Author’s Note: So… I don’t know that it’s much of a twist, but it’s something, I suppose.

“How is she?” Robert knew he had no right to demand the answer from her doctor, but he could not help it. The moment that the other man had emerged from her room, he had descended upon the man, determined to have an answer. He had to know just how much damage his father had done.

The doctor stopped to adjust his vest. “I can only recommend that she remain in bed for the rest of her pregnancy. Her body cannot handle further strain.”

Robert frowned. That sounded as though she might die if she left the bed, and the man had to be exaggerating that. How would she stand it? She needed to be out in that garden of hers. She needed the flowers and her freedom. “She seemed to be coping rather well before today. Did my father’s behavior do that much harm?”

The doctor fixed his eyes upon him. His glare would have made Robert uncomfortable if he had not grown up with RJ Winston for a father. The doctor did not intimidate him. “It was against my advice that she saw you.”

He swallowed. He knew that he’d upset her a few times, and he’d hated it. Still, he hadn’t thought it was that bad. If he had done this, if his questions and presence had been so upsetting, so much of a strain—and he had seen some of the strain, he’d been leaving to spare her more—then he should never have come. He could only blame himself.

“Robbie?”

At the sound of her voice, he pushed past the doctor and into Violet’s room. He stopped in the doorway, aware of his improper actions. He should not be here, and yet, he could not make himself go. He stepped forward, somehow crossing all the way to the bed. “I am so sorry—I hope your aunt had my father thrown out—”

“Here,” she said, taking his hand and moving it to her stomach, almost forcing him to sit on her bed. “You can see for yourself that the child is still well. Agitated, yes, but alive.”

He smiled as he felt the baby moving under his hand. She was right. The child seemed rather well, though he would not blame it for being angry. “I am so—”

“Your father will say I am lying, but he… That is…” She took a deep breath, her eyes darting toward the door. She bit her lip, covering his hand with hers. “I do not want to say this because it is upsetting and almost impossible to believe, but I do not know if we will have another chance to talk if the doctor and my family—they will not want you to return or me to get out of bed.”

“You would not let them stop you from leaving your bed, even if you had to sneak out at night,” he said. He did not doubt that she would find a way should it be necessary. He hoped that it would not be. He did not want to see her hurt.

“Perhaps, but in case I am unable to see you again, I must tell you… Your father looks much like picture that Winston showed me of his father. I know it has been some time, but I swear they are the same man. Robbie, he not only stole your stories, he stole a photograph as well. That man… Winston must be insane and convinced that he is you.”

He closed his eyes. “That… I don’t understand. It is not that I do not believe you. I do. I just don’t understand why anyone would do that. Why me? I had… My life is not that good, and you could even say that it is rather terrible in some respects. The war, my arm…”

“I do not know why he would do something like that,” she said, and he opened his eyes again, guilty. He was still too concerned with his problems, not giving enough attention to hers, but he could hear the pain in her voice. “It makes so little sense.”

“My father was wrong. I cannot apologize enough for his behavior. He had no right to say anything to you, but what he did say—you are not a liar and—even if you were desperate, do not dignify his behavior by accepting his offer. Not that I thought you would, but he… I am so ashamed of him, of the way he treated you, and I am sorry that we caused you so much distress.”

She shook her head. “The moment I have a twinge, everyone shuffles me off to bed again. They can’t do anything for me except tell me to rest, and unfortunately, they are rather insistent upon it.”

“I should let you rest, then. That, and I should see to my father. I have to make him leave.”

She frowned. “Are you going with him?”

“If it proves necessary, yes. I rather think it would be better if you did not have to suffer either of our company while you recover.”

“Will… Will you at least write, then, and tell me what you learned, if anything? I do not want anything else from you or your family, but if you find Winston—”

“I assure you, I will tell you. I will not hold back any information from you. That is a promise.”

“Thank you, Robbie. I am… very grateful to you for all you have done.”

“It is nothing.”

“No, it is not. Trust me, it is not.”

Author’s Note: Sometimes, when a person is convinced that they’re right, they won’t listen to anyone else. Robert’s father is definitely one of those people.

So I have now officially separated this story out, given it its own category and renamed it. It has its own listing on the Kabobbles Serials page, plus a page with the summary and temporary cover art here. I am very proud of the cover art for both this and A Perfect Sunset, as they turned out quite beautiful.

Admittedly, part of the reason I incorporated the Three Word Wednesday words into this section was to show off the new organization and the covers. I had to share the covers.

The words today: lanky, destruction, and ultimatum.

Violet put her hands on her stomach, closing her eyes as she did. She did not know what she would do now. She had cried herself out in her mother’s room last night, and her mother had tried to help her. She was not going to say that she had not been helped, but she woke with no more answers than she’d had before. A part of her was relieved that Robbie had not come this morning, and yet at the same time, she found herself out of sorts because he had not. Would he never return, then? He had already suggested that he should leave, several times, in fact, and after that disastrous dinner, she had almost been certain that he would.

Why should he? What possible good had their talks done? She had not told him anything that could help him find the man who had taken his name, and she knew he felt that all he did when he spoke to her was hurt her.

True, it was painful to hear that he had been the one in all those stories that had amused her so much, the ones that made her think of Winston as a playful child, not as practiced or charming as he’d been when she met him. Sometimes when a person was too charming, they seemed as though they tried too much to conceal what they were not proud of, and while neither Winston nor Robbie had been too proud of the childhood mischief, she had been satisfied by believing that was what had led to him being so charming.

She had, of course, been quite wrong, but that was only clear now that he was gone and Robbie was here. Winston had seemed sincere before, and the charm was perhaps the most worrisome thing she’d noticed. Then again, she was a fool.

“I demand that you drop this ridiculous claim of yours,” a man said, bursting into the room, and Violet jerked as she sat up, frowning.

Robbie lagged behind the other man, his movements less forceful, more stumbling. She almost thought he would fall as he tried to catch the other man. Beside him, Robbie seemed lanky, though he had never been tall, lacking in all polish and bearing, with the older man standing rigid and disapproving, glaring at her from the other side of the room. Violet had to wonder if Harriet had been hurt when that man plowed his way into the house, because she doubted he’d been willing to wait, and Robbie looked rather guilty, so she thought she’d find that the maid was at least shaken if not injured.

Violet considered rising, but she did not want to do that, not when it could mean that she, too, might be pushed aside, something far more dangerous given her current condition.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I am sorry, Violet. I tried to persuade him not to do this, but Father has—”

“I am here to tell you that you will get nothing from my son or from me. This farce has gone on long enough already, and you will cease to make any further claims that impugn the honor of this family. Your lies will cease immediately.”

She swallowed, shaking her head. How dare he? What gave that man the right to come into her home and demand anything of her? “Sir, I have not and will not ask you for anything. I have made no claims. I have not lied. My story is not a trick or a game or anything close to such things. I assure you that I would no more joke about my condition or situation than I would knowingly ingest poison. This is not only undeniable, it is rather… irreversible.”

His eyes went to her stomach, and she let out a breath, hoping to forestall the next lecture that was coming. Robbie crossed to her side. “Please, don’t trouble yourself. Father is not in a mood where he will listen to anyone, and I won’t have him upsetting you after all that I have done. It was my intention to leave, but he would not be stopped. He doesn’t care what kind of destruction he brings with him, just that he gets his way.”

She nodded, her hand on her back. “I understand, and I do not—Oh. That… The child has become quite agitated. Will you please—”

“I see your pretense has fooled my son, but then he was always the gullible sort. Very well. I will settle upon you one thousand dollars. That is all you will ever get. You will stop your claims and retire in silence with that bastard child of yours.”

Violet stared, trying to summon a response to that horrible ultimatum, not sure if the tears stinging her eyes were motivated by his words or by the increasing amount of pain she felt.

“If anyone here is a bastard, it is you, Father. You should be ashamed of yourself,” Robbie told him. He knelt next to her, biting his lip. “I doubt I can carry you up to your room, but I am concerned—Harriet, go and get the doctor. I think Mrs. Winston has need of him again.”

Author’s Note: I think Violet’s scene can follow this and end this arc, but we’ll see about that tomorrow. 🙂

Robert should not have stayed. He had taken only a few bites of his meal before he understood the mistake he’d made. He had not thought it should be so difficult a thing, surviving a meal, since they were all civil people and knew how to be polite. They had all spent hours in each other’s company without incident. That precedent should have been a simple one to continue, but when her aunt’s disapproval combined with yet another stolen story, the evening was effectively ruined.

It might have been different if the story had not been one of Robert’s less savory moments, one of his later follies involving another girl he’d tricked—this time it was fooling the winner of the local baking contest into making him several pies—but nevertheless, all Beatrice did was frown as the others laughed, and when Violet looked at him and realized that the story her mother was repeating belonged to him as well, she had fallen silent.

No, that was not quite true. She managed not to sob with much of any sound, but her sadness spoke with every glint of the tears on her face or slight flinch of her body.

“Violet?”

“I am sorry, Mother. The story was amusing when we first heard it, and even though it was Winston’s, it did not bother me to hear again, but it is not… The story is Robbie’s, not his, and that is yet another one of them that… that was a lie.”

Robert grimaced. “Not exactly. It did happen, and I did get very sick off the pie, so the story is real. It’s just not his.”

“And how is it that he knows all of your stories?”

“If I knew that, I think I would know who he is. I don’t. I should, but I don’t.”

The spinster set down her napkin and shook her head. “I find that rather hard to believe. This whole farce has gone on quite long enough. If you were as honorable as you pretend to be, you would already have married her. Instead, you let her modern sensibilities cover over your inadequacies. Now you say that you are the one who has all these stories that he told Violet? I say that you must have been in collusion with him all along.”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am, but that is far from what has happened here. I admit that it seems implausible that I would not know a man who has done all this to me, but I swear that I do not. He took my name and my childhood, and it would seem that he hates me. I do not know why, but I will learn that when I find him. As for marrying Violet… That is something that is not for you or anyone else to decide—only the two of us have the right to determine that, and we have made the best decision that we can at present. It is not just about sensibilities. It is about much more than that. If there were some good reason why this man had done what he did, if his intentions were at all honorable, would you not want to see that he did what was right? How is that possible if I have already done it? And even though I think that prospect unlikely, it does occur to me that if he hates me so much, my involvement with your niece would make him angry and unreasonable. He could hurt her or the child or both, and I do not want that to happen. It is imperative that we find him and learn the reasons for his actions before we go any further in ours.”

Violet put a hand on her stomach. “I do not feel well.”

“I am sorry. I did not mean to distress you. It… I wish I had lied about all the stories being mine. That would, I think, hurt you less than I already have.”

She brushed at her eye, trying to compose herself. “It is not like you lying would make things better. You are not… You have the right to acknowledge those stories because they are yours. You need not attempt to protect me—I am afraid there is little that could do such a thing at this point. I have already endured most of the worst of it—I do fear when the birth comes as any mother might, but even that is not pain that you could spare me. Nor, in fact, do I expect you to spare me any of it. I am not your responsibility, Robbie, and I never have been.”

He reached over and took her hand. “I am not going to call you an obligation—not now and not ever—but you have suffered because of a man who seems to be looking to hurt me, and that means that I should do something about what you have been through, something to make it right.”

“I trust that you will when you find him,” she told him, withdrawing her hand. “Now I think it is best if you—”

“I think I should go. This is my fault, after all, and I should have declined your generous invitation since I knew it would upset Violet if I stayed. It has. I apologize, and I will not trouble you further tonight—or any night, for that matter. Please excuse me.”

She blinked, but he had already risen and started for the door. He did not dare look back. He knew what he’d told her earlier, but he did believe it was time for him to pack up and return home, even if it delayed the answers that might come in the mail. Surely that was worth sparing her this pain.

Author’s Note: I am starting to think that I can’t draw this out too much longer. It might be time for a twist or something, and yet… I have an end in mind, so we’ll just have to see if I can make the two things work. I will wrap up part of this idea soon, and then I can add in a new thought or two and make it more exciting, I think.

“What could you have done before the war that was so terrible? Did you seduce someone and leave her pregnant and alone?” Violet asked, folding her hands in her lap. She did not see how Robbie could think his stories so terrible. “Did you kill anyone? Did you steal someone’s name and lie to everyone?”

He grimaced. “That is hardly a fair comparison. I don’t know that I was—I didn’t act with malicious intent, didn’t do things to hurt others, but that is not necessarily an excuse. I didn’t go ruining everyone I saw—though I did steal a kiss—I tricked a girl into letting me close enough for one, and then I did refuse to marry her after that. I didn’t like the way she kissed.”

Violet laughed, but then she had to grimace. “Was her name Alice?”

Robbie nodded. “Yes, it was. How did you know?”

“Another one of his stories. I asked him how he knew that he loved me, that he wanted to marry me, and he said because he’d tried this before, that he’d kissed Alice Andrews, and she didn’t mean a thing to him—that he didn’t like the way she tasted. He said I tasted better, that I was something more like… like the garden and freshness and flowers, and I remember telling him that flowers do not taste good—”

“Oh, Violet, did you go eating them when you were younger?” Robbie teased, a grin on his face as he leaned toward her.

She flushed, feeling very foolish. “They looked so pretty and smelled so nice I thought they’d taste wonderful as well. I found that I was wrong. They did not taste good at all. It was a rather humiliating experience, though Mother laughed for days and said she’d picked the right name for me.”

“I do think she did.”

“You are not going to call me a sprite now, are you?”

“No, of course not. I just think that a fine name shared with a lovely flower suits you. You are in some ways as delicate and beautiful as a flower, but then you are stronger than any plant could hope to be, even those that withstand the winter frosts. I would not say that it is right to think of you only as your namesake, but I do think it agrees with you in many ways.”

She lowered her head, flushing for a different reason. “I would think it best if you do not flatter me, Mr. Winston. This is… Our situation remains quite awkward, and I do not wish to confuse things.”

He shook his head. “Forgive me. It was not my intention to be confusing, nor insincere. I hope I did not offend you or make you uncomfortable. I do not want to cause you any more distress than I have already. It seems every time we discuss a part of my past, I learn it has been usurped, and you learn that another story he told you is a lie.”

Violet put her hands together. That was part of what concerned her—indeed, she did not think she would avoid a second sleepless night over the matter. All of Winston’s stories were Robbie’s, and what she’d loved about him was not true, not even the slightest bit. She felt sick again. She did not want to give in to that feeling, that despair. She needed to act with the strength that he kept saying that she had.

“I think that I should go.”

“Oh, and just when I’d come in to ask you if you’d like to stay to dinner,” her mother said, drawing both their eyes to the doorway where she stood, a slight grimace on her face. “Are you sure you won’t? Cook has prepared Violet’s current favorite, and while I know we did have it the last time you dined with us, you did seem to like it.”

“So I did,” he said with a smile. “I would not mind staying—if Violet does not object to that.”

She should—or part of her thought that she should—but she also didn’t. She would like him to stay. She didn’t know what was best. She knew her mother wanted him here. She had already said so. Aunt Beatrice would not be as welcoming—she had not been pleased with Robbie since he refused to marry Violet when her aunt more or less decreed it.

“No,” she said, thinking that she would likely regret this. “I do not object.”

Author’s Note: This story was a lot easier to incorporate the words from Three Word Wednesday into, since all it took was Violet’s question to lead into them all. In fact, one of them kept coming up without any effort on my part.

The words for this week were: believe, penitent, and tribute.

“Do you believe he feels any kind of remorse?”

Robert shook his head. He had to think that if the man who’d stolen his name had any kind of repentance in him. If he had, he’d have come back and done right by Violet a long time ago. He’d have confessed, on his knees, to everything he’d done, to the lies and the theft, and after he’d finished, he’d take her by the hand and beg her to forgive him, to let him make it up to her for the rest of his life. He’d do anything to be able to marry her legally and be the father to her child that he should be.

Since he had not even bothered to write her since he left, Robert had to assume that he didn’t care at all what happened to her or the child. He didn’t have any remorse in him, and he would not be penitent, not now, not ever. He’d never come back and ask to be forgiven. He’d left, and he had no heart in him, not if he could abandon Violet like that.

“No.”

Violet nodded, turning away from the window, rubbing her back as she did. “I don’t think I can disagree with you. That is the hardest part in all this. I doubt that if he came back I would know what to do with him. Shouldn’t I hate him for the rest of my life? And yet… propriety would say that I should want him here, that I should be glad to have him if he’d only have me, that if he gave me a legal marriage and a name for my child that I shouldn’t care. I should just be grateful.”

Robert shook his head. “I don’t think so. How can you be grateful to have a man who abandoned you come back into your life like that? So what if he gives you a name and a marriage? Marriage to him would be a mistake you should not make a second time.”

She sighed. He grimaced. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. He crossed over to her side, taking her hand and trying to guide her back to her chair. She should be sitting, even if she didn’t think so.

“I just think it’s dangerous to let yourself be open to him hurting you all over again. Even if he begged for forgiveness, how would you know if he was sincere or not?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have any way of knowing. Everything I thought I knew about him was a lie, wasn’t it?”

“Not necessarily. Those stories were mine, not his, but maybe others weren’t. Maybe the real him showed through at times, and you loved that, too, didn’t you?”

She twisted her lip, biting it. “I don’t… What if that was the part of him that I found the most infuriating was the part that was the most real? What if the only part of him that was honest was the part I hated?”

Robert almost laughed. “I’m sorry, but I can’t see that you’d like only the parts that he stole from me. You are too smart for that.”

She gave him a look. “I was a fool, and we all know I was.”

He wanted her to stop saying that. He did not like it when she talked about herself that way. “You had no reason to think that he was lying. You didn’t know that his stories were stolen. You were perhaps a bit naïve, but who would think that he would deceive you like that? Even now we don’t know why he did that. His reasons for marrying you don’t make much sense.”

“Thank you.”

Robert winced. “I am sorry. That’s not what I meant. I can see why you were someone he was interested in, why he’d want to marry you, why he loved you, but what I don’t understand is why he thought he had to lie to get you.”

She let out a breath, brushing back some loose hair. “Perhaps it is what you said. He thought I was… That I was not willing to marry any man with less than your social status.”

“That makes him a fool. I don’t think that is what matters to you at all.”

She smiled. “Not so much. I did not plan on marrying before I met him, and then he… I found his stories charming and really wanted to believe that I was in love. Now… Well, now I don’t know that I was. If all I liked was his stories…”

“Perhaps he should have been a writer. He could have audiences love him like… uh… Dickens did.”

She laughed. “You’re not much of a reader, are you?”

“No.”

“He stole your stories, too, and just because he could tell them in a way that I enjoyed hearing does not mean that he could write them. I doubt he would want to write them down, though. All that book would be—”

“A tribute to boyhood mischief?”

“Well… yes, though I think there was more to his stories besides your childhood.”

“There was?”

“Does that scare you?”

“Considering some of the things I did before I went to war, yes, it does.”

Author’s Note: Robert had a long night. He might not have been thinking clearly. I might not have been, either.

“How are you feeling?”

“I think I feel better than you look,” Violet said, rubbing her back and wondering what left him in such a state. He appeared so haggard that she would have thought he’d spent the night drinking, though that would be difficult in a dry town, but then again, a man determined to drink would find a way—and it was not that far to their sister city where alcohol had never been banned. “What happened?”

“Oh, I thought… I thought, that’s what I did. Over and over, all night through, didn’t do anything but think. That left me rather lacking in sleep, and so I suppose I must seem rather… unkempt despite my best efforts to be presentable.”

She shook her head. “Your clothes are in order. You just look as though you are ailing somehow.”

“I rather feel it,” he said, letting out a breath as he sat down. “I’ve been trying to determine what I should do at this point, and I can’t seem to make a decision that I stick to for more than a few minutes. I thought I’d stay and ask others about the man who stole my name, but I am not certain there is much point. If he told them the same stories as the ones he told you, then all I end up doing is repeating what I already know. If I don’t ask them, there’s asking you, but that has been causing you a great deal of grief lately, and I do not want to do that again. I should probably go home. I think there is very little I can do here.”

“Oh.”

She fidgeted, not certain that she liked that idea much, even with the way she’d struggled with every time he claimed one of the stories as his own instead of Winston’s. She didn’t want him to go, but she was also wondering if that might not be for the best. She didn’t know. She was still very confused. She didn’t like this sort of confusion, either. She was sick at heart, sick to her stomach thanks to her child, and she could hardly think, so she felt even worse than she had during the most terrible time of her pregnancy so far.

Oh, she did not think she would survive to see the child born, not with all this strain.

“Violet?”

She looked up, biting her lip. “I am sorry. I did not mean to become distracted. I have been trying to find… Did you put the inn as your address on those letters you sent? Or did you have them sent to your home?”

He frowned. “I… I think I wrote down the inn since I was still expecting to be here, and I didn’t want to send them to my home just to have someone interfere with them. I would not trust my father with them, not with the way he had opened other letters of yours and thought this matter could be ignored. Any response I got might never reach me if I had it sent home first.”

“So then you have to wait here to get it? Or can you have them send it on to you when you are back home?”

“That is another delay on the information that has already taken long enough to acquire.”

“Yes.”

“I suppose I cannot leave immediately, though I might have been tempted.”

She let out a breath, not sure that she dared be relieved by the idea of him staying. She shouldn’t be. She should be bothered by it, shouldn’t she? She did not know anymore. “The cook wasn’t fooled by the tomatoes, was she?”

He laughed. “Well, she shouldn’t have been, but there was a commotion that day because of the rat—that had nothing to do with me, I swear—and so by the time she got to baking the pie, she didn’t know her right hand from her left. That poor woman. She hated me so much… I remember I ran off to find some strawberries to replace the ones that I’d switched with tomatoes and—”

“Oh, this must be worse than the rest of it. What did you find? A poisonous plant?”

He smiled. “No, I didn’t. I did know what most of those were, at least. No, I went all the way into town, went to the market, bought as many of those beautiful little strawberries I could find and come to find out later that they are raspberries and that I am allergic to them. Oh, the cook liked that, I can assure you. She became a true master at baking anything and everything with raspberries in it.”

Violet found herself laughing. She shouldn’t find this so amusing, but she did. “What about the tomato pie?”

“You should have seen my father’s face. I wish I’d had a camera just then, but then you’re supposed to hold still for that, and he’d never have allowed such a violation of his dignity. He doesn’t much care for cameras. Mother adapted to that better than he did. She’s the one who insists on having them instead of painted likenesses of us all. I think my father would like to burn them all someday, but he is too vain to destroy his own face.”

“It’s not much of a face.”

Robert frowned. “You haven’t seen my father.”

She grimaced. “I… Winston showed me a picture of his father once. I suppose I don’t know if that man was even his father. I don’t know anything about him. He wasn’t your father, though, and I don’t know why I said that. I know better.”

“Sometimes it must be very hard to tell us apart.”

She lowered her head. “Yes, it is. It has been so much harder than I thought it would ever be. You do not look that much alike or sound that much alike, but with those stories he stole from you… I don’t know what to do.”

“I can go. I had come only to tell you that I was going—”

“You’re not, though. You decided not to go.”

“I… Yes, I suppose I am staying, but that doesn’t mean I have to stay here bothering you.”

“You are not bothering me.”

“I’m not?”

“No.”

“Oh.”