knows it. On the subject of the mill, I would have sided with her. Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that just about the funniest thing you ever heard?” And then she crumpled in her chair, sobbing.
Phillip came to her then, kneeling by the chair and gathering her into his arms. Carolyn neither resisted him nor moved closer to him, and even as he held her, he could sense the loneliness she was feeling.
“It’s all right, darling,” he whispered, stroking her hair gently. “We’ll get through this. Somehow, we’ll put all of this behind us. But you mustn’t even think of leaving me—without you, I’d have nothing.”
“Nothing?” Carolyn echoed. “You’d have your mother, and your daughter, and Hilltop, and all the rest of everything the Sturgesses have always had. You’d hardly miss me at all.”
Phillip groaned silently, and held her closer. “It’s not true, darling. The only thing that matters to me is you. You and our baby.”
Carolyn stiffened in his arms. For that moment—that moment of overwhelming anguish—she’d forgotten about the baby. She drew back slightly, and tipped her face up to look at Phillip. In his eyes, she could see his love for her, and she felt a glimmer of hope.
“You do love me, don’t you?” she asked, the need for his reassurance gripping her once more.
“More than anything,” Phillip replied.
“And the baby? You really do want the baby? You haven’t just been saying that for my sake?”
Phillip smiled fondly at her. “How could I not want the baby?” he asked. “It’s going to be our baby. Ours! It won’t be anything anyone can use to try to drive us apart. In fact, it might even help. It will be Mother’s grandson, and she’ll fall in love with him the moment he’s born.”
Deep in Carolyn’s mind, a warning sounded. “Son?” she asked. “What makes you so sure it will be a boy?”
“What else can it be?” Phillip asked. He was grinning broadly now, the crisis behind him. “I’ve already got a daughter, and so have you. And I need a son. After all, if it’s not a boy, who will there be to carry on the Sturgess line?”
The Sturgess line.
The phrase echoed in Carolyn’s mind. She tried to tell herself that he hadn’t meant anything by it, that he’d meant it as a joke. But deep inside, the warning sounded stronger.
He wants an heir. He wants a boy, to name after himself, and to raise in his own image. Abigail’s right. He’s a Sturgess, and I mustn’t ever forget it.
“And what if it’s a girl?” she asked, careful to keep her tone as lightly bantering as his had been.
“Then I’ll spoil her,” Phillip assured her. “I’ll give her everything she wants, and treat her like the princess she’ll be, and she’ll be the happiest little girl who ever lived.”
But she’ll be a girl, Carolyn said to herself. And to the Sturgesses, girls just aren’t quite as good. Nice to have around, but just not quite as good.
She kissed Phillip on the cheek, and stood up. “Well,” she said as blithely as possible, “I shall certainly do my best to produce a boy for you. But if I fail,” she added, “it will be your own fault. As I understand it, the gene that determines sex comes directly from the father. If the Sturgesses want boys, their chromosomes better be able to handle it.”
Phillip nodded affably, and his eyes once again took on the gentleness that Carolyn had fallen in love with. There wasn’t a trace left of the cold anger with which he had told his mother that she was little more than a guest in her own home. “And what about the mill?” he asked. “Are you really planning to form some kind of unholy alliance with my mother?”
Carolyn hesitated, then shook her head. “I suppose not,” she said. “For one thing, in their own way, my reasons for keeping it closed are just as superstitious as hers. And I have a feeling that she’d change her position before accepting support from me anyway. So I’ll just stay out of it, bite my tongue, and hope for the best.”
But as she slowly climbed the stairs and started toward the master suite at the end of the hall, Carolyn wondered, once more, what the best would be. Perhaps, indeed, she had been right in her hysterical outburst, and the marriage—no matter how much she and Phillip loved each other—was doomed to failure already.