Jason slowly let out his breath and forced the compassionate thoughts away. She was not a child. She was old enough to be given in marriage, she was old enough to have a babe of her own. She was learned and intelligent. She was alluring. She had the face and figure to draw any man, the kind of beauty that had been a siren song in many an ear. So he had given in to the temptation–who would not have? Any of his friends would have taken her if they could have, even Apidius, professedly in love with his Roman Drusilla.
What a hopeless situation. He would have liked to be able to keep his distance from her, to punish her for her deception by forcing her to be nothing but a servant for the rest of her life. But he could not. He was not strong enough to resist the promises her sleeping mouth made or the invitation of her still arms. It gave her a power over him that he resented, but one he could not escape. He did not understand why this Hebrew girl had gotten into his blood so fully when no other woman ever had, but he could not argue its fact. When he looked upon her, the rest of the world receded; his responsibilities in the legion seemed unimportant, his dreams of Rome too distant to be concerned with. His only comfort was the thought that she was only a diversion for this transitional time of his life, that when Rome loomed nearer in his future, it would gain his full attention once more.
Her eyes fluttered open under his steady gaze, blinking away the sleep. He did not avert his eyes, but rather just whispered, “What am I to do with you, Abigail?”
He watched sorrow flood her eyes. “Forgive me.”
Her sincerity struck something within him that made the pain resonate all the more. She gripped his hand, and he raised it to his lips and kissed the tips of her fingers. “I do not know if I can, fair one. I do not know if I want to.”
Her lips quivered, but she bit her bottom one until it stopped. “I would not have done it, Jason. I could not.”
“That is not the point, beloved. You deceived me. You dishonored me. Relenting in one decision does not change those things.”
“I know.” Her eyes slid shut in agony. She opened them again when he settled beside her, a breath away from her face.
“I wish I did not want you,” he said fervently. He kissed her.
“So do I.” She kissed him back.
*
Jason was on watch that night, so Abigail was headed for her closet to sleep when Andrew stopped her. It only took one glance at his face to realize the news had spread throughout the household.
“You are having his child.”
Abigail nodded, unable to think why his eyes suddenly lit.
“This could be good, dear one.” He took her hands in his. “Your body will change. He will lose interest. But my love is deeper than that, you know that. I will always want you. If he dismisses you, I will gladly wed you; I will be a father to the babe, too.”
She sighed, squeezing his hands in return. She was too tired to argue, to tell him he could not be more wrong. She did not want to say the truth aloud, that Jason would never release her now, even if he did lose interest. That he would never relinquish the rights to his child. So instead, she took the easy way out. “Perhaps so, Andrew. It is good to know how much you care.”
He gave her a sweet, promising smile and released her fingers. “You were going to bed. I will not hinder you. Rest well, my love, and take care of yourself; though I suspect everyone in the house will see that you do. We all love you, Abigail. We are all prepared to share in your joy.”
Share in her joy? How could they all love her, yet not realize this was not a joyous occasion for her? How could they think that bringing a child into this situation could be anything but a curse? But she smiled. “Thank you, my friend. I will see you in the morning.”
She turned into her little room, not bothering with a lamp. She crawled onto her pallet, closed her eyes, and was asleep within minutes.
It did not last long. The floor was too hard for her after spending most of her nights in a soft bed, and her stomach would not settle. She dozed off only to wake again before an hour had passed, then tossed and turned for twice as long again. She waited not so patiently for her internal clock to tell her it was time to rise. When she finally lost patience and dressed for the day, she left her room to find dawn barely streaking the horizon.
She barely made it outside before she lost her dinner from the evening before. Retching, she knew true misery. She was standing outside in the pre-day chill, trying to hold back her hair, knees stinging from when she fell onto the ground with the violence of her sickness, tears streaming unhindered down her face. She was completely alone, only the distant call of a bird telling her a world existed outside of her circle of pain. When her stomach was empty, she struggled to her feet and moved slowly to rinse out her mouth and wash her face. She pressed a hand against the flat of her stomach.