Chapter two:

As the darker days of May faded into the lovely shades of an early summer of June, Rose Hockley failed to bloom with it. Failed to feel anything other than the long redundancy which had filled her for quite some time. It came with a strange calm, and the erratic melancholia which had initiated the week before her wedding to Cal had disintegrated somewhere and left was this cloud of exhaustion. As though the world had no or very little colour within it. Aside from one small and tiny speck...

Adeline Hockley was four weeks old, and had yet to meet her father. Work in London had prevented Cal from returning just yet and whilst she had written to him to notify him of their daughter's birth, the silence on his end was compelling enough to speaks volumes of his displeasure. Her husband had spoken only of their child as a son, and any daughter, he had made clear would be dismissed. He would require a son very soon and had insisted that if a daughter was born, then another pregnancy should have to follow right after. The doctor, had warned against such things. Rose had lost a significant amount of blood, having been left alone for the majority of her birth. The doctor offered to write to her husband in order to specify just how ill she had become since the birth to perhaps coax him back from London but Rose had found herself enjoying the salvation that been alone with the infant provided. Once Cal was home, then no doubt her duties as a wife would resume in order to produce the healthy son which he required so badly. Rose was a vessel, that much she was aware of, just a container to carry the child. Wasn't that one of the topics of conversation her own mother had brought up just the morning of the wedding?

'We're women. Our choices are limited and when we have them, they will never be easy.'

'But children? I am so young, mother.'

'I was eighteen when you were born, Rose. Your father and I raised one child to be the woman that you are today. Cal requires a son; an heir. Just one. Once that part is done, you may come and go as you please. Spend time away from your marriage and simply come together when it is required, just as your father and I did.'

'But it seems such a lonely existence, mother. To be away from my husband? Why marry in the first place?'

'Because, Rose, not only is our situation precarious, but you ought to think of yourself. The match with Hockley is advantageous on both ends. Cal requires a wife; a well brought up girl, with a beautiful face and body and the means to provide him with a child once the time comes. And you require a husband to protect you in name and provide for you, always. The child which you have needn't affect anything; your figure will return if you don't nurse yourself or overindulge and keep up the exercise required. Cal will hire held to raise the child just as I had; a wetnurse, a governess. There will be very little for you to do and when the time comes Cal will choose the correct way to educate his son.'

'What if we have a daughter?'

Her mother had gone silent for a second. 'Then, a second child may be required.'

Rose sighed heavily at her own stupidity less than a year ago. Having spent time watching the small ways in which her daughter moved, the tiniest of noises and snuffles which she made, Rose could not yet bring herself to find an unpleasant thing about the child. Even during the night, when the two were alone and Adeline would do nothing but focus her eyes on Rose as they stood at the window watching the moon. The night. Life. Contemplation was all which had kept her from going mad. From almost wishing her own life away until she looked down to her daughter and suddenly found a reason to love. To live. To survive everything. When she had learnt of her gender, Rose had promised for Adeline to only ever belong to her, and it was true. For her father would cruelly never care. Never truly wish for anything other than a son to pass the torch on to. A son to one day stand with him, and twist into an arrogant, perhaps more conceited version of himself. The Hockley name was powerful, not just across the Ocean but in Derbyshire, too. The early days out here in the endless, rolling hills of Yorkshire seemed to leave her empty and dark, but now, she had learnt to appreciate the quietness of been out in the middle of a small village, where miners and factory workers were the majority and the local dialect was baffling. America seemed so far away and she welcomed that now away from the stuffy and stifling house in which she had grown to despite. Her mother had encouraged the move, telling her peers how Rose was now a titled lady. The title meant nothing to her. The marriage in which she had entered, naively, she had believed would have some impact upon both her and Cal. She had been flattered by his affections and despite been warned Cal was thirty-four years of age and in dire need of a wife and child, Rose had perhaps thought that they could have had something more than that. A friendship, companionship and during their outings to New York and travelling to Europe, they had grown to share a laugh together, until they had married and the cracks had increased. Rose now found him to be pompous. Self-important. A man who believed that the very world revolved around him and nothing more. Even his wife, once pregnant, had been discarded to the doctor to watch and despite her lack of love for him; the company during those months of winter would have been nice. Just to see a face across the drawing room as she read or completed a cross stitch. To share a laugh over the day's events. For him to once place his hands upon her stomach and smile as she bloomed. The child had moved within her belly, causing it to change all sorts of squishy shapes and Rose had watched it, curiously and without the power to stop it as her child wiggled. Her fingers and ankles had swollen towards the end. The need to urinate frequently was beyond her and then, the pain in her back which had shot into her stomach. The pains which had eventually grown powerful enough to turn into her labour...

Having been out of bed just a handful of days since the treacherous day Rose had given birth with the assistance of the footman, who she had yet to learn the name of, she had barely managed to move or hardly tend to her child. A wet nurse had arrived the morning after Adeline's birth and had been dismissed at first instance. Rose would nurse her own child and would continue to do so until it killed her.

'The child is getting all of the nutrients, your ladyship. You are frail and weak, whilst she is thriving. Why allow yourself to suffer in such a way when help is available to you?'

'Because I am her mother.'

'Yes, but you have the luxury of help.'

'I don't want the help, doctor, I want to nurse my own child.'

'But you will not be out of bed for some time. Your body was in shock. You haemorrhaged. You required countless stiches and gave birth alone-'

'I was not alone. I had a young man assist.'

'Who could have done more damage than good. A man knows nothing of childbirth, your ladyship, which is why unless the man is a doctor or medical professional, he is required to stay outside the room. The footman should be dismissed for entering a lady's chamber without her knowledge. God knows what he wanted to do.'

In the limitless days which had followed the birth, in and out of the endless abyss of strange dreams, Rose had done nothing but contemplate just why the young footman had come into her room to begin with. Her cries had been muffled from biting the flannel compress and whilst she had pulled the bell numerous times over a thirty-minute period, she had believed Mrs. Ball would have been the one to call. Once her strength had gathered enough to contemplate if the young man should be reprimanded as each and every other person thought or thanked, personally, as she wished to, she had wished to catch glimpse of him about the house but it seemed he was never about. Maybe he had been dismissed without her knowledge, maybe...it felt strange. As though they had some kind of understanding, an affinity, an odd understanding. Pieces of a memory, fragmentation came to her at times of his voice soothing her, speaking of animals. Or something of the sort. And that was how she had known it was an hallucination; the doctor had advised such a thing could happen after a traumatic delivery and high amount of blood lost. She had even envisioned his eyes, staring right into the centre of her soul and it had almost frightened her. Each time she closed her eyes, he was there. She was never in his arms. He was there, though, offering her quiet strength and at times she would even laugh and hum a song. A familiar tune. A tune which Adeline now fell fast asleep whilst hummed to. Something about a flying machine...

Despite feeling endlessly sick and dizzy, Rose had managed to eat dry toast and a weak tea that morning and once the morning sun came burning brightly through the windows, it seemed to fill her with something. It was as though she hadn't felt the sunlight in quite some time upon her face. It seemed to bring an alteration to her mood. The days since the birth had seemed to move slowly, and the only time Rose seemed to feel alive was when Adeline was brought to her for feeding time, and there, the small red-faced child with thick dark curls and beautifully large eyes would fall right back to sleep there within the comfort of her mother's arms but this morning, she felt different, almost as though an old part of her was resurrecting.

Since her move to Derbyshire from Pennsylvania almost a year prior, Rose had ventured to the garden just once, having spent the rest of the time indoors due to the treacherous and long pregnancy. Oh, how she had loved the child within but cursed her body's reaction to carrying a it. But now, glancing across an endless acre of fields through the highest lead window, she felt the urge to leave the house. To explore. Somehow. Trudy had taken Adeline to the nursery to nap just minutes before and with itching fingers, Rose startled to fettle about the room as though she was a servant or a cleaner and just realised why...she was restless; her mind overturning the seconds of her birth as though it was happening. As though she was watching the charade on a moving picture and she was the actress at the centre of the massacre. It wasn't the thought of a stranger with his eyes and hands in a place where only her husband should have known but the fact that despite her fear of been alone, he had filled her with such a certainty of herself and power as a woman more than he could have known.

It was without knowledge how she reached the bottom stair of the vast staircase, how she found the right turning to the servant's quarters and the clock on the mantel seemed to show that it was almost nine a.m. Still so early in the day and yet it felt as though she had been awake for hours. Her skirts dusted across the cleanly swept floor and her heels cracked against the tile, indicating her presence there. Usually, the lower part of the house was bustling with life when her husband was home as breakfast would be served between eight and nine and then he would be off to work and she would be left alone to make arrangements to entertain herself. Now though, there wasn't a soul about. The long oak table was bare aside from a few crumbs. The cook wasn't about. Mrs. Ball's shrill voice wasn't echoing about drilling orders whilst Mr. Lovejoy was away.

She was about to call hello, when she stumbled right into the sturdy hands of a tall man dressed in his liveries.

"Oh shit—"

"Oh, heavens—"

They both spoke in unison, shocked at the others presence and just how willowy Rose was. The man clasped her elbows to keep her balance and then, she was dizzy...

"May—may I—" she tried to speak, but then saw three versions of a footman as her eyes went foggy. White bits floated about her eyes, and she tried to blink them away furiously, to try to stay alert. This had happened when taking her bath just a week previous, and the doctor had warned her as such after suffering the loss of blood.

"Hey, you're all right, your ladyship. Stay with me. It's only a bit of dizziness. Easy." The voice was soothing. Familiar. His grip on her was gentle and kind. Blinking, she desperately tried to focus her eyes and suddenly, as she was held firmly but tightly at her waist, she furiously blinked to bring herself back to it and to calm her racing heart.

"I'm all right. Stupid really, I must have slipped."

"No, I think I almost knocked you into tomorrow because your ladyship shouldn't be down here."

Her vision cleared then. And her heart didn't stop racing. Blue eyes. Tender touch. Handsome smile and a familiar rush of something. Recoiling, she moved a little too fast and it would have set her off again if she didn't dig her nails into the cuffs of his black liveries to clasp onto the small piece of reality left.

"I was looking for someone."

"You should have called the bell," he told her, and she frowned, "your ladyship shouldn't be sneaking around down here."

Rose was about to snap that it was her home and that she could go where she liked. That the last time she called the bell, it was vastly ignored as she tried to birth her child. That she was to go about this space however she wished to when she saw the concern evident upon his face and was suddenly flashing warm at how his hands were still steadying her weak body.

''I certainly was not sneaking.''

''Well, I didn't hear you.''

''I fear you may have been distracted then!'' She fired back, finding the strength from someplace to scold. She was sure that amusement was threatening to pull at his lips but he refrained from allowing his face to show it.

''No, your ladyship, I was not distracted, just coming to find some boot polish.''

Glancing downwards to his pristine boots, she almost wished to query why until curiosity gained the better of her.

"Forgive me, but just what is your name?"

Glancing upwards, at a man over six feet tall, a tower over her and with eyes the most piercing of blue, she felt that her universe was temporarily filled. There, in ice blue, she felt the thorough safety that she had on a night four weeks previous when Adeline was placed upon her chest by a stranger. By a man who she believed, at times, could even have been a figment of her own imagination. How ludicrous that would have been!

"Jack Dawson, your ladyship. I thought you knew that already."

"No," she slowly untangled herself from his grasp. "No, I did not."

Once she had stepped away from the warmth of him, the feeling of sunlight came to her as she found his lopsided smile to be the most charming. He was breezy. Easy. She almost wished to smile right back there with him and it took a moment to recall her position and then realised what his position was. Not even the first footman by all accounts. A man who served meals on a tray, who transported the luggage about and furniture when the time came for a spring clean. He would open the doors and close them, and as she gazed into his face, he was now familiar to her. Somehow.

"Who were you looking for?"

Rose blinked, pulling her hands to her shrunken middle. "Pardon me?"

"You said that you were looking for someone down here?"

As though slowly waking from a long sleep, Rose nodded as she swallowed back uncertainties.

'I may be able to find them for you, if you wish to return to your rooms, or the sitting room. Would you care for some tea?''

''No, I would not.'' Rose cut him short, about to make a conscious decision to be rude, but then as he flipped the hair from his eyes, she spoke and the hair fell back seemingly unnoticed by him. "Mr. Dawson, I was looking for you. May I speak with you?"

Mr. Dawson seemed surprised and raised a brow in query before nodding. "Of course."

Glancing about, Rose noticed that whilst they were alone in the kitchen, servants were prone to gossip and lurking in the most unheard-of places to catch a piece of something to pass to the others and therefore it wouldn't be wise to conduct such a conversation within earshot.

"In private." She suggested. "Perhaps you could walk me about the gardens, I haven't had air since my daughter was born and I fear I may either faint upon breathing in fresh air or run to the hills." Jack smiled, and then smirked at her exaggeration and it seemed to break the little bit of nerves both felt.

''Yes, of course.'' Mr. Dawson glanced about, checking that the servants' quarters were empty. ''After you.'' He indicated for her to lead the way to the gardens.

Rose pulled her hands into her stomach, self-consciously, suddenly aware that she would be alone with him; again. She wasn't frightened, or crippled by anything other than a complete loss of what to say. Speaking with him would ensure that the birth was truly a reality. That it wasn't just a figment of her own deranged imagination. Her husband more than once had accused her of having an excessively wild streak, prone to start once as she had read a progressively modern book and then after discussing the contents with Cal, he would only laugh and comment about how he would need to mind what she read from now on.

''After you.'' Mr. Dawson broke the silence once, more and she was startled by him, repeating. Glancing upwards, she smiled meekly, nodding in a response to him.

''Yes, shall we?''

Before he could respond, Rose walked on, feeling Mr. Dawson follow closely behind her.