Chapter 33 – Rosalie – Everything I Never Knew

He wants to marry me. I'm going to marry him.

I rested my head on Emmett's chest, hearing the regular thump of his heartbeat as his arms wrapped around me. "I love you," I murmured.

"My beautiful girl," Emmett said tenderly. "I'm so happy you said yes."

I ran a hand down his chest, tracing the ridges of his scars from the bear attack. "I said yes and I do want to marry you, but you know it's not that simple, right?"

"It's simple enough for now," Emmett answered. "Right now all I need to know is that you love me and you'll marry me, and that you and I and baby Jem are going to be a family."

A family…how have I been so lucky?

Baby Jem woke three times in the night. It felt odd and awkward having the baby on my breast, but I loved the way he would cry and then clamp down so fiercely, all his tears forgotten in his satisfaction in finding milk.

Emmett slept beside me, warm and solid and comforting. He woke when the baby woke and watched me feed him, his eyes sleepy and soft with love. When I lay back down to sleep he drew me against him and wrapped a careless arm around me, so that the two of us drifted off together, limbs intertwined and bodies close and warm.

I was surprised how well I slept with him there. I had never liked sharing a bed with Royce. Not just because of the sex, but because having him in my space, stealing the covers and touching me randomly all through the night had always felt wrong. But Emmett felt comfortable and oddly familiar and, despite being woken by the baby, I slept better than I had in weeks.

When baby Jem woke in the early morning, Emmett changed his diaper and then gave him to me to feed.

"I'll get you some breakfast," he promised.

I nodded, distracted by trying to get the crying baby to feed. Emmett disappeared, and a moment later I heard voices from the kitchen.

"Well, you didn't waste any time, did you?" Miss Adeline said disapprovingly.

"What?" Emmett's voice was sleepy. "What did I do?"

"Moving in there, with her…honestly Em, I would have expected better from you!"

"Ma! She just had a baby!" Emmett sounded a lot more awake.

"Exactly!" Miss Adeline snapped. "She just had a baby, and she gets six weeks with nothing in between her legs besides cloths soaked in witch hazel and those fancy panties she wears. She certainly doesn't need your…"

"Ma!" Emmett cried indignantly. "I never did…as if I would! I just wanted to be with her, that's all. I slept there, and I helped her with the baby. Really."

"Ah Emmett, I'm sorry," Miss Adeline sighed. "I just worry about you. It's nothing against Rosalie, you know that I like her. She's tried hard to settle in and she's a good girl. But she doesn't belong here for all that. She has a family and a husband somewhere else, and at some point she's going to have to deal with that."

"I know that." Emmett was very quiet.

"I've seen the way you look at her, like she outshines the stars. And she loves you, I'm sure of that…but I don't know if that's enough. There's so much against you both, and I don't want to see you hurt," Miss Adeline finished softly.

"I can't change anything now, Ma. I love her. There isn't anything in the world I wouldn't do for her," Emmett's voice rang with conviction. "Rose and that little baby in there…all I want is to be with them and take care of them. And I know that she has a husband and that I'm not really that little baby's daddy and it might all come crashing down on my head, but I can't do anything different now." He paused. "I asked her to marry me, and she said yes."

"She's willing to settle here in Tennessee? Raise her babies without the privileges she was raised with?"

"I don't…we haven't talked about it," Emmett said edgily.

"Well, it's what you need to talk about. If she wants to marry you then you both need to talk about the husband she already has…"

"He hit her Ma! He beat her…"

"I know that, and I'm not suggesting she go back to him. But she's legally wed to him, and chances are that baby is legally his too. If you want to be with her and have other babies with her within the bounds of marriage, you're going to have to sort out the issue of her husband."

"I don't know how," Emmett admitted, his voice low. "I guess there's divorce, but I don't know how that works."

"Well, you can find out. Rosalie may need to swallow her pride and get in touch with her parents and see if they can help…at least they might know someone in the law who can give some advice," Miss Adeline said.

I made a face at the idea of contacting my parents, but then I thought about being able to show them my baby Jem and my heart softened. Mother had been thrilled when I had told her I was carrying him…surely now he was here she would want to see him?

"And I know Rosalie loves you," Miss Adeline continued, but this time her voice was soft. "But she is going to need to think very hard about whether she can marry you. Because it's not just about you, Emmett…she'll be marrying a different way of a life if she chooses you. A different way of life for her and for her son, as well as any other babies the two of you have."

"I'm not always going to be an unemployed bum," Emmett said, hurt clear in his voice. "It's going to change one day Ma, the economy is going to pick up and I'm going to make money for her, all the money we need."

"You'll do that, but it won't be the money that Rosalie is used to. If she marries you she's marrying a simpler way of life with a lot of hard work in it…there are rewards in it, but she'll have to open her eyes to see them."

I winced as Jem's little gums bit down hard, but it wasn't that that bought the tears to my eyes. Did Miss Adeline really see me as so shallow? Did she really think that I couldn't look past the obstacle of my own selfishness to see the extraordinary gift in my life that Emmett had been?

"We'll talk about all that," Emmett said quietly. "But it won't matter…I love her and I know she feels the same. I want to be with her, and if I have to do that outside the marriage laws then I will. And I don't know what you're thinking about Rosalie, but she's a much stronger and more determined person than you seem to be giving her credit for. She's lived here with us for months, and if she's whined or complained to you then I haven't heard it…she's always done her best to fit in and make it work and she's done a damned good job."

"She has," Miss Adeline agreed. "I didn't want anything I said to sound negative about Rosalie! I've grown to love the girl, and I can see how, in a funny kind of way, that she is everything you need and want. I would never in a million years have picked her for you, but the two of you together just work, and it only takes eyes to see that. But if you want your marriage to be forever, then you both need to go into it with your eyes wide open. You don't want to leave room for ugly surprises and resentments to spring up."

"I hear you," Emmett said at last. "I promise you that I'm listening and thinking over what you've said."

"Good boy. And now, I'm going to take this porridge into Rosalie and find out how my grandbaby did overnight."

Miss Adeline came in with some steaming, milky porridge and then held the baby while I ate, changing his soiled diapers and asking me how feeding was going and how he slept. She kissed his tiny little hands with the long, slender fingers and kissed his toes with the tiny toenails like pearly little shells, and examined the stump of the umbilical cord, tied with a knotted bit of string.

"He's a beautiful baby Rosalie," she told me sincerely, wrapping him back up tightly, until he looked like a little bug just peeping out of a cocoon. "You did wonderfully with the birth, and feeding is going well…it's marvellous. And you're feeling well?"

I nodded and kept eating my porridge while Miss Adeline rocked the baby to sleep. Only once he was asleep did she speak again, her voice soft.

"And you're comfortable with him? Considering…well, we're all assuming he looks like your husband."

I swallowed the last of my breakfast. "He looks just like him," I admitted quietly. "The straight dark hair, the cleft chin…it's all Royce. Even the baby's eyes are kind of muddy, and I think they'll turn dark."

"They're darker than any of my babies were at birth," Miss Adeline said.

"But it doesn't matter," I said plainly. "I thought it would, but it doesn't…he's just his own little self, aren't you baby Jem?"

"Baby Jem? He has a name?"

"James Emmett McCarty," I said, watching carefully for her response.

But a wide smile was all that met my eyes. "That's lovely. James for Emmett's granddaddy? Emmett always looked up to him, and James had a real soft spot for him. He'd be tickled pink that Emmett named his baby for him."

I smiled in relief. "I love him," I said, and for once I thought of nothing but honesty. "I love Emmett, Miss Adeline, and I'm going to do my very best to make him happy. He means more to me than…well, more than I can say."

"You heard all I said, then?"

I nodded. "I know that there's a thousand reasons why Emmett and I together won't work…but somehow, the truth is that we do work. You said yourself that I'm what he wants, and he is…he is everything I never knew I wanted until I had it. I know there are so many things we need to work out, but I think we love each other enough to do the hard work it's going to take."

Miss Adeline leaned forward and kissed my cheek. "Bless you, Rosalie, you're a good girl. I know how much you love my boy, and how much he loves you, and I wish the two of you all the luck in the world. You know that Jack and I are behind you one hundred percent and will do whatever we can to help you both." She laughed. "I never in my wildest dreams thought any of the boys would bring home a spoiled city princess for a wife! But there…you've settled down here and you already belong. Not to mention this little blessing!" She gave me the bundle of baby back and smiled. "I had better go and get the breakfast for the other children, I can hear them out on the porch. You just lie in bed and take it easy."

I listened to everyone else eating, rocking the sleeping baby and thinking over what Miss Adeline and I had talked about, and what I had heard her speaking of with Emmett earlier. I thought about the hard work of running a household in poverty, and then I thought about marriage and what that entailed and I felt my stomach tighten with nerves. Emmett was nothing like Royce, and yet even so…

Emmett chose that moment to come back into the room, clean and scrubbed and smelling of soap, water glistening on his curly dark hair.

"What's the matter, Rosa girl?" Emmett said instantly, seeing my face. "Are you okay? Is it the baby?"

"No, he's fine," I said. "I was just…thinking about being married."

Emmett raised his eyebrows. "And it put that look on your face? I think you'd better talk to me, sweetheart."

I couldn't help laughing a little, and Emmett gave me a dimpled smile as he eased down onto the bed beside me. He slipped an arm around my shoulders and I leaned into him, loving the way our bodies seemed to fit together so perfectly.

"So I'm going to take a guess that you heard me and Ma talking this morning?" Emmett began.

I nodded, playing with the buttons on my nightgown. "I suppose she's right that we have a lot to talk about."

"Mmm." Emmett was playing with my long braid of hair. "I guess it's not just a matter of going to the minister." He sounded unhappy.

"I'm sorry," I said wretchedly. "I wish I'd never married Royce! I wish that we didn't have any of that to deal with!"

"But if you hadn't married Royce, would I have even known you?" Emmett asked practically. "I got the job because you and Royce got married and needed a driver. And if I'd never worked for you, then I would never have known you."

"It meant so much to me to have you there," I said in a low voice. "I never said it, and I wasn't always willing to admit it even to myself, but having you be my friend was the thing that kept me going. You are the very best thing to come out of my miserable marriage…you and Jem and this family that we're going to make."

"I'm always going to be here for you. Always. I can't offer you much right now, but I can give you that," Emmett said, squeezing my shoulder.

"I don't care that there's not that much right now," I said to him honestly. "I'm not as shallow as I was…so many things that I used to think were necessities I've learned to live without. There's more to life than looking pretty at parties, and I think we're doing okay here with your family for now. I know it can't be that much longer until things pick up and you can get work."

"It's never going to be money like you grew up with though," Emmett said seriously.

I shrugged. "That's okay. I can learn to manage. If you can learn to cope with a wife who is so much worse a cook and housekeeper than your mother or your sister are!"

Emmett laughed, leaning over to nuzzle his face into my hair. "Yeah, but neither of them are so kick-ass with fixing up cars. You know…everyone looks at us and thinks it can't work, that it makes no sense for us to be together. But when I'm with you…I never doubt, Rosa girl. You are everything I have always wanted."

I looked back at him with my heart in my eyes. "And you…you're everything I never knew I wanted until you were right there in front of me."