In a Lawless Love

She was home only a few hours when she made her way quietly and secretly to Jason’s rooms. He opened the door cautiously, but when his eyes fell on her they lit like the bright lights of Christmas. His lips spread into a smile and he moved aside quickly so that she could slip into the room without anybody noticing her. She moved in quickly and he closed the door before turning and putting his hands at her hips. He leaned down to kiss her and she turned her face away from him.

“Jason,” she said in a strained whisper.

His enthusiasm faded as he saw the look of fear and sorrow in her eyes. “What has happened, Miss Charlotte?” he asked, unable even in the midst of their affair to leave his formal training behind.

“Jason…there is some news I must share,” she said and pulled out of his embrace, crossing her arms around her waist, holding in the secret she had kept for the last few days.

“Is everything alright, Miss Charlotte? Are you ill? Did something happen with Mr. Hayes?”

“No,” she says and turned away from him, trying hard to find the words to tell him what was happening. “Jason, I should soon be a mother,” she said quickly. “Mr. Hayes will surely have the doctor here soon to confirm but as a woman I am well aware of the things changing within me and I should soon be a mother. Mr. Hayes believes the child to be his, the heir he so dreams of. Because of this we cannot let him know that it is not.”

“Of course,” Jason said and stood straight then, back to formality immediately. “Then you’d like to end what we have?”

“No! Oh Jason, I don’t want to end what we have. I love you…oh how I love you. But I fear we are both in danger should we continue this affair.”

“Charlotte, please, let me take you from here. We could leave tonight. Mr. Hayes should never know. I’ve got a few hundred dollars.”

“Oh Jason,” she said and turned to him again with tears in her eyes. She put her hands on his face and looked him straight in his eyes. “It is a chance neither of us can take. Not now, not with this precious child.”

“We can raise it together, teach it the true meaning of life, rather than the meaning of riches and power…”

“We cannot run from here on only a few hundred dollars. My mother nearly died giving birth to my youngest sister because she didn’t have the means to hire a doctor. Running away together, it seems so romantic indeed Jason. But we can’t just leave it all and go to nothing.” She pressed her lips against his. Her tears fell to their lips and the taste of salt water filled their mouths.

“I want to take you away, so that you should never be hurt or afraid again,” he said.

“We both know that it cannot happen,” she said. “Hold me against you. Comfort me a moment. And then, I should like to go to the country and see my mother. It has been so long since I’ve seen her or my sisters. I so miss them and I do need her advice.”

He held her tightly against his chest and for a long moment she cried fully until she felt as if there were no tears left in her eyes to cry. He in many ways regretted the day he sold his life to Matthew Hayes but then he held her tightly and felt her body against his and he knew he’d been meant to meet her. He knew his purpose in working for Matt was to save this beautiful woman who was so lost in a world she didn’t belong in.

When she finished crying she pulled away from him and straightened her clothes before nodding her head once. “I should be dressed so that I may go to my mother’s home. I will meet you where the car is.”

He didn’t answer her; he only watched her walk out of his room and away.

Matt sat in his office with his papers spread before him, looking at them but paying little attention. Work was far from his mind as he thought about the things Charlotte had said to him in the morning. It was infuriating that she thought she had any right to tell him he could or could not touch his wife. Yet the laws on their marriage said she did, she owned him. He was a slave to her as she was to him, yet in all his life he’d never had to obey anybody’s rule. His mother had abused him greatly as a child, yet on occasion that he’d had enough he’d been allowed time away from her without her rule over his head.

He reached for the phone on his desk and punched in a page number. “Yes, Marianne, please send my mother to my offices. I will need to speak with her at once.”

“Of course, sir,” Marianne said.

He put the phone back into its cradle and he sat waiting at his desk. His mother was old and it seemed sicker each day. He knew she would be dead soon and he felt it unfortunate that he did not care. He had an appointment in an hour to discuss a loan with a farmer not far from his home. The man was in need of money to buy a cow to provide his family with milk, and he had promised to repay him with money he made selling the cow’s milk. If he couldn’t repay the loan Matt would keep his farm and cow and resell to make back the profits. It never bothered him to know that this poor farmer and his family would be homeless in little time.

Margret walked into the room holding tightly to her cane with Marianne’s assistance. Matt waved his hand to Marianne in dismissal and she left the room quickly, waiting outside the door for when it would be time to assist Margret back to her room.

“You called for me, Matthew,” Margret said and held onto her cane with both hands. Her skin had paled and hung loosely from her fragile bones. She seemed to have lost a great deal of weight in a short time and Matt knew he’d soon have to call for a doctor.

“Yes, mother,” he said. “You may sit if you’d like.”

“No, I think I’d rather stand,” Margret said bitterly. “What is it you need from me?”

“My wife is pregnant,” he said and folded his hands on his desk. “Where I should be filled with joy, I find that I am filled more with anger at her demand that I leave her untouched during her pregnancy.”

“What has this to do with me?”

“I want to know how father would have handled such a manner,” he said. “You were married for many years; you should be able to tell me the ways to outweigh the laws.”

“Matthew, I will not give you answers to such a vile question,” Margret said. “Though I quite frankly hate the woman you’ve brought into this house to be your wife, and though I fell she is only garbage at our feet, I refuse to aid you in breaking the marriage laws for your own benefit. A woman in her condition should have every right to tell you what you may and may not do with her body. It is your heir is it not?”

“It is indeed,” Matt said.

“Then perhaps you should listen to this demand from the farm girl you’ve chosen to bring here,” Margret said. “The country people have ways…ways to destroy a child in the womb. Don’t test her limits this time, Matthew.”

“That is all I will be needing from you, mother,” Matt said in a tight voice. “Marianne! Please remove my mother from my office!” he called to the open door. Marianne hurried in.

“Listen to me, Matthew. You never were good for authority. This time you need to understand the risks you would be taking by going against her wishes! Do not push her,” Margret said as Marianne led her from the room.

“Good afternoon, mother,” Matt said. As his mother left with her maid Victor came into the room.

“Mr. Hayes, your appointment is here to see you,” he said in a formal voice.

“Ah, yes, Victor, bring him in,” Matt said then with a wide artificial smile. He could worry later about what to do with Charlotte and the child, for now he had to bring focus back to his fortune and doing what he did best. Taking things from people who had nothing to give.

Charlotte sat in the back seat of Victor’s care looking out the window as they made it into the poor area she’d grown up in. It broke her heart to see the torn down homes of the people she’d once known so well. She looked down at her dress, made of blue silk, and it hurt her to remember how the people she loved lived when she was so “privileged.”

Jason stopped the car in front of her father’s small farm house and she watched as her sisters came out with curiosity on their faces. It could only be her and yet they all looked at the black thing in their drive way wondering who on earth could have come to visit them. Jason stepped out first and went to her door, his face blank and formal, and his suit clean and crisp. He opened the door and she set one blue satin shoe clad foot on the ground outside before taking a breath. She hadn’t seen them in so many months, nearly a year, and she knew they would be both excited and hurt. She watched as they whispered to each other after seeing the single foot come out of the car. They surely had never seen shoes so beautiful as the ones she wore. She let out her breath and lifted herself out of the car.

All four girls’ mouths dropped open and their eyes widened at the sight of their estranged sister. They watched her walk towards them, even her stride had changed. She no longer walked casually like she had before. She walked now like a woman with money, walking in high heels like she’d never in her life had to walk in shoes with holes in the soles. Her dress hugged her body tightly and they could see she’d been given enough to eat now and her body was full. Her beauty was only enhanced by her weight gain and she seemed flawless in the dark blue dress and shoes. Her face was painted and her hair was neatly braided and pinned, and perfectly clean.

As she approached them she opened her arms to them but not one could find the strength to open theirs to her. She embraced each of their stiff bodies one at a time and kissed their cheeks, leaving marks on their faces with the pain on her lips.

“I have missed you so,” she said.

“We haven’t seen or heard a word from you in many months, sister.” The voice came from Elaine and James’ second oldest daughter, Giselle. Giselle stood in front of her, her stomach swollen with what would be her own child.

“I know, and I am sorry,” Charlotte said in a soft voice. “Where is mother?”

“Mother is inside,” said the third oldest, Marlene. Charlotte nodded once before moving away from her sisters, unable to look at them and their anger any longer. She went into the house quietly and saw her mother seated at the kitchen table taking peas from their pods so that she could make a pot of soup. The old woman looked up at the sound of Charlotte’s heels on the ground and examined her daughter.

Tears filled her eyes as she dropped the peas in her hand before standing in a rush and pulled Charlotte against her in a tight embrace. “Oh my darling,” she cried. “I’ve missed you so. You are beautiful; tell me how you have been? How is your marriage? Please, tell me everything.” She pulled away from her and looked her over. “I see you’ve been fed! My look how healthy you look with some meat on your bones!”

“Mother! I’ve missed you,” Charlotte cried, tears falling from her own eyes and she fell into another embrace with her mother. The feeling of being in her mother’s arms again brought on a surge of emotions and tears and sobs flooded out of her.

“Oh dear, come, come and sit at the table and I’ll make you a cup of tea. What is the matter?” Elaine said as she led her daughter to the table. She sat her at the table Charlotte had once eaten each meal at and went to the small stove and put on a pot of water for tea.

“Oh mother it is horrible, I miss you so much,” Charlotte said. “Each day I think of how I’d love to be here again. The money and food pales in comparison to the love here. Mr. Hayes doesn’t love me…he is so aggressive…so…so cruel. I should never forgive father for selling me to that vile creature. Selling me away as if I were a cow.”

“Oh darling, you mustn’t blame your father. He did what he thought he had to to keep food in our mouths. He thought you’d be in a better place, darling, fed and cleaned and never again should you have to spend a day in a field burning under the sun so that you could pick enough food to eat for dinner. Look at this home, Charlotte. It is such a poor place, falling apart. Clothes we have not…why even Giselle is now married. She married a boy from the field and they live together in a small shack of a home.”

“Mother…I haven’t much time to stay, though I long to be with you always. I’ve come for a little bit of wisdom.”

“In what way?”

“I should soon be a mother,” Charlotte said. There was a pause.

“A child? Why this is such wonderful news!”

“No,” Charlotte said. “It is not. Mother, I have done something…something very dangerous…”

Elaine looked onto her daughter with concern as she poured a cup of tea for herself and one for Charlotte. She set the cup in front of her and took a seat back behind her bowl of peas. “What is this terrible thing, daughter?”

“Mother, the child is not that of Mr. Hayes,” Charlotte confessed in a fearful whisper.

Elaine’s eyes widened quickly and she looked away from her daughter, shame clear on her face. She’d always taught her daughters to be true to the men that took them from this home. She always told them to be sure they always remembered when they were married their husband’s owned them. They were property to their husbands and they could easily be gotten rid of. Now her oldest, the one she feared for the most, was carrying a bastard child.

“Does Mr. Hayes know of the child?”

“He does,” Charlotte said and looked down at the table.

“Charlotte…you’ve put yourself in danger. A man as powerful of Mr. Hayes…if he should learn that the child is not his own…you could easily be in a great deal of trouble.”

“I know…so what should I do?”

“Charlotte, I cannot help you this time,” Elaine said. “If your husband did not know of the child I could help you, I could…I could prepare you a serum. But he knows. Now you can only hope he never knows the truth.”

“I don’t know how to be a mother,” Charlotte said. “I can’t do it.”

“You will have help…a man like that can afford all the help in the world so long as he never knows it isn’t his blood. You mustn’t come here again, Charlotte. If he finds out the truth and knows we knew your father will lose the farm. We will all starve. Return home, and be careful.”

“Mother, how can you turn me away?”

“Because, you have put us in danger of losing what little we have left. I taught you one thing, never be untrue to your husband. And you come to me with a child that isn’t his. How can I help you?”

Charlotte stood then, tears filling her eyes and straightened her dress. “I have done so many things for you since I was sold like cattle. If not for me you’d be starving to death, you’d have no extra crop. The extra chickens you are provided each month would not be. And yet I come to you with a problem and you turn me away. I should not care now, mother. I see you are nothing different than papa. You only care of yourself. I should return to my home now, and lie on my pillows of down and Matthew should never know the child is not his. Nor will the child ever know of the life its mother lived to bring it to this world. My child will grow knowing money and power and he will grow to look down on the people like you. Because you have given me nothing.”

“You’re riches have hardened the heart you had, my child,” Elaine said.

“No mother, my family has done that,” Charlotte said. She moved away from the kitchen then, smelling the smells she’d once missed and she hated them. Hated and resented everything about the home. The idea that her mother should never want to see her again only broke her heart more and she couldn’t allow herself the moment or the space to be lost in longing for a life she once had.

She walked straight past her sisters with her face turned up away from them.

“You should leave us those shoes, sister,” Giselle said. “We’ve never seen a thing so beautiful.”

“You will have nothing of mine,” Charlotte snapped. “For you could not even bother to embrace me when I walked up. And to disgrace these shoes with feet of peasants is an atrocity I won’t consider.”

“Remember who you are, Charlotte,” Giselle said with venom.

“I am not the wife of a farm boy,” Charlotte snapped. “I am the wife of Matthew Hayes, I own the land you sleep on, Giselle. And should you so choose to speak to me in such a tone again I can have it taken from under your head and the heads of your brats.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“Do not press me,” Charlotte snapped. “I shall leave you a gift.”

“What kind of gift should you possible leave me other than your hatred?”

Charlotte stood with her back stiffened and opened the small bag she held in her hand. She pulled out a pack dollar bills. She threw it into the air, letting the money fall across the floor. “She who collects the fastest gets the most. Good luck dear, I see you are in quite a condition. No, Jason, I ask that you return me to my home. I am quite tired and I fear there is dirt on my clothes.”

She stepped into the car and as it backed away from the farm house she again started to sob.