The Reigning and the Rule

by Calia Read

  Table of Contents

  Also by Calia Read

  Dedication

  PART I

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  PART II

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  PART III

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  The Reigning and the Rule

  Copyright © 2018 by Calia Read.

  Cover design by Sofie Hartley, Hart & Bailey Design Co.

  Formatting by Juliana Cabrera, Jersey Girl Design

  Edited by Jenny Sims, Editing4Indies

  First Edition: November 2018

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to retailer and purchase.

  also by Calia Read

  Sloan Brothers

  Every Which Way

  Breaking the Wrong

  Ruin You Completely

  Fairfax

  Unravel

  Unhinge

  Surviving Time

  The Surviving Trace

  The Reigning and the Rule

  Figure Eight

  This book is dedicated to M & A,

  BOOM.

  You done.

  PART I

  “As if you could kill time wit hout injuring eternity.”

  — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

  “I can’t do this,” I pant. Sweat pours down my face as I gasp for breath. “I can’t do this.”

  “You have to,” the midwife says. “The baby is ready to come out.”

  Another contraction takes over, starting at my lower back and spreading toward my midsection. The pain is so powerful, I arch my back and try to breathe, but all I want to do is curl into a ball and wait for the pain to dissipate.

  “Breathe, Little Poison,” my sister, Marjorie, says as she dabs at my sweaty forehead with a wet washcloth. “You have to breathe.”

  Every curse word I know, I want to hurl at everyone in the room. The person I want to say the words to the most is Edward. But he’s dead.

  As if she can sense my frustration, Marjorie reaches out and grips my left hand while I try my hardest to breathe through the contraction. My nostrils flare as I groan and obey my sister’s advice to breathe. The seconds that pass are agonizing, but soon, the pain fades. My head falls back onto the pillow.

  My hair is braided, but tendrils have escaped and cling to my neck and temples. Listlessly, I stare at the ceiling. “Margo, how much longer can I bear this?” I pant.

  No one in the room answers.

  I’ve been in labor for nine hours.

  Earlier, I heard the midwife quietly speaking to Margo. She said the word breech. When I tried to ask what they were discussing, my sister smiled as she double checked the warm cloth on my head and told me everything was okay. But I’m not a child. I know something was wrong. The baby should be out by now.

  When I arrived in London, I wasn’t well received by my friends. Nor anyone in Highbury, London. Not that I was shocked. The families living on our street were middle class, but they had standards. I expected their judgment.

  What I didn’t expect was the judgment from inside 29 Calabria Road. With the exception of Margo, my family refuses to have any involvement with the baby. At this moment, my mother is downstairs in the kitchen, and my father is at a pub. He’s a solicitor, but he didn’t go into work. They are treating this day as if they’re in mourning instead of celebrating the birth of my child.

  If I’m already receiving such negativity from my family, and the baby’s not even born yet, what is our life going to be like after it’s born?

  The very thought makes me want to sit up on my elbows, wrap my hands around my protruding stomach, and shout at my innocent baby, “Stay in there forever! It’s safe in there!”

  However, when I arrived, my cousin Helen was with child. Her stomach was so large she barely left the house. She already had a little boy and was hoping for a girl. Perhaps, she was desperate to talk to someone else who was pregnant, or maybe her hormones were making her delirious. Either way, she was kind to me and frequently invited me over for tea.

  I asked her every question I could think of about childbirth and demanded no gory detail be left unsaid. My cousin had her husband to help her, but I did not. I was alone on this journey, so I needed to be prepared. She told me it was impossible to describe childbirth until you experienced it yourself—which was no help to me at all—and with her son, there were no complications. He came out head first.

  She said once the baby’s out, there’s such relief and joy at seeing your baby that you’re unruffled by the aftermath of the birth.

  I left our conversations feeling a brief surge of contentment, but then reality crashed into me. Not only is this my first child, but this will be my first child alone.

  The beginnings of another contraction overtake my body, and I groan. I don’t think I can handle much more of this.

  “Use the sheet for this contraction, Emmeline,” the midwife, Virginia, says quietly but in a firm tone.

  Tied to one of the bedposts is a bed sheet. Virginia had my sister tie it there for me to use. When the pain became intolerable, I could grab the sheet and pull on it as hard as I could. At the beginning of labor, I was using it consistently. But as the contractions increased, the bed sheet was the last thing I wanted to grab. All I wanted was to get this child out of my body.

  That was swiftly starting to feel like a bad dream. This baby is going to stay inside me forever and I’m going to stay in this blinding agony for the rest of my life. The very thought is enough to bring tears to my eyes. I swear I’m becoming delusional. One second, I want to keep the baby inside to protect it from the world, and the next, I want it out of me as quickly as possible.

  As though she can read my mind, Virginia brushes the damp strands away from my forehead and smiles at me. “You’re doing well. The baby is close to coming out.”

  All I can do is weakly nod.

  Another contraction takes over. I grab Virginia’s hand and hold it for dear life. “Give me chloroform. Anything. This pain is unbearable,” I say from between clenched teeth.

  The midwife wrenches her hand away. “Absolutely not.”

  Even in the midst of my agony, I know for certain I’m not the first woman to beg for pain control. From the way Virginia is looking at me, you’d think I was.

  “Pain is part of labor,” she remarks.

  My fingers curl around the sheets, and I suppress the urge to slap her. This
pain is ungodly and inhumane. I wouldn’t wish it upon my worst enemy. Ironically, my worst enemy was the very person who put me in this position.

  “I’m going to check you, all right?”

  I nod and try to say okay, but it sounds like gibberish. As she lifts my nightgown to my knees, my sister stands by my shoulder. I hold out my hand, and she automatically grabs it as I brace myself for the midwife to check the baby.

  Instead, she lifts her head, her eyes meeting mine, and says, “The baby is ready to come out.”

  There’s no time for me to be mollified by her words because once again, a contraction takes hold. Through the thin slits of my eyes, I watch Virginia and the second midwife Mary. The two of them washed their hands in a hot pail of water with something Margo told me was called carbolic soap. Once their hands are dry, Virginia puts on a pair of rubber gloves while Mary opens the black bag she brought with her. The silver tools and glass jars she places on the white towel make adrenaline course through my veins.

  Both she and Virginia have on ankle-length pinafores on top of their all-white, long-sleeve dresses and white caps on their heads.

  Virginia steps toward me. I shrink back while stabbing pain envelops my lower stomach. Oh, God. Another one. Margo whispers in my ear to breathe. “Inhale and exhale, Little Poison.”

  “Stop calling me that,” I say through gritted teeth. “My name is Emmeline.”

  Margo continues to hold my hand but snorts at my words. Virginia looks back and forth between two of us before she settles between my legs. Automatically, my legs open wider. It’s as if my body knows what to do.

  “Emmeline, you need to push as hard as you possibly can on the count of three, all right?”

  Breathing out of my mouth, I nod. Margo’s grip tightens or maybe mine does. It’s hard to tell. Either way, we can both feel the anticipation lingering in the air. Even Mary, who is standing directly behind Virginia, is alert and moving back and forth on her heels.

  “Push!” Virginia demands.

  Grinding my teeth and closing my eyes, I push as hard as I can. Distantly, I can hear Virginia and Margo encouraging me, but in my mind, it’s my own determination to deliver this baby that propels me to keep going.

  Over and over, I repeat this arduous process until Virginia speaks.

  “Stop for a moment.” She raises a hand, and I look at her. Her eyes remain on my lower body. “One more push and the legs will be out. You need to push slowly and carefully.”

  I know it’s not normal for the legs to come out first. Panic-stricken, I look at my sister, but she smiles down at me. “Everything is okay, L...I mean, Emmeline.”

  Virginia tells me to give small pushes, and it takes everything in me to do just that.

  “Perfect. Keep going,” she encourages.

  I try my best to remind myself that the horrendous pain I’m feeling will all go away once the baby is out of me.

  “Almost there,” Virginia announces.

  Margo keeps ahold of my hand but stands on her tiptoes to try to get a better look at the baby. I want to tell her to stop, but I’m too busy grunting and squeezing her hand.

  And then I feel it. After a small pop, relief spreads throughout my body, making me collapse against the bed. Seconds later, I hear the first shrieks of a baby crying.

  Margo lets go of my hand to pick up the pocket watch she “borrowed” from our brother, Otto. “The time is 3:26!”

  Virginia lifts her head, smiling as she proudly holds my baby, unfazed by the blood and the white slime that coats the baby’s body. Her left hand cradles the head, her right hand firmly holds the bum as the baby lets out another powerful wail.

  “It’s a boy!” she declares.

  I came back to England to get away from the danger in America. Five months later, I’m going back to the chaos. I don’t know what compelled me to buy the ticket last week for the passenger liner RMS Parintins, but the minute I did, something settled in my soul.

  I know I did the right thing for Henry and me.

  England will always be my home, but it’s changed. Or perhaps I have. I haven’t been able to figure out which it is, and I don’t want to take the time. I simply know I have to alter my life in some form because I feel as though I’m being suffocated. Being a seamstress isn’t enough for me. I go to work every day. Go through the motions of taking measurements, sewing dresses, taking in hems, taking out waistlines. I come home with my hands throbbing to take care of Henry under the disapproving eyes of my parents.

  The routine is never-ending, and it isn’t enough.

  I’ll do whatever it takes to have a better life. It won’t be easy, though. Women still have restrictions, but the men? Oh, they take everything within reach. Prosperity is only allowed for them.

  With the exception of my sister, my family doesn’t seem upset about my departure. Margo was the only one to say goodbye to Henry and me. Honestly, the rest of my family was probably happy the black sheep of the family was leaving. If I’m honest with myself, I’m happy to be escaping their stares. Disappointment oozes from my mother’s eyes. My father can barely stand the sight of me and gives me one or two-word replies. They look at Henry, and although they don’t say anything, I know what they are thinking. “Bastard. He’s a bastard child,” is what they want to say.

  I can’t protect Henry from the entire world, but I can protect him from the environment and people placed in his life. He doesn’t deserve to be treated that way.

  Exhaling loudly, I tip my head back and close my eyes and let the wind sweep over me. My fingers tighten on the railing. This journey is a far cry from the one I took nearly a year ago. Asa Calhoun had given me money to use for emergencies, but in all my time in Highbury, I never used it. Except to buy Henry’s and my tickets. Asa made sure I had first class tickets when I came home last year, but I could only afford third class tickets for my son and me. I don’t mind, though. This is an adventure for us. I’m not certain what’s in store, but I know a better life awaits.

  Besides, I might not have paid for a first-class ticket, but I managed to find my way up here. It’s an hour past dinnertime, and I snuck up here thirty minutes ago. Henry was tired, and since the beginning of our journey, I’d made friends with an Irish woman, Claire O’Malley. She had three little girls and a gruff husband. They were all stuffed together in a third-class cabin across from mine, but she seemed so happy at the prospect of coming to America that it didn’t bother her much. She loved holding Henry, and tonight, I let her rock him to sleep.

  My guilt for having a moment to myself was short lived the minute I stepped out of my room and released a deep breath I didn’t know I was holding. We’ve been on the ship for two days now. Henry wasn’t thrilled about being restrained to the small quarters. However, he loved the rocking of the ship when it came to bedtime.

  My nerves were frayed. Even in third class, I was receiving curious stares. A woman with a baby and no man in sight? No one asked questions, but it was quite clear they were dying to. I will show them how strong I am. I will provide for my son.

  A part of me wonders why I’m going back to America. But then I remember what compelled me to go the first time all those years ago. To create a better life for myself. As a solicitor’s daughter, I didn’t have a hard life, but I wanted more. I wanted to rub shoulders with the elite and wear luxurious gowns, not make them. And never, ever have to worry about money.

  The difference about this journey compared to last time is my determination not to settle. Not to be afraid of anything. I escaped Edward, and since then, I’ve given birth to a beautiful baby boy and essentially raised him on my own.

  Weak is the man who hurts a woman…

  Serene’s words echo through my head like an anthem. I stare out across the endless waters and narrow my eyes. Perhaps having Henry has brought forth some hidden strength I didn’t know existed, but the second this boat gets to port and my feet touch American soil, the power to rule this world and my life is mine and no one else’
s. I will not leave America this time.

  “I am going to make something of myself,” I declare to the sea.

  “And just how do you plan on doing that?”

  Whirling around, I only see the orange glow of a lighter highlighting the angles of a man’s face. Brown eyes. Sharp nose. Clean shaven and a cigarette cradled between his lips. Once he inhales, the fire disappears, and he steps closer.

  I turn back toward the sea. “Has anyone ever told you it’s rude to eavesdrop on someone?”

  “Has anyone ever told you it’s wrong to sneak up to the first-class deck?”

  My eyes widen as I slowly turn his way. He takes me by surprise for many reasons, but I think it’s his accent. It’s American but not Charlestonian, and I can’t place it.

  “I saw you the minute you arrived.” He gestures to the rest of the passengers inside the dining room. “They may be drinking, but I assure you, I have not.”

  “Are you going to report me and have me sent back to third class?”

  He looks me up and down. “No.”

  “Why not?” I ask.

  This time, he’s the one to look surprised. “Because I’m curious as to why a beautiful woman such as yourself is alone out here, talking to herself.”

  “I needed a moment to breathe. Don’t you ever need a moment to think?”

  “Of course.”

  Light from the dining room filters onto the deck, and I’m able to get a better look at this man. He leans against the railing and continues to smoke. From his tailored black tailcoat, wool trousers, and white dress shirt with wing tip collars; I can tell he has money or comes from money.

  He’s not wearing a hat, and the wind sweeps his brown hair across his forehead. “So why did you declare you were going to make something of yourself?” he asks, his eyes fixated on the water.

  I sigh, looking back out at the water, and decide to tell this American the truth. The chances of me seeing him again are very slim. “Because women have no life.”