Initium (The Nocte Trilogy 2.50)

He stares at me again. “Who is the father, pray tell?”

“You don’t know him. And he’s gone now.”

I think.

“He’d better be,” Richard finally answers. “You will not disgrace me.”

That’s all he’s worried about?

I nod and he thinks.

“The child won’t leave the estate, just in case it doesn’t resemble either you or I. We’ll have private tutors in, and no one will know. We’ll say it’s unwell, so no one will wonder.”

All he cares about is public perception and the fact that he won’t have to bed me.

I’m relieved and sickened at the same time.

But I nod.

“Very well,” Richard says icily. He turns to leave. “Oh, and Olivia?”

“Yes?”

He turns around and backhands me hard enough to knock me into the wall. The room seems to splinter from the pain of it. It swirls and twirls, and when I touch my cheek, my fingers come back with blood on them, and the metallic taste fills my mouth, running from my teeth.

“Don’t disgrace me again.”

Chapter Five

“What have you done, girl?”

My mother stares at me above the rim of her cup, and her eyes are sad. Her shoulders are hunched, and she suddenly seems so frail and old.

“I haven’t done anything,” I tell her firmly and I reach for a tea-cup. She places her hand on mine, and closes her eyes.

“I saw it on your face and I feel it now. You’re pregnant. I know it isn’t Richard’s. What have you done?”

I sigh, and the sadness wells up in me, and I sink into a chair at the table.

“I told you I loved him,” I murmur, and in my head, all I can see if Phillip. “He was my heart, mama. And now he’s gone.”

She clucks in disapproval and looks away, as though she can’t even bear to meet my eyes.

“This won’t go well for you,” she says, and her voice is dejected and weak. “I know that it won’t, Liv. You must do something.”

She rummages around in an old cabinet, and after a few minutes, she hands me a steaming mug. “Drink this. It will take care of everything.”

I sniff at the liquid and it smells bitter and mossy. It smells like something evil and I’m startled. “What is this?”

“Just drink it,” she croaks, and everything I need to know is in her voice.

“I’m not killing my baby,” I tell her, and I’m appalled that she would even try. “I would never. It’s the only thing that will love me.”

“I love you,” my mother insists. “More than you will ever know. You must get rid of this baby. It will be your downfall. I know it.”

“I’m my own downfall,” I argue, and there’s no arguing this subject. “I’ll never hurt my baby.”

“What will Richard say?” mother muses aloud. “Or Eleanor? You certainly didn’t t