HEARTS WILL GO ON
Chapter Ten
"Excuse me?" my mother
exclaimed in disbelief, holding my shoulders. I couldn’t find words to say in
my state of shock. Olivia sighed.
"Believe me, Jo, this would never
have been my choice, but my father’s lawyers had to draw up a codicil after we
learned Jack may be dead." Mom gasped angrily as Olivia realized what
she’d said and covered her mouth.
"Jack may be dead? Olivia,
he is gone! I was there. I saw his lifeless, frozen body sink into the Atlantic
Ocean!" Olivia cringed, obviously at the thought of her brother that way,
and suddenly, I grew suspicious. Why had she said it like that?
"Look, Rose, he was my baby
brother. Don’t you think it’s hard for me, too? To imagine him dying a slow,
icy death?" she replied tearfully to Mom. I had to intervene.
"Stop this! This is not
about Jack dying. It is about my life right now!" Ma turned to me.
"Josephine, I cannot allow
this to happen...marrying someone just to run a business, which you most likely
wouldn’t run anyway. Think about this rationally, Jo...the control would go to
your husband, thus the reason for marrying, who would then turn it over to
various executives. The only thing that would tie you to it would be your
name." She sat on a settee with her head in her hands. "I won’t have
you go through what I did."
It was clear now what she was
worried about, but she needn’t fear, for I had no intention of looking for a
fairytale. I wanted to make something out of myself, and if sacrificing love
was the way to do it, then so be it.
"Ma...I’m different than you
were..." I said, sitting beside her. "I don’t need to be in love...if
I have a chance to be more than a wife and mother, then damn it, I am going to!
I love you, Mom, for caring so much, but I am nineteen, and I think I am going
to go through with this..." Olivia raised an eyebrow. Even I could not
believe the words coming from me.
My mother looked at me sadly.
"Fine, but I want it made
perfectly clear that this is something you do not have to do. This is your
choice."
"Deal," I replied,
throwing my arms around her body, which was wrought with tension. Olivia smiled
uneasily at us.
"We’ll hold a party next
weekend and invite all of the eligible bachelors in town."
"Fine," I replied, not
really caring in the least. Maybe I could find some old, wealthy man near his
death bed, who would leave me in charge anyway.
*****
Christmas was a week away now. I
checked my reflection quickly before we retired to the library to wait until
the guests arrived in two hours.
To my utter dismay, Jonathan
Hockley was present, accompanied by Miss Gloria Edwards, the blonde from the
first dinner I had been to. He seemed to brighten as I appeared, but I firmly
ignored him and spent the entire night speaking to various people, including
Dave, who hardly listened to a word I said because he was once again caught
under the shy spell of the pretty Miss Edwards. Word had spread quickly about
my situation, and numerous gentlemen of all ages approached me that evening. At
one point, three of them were talking to me all at once. Overwhelmed and unsure
of my decision, I excused myself and fled to the library.
I tried to calm myself by
examining books on the shelves, finding nothing of interest, when a worn book
caught my eye. The spine read Dawson Family Album. I frowned in
confusion and had just begun to reach for it when a voice behind me nearly made
me leap out of my skin as I shrieked.
"Are you bored to tears, as
well?" I whirled on the perpetrator, a male, nearly toppling over. He
caught me, and I pushed him away as if he carried the plague.
"What are you doing in
here?" I hissed at him, more embarrassed than angry. He grinned.
"To much chatter out
there..." he replied easily, looking at a few of Olivia and Grant’s
statues that graced the room.
"Are you following me, Mr.
Hockley?" I asked, crossing my arms defensively. His face turned a
brilliant shade of pink as he stuttered.
"No, of course not. I
just...well..." He stopped talking as I turned away so he would not see
the blush that also decorated my white skin. In that moment, I realized I was
inexplicably affected by his mere presence in the room. "Is it true?"
he asked quietly, running his finger along a shelf. I looked at him, perplexed.
"What?"
"That you are searching for
a husband?" I frowned at him, wondering how fast gossip traveled in this
town.
"I...yes, I am..." I
said. His face seemed to lose the easiness in his smile. "Aren’t you
courting Miss Edwards anyhow?" I asked, unable to make eye contact with
him. He nodded, though.
"We’re engaged,
actually...I’ve known her just under a year. Her father is in the automotive
industry. She’s heiress to a large fortune...so large you could scarcely
believe it." I almost rolled my eyes...why was everything about money?
"Congratulations..." I
muttered dryly. "Can I go now?" I asked impatiently, pushing past
him. He caught my arm.
"Why not take a walk out to
the terrace with me?" I sighed loudly in exasperation.
"Do you want the short list
or the long?" I offered, trying to pry off the firm but gentle grip he had
on my arm. "For one thing, Mr. Hockley, you are engaged...for another, you
are an arrogant, self-centered playboy, and finally, you are the son of someone
I don’t care to have association with!" His face became a mask of hurt.
"So, I am to be judged for
the sins of my father?"
Stupidly, trying desperately to
find a way out of this situation I retorted, "Like father, like son."
He reeled back as if burned, and guilt swam in my mind. "That was uncalled
for..." I said apologetically.
Resentment left his eyes as
quickly as it had come.
"I only wanted to be your
friend, Miss Dawson. Believe it or not, I don’t have many..." He was
obviously embarrassed by this revelation, but I was unmoved.
"I honestly can’t believe
that," I replied. "You’re nice-looking and your family is
wealthy." He shook his head.
"It’s a sham..." he
said quietly, bringing a puzzled frown to my face.
"What is?" I questioned
like a parrot.
"We’re broke," he
explained, sitting on an ottoman. I was dumbfounded.
"What? How?" I asked,
sitting on the arm of the chair that matched his ottoman.
"Easy," he said,
folding his hands. "The stock crash...he’d invested almost all we had in
it when the steel mills began to decline, and it went well for a long
time...but..."
"It crashed and you lost
almost everything," I finished for him. He nodded, something lurking
behind those silver eyes...something that haunted him.
"Father was devastated...we
had to sell our summer home in New York and our vacation house in Florida just
to get by. Not to mention that all of our servants but our butler and cook had
to be laid off. My stepmother takes care of the house with my little
sisters."
My mouth dropped open, not at the
fact that they cleaned on their own, since Mom and I had done it forever, but
the fact that he said stepmother.
"Deirdre is your
stepmother?" I inquired, and he nodded, surprised that I hadn’t known.
"Mother died when I was
barely three, and Father remarried Deirdre when I was five. She’s nice, if a
bit overbearing, but she cares for me as her own, and I promised Father that
should anything happen to him, I would take care of her and the girls. My
sisters...Grace and Bianca. They’re ten and thirteen." Affectionately, he
pulled out two small portraits from his wallet and showed me. They were pretty
girls. Both had dark hair, but they had taken their mother’s eyes.
"They’re lovely," I
said, unsure of how I was supposed to feel about him now. Truth be told, I
wanted so very much to like him, but the thought of Mom and what she would
think halted my feelings. "I wonder, Mr. Hockley...did your father ever
mention a Rose?" His eyes darkened at the name.
"I...vaguely recall him
mentioning her a time or two...he called out her name before he..." He
stopped abruptly as the first strains of music told us the dancing had begun in
the ballroom.
"You know...if someone were
to come in here, this would look questionable. A young girl, who has not even
debuted into society, alone with an engaged heir." Relief that the subject
had changed flooded his eyes, and he smiled again, that wide, beautiful smile.
"Perhaps we should get
back." He offered his arm to me, and I looked longingly at that photo
album in the midst of Olivia’s shelf, but opted to look at it another time.
"Listen," he said as we entered the ballroom. "I must offer the
first dance to Gloria, but will you save one of yours for me? It’s not often I
make a friend." He squeezed my hand as I nodded, and strode toward his
young fiancée. She was younger than me, possibly eighteen, with a shy manner
that gave her a sweet sort of presence. I smiled thoughtfully at the couple
before joining Dave at the side, where he sulked near Mom and his parents.
"Was that Jonathan Hockley
you walked in with?" Mom asked suspiciously. I almost laughed at her
silliness.
"Yes, Mother...it’s not what
you think, though...he is engaged to Gloria Edwards...but I do think I have
made a friend in young Mr. Hockley."
"A smart friend, indeed,
dear child." I spun around to see my would-be grandmother, standing there
in her finest, accompanied by one of the oldest men I had ever seen.
"Mother, what are you doing
here?" Mom asked, coming to my side. I took her hand.
"I was invited, if you must
know..." She turned to her escort. "This is my dear husband, Reginald
Cohen," she said.
The old man turned to her and
said loudly, "What?" It was obvious he had hearing problems. I
stifled a smile at this.
"This is Rose! My
daughter!" she said, and he frowned.
"You want some water?"
he asked loudly, hobbling to the refreshment table. I giggled, looking at Dave,
who was still moping. I shot him a scowl.
"Why is Mr. Hockley a smart
friend?" I asked, returning my attention to the aging woman before me. She
smiled, I would have guessed genuinely.
"He’s a good boy...his
father was a good man...he cared for me until I married Reginald, you
know," she said, and Mom gasped.
"He...did?" she asked
softly. The grandmother nodded.
"Absolutely...he was
devastated when we thought you were...well..."
"Dead," Mom finished.
The woman nodded.
"Yes...he found a place for
me to live and included me in family affairs...I met Reginald at a dinner party
of his wife Isabella’s…you know...Jonathan’s mother."
Mother seemed to have forgotten
her angst toward this woman.
"How did she die?" she
asked, remembering the girl apparently. The woman let out a slow breath.
"Childbirth...she died, and
so did the baby." Mom audibly gasped.
"No...and now that boy is an
orphan," she said, the maternal instinct in her taking over, as always. My
grandmother nodded.
"Deirdre took good care of
him when his father died, though. Loves him to pieces...the poor child was in
the room when Cal shot himself."