“What makes you say that?”
“I overheard my mother saying—” Rose’s voice cracked. Neither of them spoke as Rose’s mind raced through all the times in her life that she had felt like an outsider in her own home. She didn’t look like anyone else in the family. No one ever compared her to an aunt or cousin as they did her younger sisters. Why had Rose never thought of it before? She didn’t belong to them—and her mother didn’t want her and resented everything she had ever done for her.
“Did you know?” Rose demanded.
“How could I know? What did you hear?”
Was it Rose’s imagination, or had Frau Geruscha’s face grown ashen?
“My mother said I wasn’t their daughter.” Rose stared at the stone floor. “She doesn’t love me…never loved me.”
Frau Geruscha said nothing.
Rose rubbed angrily at the tears in her eyes. If she was not Thomas Roemer’s daughter, then who was she? The illegitimate child of a prostitute? The orphan of someone who had succumbed to the Great Pestilence? It must have been an indigent family, since she had been pushed off on a poor woodcutter. And they didn’t want me, either.
Rose ran up to her room.
For four days Rose thought constantly about her mother’s words. Her father wasn’t her father, her siblings weren’t her siblings, and her mother wasn’t her mother and had never wanted her. She felt unloved, a castoff, an orphan. Even as a baby, had she been so unworthy of love? She couldn’t bear the questions inside her, and she decided to confront her father with what she had learned.
Rose headed out with Wolfie into the forest. She inquired about her father’s whereabouts from another woodcutter and his son. She found him not far away, chopping steadily at a large beech tree.
“Father? May I speak with you?”
He looked up. “Of course, Rose.” He placed the ax head on the ground and leaned on the handle. “Your mother sent you a message four nights ago saying she wanted to talk to you. Have you been well? We haven’t heard from you.”
Rose took a deep breath. “Father, I know I’m not your daughter. I want to know who my parents are and how you came to raise me. And why did you never tell me?”
A flicker of pain had crossed his face as Rose spoke. When she finished, he sighed. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to know. I wanted you to always be my daughter. And you are my daughter, just as much as my other children.”
“But Mother doesn’t feel that way, does she?”
He gave her a disapproving look. As always, certain topics were forbidden. One shouldn’t even think about them, and to talk about them was worse.
Rose felt the tears gathering behind her eyes. But she didn’t care. She was determined to say what she had come to say, even if she had to choke the words out.
“I know what my mother wants. She wants me to marry a man who will improve her children’s status and prospects.” Angry tears spilled down her cheeks. “But you can tell her I’m not interested in anyone she tries to foist me off on.”
“Now, Rose, that’s disrespectful and you know it. She raised you from a baby—”
“Who were my real mother and father? I think I have a right to know that, at least.”
Thomas shook his head. “I know not.” Rose waited, but he said nothing more.
“Why don’t you know? Did you find me on the road? In the woods? Under a chicken coop?”
He gave Rose another severe look. “No, but it doesn’t matter, Rose. You needed a home and I was happy to take you in. Your mother and I both were. We thought she was barren.”
“So when she discovered she was with child, she began to wish she hadn’t taken me.” The tears came faster.
“Rose!”
The emotion in her chest rose higher and higher. If she had to listen to one more of his unsatisfying answers, to his scolding tone and see his disapproving look, she would explode. She had to be alone, to sob out the huge weight in her chest. She turned to go.
“Rose, wait.”
Rose shook her head and ran.
A few mornings later, in Frau Geruscha’s chambers, Lord Rupert stopped talking and looked annoyed. “What’s the matter, Rose? Are you ill?”
“No.” Rose gave him a smile. “I’m sorry. Only having a little trouble with my mother. It’s nothing. Go ahead and tell me about your hunting trip.”
“There is something else I need to discuss with you.” He lowered his voice. A glimmer of excitement shone in his eyes, and something she’d never seen before. Was it nervousness? She hadn’t known he was capable of the emotion.
“Rose, you know by now that I love you,” he whispered. He leaned close to her ear, keeping an eye on the storage room where Frau Geruscha was working. “I need to talk to you. Can you meet me later?”
“Later?”