THE HEART NEVER LIES
Chapter Seven
Cal
I raised the glass of champagne
to my lips, smiling.
"Well, Ruth," I said to
Rose’s mother, sitting awkwardly in the chair in my father’s parlor, "a
toast is in order, I believe. To gaining lost riches!" I laughed and
raised my glass up. Ruth DeWitt Bukater blanched. Her glass shook in her
trembling hands.
"Are we doing the right
thing, Caledon, about Rose?" she asked quietly. I stared at her in
amazement. This woman was so weak, like putty in my hands. I could play her
like a violin. Ruth with a conscience. Ha! The only thing that worked with a
socialite like her was the smell of money.
I smiled at her. Her eyes were
watery. "Now, Ruth, we are looking after dear Rose. That gutter rat is
gone. He did me a favor. Now my precious is back. I can look after her and you.
Neither of you will ever want for anything."
A wan, faint smile touched Ruth’s
lips. "Well, if you say so," she said. Money talks, I thought.
Everyone has a price!
Honestly, she was a pawn. I had
only gotten Rose to come with me at gunpoint when I threatened her mother. I
honestly hadn’t recognized Rose. She had looked like a wild creature, hair
everywhere, her clothes stained and disheveled, and the hard, cold look in her
eyes.
But that girl was mine, would
always be mine. Ever since I set eyes on her at a society cotillion in London
and saw her standing there, so innocent and beautiful in her virginal white
dress, looking like a vision. Oh, she had been so easy to woo, the dead father
being penniless and the mother using Rose as a financial pawn. Well, the old
bat had handed her over on a plate!
Now the vision was lying safely
in bed, asleep behind a locked door. Oh, it had been so easy. Once we had
arrived at my father’s brownstone, I had dragged her from the car, taken her
upstairs to the old nursery, and locked her in. Oh, she had spirit, and had screamed
and yelled, pounding on the door, to let her go.
That gutter rat had certainly
unleashed the tiger in her. None of the lady was left! But I, Caledon Hockley
II, would tame the tiger, and she would be my high society wife, with all the
etiquette that it demanded. She would learn. Like my mother before her, my
father turning my mother into a wife to be proud of, the master of all he
surveyed. I had learned from him at his knee.
"What happens now,
Caledon?" Ruth was asking.
I took another sip of my champagne.
"Ruth, we’ll let the wildcat calm down, and in due course, we’ll have the
wedding, but you’ll need to do your part."
"Oh?" she exclaimed.
"Yes, my dear Ruth," I
drawled. "Your role is to coax and remold our Rose into the lady she has
forgotten to be. Marry, we will, or you may find your own lifestyle a little
different from what you are accustomed to."
Tears welled in her pale,
passionless eyes. She was so useless, and she had had a life of complete
gentility and was good for nothing, doted on by that old duffer, Daniel
Bukater.
"We can accomplish this,
Ruth, for all our futures," I said smoothly.
She raised her glass unsteadily.
"To our futures," she whispered.
Everything was going my way. I
remembered what I had said to Jack, Jack the gutter rat, as we forced Rose into
the lifeboat. "I always win, Jack, one way or another."
My fiancée was now lying drugged
in bed, sleeping like a baby. A hired nurse was caring for her, keeping her
quiet. When she woke, she would step back into our tomorrows, and she had no
choice. I would make sure of that.