, she was stupid.
*****
"I don't understand her. Did she ever entertain the fantasy that she would be able to survive in the world on her own?"
Cal turned from the window to look at Ruth. She had arranged herself on the fainting couch with her tea, skirts fanned out, gloves folded neatly beside her. She was perfection and he hated her for it.
"She wanted to make herself disappear," he said in monotone. "But she came to her senses quickly enough."
Ruth smiled. It was the kind of smile that looked as though it could crack her face if it stayed on too long. "I want so dearly to believe it's true," she said. "I want to think that hardship…has helped Rose to learn an important lesson and to realize how selfish she's been…"
The smile faded.
"But I can't help feeling that there's more to this than meets the eye. Her change of heart…it was so…sudden…"
"Mmm, yes," said Cal absently, trying to decide how he ought to handle her. Her esteem for him had been damaged aboard the Titanic, and although he had won back most of it by assuming her debt after she came to him in a display of teary hysterics that barely masked her vague threats, he'd come to realize that she had to be treated with kid gloves. Money gave him the upper hand between them, but she had seen a side of him that he preferred to keep hidden and the last thing he needed was for her to start talking.
"Tell me the truth, Mr. Hockley. There was another reason she came back. I know it."
Cal studied her a moment longer and then, making up his mind, crossed the room and took a seat across from her.
"I'll speak to you in confidentiality," he said. "You can't repeat this to anyone."
Ruth's eyebrows arched in question.
"As I'm sure you recall, Rose's infatuation with…Dawson…led her to behave impetuously."
"Of course."
"She whored herself to him."
Ruth blinked several times.
"He impregnated her."
"Oh," she whispered, raising a manicured hand to her mouth.
Cal smiled darkly. "I imagine you can fill in the rest for yourself."
"Her child—"
"Dawson's. Yes."
"Are you certain?"
"Quite certain." Under any other circumstances, his admission that he hadn't slept with her daughter out of wedlock would probably have been a relief to her…but now, he knew, it was a grievous disappointment.
She stared at him in shocked silence.
"It's vital that we keep this between us," said Cal. "If word got out—"
"Of course," replied Ruth, her voice hushed. "No one must know."
*****
Ruth departed back to Philadelphia early the next morning. Cal was in the kitchen, reading the paper over coffee, when Rose entered the room in a huff. She was still in her nightgown, her flaming hair in an uncombed tumble down her back.
She seemed so very, very young, painfully young, a little girl on the verge of a temper tantrum. At times during their engagement he had forgotten that she was thirteen years younger than him; she was a smart girl, and she could hold her end of an intellectual conversation when she wanted to. But every time she got herself into trouble, every time she became emotional, she changed in front of him and he was reminded of the fact that she was seventeen, scarcely more than a child.
Rather than explode, however, she poured herself a mug of coffee and joined him at the table. He watched her, waiting for whatever was coming.
She was silent.
He returned to his paper.
"It's a beautiful morning," said Rose. Her voice was angry despite her words. "Lovely traveling conditions for my mother on her way back to Philadelphia."
Annoyance snapped in Cal and for a moment he would have liked nothing more than to scream at her and throw a tantrum of his own. Why can't you ever be satisfied?
Instead he said, without raising his eyes from the paper, "What do you want, Rose?"
She slammed her mug down, sloshing coffee onto the tablecloth. "Why did you tell her?"
"Come again?"
"Why did you tell Mother that I'm carrying Jack's child?"
Finally Cal looked up. "How did you know that?"
"I overheard you in the sitting room yesterday. Why did you tell her? It was none of her business."
"You're her daughter. it's her business entirely."
"No, it isn't!" Rose leaned across the table, slamming the newspaper flat and grabbing him roughly by the arm. "Don't you see her? Don't you realize what her motives are?"
Clenching his jaw, Cal pried her hand off his arm.
"She forced us together because of money. She was willing to sell her own daughter's happiness so that she wouldn't have to give up her life of luxury. I'm not a person to her—I'm an object. You must be able to understand that because you see me the same way."
"I'm not going to have this discussion with you, Rose." For the second time he returned to his paper. "I can't imagine why you would want to keep things from your mother anyway."
She said nothing. She didn't storm off; she sat in silence for a good ten minutes, only speaking once to a maid—"No thank you"—when she was offered more coffee.
Cal ignored her.
"Why do I even bother trying to get anything across to you?" she whispered at last.
He looked up in time to watch her vanish out the door.