The Keeper of Happy Endings(73)

His eyes slide to my belly, then back to my face, sparking with accusation. “I suppose I should have seen this coming. Now that you know there won’t be any wedding bells, you’ve decided to play your ace. Did my son know?”

I shake my head. “I only realized it yesterday, after you showed me the telegram.”

“Convenient timing, I must say.”

His callousness astonishes me. “Your son isn’t coming home, and I’m carrying his child. This is what you have to say to me?”

He glares down his nose. “I don’t question the fact that you’re carrying a child. Only a fool would lie about such a thing when time stands to expose her, and though I suspect you of being many things, a fool isn’t one of them. But there’s no way to say for certain who the father is.” He pauses, raking his eyes over me. “For all I know, you don’t even know.”

The words wound in a way I never would have thought possible. “You don’t believe that. You can’t.”

“Can’t I?” His mouth curls unpleasantly. “There are names for women like you. Experts at luring our boys into marriage. It nearly worked too. You managed to get yourself all the way across the big blue ocean and install yourself in my home. You even have my daughter eating out of your hand. But you didn’t plan for the telegram, did you?”

“It isn’t true! None of that is true!”

“Spare me your outrage. It will do you no good.” He moves to the desk, briefly studying the cracked picture frame before slipping it back into the drawer. When he turns to look at me again, his face is blank and hard. “You thought you were so clever, showing up on my doorstep with your box full of clothes. You assumed I would simply look the other way while you sauntered down the aisle with my son. But that was never going to happen. Now you think your belly will save you, that a baby gives you some kind of a claim on the Purcells. But you’ve miscalculated, mademoiselle. Your child will never be a Purcell—in name or anything else. There is no place for either of you here.”

I stare at him as the reality of my situation creeps in. I am an inconvenience, a mistake to be corrected. The sooner the better. “Are you really so hard—so full of hate—that you could live with turning your back on your own grandchild? Could Thia live with it?”

He stiffens, hands fisted at his sides. “My daughter isn’t to hear a word about you and your belly. Or about her brother. Is that clear? I’ve arranged for her to go away to school in Connecticut. She leaves the day after tomorrow. And until she does, you will stay well clear of her. By the time she returns, you’ll be gone.”

The thought strikes me with terror. I know no one here, have no money, no work. But my first concern is for poor Thia. “May I at least say goodbye?”

“You may not. I won’t have you manipulating her further.”

I have nothing to say to any of that. He’s made up his mind. About me, about all of it. “What happens now?” I ask simply.

“Steps will need to be taken. Damage control. You have no money, I suppose?”

“Not much, and none of it American.”

“There’s a man I know in Providence, a doctor who works with women like you.”

“Women like me,” I repeat. “What does that mean?”

“It means unmarried, pregnant, no family or means of support. I’ll call him today and get started on the arrangements.”

I feel myself go pale. In Paris, there were women who specialized in such things, in medicines and . . . procedures. Avorteuses. I cross my hands over my belly, an instinctive act of protection. “What kind of . . . arrangements?”

“A place for you to go. A suitable family to take the baby. Help getting on your feet when you’re done with all of it. What did you think I meant?”

I shake my head, unable to say the word out loud.

Owen drops his eyes to the floor, clearly uncomfortable. “I’m not a barbarian, despite what you might think. But I will not have your condition become public knowledge and create a scandal for myself and my daughter. No one knows about your connection with my son, and I intend to keep it that way. And if you’re as clever as I think you are, you’ll keep it that way. If this were the movies, I would just write you a check or set you up in a little business, and that would be the end of it. But this isn’t the movies. In the real world, that kind of assistance could be mistaken for an admission rather than what it really is—a simple act of Christian kindness.”

“This is your kindness? To treat me like some little schemer? When I’ve asked you for nothing?”

He moves to the door as if I haven’t spoken. “This conversation is over. Except to say that if you decide to be troublesome, if you attempt to contact me or my daughter or ever breathe my son’s name to a living soul, I will make it my mission to ruin you. In other words, Miss Roussel, I can help you or hurt you. The choice is yours.”

I stand there with his ultimatum, studying the man I thought would one day be my father-in-law. How cool he is as he makes his plans to dismiss me, so steely and businesslike. A deal to be brokered. A mess to clean up. Anson once called him formidable, and he was right. His father has thought of everything.

But Owen is right too. I haven’t many options. None, in fact. I’ll need a place to live, somewhere clean and safe, until I can find work and make my own way. I will accept what he’s offering, because I have no choice. But my baby will not need a family. I will be its family.