PROLOGUE
September 1891, New York City
“My son says you are with child. His child. My grandchild.”
Jane Middlebourne remained stoic in the face of Frances Ewing’s censure. She said nothing. Every word bit at her flesh like a whiplash, and she did not flinch. Oddly, it was not as difficult as she had imagined it would be. Until this moment she had not understood how tolerant, even immune, she had become to the sharp, disapproving nature of her cousin’s discourse. From Cousin Franny’s lips, a passing pleasantry more closely resembled an accusation. When Frances Ewing said good morning, it was a clear indictment against the sun for rising on another day.
“I cannot say that I am surprised,” Frances Ewing said. “Disappointed, certainly. But not surprised. You are your mother’s daughter after all and blood will out. Cousin Eleanor was a source of tribulation to her family, and by extension, mine. And so it goes to the next generation. You are a failed experiment, Jane. You must see that it is so. I offered you every advantage when I took you in. All that was required was for you to demonstrate respect and a modicum of gratitude. I have evidence of neither.”
Jane kept her hands at her sides. It required some effort. If she curled her fingers into fists, she would look like a combatant, and Cousin Franny would double her attempts to humiliate. If she folded her hands in front of her, she would present herself as a penitent, and Cousin Franny would seize the opportunity to drive her point home. It was better to do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
Jane’s gaze remained level, unblinking. She stared back at Frances Ewing with eyes that often had been likened to her mother’s for their direct, sometimes defiant aspect, and hardly ever for their unusually deep emerald coloring. Jane took measured breaths, steeling herself without giving away the tension that kept her shoulders taut and her chest tight. Her hair, the exact shade of bittersweet chocolate, was scraped back from her forehead and secured in a coil at her nape. This style, approved by her mother’s cousin as being modest and proper for a young woman with no particular standing in society, frequently provoked a headache. The dull throbbing behind Jane’s left eye made her want to tear at the anchoring pins and combs and shake out the dark mane of hair that she was told required taming.
Jane did not flush in response to this last rebuke. In spite of her fair—and some would say wan—complexion, she rarely blushed. It was not that she did not feel the heat of shame or embarrassment; it was that she felt it in the pit of her stomach. Her belly was roiling now. Acid burned at the back of her throat. Pride, not defiance, kept her from being sick.
Frances Ewing leaned forward in the plump, velvet-covered armchair and lifted the teapot from the silver tray that had been placed on the table before her. She added cream and a carefully measured half teaspoon of sugar. She slowly stirred her tea, deliberation in the movement. Her eyes never left Jane’s face.
Jane’s summons to the parlor included carrying in the tea service. Although there were two china cups on the tray, Jane had no expectation that she would be invited to join her cousin, or even invited to sit down. The cup was either meant for someone else who would be joining them, or it was another in a succession of pointed reminders of how she occupied no place as family or guest.
Jane Middlebourne was a sufferance.
“What do you propose to do?” asked Frances. She set down the teaspoon and raised the dainty hand-painted cup to her mouth. She did not sip. She pursed her lips in a manner that communicated her dissatisfaction with the temperature of the tea and blew. “The enormity of the disgrace your condition will visit upon this house is not to be borne. Consider that before you answer.”
Jane did not respond. There was no correct answer here, no solution that she could provide that would be accepted. By offering any opinion on resolving this matter, Jane would actually be eliminating alternatives. Cousin Franny would dismiss her suggestions out of hand in spite of the fact that she had invited them. Whatever was to come of this—and there was a hoped-for answer—it had to be Frances Ewing’s idea.
Over the rim of her teacup, Frances curled her lip. “You have nothing to say for yourself? Nothing at all?” She shook her head, sipped her tea, and lowered the cup until it hovered just above the shelf of her ample bosom. “I suppose I can credit you with enough good sense not to suggest that my son marry you. The idea is entirely without merit. I would never countenance it.”
Jane remained quiet. She had expected this objection. It was actually welcome. She would not countenance that arrangement either.
“There are homes for young women such as yourself. I know because one of my charities is a house for girls in your indelicate condition. I have always considered it the duty of privilege to help those less fortunate. You see my dilemma, don’t you? You must. I cannot count you as one of those with no advantages. You cannot count yourself among the less fortunate. Except for the early years you spent in the company of your mother and that fool of a dream- addled do-gooder who claimed you for his own, you have had an exemplary upbringing, a proper education, and the benefits of a society that would never embrace you if I had not embraced you first.”
Jane narrowly avoided a visible reaction to her cousin’s choice of words. Embraced? Jane could not recall a single instance in which she had ever been embraced, literally or figuratively. In those early days, months, perhaps for the duration of that long first year after her parents had died, Jane had wished she might be sheltered against the same plump breasts that pillowed Franny’s daughter and each of her sons. She was never asked to come forward, never invited to be comforted. In time, Jane came to understand that she shouldn’t expect it. There was good form for the public forum; in the privacy of the Ewing parlor there was…nothing.
Jane Middlebourne was a charity.
For the first time since Jane entered the room, Frances Ewing turned her gimlet eye on the plate of petit fours, iced cookies, and pastries and studied them at length before making her selection. She chose a rolled almond wafer and lightly tapped it against the rim of the plate until most of the loose dusting of powdered sugar fell away.
“I am not pleased with my younger son either,” Frances said. “I am aware that your envious nature makes you sensitive to the relationship I enjoy with my children. You think I indulge them, hold them harmless. You wish that I would show you this same consideration, but I cannot since you quite mistake the matter, and what you imagine is special consideration does not exist except in your mind. I am familiar with Alex’s predilections. I cannot explain or excuse these tendencies except to say it is in the nature of some men to behave incautiously.”
Frances delicately bit off the end of the almond wafer and then sipped from her cup. “You know it, too. That is what I cannot forgive. You very nearly grew up in his pockets. You know him better than his brother and sister. It is with some pain that I admit that you may know Alexander better than I. Yet you behaved as naïvely as a dewy-eyed debutante. Do you tell yourself that he seduced you, made you lose all sense of what was right and proper?”
Jane knew Cousin Franny was posing what was essentially a rhetorical question. A reply would have been unwelcome.
“Alex wants to marry you. It is always what he wants to do when he learns that one of his dalliances has consequences. He tells himself that he is righting a wrong, but he knows he is safe to suggest it because I will always save him from himself. I will not permit it. Thus, we go on and inevitably arrive at this end.”
Frances finished her rolled wafer and sipped more tea. After returning her cup to the tray, she folded her hands together and set that single fist on her lap. “I have no bastard grandchildren, Jane. You understand what I am saying, do you not?”
Jane’s long stillness was what made her slight nod perceptible. She understood Cousin Franny clearly. There would be no marriage. There would be no home for fallen women. There would be no child. She would not give birth.
But there would be money.
“I will leave it to David to make the arrangements,” Frances said.
It was then that Jane Middlebourne’s heart fell into the acid bath that was her stomach.
Alexander Ewing surveyed Jane’s sitting room before his gaze settled on the chair at her writing desk. He spun it away from the desk so that it faced the window bench and eased himself into it. He looked up when Jane paused in the doorway that led from the bedroom.
“Were you sick?” he asked.
