The Duty and the Gone (The Fertility Plague Book 1)

by Claire Vale

  “We’ll continue to monitor and assess Beth’s situation, and take the necessary measures. This is no longer your concern.”

  I ignored the obvious dismissal. “What necessary measures? Beth is telling the truth and I’d like to know what you’re going to do when you finally realize that. How will you remove her from the situation?”

  Rose walked up to me, pressed her palms to the table and tilted her head to look me in the eyes. “What do you suggest? I’m always open to ideas.”

  “There’s no need to mock me.”

  “I’m not mocking you, Georga, I’m trying to get you to think about what you so easily demand. We could remove Beth, but that would mean smuggling her to The Smoke. Trust me, that’s not a place anyone wants to be.”

  My curiosity perked to derail me totally off topic. “What do you know about The Smoke? Are there really women there? I have a friend, Jenna Simmons, she didn’t graduate. Is that where they sent her?”

  Rose lifted a hand to tick off on her fingers. “Not much. Yes. I honestly don’t know.”

  She slammed that hand down again and leant in. “I have heard that the conditions are appalling, and that’s from a reliable source. Almost anything, apparently, is better than ending up there. Moving on. We could remove her husband, arrange an accident, something permanent, let’s just call it by its name—murder. You can see how undesirable, not to mention risky, that option might be and I’m speaking for Beth here. She’d be the number one suspect. Even if everything goes according to plan and she’s not charged, she’d still have to live with that on her conscience.”

  A shiver rippled my spine. Murder? “Have you…ever…? Has the Sisterhood ever…?”

  “Never ask a question you don’t want to know the answer to.” Rose straightened, folded her arms. “This is all conjecture, you understand?”

  I was starting to fear I did understand, only too well. I swallowed hard.

  “And let’s not forget,” Rose went on grimly. “Beth isn’t the only woman to have come to us for help. There’s only so many wives, or husbands, we could make disappear without bringing a witch hunt down on the entire town. Plus, any of those options would take time and cautious planning, impossible to arrange if the Guard was already on alert and searching for a missing wife. Beth was always going back home to her husband tonight.”

  She gave me a searching look, waiting for my response.

  I had nothing.

  20

  I was never going to make it home before curfew.

  That became apparent about five minutes into my journey, the time it took me to scurry down one block. The wind howled from all directions, buffeting me from side to side as I put my head down to surge into the oncoming gusts.

  The Bohemian Quarter sprawled on and on, a never-ending warren of alleyways and stacked buildings to my right. I’d left Rose’s too late, lost track of time while I sat in her kitchen, debating my worthless cause.

  The night was thick with shadows and I stuck close to them as the curfew hour drew near.

  When I reached the eastern outskirts, I had to make a decision. Parklands was closer, but I’d never be able to sneak past the barrier guard.

  Not really a decision after all.

  I turned south toward the park, trailing the outline of buildings. Wrapped my scarf higher, tucked my chin in, my pulse hammering every time someone passed me by.

  Not curfew yet.

  Not breaking any laws yet.

  Only a guard would bother to stop and reprimand me about how fine I was cutting it, follow to see me safely home, take action if I didn’t make it there on time—thankfully they were scarce in this area. It was something I’d wondered about, why the Bohemian Quarter required less regulation than the other zones.

  Now I thought I knew.

  Paid snitches.

  That sent my heartrate racing again. My gaze darted nervously, every shadow now harboring a potential snitch.

  The straggling lights from the Bohemian District fell away, coal-dark blackness engulfing me as I slipped into the bushy edges of the park. Despite the cold, the tightness in my chest loosened. No civilian would be out here in this weather. I’d easily spot the bobbing flashlight of a guard.

  I moved more slowly, creeping from bush to bush, tree to tree, taking advantage of the cover and partial shelter from the blistering wind.

  My nose was wet.

  The tips of my ears ached.

  My feet were numb.

  My low spirits dropped another notch as I thought of the misery still to come. My father would be thoroughly disappointed in me. Roman would be all icy wrath and arrogant assumptions about my spoilt, over-indulgent childhood. It was going to be a long, long night.

  I made it to Robin Corner, then through the suburbs to my parents without any major incident. I’d crossed paths with three guards, but the moonless night gave me plenty of time to duck behind a tree or hedge, and the stormy weather hid my panting breaths. I almost felt brazen enough to march up to the front door. Almost. In the end, I snuck around the back and tapped on the kitchen window to draw my mom’s attention.

  She glanced up from the sink, down again.

  I squashed my face to the window and tapped harder.

  Her eyes blinked wide, her lips parted in surprise, and that’s the expression that greeted me as she opened the back door to let me in. “Goodness, Georga, why didn’t you come around the front?” She peered outside. “Where’s Roman?”

  I grimaced. “Just me.”

  “Oh, dear.” She closed the door, her gaze automatically going to the wall clock. The minute hand pushed eight-o’clock.

  “I know,” I muttered, stamping from foot to foot to get the blood circulating again.

  “What happened?” She studied me with a growing frown. “You look frozen stiff. I’ll make you some cocoa, the kettle’s just boiled. What on earth happened?” she asked again as she went about the task, not giving me a chance to respond. “Does Roman know where you are? He must be worried out of his mind.”

  Worried? I hadn’t considered that. “He hasn’t called around here?”

  “Would I be asking if he had?”

  “Then he’s not worried,” I said, relieved. “This is the first place he’d come looking. He must be working late.”

  Mom brought my cocoa over, her brow raised in disapproval. “He does that a lot?”

  “Work late?” I shrugged, relaxing a hip against the counter as I wrapped my fingers around the steaming mug. “He doesn’t really keep regular office hours.”

  “That’s no reason to neglect you.”

  My heart pinged with love and frustrated guilt. I’d broken curfew and my mom was already looking to shift the blame. Beth suffered every day through no fault of her own, in silence and alone because her family weren’t prepared to look past her husband’s lies.

  It wasn’t fair, and I didn’t mean that in a ‘life isn’t fair’ kind of way. This was in a whole other league. My moans and grumbles seemed so extraordinarily petty compared to her problems. No wonder it was so easy for me to keep drifting into complacency.

  No more.

  I was done with that, done with looking the other way, done with burying challenges in my underwear drawer so I wouldn’t have to face the hard stuff.

  “Well?” Mom came to stand in front of me. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on? You’re not a child anymore. Getting caught outside after curfew is far more serious than a slap on the wrist.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I never broke curfew as a child.”

  “And I can’t think why you’d start now,” Mom said.

  I hesitated, sipped on my cocoa while wants and wishes ran rampant through my mind. I wanted to tell her the whole sordid tale. I wanted me and her to laugh at all that murder nonsense Rose had put inside my head and I wanted her to insist that of course there was a simple fix for Beth.

  But then I’d have to tell her about Rose and was there any point in breaching yet another Sist
erhood protocol? Mom wouldn’t approve. She might dismiss the accidental murders as conjecture, but that would just be her sticking to the Sisterhood storyline and didn’t make the denial true.

  And she was never going to tell me there was a simple fix for Beth.

  My naivety was bleeding through my fingertips, drip-drip-dripping into a great abyss and I couldn’t get it back.

  “We were at the Crooked Teapot,” I said, and went on to give her the same version that I’d asked Jessie to tell. “Brenda was so irritating, I couldn’t take it anymore and I left. I stomped around for ages and forgot I didn’t have my bike with me.”

  Just enough truth sprinkled in there to make it not really a lie.

  “I’ll be more conscientious in the future,” I added beneath Mom’s perplexed scrutiny. “It won’t happen again.”

  She pursed her lips, a sure sign she was guarding her tongue. Processing, picking at the holes.

  I exhaled slowly when her brow cleared. I wasn’t sure she’d bought my excuse, but she wasn’t going to call me out on it either.

  “Let me handle your father,” was all she said, straightening her apron as she stepped out the kitchen.

  It wasn’t long before they both returned, my father clutching his iComm and ploughing agitated fingers through his hair.

  I offered a weak smile, bracing myself for a scolding lecture—that never came.

  “Roman is on his way.” His hand dragged through his hair again as he considered me. “I presume you weren’t stopped by any guards. Did anyone see you?”

  Only in the Bohemian Quarters, before the curfew deadline, and no one who would’ve recognized me. I shook my head. “No.”

  His stern gaze bit into me. “You were lucky.”

  Actually, I made my own luck with quick reactions and caution! The kind of flippant remark I might have shot back at Roman, but never at my Father.

  Oh, sweet irony.

  If only Roman could see us now.

  He was always going on about how my father indulged me, usually while he was making a lesson out of how not to indulge me. Surely there was a lesson to be learnt here, and not the one he tried to teach.

  Father beat a stoic retreat, leaving Mom to fuss over me. She served me a plate from their leftovers, chicken casserole and brown rice, and packed up a portion to take home for Roman. A subtle reminder that I’d been wandering the streets when I should have been home tending to my husband’s needs.

  When Roman arrived, Father whisked him into his office so quickly I barely caught a glimpse.

  I sent Mom a questioning look.

  She rubbed my arm and smiled. “Your father’s worried about you, that’s all.”

  Which didn’t exactly satisfy my curiosity. They were talking about me, about my curfew fiasco. What else? A knot of resentment soured the food nestled in my stomach. As Mom had pointed out, I wasn’t a child anymore, and yet here we were, my father and husband discussing me behind closed doors.

  At least it was a short conversation and, when they reappeared, no one was of a mind to visit beyond the round of perfunctory greetings. Roman’s face was a stone-cast mask, all slate-grey eyes and granite edges. His mood could’ve ranged anywhere from mild disinterest to raging inferno, I wouldn’t know.

  “We should get going,” he said. “The storm’s about to break.”

  Father’s head bobbed in agreement. “Drive safe.”

  I grabbed the covered dish with Roman’s supper, mouthed, ‘Thank you,’ to my father and gave Mom a fly-by hug on the way out.

  The storm broke just as we climbed into the truck. In the distance, a jagged spear of lightning lit the tumultuous heavens. The air rumbled with a thunderous crack that seemed to split a seam in the sky above for the slanting rain to sluice down.

  I placed the dish on the floor by my feet and strapped in. “What were you and my father talking about?”

  Roma turned the engine, flipped the wipers on and pulled away from the curb.

  Maybe he hadn’t heard me above the tinny racket pounding the truck’s roof. Maybe he was too busy concentrating to speak—the rain pelted faster than the wipers could slash away.

  Maybe…

  A dozen flashes of fragmented lightning forked behind the clouds. Another thunderous roar, this one rumbling into a crescendo like a percussion drum roll.

  I gave up on conversation and snuggled deeper into my coat, stared forward, partially mesmerizing myself with the swish-swosh of the wiper blades.

  The guard at the Parklands barrier was a faceless form pinched into a high-visibility waterproof anorak. His flashlight bounced over Roman and then waved us through as he raised the barrier. It wasn’t a night for pleasantries.

  Outside the truck’s window, the wind howled and whipped the stately elms and gangly junipers, bowing their tips and threatening to rip off any vulnerable arms. The rain hadn’t let up once, if anything it now came down in blinding sheets. Mud rivulets churned into flowing trenches along the side of the packed dirt road.

  When we reached the cottage, Roman pulled up so the passenger side was as close to the door as he could get without driving right inside.

  Still, neither of us made an immediate move to leap out into the torrential downpour.

  Unfastening my seatbelt, I shifted my body so I faced him. I wanted to get any ugly business out in the open before we went inside. A foolish, hopeful part of me imagined we could leave it out here to keep company with the miserable stormy night, not bring it into the toasty warmth of our home.

  “What did my father want to speak to you about?”

  Roman ducked his head my way. Too dark to see where his gaze fell, but I felt the prick and had to resist the urge to squirm beneath his scrutiny. “His disappointment, mostly.”

  “I could’ve guessed that much. Of course he’s disappointed in me, but what did he say?”

  “Actually, it’s me he’s disappointed in.”

  “Huh? That doesn’t make any sense. I’m the one that broke curfew.”

  “My feelings exactly,” Roman drawled, sounding somewhat bemused.

  “Then why’s he blaming you?”

  “He handed you into my care and it seems he’s not impressed with the job I’m doing of it.”

  His tone covered just about everything he’d left unsaid. He expected no less from the man who’d raised me. In Roman’s mind, this probably vindicated every allusion he’d ever made to me being over-indulged and cosseted from harsh realities. No wonder he’d sounded amused. And smug.

  Smugly amused.

  “He’s not absolving me,” I said irritably. “That’s just his round-about way of reminding you that as my husband, it’s your duty to punish and curb my reckless behavior.”

  “Then I’m bound to disappoint again.”

  What? But as his meaning sank in, it wasn’t really a surprise. I thought back over the last half hour or so, and there was nothing to indicate Roman was furious or even particularly bothered by my crime.

  And breaking curfew was a full blown crime now that I’d graduated, not just a misdemeanor. If I’d been caught, it would have warranted an investigation and a distinct possibility of rehab if the Guard (or my husband) didn’t like what they learnt.

  There was no good reason for a woman to break curfew. More popularly interpreted as: a woman out alone after curfew must be up to no good.

  And wasn’t that right. What good had I been up to tonight? None! There was a strong possibility I’d done Beth more harm than if I’d just left her there to wait obediently outside the Blue Fish.

  “Here.” Roman shrugged out of his windbreaker. “Throw this over your head.”

  “I’m not taking your…” The rest of my protest swept away in the rain and wind as he shoved the door open.

  I only had a couple of steps to go, while Roman had to round the truck, plus fumble with the lock and key to the front door in the dark. I had to admit though, I was grateful for the added protection when I made the awkward journey in the s
luicing rain, casserole dish tucked under one arm.

  My shoes were a muddy mess. I kicked them off into a corner under the coatrack and shook off Roman’s windbreaker. He took it from me to hang on a peg and I stood there a moment, watching as he moved on to adjust the temperature on the AC control beside the door. Instead of laying down the law, he’d made sure I was practically bone dry while he was drenched from head to toe, clothes plastered to his body, dripping puddles on the floor.

  A niggling unease crept over me.

  I could have been in serious trouble tonight, and everyone had bandied around to bring me home safe. I hadn’t seen it before, but with Beth fresh in my mind, I could see how Roman might think I’d led an indulged life, how it was easy to have a strong backbone when it had never carried any weight.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Roman. “Sorry for dragging you out in this weather.”

  “I was already out.” He hunched low to loosen his boots, glanced up at me. “I’ll need to go back out in a bit.”

  “Seriously? The sky is literally falling out there.”

  His mouth opened, then clamped on that granite jaw as he finished removing his boots and stood. Which pretty much went the way of any work/warden related conversation I’d ever tried to have with him.

  I sighed. “Do you at least have time to eat?” I held out the dish as some kind of peace offering. “Chicken casserole.”

  His gaze met mine. “I have time to eat.”

  My smile came out of nowhere, snuck straight through the miserable events of the past four or so miserable hours. I turned from him, walking on ahead into the kitchen with a light step, grateful for this small way to show my appreciation for the speedy (and judgement-free) rescue.

  Roman disappeared and returned mostly dry just as I was setting the reheated casserole on the table. He’d changed into a fresh set of warden black cargo pants and form-fitting long-sleeved top. His hair was still slightly damp, clinging to his forehead and temples with an uncombed kink.

  My breath snagged. He looked both authoritarian and vulnerable, primal male but softer around the edges. I had to tear my eyes from him, butterflies thrumming in my stomach as I slipped away into my room to remove my crispy outer layers.