Rosaline

While Henry and Monique struggled with the great divide in their relationship another relationship was struggling to collapse. Rosaline was yearning to meet her birth father the man who had moulded her into the woman she is. It was easy to fall for the sweet-talking Heinrich but what a fall it was! Heinrich married her for money and Rosaline had recently discovered that he had been milking her father all this while. She was truly ashamed.

Rosaline would sit wondering what it was that made her choose the man she knew to be her uncle. Was it really the realization that Rupert was more a Father to her than a Godfather? Was it the realization that her relationship to her father was submerged more in shame than in honour? Rosaline had stood in front of her father so many times and admitted to him how ashamed she was of being his daughter but Rosaline could never deny the fact that Rupert was the only man in her life that had made her respect herself. She guessed all fathers were supposed to be like that. She always assumed that it was a quality endowed with fatherhood. Rosaline looked at the quite bundle of joy in her arms. Her child had not changed Heinrich much, towards making him a better man. He was as arrogant, as selfish and as reckless as he forever was. Perhaps it was all the differences with her father that had attracted her to him in the first place. Yes, she was attracted to him, like a moth to a flame. Her attraction had started early in a vacation from the school where Uncle Heinrich was paying a visit. Only recently had she learnt that those visits were extortion visits to her father. Rosaline was ashamed that she had supported her husband in tormenting her father again and again. The latest being, in refusing him the privilege of ever being called her father, for she did not wish to carry on, the legacy of shame.

Rosaline was hardly three years old when a young Rupert had picked her up in his arms. The first thing she remembered was to be enveloped in the scent of him. He had this peculiar scent of musk meets sandalwood. She also remembered him smiling and that smile had filled a recently orphaned girl with warmth. From that day her world revolved around Rupert and his revolved around her. Her grandmother who was subdued with arthritis was unable to pay regular visits and when she wanted to go to her she always was never home. It was much later that things about custody became clearer and she found out that her grandmother did not want her custody but it was never clear to her why. It wasn't Heinrich who dropped the bomb on the innocent Rosaline. It was someone at her grandmother's funeral that exclaimed at her death the tragedy of having to witness her family line die at her recently married son. Her father had apparently married her pregnant mother as he was enamoured of her honesty. As a result in a few years time, they were both dead. God in the real world seems to not favour honesty or loyalty or devotion. It appears sometimes that even the all-merciful God does not believe in redemption and second chances. If He did would Rosaline have been orphaned at the age that she was? When a fifteen-year-old Rosaline had confronted her father on the reality of her birth Rupert admitted that she was his own.

Unable to deal with the change in relationship Rosaline had insisted on being put in a boarding school for the remaining days of her education. Her venturing into the outside world had left her scathed and bleeding. The one man she could lean upon was the one man she tried hard to avoid. That avoidance led her to a man opposite to her father in every sense of the term. Rosaline knew Heinrich was a drug dealer and a scum. He did not have an ounce of honesty or loyalty in him. At that point of time, he seemed perfect for her. Why do good girls fall for bad boys? It is the rebel inside every heart that is suppressed more inside a woman than in a man, wanting to break free of the restrictions of society.

When she lost her virginity to him it was her answer to her father for ruining her own mother. If only Rupert had left her mother alone Rosaline would have her grandmother's love, two loving parents and a normal life. Normal is always overrated. We try to be normal, try to blend in with the majority, forgetting the individuality of the human DNA. Rosaline made that mistake more than often. There were times when she would dye her hair the copper brown that her father possessed just to be related to him and then there came a time that she undid all of that just to disassociate herself from him.

Only her mother's doctor knew the reality of her birth. The child that had brought together the couple was lost in the very first month of pregnancy. Madeline and David did not marry because she was too ashamed to bring her child into the world alone. Madeline was too weak to face the loss of her child alone. Crying and despondent she lay on the hospital bed waiting for Rupert to call and say that he forgave her for losing their child. That call never came and David, whose father was a gardener in the Mornington mansion, went down on his knees beside her bed urging her to accept his hand in marriage. If Madeline was the strong woman that dared to love a weaker man she would have said no, waiting for the man who was her life. But Madeline was the weak woman who had taken the first sign of support in the form of Rupert to lean on. In the absence of Rupert, David seemed good enough a support to lean on. Madeline said yes to David and in a week they were married. When the news reached Rupert he was in Switzerland signing forms for a treatment he believed would be beneficial for his dying foster sister. He was right. She lived to receive many such treatments in the course of the next few years and he was always at her side. When Rupert finally could return to his lover's side she was lying in a grave. David, who was also his father's Chauffer, had managed to lose control of his car on a frostbitten night and that resulted in the loss of life for both the driver and his wife. The child at the time stayed with the grandmother who wanted her not. With Mrs Mornington dead and Mr Mornington unwilling to co-operate Rupert had just time enough to take on one more responsibility, a responsibility which according to Rosaline's grandmother was always his.

Rupert never searched for a resemblance or a mark to call Rosaline his own daughter. Rosaline was Madeline's splitting image and having the opportunity to see her with his own eyes was a treat in itself for him. When Rupert found out that Rosaline had eloped he was devastated. No matter how much he tried to appease his restless mind that Rosaline was his daughter and would understand responsibilities like he did he failed. When he found out that Rosaline had eloped with Heinrich he was heartbroken.

The news had already been broken to him that Rosaline was never his daughter in the real terms. The secret which Dr Andrew Williams had hidden in his heart came to light through a DNA report that Frederick Bartoli, the legal and financial advisor of Phoenix group of industries procured to protect itself from Heinrich. To the astonishment of both, Rupert tore the report into pieces before feeding it to the shredder one piece at a time to signify that it meant nothing to him.

Soon after, the extortions resumed. Earlier Rupert's only intentions in humouring Heinrich was to protect his brother, Henry's, peace of mind. Now it was to protect the girl he called his daughter and who resembled the woman he so much loved.

Rosaline was still ignorant of the mystery behind her birth. To her, she still was Rupert Mornington's illegitimate child, the only difference being that she was more proud of her identity as Rosaline Mornington than she ever could be as Mrs Heinrich Monnet.

Rupert had stopped looking for Rosaline. He wanted to give her one assurance that she was his love child and not complete sin. That is what had taken him to India, a proof that he was not born out of wedlock, a hope instilled in him by his dying father. Rosaline did not know that. All she knew was that with her gone out of his life her father was ready to take on a new responsibility. Rosaline knew about the wedding and wished to see her father one last time before he denounced her over his legal and legitimate family. The only hurdle remained that she was locked in a room where Heinrich had kept her and her child imprisoned.