Blooming: Veronica by Louisa Trent Page A

where?” he demanded to know.
    How could she possibly tell him? Even the doctor had not looked at her down there . His examination had consisted of kneading her belly over her shift and asking about her monthlies.
    My baby , she wanted to scream through her chattering teeth. Is something wrong with my baby?
    Oh, God, she felt so alone. Why was childbirth shrouded in mystery?
    Finally, terror for her baby prompted her to say to this complete stranger, “Between my legs. I am bleeding between my legs.”
    “Vaginal bleeding,” he muttered and raced lopsidedly along the hallway for her room.
    She tossed her head back and forth. “Robert! Where is Robert?” She looked up into a beardless face, and a dull memory competed with a sharp pain for a foothold.
    Why, she knew him. He was the staring gentleman from the book reading. Why was he here?
    “Put me down!” Twisting like a snared rabbit in his arms, she thrashed her head frantically back and forth. “Stay away from me. You walk with a cane, sir.”
    “A walking stick,” he corrected, placing her on her bed. Without ceremony and regardless of propriety, he flung her wrap up to her chin, yanked down her bloodstained drawers, and splayed her legs wide while she squealed. “No no no.”
    “Miss Cooper, this is no time for offended modesty. This bleeding must be staunched.” He hiked her knees up in the air and bent his head to her privates.
    She felt faint. “My baby. Please, sir, do what you must to save my baby.”
    As something tore away inside her and she gushed hot and wet below, the stranger’s head popped up from between her knees. He placed his cane aside, stripped off his coat, and rolled up his sleeves. After pouring hot water from the bedstead’s pitcher into the washbasin, he dunked his hands and furiously scrubbed them with soap up to the wrist.
    “Where do you keep your menstruation rags?” he asked.
    “My bureau, top drawer,” she cried as agony squeezed her belly and darkness mercifully moved in.

Chapter Eight
     
    Four months later, Maynard Cooper held a shaking finger in front of Veronica’s nose. Though her father had never raised his voice to her before, he shouted at her now. “You will do as I say, daughter. You will wed Mr. Talbot Bowdoin, for you have no other choice. Your reputation is in tatters.”
    Too upset to be still, Veronica paced the floor in her father’s library while twisting a hanky in her hands. The square of embroidered linen was not there to catch her tears. She had done no crying these past weeks. The hanky served as a prop, something to wring in frustration.
    “Sorry, Papa, but I cannot obey you. Someone…indeed, a man…will soon come for me. He will take me away.”
    “If you are referring to Robert McDougal, that scalawag will do nothing of the kind. Not only is he your social inferior, the man has no honor or integrity. You are well rid of him.”
    “He loves me.”
    Her papa’s face grew florid, as if he were on the verge of having an apoplexy. “Loves you? Bah! He used you.”
    “What do you mean he used me? Used me how?”
    “I never wished to tell you, never wished to hurt you this way, but you leave me no alternative. That evil piece of offal came here, to this very room, and tried to extort money from me.”
    She stopped her pacing. “Why?”
    “Robert McDougal is a union activist involved in rabble rousing at the port. Countless strikes against shipping companies like mine owe their inception to him and to men just like him. These insurrections will be the downfall of sea commerce yet.”
    Her father sounded so bitter. She feared for his health when he crashed a fist down on a nearby bookshelf.
    “The colossal gall of that man,” Papa exploded. “Cooper Enterprises pays a fair wage and offers those men who unload company ships decent working conditions. But no. That was not enough. Give an inch, and these Irish immigrants will steal a mile.”
    “But, Papa, what did Robert do