Harry Turtledove - United States of Atlantis

"Don't tell Stella," Victor said.

"I have not the heart to do any such cruel thing," Meg said. "The truth will come out, though. Sooner or later, it will." She paused. "Did he get a byblow on his harlot?"

"Not so far as I know," Victor answered. "And, so far as I know, he has no notion that I did."

"I wish I had no notion that you did!" Meg exclaimed. Then she hesitated. "Or do I? Is it not better that the truth has come forth?"

"I know not," Victor said, "but I do know how much I wish Monsieur Freycinet had never told me I have a colored son."

"And, surely, you wish even more that he had never told me you were to have a colored child," Meg said. "The one thing you have not said is that you wish you had never used this Louise for your bedstraw. Am I to gather that the reason you have not said it is because it is not true?"

Victor had no idea how to answer that. What man ever regretted doing that which made him a man? He might-he would!- regret discovery. He might-he would!-regret unexpected offspring. But regret lying down with a pretty woman and getting up afterwards with a smile? No, not likely. And yet…

"I wish I had not hurt you by doing what I did," he said-and he meant it all the way down to his toes.

Not that it helped. "You would do better to wish me made of stone, then," his wife said. "I trusted you, Victor. Fool that I was, I did. Now I see I must have been a fool indeed. If you took this Louise on that journey, then you must have taken a Nell or a Joanna or a Sue or an Anne or a Bess or a Kate on all your others. And then you would come home and say how much you missed me!"

He'd feared he was wasting his breath when he insisted he'd fallen from virtue, fallen from fidelity, with Louise alone. How hideously right he'd been! "I always did miss you," he said, and he meant that, too.

"Not enough!" Meg retorted. "Besides, why would you. What did you have from me you could not get for a few shillings from any tavern wench with a hot cleft?"

That shot, like so many of hers, came too close to the center of the target. Unlike some of the others, it wasn't quite a bull's-eye. "What did I have from you? Yourself. With Louise"-Victor still wouldn't admit to any others, no matter how right about them Meg was-"it was a matter of a moment, forgotten as soon as it was over. With you, I always knew we were in harness together so long as we both should live, and I never wanted it any other way. I love you, Meg."

"Forgotten as soon as it was over? She left you something to remember her by, though, didn't she? And nothing but luck she didn't give you the pox to remember her by, too, and for you to bring home to me," Meg said. "You love me, you say? You love me till you ride off far enough so you can see me no more, and then you go your merry way!"

"That is not so," Victor said, painfully aware how likely it was to seem so to a woman who discovered herself scorned.

But Meg was shooting bigger guns. "What is not so? That you love me whilst I am within sight? For beyond doubt you cease to do so once I sink below the horizon. Then the whores rise!"

"I have been away since the beginning of the war," Victor said.

"So you have. And how would you have liked it had I entertained gentlemen callers the way that black bitch entertained you?

Do you suppose I have not been lonely of nights?"

He winced. "I should have liked that not one bit, as you must know. But… it is different for a man, as you also must know."

"Much too well!" Meg said. "Which makes me believe God is truly a man, for were He She we should operate under some other, more equitable, dispensation."

"Whatever you would have me do to show my contrition…"

"Ride south and shoot them both, and that brothel keeper Freycinet with them, and sink all the bodies in the swamp?" his wife suggested.

"I doubt I could escape uncaught," Victor said, which was putting it mildly. "And it is not the baby's fault."

"No. It isn't." Meg started to cry then. "Not his fault he lives and cries and makes messes in his drawers, while all of mine lie in the cold ground. Not his fault at all." The tears ran down her cheeks. "Damn you!"

Victor had wondered if she might let him buy Nicholas and bring the colored boy north for some free colored couple in these parts to raise. He didn't bring it up now-the answer seemed much too obvious. Maybe she would change her mind once her temper, like any tempest, at last receded.

On the other hand, maybe she wouldn't.

When they went upstairs to bed, she said, "If you lay so much as a finger on me, I will scream the house down."

"Meg-"

"I will," she insisted. "Better than you deserve, too." She started crying again. "And if I don't yield myself to you, what will you do? Go out and scatter your seed among more strange women." She eyed him on the stairs. "I could win a bill of divorcement against you. Not much plainer proof of adultery than a child, is there?"

"No," he said, the cold wind of fear blowing in his ears. She could win a divorce. And if she did, he would never be able to hold up his head in polite society again. Wherever he went, he would always be the man who… And, behind his back, he would always be the man with the nigger bastard. Conversation would stop whenever he walked into a room, then pick up again on a different note. How could you go on like that? "I… hope you don't." He forced the words out through stiff lips.

"I don't want to," she answered. "Not only for the scandal's sake, either. I want to love you, Victor. I want you to love me. I want to be able to believe you love me."

"Whatever I can do to bring that about, I will." After a moment, Victor added, "It will be harder if I may not touch you."

"One day, maybe. One night, maybe. Not today. Not tonight," Meg said. "As things are right now, I could not stand it."

"All right," Victor said-he could hardly say anything else. They went up the rest of the stairs together and a million miles apart.

Victor stood by the edge of the pond, eyeing the ducks and geese. They swam toward him, gabbling eagerly-they hoped he would throw them grain. And he did, and smiled to see how eagerly they fed. There were more of them than he'd thought there might be. The farm as a whole was in better shape than he'd expected. Meg had done a splendid job.

And he'd repaid her with a bastard boy. Worse-much worse-she knew it, too.

Blaise ambled up alongside of him. The Negro looked less happy with the world than he had when he was riding up to the farmhouse with Victor a few days before. Victor understood that down to the ground. He was none too happy himself.

Blaise eyed a goose as if he wanted to wring its neck. "Women." he said-a one-word sentence as old as men.

"What's wrong?" Victor asked. Maybe someone else's troubles would help take his mind off his own.

"Some kind of way, Stella done found out about that girl I had, that Roxane, when I went down with you to meet de la Fayette," Blaise answered. "My life's been a misery ever since."

"Oh, dear," Victor said. Even if Blaise didn't, he had a good idea about how that might have happened. His wife might have told him she wouldn't say anything to Stella, but____________________

"Had Meg got wind of you and Louise?" Blaise asked. "Is that why you were biting people's heads off while we besieged Croydon?"

"Was I?" Victor said. "I tried not to."

"You did pretty well most of the time," Blaise said, by which he had to mean Victor hadn't done well enough often enough. He went on, "No wonder you didn't care to talk about it, though. A woman who finds out her man's put it where it don't belong…" He shook his head. "She's trouble."

"I found that out," Victor said. The part of the truth his factotum had grasped was the part that wouldn't get in the way between the two of them. It was also the part that Victor didn't much mind getting out. Meg might say what she would, but only the most censorious condemned a man who slept with other women when he was away from home for years at a stretch. A white man who sired a little black bastard on one of them, though, was much easier to scorn.