Chapter 17 #2
Fleur gave Mary the prod she needed to complete her thought. “It is…?”
“You have not had your courses since Lord and Lady Rutland’s masquerade.”
Mary’s voice was so whispery soft that Fleur could hardly hear. When she did, it took a moment for the words to register. When they did, Fleur still couldn’t process.
“Yes, I have.”
Her maid captured Fleur’s hands this time, returning the sympathetic gesture. “You have had blood, but not…your full courses.”
Fleur drew back, her mind working to tabulate the days and months. Since she had begun them, they were never predictable…but…
A pit formed in her stomach.
“You know, I do not always have them monthly. I go months without,” she reminded, deriving comfort in the assurances she gave both of them. Because if Mary thought logically and they together reasoned away the horror her maid was raising, then they could both be free of it.
“Oh, my lady. This is not your fault. So many, too many, good women have suffered at the hands of a cad.”
Panic throbbed throughout her chest. “What is not my fault?” The reedy quality of her voice, she didn’t recognize. “I don’t…” But she knew what the older woman was saying, without having said it explicitly.
“You have also been suffering from stomach upset and exhaustion and…tears.”
“Tears,” she repeated blankly.
Then words came rushing in like river rapids over stones stuck in place.
“…Since when did you become a weepy female?” Henry demanded. “Never mind. I don’t care. Just stop.”
“…I am not a weepy female…”
With slow, sickening dread sinking in, she looked at the window, drew the curtain back, and stared at Rundell and Bridge’s.
She recalled her last time here when she moved between shrieking like a banshee and weeping like a ninny. She’d had absolutely no idea why.
Even playing with the prisms shooting off her fingertips had brought tears to her eyes.
Then last night, when she’d sobbed copiously against Lord Cassian’s shoulder and then, as if she hadn’t cried enough for two lifetimes, she did so in Henry’s arms.
“… The drying up a single tear has more / Of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore…something about you makes me a watering pot…” Fleur had told him.
Instead of mocking, he had soothed her.
“… If I laugh at any mortal thing, ’Tis that I may not weep…”
A droning filled her ears.
“And your gowns, Lady Fleur,” Mary whispered softly.
No. No. No.
“I’ve had to…”
Fleur clamped her hands over her ears. “Mm. Mmmmmm,” she hummed, to drown out what she didn’t need to hear. They were words she herself had thought as recently as last night.
Lady Angela was lithe and willowy, unlike me, whose dresses had recently needed letting out…
Her body went slick with sweat, and then a vicious chill cut through her.
“Let my gowns out,” Fleur rasped. “Oh, my God.” A tremble started at Fleur’s toes and rapidly worked her entire body; frozen on the inside out, she shook, her teeth chattering.
Bile climbed Fleur’s throat. She swallowed convulsively. “Oh, God. Oh, Gooood.” Her plea became a prayer, then a moan.
“Oh, my lady.” Mary made soothing sounds and gently guided Fleur forward until her head was at her knees. “Breathe slow. It is going to be all right.”
Except they both knew Mary wasn’t being truthful. That a young lady of the Ton, nay, any young lady who was foolish enough to get a babe in her belly had no future that awaited her. Not a good one, anyway.
“Your family will care for you,” Mary said entreatingly. “They will stand by you.”
Fleur buried her face in her hands. Of course they would. They were McQuoids. But this involved more than just her. “My cousins. My nieces and nephews. Nothing will be all r-right,” she whimpered. “Not for anyone.” I’ve ruined them all!
Mary firmly but gently forced Fleur’s fingers to her lap. Holding on, she gave them a little shake.
“I will stand by you, my lady. If that means we go away until the babe is born. There, you can write your own story. We stay somewhere, in Scotland or someplace else, as long as you need. You can become a widow…and then eventually return…”
The ease and calmness with which Mary spoke indicated this plan had been something the treasured servant had been considering all these months. Fleur had carried on blissfully ignorant, believing the greatest struggle was not knowing her lover’s identity.
Never imagining the worst had happened that night, and she was carrying the seeds of her own reckless mistake inside her.
Fleur touched her hands to her belly, which used to be so flat, but now was slightly curved.
A babe…
Who wouldn’t have a father…
The sound of an ensnared, tortured animal filled the carriage before Fleur realized it was her. She was the trapped, tortured animal.
“Let us get you home, Lady Fleur. We will handle this and return another day.”
“This can’t be sorted, Mary!” she cried. “This isn’t the spillikins or fallen blocks or mess of soldiers I played with as a child. This is…This is…” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “A child.”
Something in saying that cemented the reality of her circumstance in her mind. Her stomach curdled with dread. Or was this part of the constant nausea she’d suffered for months?
Fleur lifted anguished eyes to her former nursemaid, now maid. “I am sorry to lose my patience—”
Mary interrupted with a tenderness Fleur didn’t deserve. “None of that now. You’re within your rights, lass. We have to take this moment by moment. Tell me what you want me to do in this one.”
Her head pounding, Fleur looked outside at Rundell and Bridge’s. This entire ride, Fleur hadn’t wanted to go inside and learn her lover’s identity. Now, she had no choice. She had to. Because that mystery gentleman from a masquerade wasn’t merely a mistake, he was the father of her child.
Fleur didn’t remember how she got down from the carriage, or if she walked alone, or how she got inside Rundell and Bridge’s. Who held the door? Did someone, or did she let herself in and enter Mr. Rundell’s office uninvited?
He sat at his messy desk and stood when he saw her. He wore a smile. The notorious shopkeeper’s smile made no sense because crotchety Mr. Rundell hated her as he hated everyone.
Fleur’s vision began to tunnel.
None of it mattered.
Her life was over. She carried a bairn in her belly. A wee human.
Unlike Fleur’s sisters, brothers, and cousins, Fleur wouldn’t have the benefit of marriage.
Fleur’s legs gave out, and Mr. Rundell was helping her into her seat.
But then something happened. Something normal.
The surly goldsmith cursed.
“If you toss your biscuits on all my things, after all the work I’ve done for you, I’m going to be peeved, Lady Fleur.”
Blinking several times, Fleur found Mr. Rundell hovering over her. The gentleness in his rheumy eyes belied the sharpness of his tone.
This was the closest she suspected the notorious goldsmith came to compassion and warmth and that he bestowed it on her…?
She found a small smile. It proved short-lived.
A fresh onslaught of tears threatened.
Mr. Rundell shoved a dusty kerchief into her open hand. “Be warned, I draw the line at crying, chit. If you weep, I’ll toss you out myself.”
“I understand, Mr. Rundell.”
These blasted tears. Would they not cease?
“Before you get yourself shown the door, permit me to return your piece to you.” He placed a mahogany jewelry casket in front of Fleur.
Fleur stared at the box for a long, long time. How was it possible that she collected the case, that her fingers stayed steady? She popped the box open, not sure why the gentleman’s name didn’t pop out. It felt like she should know. Because she should know.
In a land where she had behaved as a proper lady, the ancient signet she stared at would belong to the son she even now carried. Or was it a daughter?
Was the life of a bastard worse for a lass or lad? Or were their fates equally cold and cruel?
Fleur had to clear her throat several times. “A-And y-you i-indicated you know whose it is?” she said, unable to take her stare from the piece.
“I do.” Mr. Rundell grunted. “And you do too.”
You do too…
Did that mean he knew about that night? Which would mean the gentleman whom she had…the man whose child she carried. She cringed. What did that say about him? What did that say about her future, her child’s future, and…?
This was a glimpse of what her life would be like… Fleur would be damned if she let anyone make her feel small.
She squared her shoulders. “Why did you not return it to him?”
“Thought you would want to do it yourself,” he said, checking his timepiece. “With him being a friend of yours.”
Her head swimming, Fleur stared blankly at him. What was he saying? Everything was unclear. Nothing would be clear ever again. “That…friend?”
“The Duke of Hartwell.”
Mr. Rundell’s voice came from down a long tunnel.
She relived the masquerade in her mind.
Her lover, as he’d caressed her, had made her body sing.
“…There is no instinct like that of the heart…”
His low, husky baritone as he uttered Byron’s Don Juan softly into her ear.
And then, who had appeared at Lord Chilton’s auction to bid on Don Juan?
The Duke of Hartwell, who despised the McQuoids.
“…The McQuoids are vulgar and crude…”
Hartwell had always made it clear what he thought of Fleur.
“…As if I would ever court you…”
Hart, who would resent her forever if he learned she was the lady from the masquerade.
“Time and time again, you go out of your way to make a mockery of me, my name, my title.”
And if forced to marry Fleur, he would hate her forever.
For Henry, whom she had to bully into friendship, had already and effortlessly selected a paragon to be his duchess.
That was the last thought Fleur had before she fainted.