The waiter cleared her mostly full bowl of soup with a frown and set their main dish on the table. If she hadn’t liked the soup, John hoped the chicken and the chilled cabbage salad would go better.
“It smells heavenly,” she said.
“I hope you don’t mind, but chicken is a safer bet this time of year.” The last thing he wanted was his wife suffering from a sour stomach on their wedding night because the meat had turned.
“It is exactly right,” she said with a nervous smile.
Their conversation seriously needed to improve or they would dance around real topics all night. Maybe she had something in mind. “Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”
“I want to know everything about you,” she said brightly. “Where were you born?”
His birth was the last thing he wanted to talk about, but he had given her the opening she likely had been waiting for. “I assume Boston. That is where I was found.”
“And did you have a family?”
His stomach clenched as if he’d been punched. What an absurd question. He set his fork down with a thump. “What part of I was a foundling do you not understand?”
She reached across the table and put her hand on his. Her touch jolted him. “I am your wife. Don’t you think I should know about your history? I would like to know all about you. And I have something to tell you that only those closest to me know. We shouldn’t have any secrets.”
She was reaching out to touch him, which augured well for the wedding night. Her hand rested lightly on his, but it made his pulse jump. Somehow he pulled his mind back to the matter at hand. “It isn’t a secret. I’d just rather not talk about it. I’ve tried to put those years behind me.”
She patted his hand. The effect of her touch faded. “I just thought a family might have adopted you.”
He stared at her. “No, my bitch of a mother made sure that would never happen.”
Selina jerked her hand back as if his words had burned her. Her face went white.
He regretted using such a crude and ugly word to describe the woman who’d given birth to him as soon as it left his mouth. He looked around to make certain no other diner had heard, but no doubt his foul language shocked her. She needn’t worry. His venom was reserved for the woman who’d left him on a city park bench as if he was trash. He didn’t want to discuss it, or think about it, especially not now.
“How can you speak so about your mother?” she whispered.
He sighed. Damn it, he wanted a smooth wedding night.
He’d hoped for a congenial dinner, a leisurely stroll back to the store and an early bedtime. Or perhaps sitting beside her on the settee for a spell, talking about anything but his miserable childhood. He was doing a lousy job of setting his bride at ease.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have used such language around you.” He dragged out his words to show his anger wasn’t at her. And it was far from the worst name he’d called that woman. The sentiment was what it was, but he didn’t usually voice it.
He supposed he should have expected curiosity once Selina learned his full name. Obviously she wouldn’t let this subject rest until she knew the whole of it. She was his wife; he owed her the truth. He pulled on the mantle spun by years of pretending it didn’t matter.
“I spent my first nine years in an orphanage. Then I was apprenticed to a shopkeeper for six years.” More like enslaved by a shopkeeper. The man had owned him, worked him eighteen hours a day and given him only a pile of empty sacks to sleep upon. John could talk about it coldly and rationally, even though the wound festered like a canker deep inside him. “But as for the woman who bore me, she wasn’t much of a mother, was she? She left me to freeze to death.”
“You don’t know that,” said Selina. She ducked her head. “She could have watched until you were found.”
He pulled his hands into his lap and rubbed his thighs under the table, out of her view. “The man who came along wouldn’t have noticed me except I was crying, and he didn’t see anyone around. He looked.”
John relayed the details as he’d been told them. He’d even gone to the place where he’d been left, back when he’d been searching for a place to belong, before he understood there never would be a family for him.
If anything, Selina went whiter. She stared at him, her eyes like dark pools in her face. “Surely, your mother was just trying to make certain you were cared for. She probably couldn’t care for you herself...”
“No, she was trying to get rid of me.” His stomach burning, he leaned back and folded his arms. “I doubt if she cared if I lived or died. She probably just didn’t have the spine to throw me in the bay and live with the certainty of it.”
Selina shook her head slowly, as if she were in shock. She leaned forward. “Don’t you think she was likely an unfortunate young woman who...who may have been abandoned by her beau or—”
“No. There isn’t any fairy tale here. Just a heartless whore who saw me as a burden.”
Selina squeaked faintly, like a small kitten. He examined her stricken face. Was she too softhearted to understand there were evil people in the world? Or was she merely appalled that his mother was a whore?
At least her questions had pulled back his lust to a manageable buzzing. He still wanted her, but with her mouth otherwise occupied.
“Maybe she couldn’t afford to take care of you. Maybe she was trying to prevent you from starving. Maybe she was trying to ensure you had a better life than she could give you. She might not have had family or friends to help her.” Selina’s brows drew together as she persisted in ignoring the obvious conclusion.
Granted, it had taken him years to realize the truth. But if the woman who had borne him had meant well by him, his surname would be Church or Station, where he would have been sheltered inside and was certain to have been found. She also wouldn’t have left the torn-in-half playing card on him, which ensured no family would adopt him for fear she’d be back to claim him. “No good woman would ever abandon her baby, no matter what her circumstances.”
Selina gasped.
That she wanted to find an excuse for his abandonment or simply couldn’t accept that a woman would throw away a child was sweet, even as it poked at raw places inside him.
“No excuse you could make for her will change my mind. Now are we done talking about my past?” He picked up his fork and stabbed a piece of chicken. He would do anything to turn the conversation, and most people loved to talk about themselves. “What is it that you wanted to tell me?”
Color rushed back into Selina’s skin, and her eyes widened. She shook her head. Averting her face, she stared at the window across the dining room.
“Now you don’t want to tell me.” Was she already thinking this marriage a mistake?
Her head jerked back in his direction; her gaze darted to his and then down to her plate. She swallowed audibly. “It is just that I was engaged to another man before I wrote you.”
Her voice was high and thready.
His spine knotted. Was this the flaw he anticipated? He’d known better than to hope. “And?”
“He married another girl, whose father promised him a job.” Selina twisted her fingers together.
“His loss then,” said John.
Her gaze lifted. He’d hoped for a smile, but she chewed her lip.