Chapter 2

NORA

Gideon pulled away from me to answer the phone.

His voice changed completely. Warm. Gentle. Close.

"I know. I could not sleep either."

He listened, then took his jacket from the chair.

"I will be there in twenty minutes."

He hung up and walked to the door without looking at me.

"Gideon?"

"I have to go out."

"It is almost midnight."

The front door closed.

I stood in the bedroom with my hand pressed where his had been. The baby felt like a weight I could not carry and could not put down.

I did not sleep. I lay in the dark, listening for his car. It came back at four. His footsteps went straight to the guest room.

Morning came gray and quiet. I went downstairs with powder over the shadows under my eyes.

Gideon sat at the breakfast table reading his tablet. He did not look up.

Greta smiled at me from the stove. "Good morning, Mrs. Hale. Did you sleep well?"

"Very well, thank you."

Another lie. My whole life was lies now.

Greta's eyes stayed on my face a moment too long. She did not believe me, but she poured my coffee anyway.

The smell turned my stomach. I drank it.

"You look tired," Gideon said, still reading.

"I am fine."

"My mother is coming at two." He swiped the screen. "She says it is urgent."

My stomach dropped. "Rosalind?"

"She called an hour ago."

Rosalind Hale. Born into old shipping money, married into more, mother of two. She had done everything the family asked of her, and she expected the same from everyone else.

She hated me.

The morning dragged. I could not eat. Across the table, Gideon's silence reminded me of something.

I was thirteen. It was a summer garden party at the Hale estate, and my mother had brought me to carry plates. Three older girls caught me beside the fountain.

"Look at the maid's kid," one of them said. "Wearing a party dress."

Another shoved me, and I went into the water in my only good dress. The others laughed. A woman nearby looked away.

Then a boy walked past. Eighteen, tall, sleeves rolled, searching the crowd for someone. He did not glance at the fountain. He tossed his jacket on the stone bench, kept walking, and was gone.

The girls scattered. I climbed out, shaking, and wrapped his jacket around my shoulders. It smelled of cedar and rain.

He never knew whose shoulders he had covered. That was the day I fell in love with him.

Ten years later, he still had never looked at me the way I looked at him.

At two o'clock, Rosalind's black car stopped in the drive. I watched her step out. Silver hair cut sharp at the jaw, a dark coat with a fur collar, a back so straight she looked carved.

Gideon met her in the hall. "Mother."

"Gideon." She kissed his cheek. Her eyes found me. "Nora."

All the warmth left her voice.

"Mrs. Hale."

"We will talk in the study," Gideon said. "I want Nora there."

Rosalind kept her eyes on me. "Good. It concerns her."

Nothing good ever followed that sentence.

In the study, Rosalind sat as though she owned the room. Gideon stood by the window. I stayed near the door.

"I heard about the Lowell girl's announcement," Rosalind said. "Everyone is celebrating. A new baby, a new heir for that family."

Gideon's jaw tightened.

"I am told her friend from the shipping board announced the same news this month. Everywhere I go, someone is expecting." She turned toward me. "Except in this house."

Silence. I dug my nails into my palm.

"Mother..."

"Three years, Gideon, and not one rumor of an heir." She stood and walked toward me. "I have begun to wonder whether something is wrong."

I was carrying his child. At that exact moment. But I could not say it.

"That is enough," Gideon said.

"Is it?" She turned to him. "I have booked a full family health screening for both of you at the Hale private clinic. My own doctor will see you. Next Monday."

A health screening. I felt the blood leave my face. She was not looking for a cause. She was looking for someone to blame.

"I will expect you both there."

"Mother, that is not necessary."

"The Hale family needs an heir. Your father and I have been patient long enough." She started for the door, then stopped, as if she had forgotten something. "Oh, Gideon. Did you hear? Camilla Voss is back from Vienna. First chair of the philharmonic now."

His face softened. The same look I had seen last night.

"She has done so well for herself," Rosalind said lightly. "I always said you two were meant for each other." Her eyes slid to me, cool and complete. "So very different."

From you. She did not say it. She did not need to.

She left, and the room emptied of her perfume. Gideon stayed at the window with his back to me. I stood there with my hand halfway to my stomach before I caught it.

"Gideon..."

"I have work."

He walked past me without looking.

I stood alone in the study. Rosalind's words rang in my ears. A health screening. Because I was not enough. Because a child who already existed was not enough.

I thought about the Lowell girl, glowing on that stage. About the woman on the phone, so loved, so brilliant, taking my husband's voice and making it gentle. And here I was. The arsonist's daughter. The contract wife. Carrying a child nobody wanted.

But this child was mine. Whatever Gideon decided, whatever Rosalind demanded, this baby was mine. No one was coming to open a door for me this time. I would have to open it myself.

I laid my palm flat against my stomach.

"It is you and me," I whispered. "That is all we need."

But even as I said it, the tears came. Because some part of me, the part that stood shivering by a fountain ten years ago, still wanted him to turn around. To see me. To want us.

That girl was still waiting by the water.

And I hated her for it.