Henry crouched down to the girls and said, “No. This is my new wife.” He gathered the girls into a hug and said, “She is your stepmother.”
Lilah darted off into a run. Tallulah stared at Daisy a bit more before she caught up with her big sister. Henry ran after his daughters to comfort them and explain. Daisy yelled after him, “You never said anything about having children!” Daisy was left under the trellis with Judge Conner and his wife who smiled at her gingerly.
Betsy placed a hand on her shoulder and said, “Come inside. I’ll put on some tea.”
Daisy composed herself and said, “Thank you,” Walking to the house, Daisy marveled at the expanse of her new home. “How long has Henry lived here?” she inquired.
Betsy turned to her stunned. “No, dear. Henry doesn’t live here. He’s a few miles down. The Judge and I have lived here for six years.”
Daisy felt the plunge again she felt a few moments before only now she was drowning. Who is Henry Baker? What have I done?
Qui vivra verra. (She who lives shall see.)
Chapter 5
Henry ran after his daughters feeling guilty for tricking Daisy into marrying him, but he had no choice. He needed a permanent solution. He had been unable to leave home for business with a clear mind since Dinah left. Henry needed to work to provide for his family. He lost a large sum of money paying off Dinah’s gambling debts.
He loved Dinah. Her free spirited ways were, at one time, perfect for Henry’s lifestyle. They were on the road together running in wanderlust and love, but when Lilah was born Dinah resented staying home with the baby. A second baby only made Dinah feel more rooted to the ground.
Dinah, a daughter of nobility in France, had traveled to America all the way from Paris. She was a vagabond latching on to caravans, traveling shows, and likeminded free spirits. Whatever Dinah had been running from in France, Henry never found out, but running is what Dinah needed to feel whole.
She ran away from their home a year ago slipping away into the night while Henry was on another one of his trips. Dinah waited until Lilah was old enough to look after her little sister. Although many would say, a seven-year-old was not old enough for that kind of responsibility. Dinah had tested her oldest methodically, disappearing a few hours at a time to see if the girls could handle her absence.
The first time was just fifteen minutes. The next time an hour. After a while, her disappearances stretched to eight full hours. Lilah learned her mother’s absences were temporary. She stopped needless hysterical crying long ago realizing her mother would return. When Dinah finally appeared, the girls were perfectly fine, playing out back or tucked into their beds as if Dinah’s absence meant little to them.
Dinah became convinced her daughters didn’t need her. The weeks without Henry only proved to her that he didn’t need her either. Where was the adventure in her life? She hadn’t meant to spend the money Henry brought home, but the buzz of gambling brought adventure back pumping into her veins. She was too drunk with thrill-seeking to realize the more she spent the more Henry needed to work. Besides, where else could Dinah go on her long jaunts into town while the girls learned to fend for themselves?
Tonight, Henry sat with his little girls on their bed. His oldest, Lilah, was bitterly angry with him. He carried over a dark crimson trunk with gold etching. “Let me show you something.” he said to them. He opened the trunk tenderly. “I put all your mother’s things in here.” Lilah and Tallulah climbed down the bed and knelt at the trunk peering into it.
Tallulah took out one of her mother’s beautiful lace dresses. “This is Mama’s,” she smiled holding the fabric close to her face. Tallulah could still smell the scent of her mother on the dress.
Henry wiped tears from his face. “Yes.” Henry remembered Dinah in that dress. Her blonde hair falling down off her shoulders. Although a beautiful gown on, Dinah always remarked the lace made her itch.
Lilah took out a framed photograph of Dinah. It was a photograph taken years before the girls came along. Dinah still had the spark of life in her eyes. “Why is this in the trunk and not hanging on the wall?”
Henry sighed and carefully said, “We are going to keep this trunk in your room. Any time you want to look at that picture or any of your mother’s things, you can.”
Lilah asked pointedly, “When is Mama coming back?”
Henry knelt down with the girls and hugged them. “Lilah, she is not coming back. She is gone.”
Lilah pushed away from Henry’s embrace and said, “That’s not true. She went away because you are a bad man. She will come back for us. She doesn’t want to come back while you are here.”
Lilah’s words stung Henry just as much as they did the first time she said them. Henry saddened by this familiar conversation left it at that. He scooped his girls up in to his arms and tucked them into bed. He kissed the tops of their beautiful heads that looked so much like their mother’s and said good night.
When their father’s footsteps retreated away, Lilah held her little sister in her arms and soothed her to sleep with a story about their mother. Lilah feared that Tallulah was forgetting her. It was her job to keep their mother alive in their hearts.
“Remember the story about how Mama came to America?”
“Tell me!” Tallulah said.
Lilah told her a marvelous fantastic story about their mother coming to American aboard a big luxurious ship. Lilah painted their mother into a beautiful heroine on a special adventure.
Chapter 6
After the wedding, if you can call it that, Henry, Silas, Daisy, Tallulah and Lilah traveled the two miles to Henry’s home from Judge Conner’s. Daisy bit her lips in anticipation worried Silas was taking them to a hovel. All in one day, Daisy had become a wife and a mother, and she hoped she would also not be destitute.
On the wagon ride, Tallulah and Lilah said nothing to Daisy. They chattered in French with each other but spoke English to their father. Daisy could only surmise they spoke French with their mother, but these were just conjectures since she knew nothing about these children until moments after marrying their father.
In the distance, Daisy saw a house. It wasn’t as imposing as the Judge’s house, but from what she could see in the diminishing sunlight, it was habitable. She reminded herself that she once slept in an abandoned servant’s quarters for a man that failed her and pressed herself to not be too hypercritical.
When they got to the house, Daisy realized it was unfinished. Her anxiety bloomed as she walked inside seeing so much of her new home was undone. The state of the house disturbed her. It was filthy. The decadence and luxury Henry promised was nowhere to be found. Henry looked at her tentatively as she quickly surveyed her new living situation. She hurried around to the sparse rooms. She found only a master bedroom, another bedroom for the children as evident from the girly things scattered about the floor, only one guest room, kitchen and common area.
“Mon dieu!” Daisy said to herself taking a seat in the common area adjacent to the kitchen. The girls ran off into the bedroom leaving Daisy and Henry to sit looking at each other like the strangers they were. Their unease was interrupted by Silas pulling Daisy’s trunks inside.
“Lot a luggage,” Silas huffed as he heads back out for more.
"Where are the rest of the servants?" Daisy asked.
"I’m not a servant!" Silas answered.
Henry said, “Silas is a ranch hand.”
“And also his good friend,” Silas said stepping back inside to add this comment.
Henry said, “Yes. He is also my good friend.” Henry sighed and tried to choose his words carefully. The wrong sentence said the wrong way often set Dinah off into a tirade. He hoped Daisy would take this news calmly. "We don't have servants. It’s not like the South here."
He turned and walked towards the girls’ room. Daisy followed him urgently. "No servants? What about my house girl?" Daisy asked directly.
Silas dragged another trunk inside. "Isn’t that what
you are?" he said pointing at her.
Daisy helped her mother throw elegant dinner parties and elaborate brunches on the plantation. Without the help of the dozens of their servants, how could any of that been done? Who cooked the food? Who washed the clothes? Who polished silverware? Who cared for the children? Daisy herself was raised my Mamie. The harrowing reality that Daisy did not have a Mamie here stunned her. She felt that she had been struck and trampled to the floor.
“Papa!” Tallulah called from their bedroom. Daisy froze in her tracks and stopped following Henry at the sound of Tallulah’s urgent voice. She retreated to the common area to numbly watch Silas drag in her luggage, the only things in the world that now connected her to home.
Chapter 7
Henry spent an eternity in his daughters’ room. Daisy, tired from her journey, her surprise wedding and motherhood, was ready to go to sleep. She hoped a good night’s sleep would help her deal with her abrupt new life. She attempted to sleep in the bed in the guest room, but found Silas already sound asleep. Zut alors!
Daisy returned to Henry’s bedroom in her nightgown and slipped under the covers. In bed, she thought about what her parents were doing and how Mamie was. A cloud of shame hovered over her. She left without saying goodbye. Her parents would have never let her go otherwise with or without Rhett. Any way she looked at it, Daisy had shamed her parents. She turned over in bed wishing Mamie was there with her to stroke her head and tell her everything would be ok like she’d done so many times when she was a child.
She heard of girls who answered matrimonial ads. These were not her close peers, of course, but they were girls who lost they husbands in the war, orphans, or girls whose families’ fortunes dissolved in wartime. These were girls who were desperate and needy for a man to care for them.
Daisy was not in the same category was she? This was her choice she made out of pride. Au bout du fossé, la culbute. (Pride comes before fall.) The restrictions of a deep-rooted system based on status and money could choke any girl with an unblemished reputation. Daisy was unwilling to stick around to see what would happen to a girl like her who had made mistakes, honest mistakes committed under the guise of love. Nonetheless, Charleston society was a cruel one ready to gobble up gossip and banish another member out of sheer boredom. There was much to squabble and bicker about when an entire tier of society wasn’t engaged in work, but were instead, languidly lazing about leisurely awaiting the next scandal to occupy themselves with.
Daisy made sure to leave Charleston before her story ever became the story to snicker about, but Daisy knew she could not escape the incongruous need to be accepted by this society that throttled her no matter how many miles she traveled. The need to tower above others in a senseless hierarchy reached her even here despite internal protests it meant nothing to her. Daisy fell asleep ruminating the events of the last few months of her life: Rhett, Ms. Beechtree’s, Sally, Henry, the girls.
She stirred awake when Henry crawled into bed next to her. Daisy, now awake, could not wait until morning to talk to him. He was her husband, and as her husband, she now had the legal right to nag him if she wished.
“You didn’t say you had children,” Daisy said to Henry.
Henry sighed and shook his head. The candlelight illuminated his anguished face. “A small detail I omitted,” he said softly.
“You said you were wealthy. ‘Moneyed’ is the word you used.” Daisy sat up and threw her arms about herself. “Is this wealth to you?”
Henry already beaten down from his daughter’s words before bed just shook his head gravely before saying, “The house is a work in progress.” Daisy glared at him. “I’m going to be coming into a whole lot of money soon,” Henry said. “It’s not going to always be like this.”
“Is that so?” Daisy said. “How should I believe anything you say? You tricked me. You wrote me lies.”
Daisy reached under her pillow extracting the letter she once gleefully received in Ms. Beechtree’s boarding house. She flung the letter to him. “Read it! Read what you wrote to me,” she screamed.
Henry turned over in bed. “I’m tired, Daisy. Please.”
Daisy grabbed his shoulder forcing him to face her and shoved the letter in his face. “You tricked me. Have the decency to read this letter and fess up to your lies.”
Henry who successfully bolted up the stress of the last few months finally broke. He choked out his tears making him even more ashamed of the kind of man he was. “I can’t read,” he admitted. “Silas wrote you the letter.”
Daisy said in horror, “You are a liar and illiterate!”
Henry looked at her with sorrow. “Yes. I didn’t grow up in luxury. My parents had me working for a wage as soon as I could. I’ve tried to make the best of what has been given to me. Dinah, the girls’ mother, was fancy and educated just like you, but she’s gone now. I have these girls to raise, and I need someone, a woman of education and propriety, to raise my girls better than I could ever dream to be.”
Henry sobbed now without restraint. Daisy, never seeing a man weep before in her life, softened to him and held him close to her. His tears soaked her nightgown making the cotton fabric cling to her nipples and the slopes of her breasts. In her arms, Daisy stroked Henry’s head and then face.
She brought her lips to his exploring Henry’s pain to help quell it. Their broken hearts sought each other out through their warm skin. Their heartache and pain mingled and then erupted into passion and desire. Daisy lifted her nightgown up letting Henry suck and lick her breasts. Henry hadn’t touched a woman since Dinah. He ran his hands on Daisy’s soft supple skin cupping her round ass.
Daisy’s hands reached for Henry’s hard dick. She stroked it gently while nibbling on his mouth. Henry gently probed Daisy’s little wet box making her utter small gasps with his thick fingers. Her sounds of pleasure made Henry burn with desire. He plunged his dick inside her wet pussy intensely.
Daisy moaned loader with each thrust savoring Henry’s immense pressure inside her. Daisy forgot about Rhett in those moments of passion. Henry’s strong broad body enveloped her and put her into a helpless trance. Henry dipped deeper and deeper inside her until Daisy washed over in bliss. The orgasm was so powerful making Daisy’s entire body shudder.
Henry watched Daisy come; her beautiful face twisting in satisfaction. He came quickly grunting loudly and depositing his hot liquid into her sumptuous little box. The newly married couple fell asleep in each other’s arms. Their worries and heartaches were silenced for one night.
Chapter 8
Sally’s time at Ms. Beechtree’s boardinghouse expired. Sally lamented to herself that it must be because of her ghastly pale skin, red frizzy hair, and freckled face that no man would ever want to marry. On her first night at the brothel, Sally cried into her pillow heartbroken that her unappealing features had trapped her into a life she didn’t want. Chelsea, a patient friendly girl from Virginia, took pity on Sally and her open self-deprecation.
“That old hag sends half the girls on their way to husbands while the other half she keeps for herself,” Chelsea said quietly sitting on Sally’s bed.
“What?” Sally looked up. Her face was red and pained.
“Beechtree is a businesswoman. She makes more money keeping us girls on in the brothel than the money she makes for fixing marriages. It isn’t you,” Chelsea said patting Sally’s head. “You have gorgeous hair, and your freckles are adorable. You are beautiful. Do you think all the girls here are ugly?”
Sally’s face dropped into shame, “Oh, no! I didn’t mean that any of you were ugly. I just meant I was.” She wiped her tear-stained face with the back of her shaking hand.
Chelsea shook her head; her brown curls bobbing. “Beechtree likes to keep her most agreeable girls while sending away the plucky ones that might give her trouble than its worth. If anything, you are too agreeable and too pretty to be sent away. Beechtree thinks she can make a pretty penny from your face.”
Sally was
incapable of believing Chelsea but said anyway, “Thank you for your kindness, but I can’t work here.”
Chelsea inquired, “Are you inexperienced?” Sally was embarrassed by the question and looked away. Chelsea cupped Sally’s chin in her hand and said, “Nothing to be embarrassed about. A lot of girls who end up here are virgins.”
Sally’s face reddened. “I always thought my first time would be with my husband.” Sally let out a small sob.
Chelsea nodded knowingly. “I thought that, too. I don’t know why you left your home and ventured out here to find a husband, but you are far from home now. If you have the means, you can go back home if you want or you can stay here, save some money, and then figure your life out.”
Sally thought of home, the small port town, Yarmouth, in Massachusetts. The town’s population was 323. Every available boy in town was either a cousin or a boy that she grew up with that she thought of as a brother. Yarmouth was a concentrated Irish Catholic town. Every resident was part of the same Catholic church.
Sally wanted to meet a man she hadn’t grown up with. Three other girls from her town moved out West and found husbands. Her parents weren’t thrilled that Sally wanted to do the same, but thanks to Gilly McDougal, Brenda Murphy, and Bridget Kelly, her parents softened to the idea. Her parents also feared that Sally’s gangly limbs and volatile emotions could interfere with her chances of marrying in their small town.
Being Irish Catholic meant sex was only reserved for marriage. Her mother warned her that intercourse was a wife’s duty and can be bearable if she thought of something pleasant during the ordeal. Sally feared lovemaking and the subsequent misery she thought went with it. She’d had never even kissed a boy before. Her mother gravely told her that there was no such thing as innocent kissing. In the end, kissing led to sin.
Sally cried, “It’s evil.”
Chelsea answered wiping the tears from her face, “No, it’s a beautiful thing.”
Daddy Plus One: A Single Dad Secret Baby Billionaire Romance Page 14