Roses (39 page)

“I’ll tell you why you hate him,” Percy said. “You hate him because he’s nice and considerate and gentle. He doesn’t seem
quite the boy you think he should be, but I want to tell you something, Wyatt. He’s every bit the man you seem to think you
are.”

“I know that.”

The response was not what Percy had expected. “Then why do you hate him?”

A shrug. A quick blink of the defiant eyes.

“And this type of thing has been going on a long time, I understand,” Percy said, rolling up the other sleeve. “He’s come
home with bruises and bumps and cuts, all delivered by you. Is that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And it’s never bothered you that you’re bigger than he is?”

“No, sir.”

Percy stared at his son, unable to assess the baffling combination of his dispassion and honesty. At eleven, he was already
pushing six feet and acquiring the breadth of his father’s shoulders. “You’re jealous of Matthew, aren’t you.”

“So what if I am? What’s it to you?”

“You watch your mouth, young man, and don’t you ever talk to your mother like you did back at the house. You are never again
to tell her to be quiet, understand?”

“Why? You do worse to her.”

Rage exploded in his head, blinding him. All he could see was the slashed baseball glove and the bandage over Matthew’s temple.
He saw love in the green eyes and hate in the blue. He drew back his right hand, balling it into a fist, and with his left
reached for the jacket front of his other son, the one he did not know, did not love, did not wish to claim. “I’m going to
let you feel what it’s like to be beaten up by somebody bigger than you,” he said through clenched teeth, and brought his
fist forward.

The blow landed Wyatt on the floor hard against the front of the couch, a thin stream of blood trickling from his nose and
a cut lip. Percy went outside and drew water, brought the bucket inside, and doused a towel in it. “Here,” he said, thrusting
the wet cloth at his son without pity or remorse. “Wipe your face. And Wyatt—” He reached down and yanked the boy into a sitting
position on the couch. “If you so much as look cross-eyed at your—” The blue eyes shot a look into his. For the second time
that day, Percy had caught himself from saying
your brother
. “Your neighbor and classmate,” he amended, “I will make sure you never bully anybody else again. You understand what I’m
saying?” He glared into his son’s bloody face. “Do you?”

A nod, then through red-stained teeth, “Yes, sir.”

When they returned home, the visitors from California were happily, volubly getting drunk in the drawing room. Dinner had
been waiting an hour. “Where have you been?” Lucy hissed, meeting her husband in the back hallway. Percy had already sent
Wyatt to his room.

“Getting my son acquainted with me,” Percy replied.

It was the last formal event ever hosted by the Warwicks. When Lucy, fearing the worst, attempted to bolt up the back stairs,
Percy grabbed her arm and directed her back to the drawing room with a grip that said she’d leave their guests on pain of
injury, divorce, or worse. All through the long meal and port afterward, she sat uncommunicative and anxious-eyed while her
husband, freshly attired, steered the conversation and poured the wine. When finally the guests had departed, she fled up
the stairs to see Wyatt.

He heard her wail of dismay and awaited her fury in his room, where he was calmly removing his cuff links when she burst in.
“How could you have done what you’ve done?” she screeched. “You’ve nearly beaten our son to death.”

“You exaggerate, Lucy. What I did was nothing compared to what he’s been dishing out to Matthew DuMont for years. I simply
gave him a dose of his own medicine.” He related what had happened that day at school and the report of Wyatt’s systematic
bullying of Matthew.

“What he did wasn’t right, I know that, Percy,” Lucy cried, “but what you did was worse. He’s going to hate you for it.”

“He already does hate me.”

“Only because of the attention you pay Matthew. That’s why he treats Matthew the way he does. He’s jealous of your affection
for him.”

“Matthew deserves my affection. Wyatt doesn’t.”

“
Matthew! Matthew! Matthew!
” Lucy struck her palm with the wedge of her hand with each cry of the boy’s name. “That’s all I hear from you! Holy Mother
of God, you’d think Matthew was your son!”

The words held in the room like smoke following an explosion. Lucy stood as if shot, her figure rigid in the satin folds of
her evening gown. She stared at Percy, realization dawning across her countenance like the slow breaking of light over the
sea. Percy was not quick enough to avert his face before it confirmed the blinding truth of her charge. “
No
…,” she gasped, horror filling her face. “Matthew is your son! It’s true, isn’t it? He’s yours and… and Mary’s….” Her voice
fell to a whisper. “Mother of God…”

He turned away, knowing that no amount of denying could undo what his expression had betrayed.

Lucy moved to stand in front of him, her scrutiny of his face so intense that he could almost feel her eyes boring into his
skin. He refused to look at her. He riveted his gaze over her head to the vista of immaculate, moonlit grounds beyond his
bedroom windows, removing himself mentally from the room. It was a trick he’d learned in the trenches when to be aware of
the wreckage around him was to go mad.

A hard slap across his face shocked him from his escape. “You have your gall!” Lucy shrieked. “How dare you shut me out at
a time like this! Tell me the truth, you prick!”

His cheek stinging, Percy answered wearily, glad to be relieved of the charade. “Yes, it’s true. Matthew is Mary’s and my
son.”

Temporarily without words, Lucy gaped at him for several agitated heaves of her enormous bosom. “I should have realized from
the way you look at Matthew and never at Wyatt that he is yours, but I believed Mary when she said that you two weren’t interested
in each other and that I had a clear field. I believed her because I knew she’d never spread her legs for a man who didn’t
give a fiddler’s fart for Somerset….” Her mouth opened wide as another apparently horrifying realization stunned her. She
moved back from him as if to give herself room to strike. “So you were able to do it with
her
! At least long enough to get her pregnant.”

“Lucy, there’s no point in discussing that.”

“No point in discussing it?” Lucy circled Percy slowly, dimpled fingers spread, tapered nails like claws itching to get to
his eyes. “Tell me, you bastard.
Tell me!
Were you able to get it up and keep it up with
her
?”

Percy looked at the twisted face of his wife and decided that he could no longer live with the lie between them—or with her.
The lie had accomplished nothing but to unbridle the inherent meanness within her—as his dissatisfaction with their son had
unleashed his.

“Tell me, you goddamn bastard,” Lucy screamed at him, “or can’t you bring yourself to admit that not even the beautiful Mary
Toliver was enough to rouse your manhood? What a shock
that
must have been to her, the lying bitch.” She began to laugh, bending down with her hands on her satin knees, the hem of her
evening gown pooling on the floor. Hysterical tears streamed from her eyes. “Can you imagine how she must have felt when she
discovered that she’d gotten pregnant with so little for her pains? Got her hair blown, did she, and without so much as a
ride around the block. What a joke on Mary.”

Percy could endure no more. What feeling he’d ever had for Lucy all at once, irretrievably, flowed out of him as if he had
a hole in his heart. He reached forward and, shocking her out of her laughter, gripped the bodice of her satin gown and pulled
her to within inches of his stalactite gaze. He could not have this little witch feeling sorry for Mary—not his Mary, whose
losses were as great as her own.

Boring into the startled blue eyes, he said, “Permit me to answer your question, my dear. Not only did I keep it up, I lifted
her with it. Sometimes, I even carried her by it to the bed, where we finished what we’d started somewhere else.”

Lucy struggled to free herself, drawing back her hand to slap him, but Percy caught her wrist and gripped it with such force,
she cried aloud. “You’re abominable when you make love, Lucy. You’re like an alley cat in heat. That’s why I can’t keep it
up with you. There’s no mystery with you, no tenderness, no sensitivity. Your sweat feels like pus, and your body odor rises
up like heat from stones. I’d rather stick my pecker into a pig’s snout than slide it into your cunt. Now, does that explain
why I don’t come to your bed?”

Ruthlessly, Percy pushed her from him. Lucy nearly fell, but she kept her footing, her look on Percy stricken, disbelieving.
“You’re lying! You’re lying!”

“The only lie I’m guilty of is letting you believe the fault was mine.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“What don’t you believe, Lucy? That I kept it up with Mary or that you’re a terrible lay?”

She spun away from him, hiding her face with her hands. Percy waited. Now was as good a time as any to get everything out
in the open, get the tears, the hurt, and the charges over with all at once. He said presently, “Lucy, I want a divorce. You
and Wyatt can go anywhere you please. I’ll see to it that neither of you ever wants for anything. We can’t go on like this.
I’m a poor husband and a poorer father. Somehow we have to cut our losses and get on with our lives.”

Lucy dropped her hands and swung to face him. Her bodice was torn, her wrist showed the pressure of Percy’s grip. Mascara
streaked her face. “Just like that. You’d get rid of Wyatt just like that.”

“He’ll be better off. We all will.”

“What is it that you have in mind, after you’ve gotten rid of us? Try to get Mary and your son back?”

“You know me better than that.”

“After what you did to Wyatt, I don’t know you at all.”

“What I do when you leave here is my business and should not decide your course.”

Lucy had begun to tremble noticeably, and her face was shockingly white. Clasping her hands together, she asked in a voice
struggling for composure, “Why did you let me believe it was you all these years? Why didn’t you tell me that… that I was
to blame, if I am?”

“Because I owed you, Lucy. You married me because you… loved me, and I married you for the wrong reason.”

“The wrong reason,” Lucy repeated softly. Her chin trembled. “Well, I’ve always known you never loved me. So why did you marry
me?”

“I was lonely, and you made me less lonely—then.”

Lucy attempted a laugh to cover the patent sadness that scored the soft, round features of her face. “Well, what a couple
of sad sacks we make! Feature it, folks—the great Percy Warwick, with all his looks, popularity, and money—
lonely
! An unimaginable picture. Why didn’t you marry Mary? Don’t tell me she was stupid enough to choose Somerset over you?”

Percy said truthfully, “Somerset has always been first in Mary’s heart.”

A corner of Lucy’s mouth pulled to one side. “And you couldn’t be second, of course. Do you still… want her?”

“I still love her.”

Lucy fixed him with a glance that dared him to lie to her. “Are you two still going at it?”

“Of course not!” His tone was sharp. “I haven’t been with Mary since before I left for Canada.”

Inaudibly his breath caught, and he regretted his words the minute they popped out of his mouth. When he saw the quickening
of Lucy’s eyes, a cold hand gripped his heart. “Canada…,” she mused. “That’s where you’d gone when Ollie and Mary married,
the reason you weren’t in the wedding…. Does Ollie know that Matthew isn’t his?”

Her tone made him think of the smooth glide of a snake toward its prey. “He knows.”

Lucy sauntered to one of the windows and asked with her back to him, “Matthew doesn’t know that you’re his father, does he?”

Percy could feel the crawl of icy fear down his spine. Why in hell had he mentioned Canada? The truth in the hands of Lucy
would destroy them all… all the ones he loved. “No, he doesn’t.”

She turned around slowly. Her expression was calm now, her hands toying with the ripped neck of her gown. “Of course he doesn’t.
I do recall asking your mother why you weren’t in Ollie and Mary’s wedding, and Beatrice explained that you returned the day
after the ceremony. The way I figure it, Mary discovered she was pregnant during the time you were in Canada. So she went
to Ollie, always her devoted slave, and he was only too willing to take her as she was. Soiled goods are better than none,
especially to a man with one leg. And, of course, Ollie knew whose hands had used her—”

“Shut up, Lucy.”

“Not before I make several points clear, Percy, my love.” She sashayed near him and thrust her face close to his. Percy recoiled,
feeling his nostrils flare, and Lucy stepped back, her face blazing. “God, I hate you, you persnickety bastard. All right,
here it is, Percy Warwick. I will never give you a divorce. And don’t try to get one, because if you do, I promise I will
go to Matthew and tell him the truth about his father. I will tell Howbutker. I will tell the world. Everyone, just like me,
will put two and two together. They’ll remember that Mary was in Europe with Ollie when Matthew was born. They’ll remember
the hasty wedding, the hurried departure overseas, and how unlike Mary it was to run off and leave the plantation for so long.
They’ll remember that you were in Canada at the time, unable to make an honest woman of her. No one will find it difficult
to believe the truth.”

Casually, she removed a pair of pinching diamond-and-ruby earrings as if she hadn’t a care in the world. “Are Mary and Ollie
aware that
you
know you’re Matthew’s father?” When Percy remained silent, she said, “Ah, I didn’t think so. Their manner makes me think
they believe they’ve kept the secret from you. I couldn’t begin to guess how you found out, but I can guess what it will do
to them—to all of you—if the scandal of Matthew’s paternity comes out.”