Page 93 of Two Wars and a Wedding

Betsy’s hand went to the ribbon at her neck, fumbling on the bow. The ribbon was getting worn and frayed from the number of times she’d tied and untied it. She held it out by the ends, the gold coin, somewhat smudged from constant use, swaying gently in the middle.

“Here,” Betsy said dully. “Take it.”

The baroness eyed her askance. “I don’t want your trinkets.” Turning to Aikaterini, she said sharply, in French, “Is the girl a half-wit?”

Betsy bristled. Strange, what mattered when nothing else did. “I graduated from Smith with honors.”

The baroness cast Betsy a look of extreme distaste. “Les cervelines. Propre à rien. Le cerveau se développe au détriment du cœur.”

Bluestockings. Good for nothing. Nourishing their brains at the expense of their hearts.

If her heart was malformed, then why did it hurt so much?

“I do speak French,” Betsy said in that language.

“Good.” The baroness was even more terrifying in her own language. “Then let me speak plainly to you. I have come for the child. It is my husband’s, and for that it will be mine.”

It. Like an object. Betsy put her hands over her stomach.

Aikaterini took one of Betsy’s cold hands. “My dear. This could be the solution. Your child will have a home and a name—a noble name. And you can be as you were.”

Betsy stared at her dumbly, not sure how Aikaterini thought she could ever be as she was. Once a civilization was destroyed, it couldn’t be put right, only excavated from the ruins, a testament to what had been but no longer was.

“It is all quite easily arranged,” said the baroness briskly. She might have been talking about ordering a new hat. “There is a place in Switzerland. I will go there for my accouchement. A baby, at my age, in a time of mourning—it requires the utmost care and quiet.”

Aikaterini squeezed Betsy’s numb fingers. “Everyone knows you worked yourself into a decline, nursing our soldiers. There is no shame in taking a rest cure. A few months among the trees and the mountains, in utter peace and solitude—it is precisely what you need. The queen herself suggested something of the kind. She takes an interest in you, you know.”

“She doesn’t know—”

“No! Nothing of the sort. Her Majesty knows only that you nursed valiantly and has expressed her concern about your health.” Aikaterini hesitated a moment, and then added, “Her Majesty has mentioned her interest in seeing you happily settled, here in Athens, if possible. She suggested, perhaps, the court physician.”

Betsy stared at her in horror. “I don’t want to marry the court physician.”

“Then you won’t,” Aikaterini hastened to reassure her. “No one wants anything but your happiness. You don’t need to marry anyone if you don’t wish it. But this way, should you wish to marry someday . . . there will be no bar.”

Other than her own conscience.

The baroness rose, in a single, swift motion. She drew on her gloves. They were beautiful gloves. Pristine. “We are agreed, then. I shall make the arrangements and convey them to Madame MacHugh.” She looked directly at Betsy for the first time since the interview began. Her lip curled. “There is no need for us to meet again.”

And she was gone, leaving a subtle hint of French perfume and a distinct chill in the air. Like the witch in a fairy tale, thought Betsy irrelevantly, come to steal her baby and seal it in a tower.

But she wasn’t in a fairy tale. She was a modern American woman and no one could take her child without her saying so. Or could they? Betsy felt hot and cold at the same time. “I haven’t—I didn’t say I would.”

“But, my dear, what else are you to do? You cannot raise the child alone.”

“I could find a little cottage somewhere.” A hut deep in the woods surrounded by brambles. There she would tend the steaming cauldron while her child went out barefoot to collect berries, until one day a talking bear would appear at the door—or was it a frog? No, Betsy didn’t want to live in that sort of story. “Or an apartment in a city. One of the modern sort where you send a dumbwaiter down to the basement for meals and someone comes and cleans for you once a week. I could pretend to be a widow. I could tell my child her father died in the war.”

“You would be found out,” said Aikaterini, not unkindly. “Do you think there is any city you could go where someone would not know you?”

Betsy didn’t have an answer. It was true. In the sorts of cities that had universities where she might study and apartments with staff who lived in the basement, there would always be someone who knew her or her brother or her father. She might try to change her name, but it would come out. And how was she to pretend, as herself, that she had married during the war? Greece was a small place, in its way. Everyone she had nursed with would know that was nonsense. The queen would know that was nonsense.

Betsy had money of her own—but only so long as Alex continued to disburse it. Betsy wasn’t sure of the exact terms of her trust. She had never bothered to check. But she knew Alex. She knew how he valued his reputation, his precious respectability, always trying so hard to wash the stench of the Yonkers carpet factory out of his money so his Beacon Hill neighbors wouldn’t get a whiff of it. If Betsy were to turn up with a child—Alex would find a way to stop her funds. He’d have her declared incompetent, unfit.

What if he had her put away? He could. Alex was a lawyer, well-connected. Betsy had flouted him—she’d flouted him with glee—but he couldn’t very well declare her not of sound mind for studying the classics.

But if she were to come home with an illegitimate child . . . Betsy could feel the cold against the back of her neck. Alex would have her put away. He’d have her put away and her child taken from her.

Betsy crammed her fist into her mouth, trying to keep the panic inside.