Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
“More salt, Betsy. A good deal more than that — go on, be brave.”
“Your Grace, it will be a salt-lick.”
“He has been on the road for four days and eaten nothing but inn food. Inn food has no salt in it whatsoever.”
Diana leaned over the pot and breathed in. “More.”
Betsy added more, washing her hands of the consequences.
It was not a proper occupation for a duchess and Diana was perfectly aware of it.
Mrs. Fletcher had said as much twice, in the careful voice she used when she disapproved and had no intention of arguing.
The cook had retired to the far end of the kitchen and taken up a position by the window with her arms folded like a woman watching her house burn.
But he was coming home tonight, and Diana had wanted there to be a thing on his table that had come out of her own hands.
In the passage beyond the door, Arabella shrieked with laughter and the puppy went past the doorway at speed with a wooden spoon in its mouth.
“Bella! Not in the kitchen—”
“He took it—”
“Then take it back, and take it back in the garden—”
Diana turned to the fire, and the smell of the pot came up at her. Her stomach turned straight over.
She got as far as the scullery door. When she felt the content of her stomach shooting into her mouth.
“Fetch water. And a cloth — no, the clean one, girl, use your eyes—”
Mrs. Fletcher had her by the elbow before Diana had properly finished being sick and got her upright. They sat her down on the bench by the cold hearth with her head against the stone.
“Diana?” Arabella’s voice went up high. “Diana—”
“I am well, Bella.”
“You are not—”
“I am.” Diana took the cup and drank a little and set it down.
She made herself smile at the three faces ranged round her.
“You are not to look at me like that, any of you. I have felt uneasy in the mornings all this week. I dare say it was the fish on Tuesday. I said at the time the fish was wrong.”
Nobody answered her.
She looked up. Mrs. Fletcher and Betsy were looking at one another over her head.
Betsy gave a small nod.
“Come along, Miss Arabella,” she said briskly, wiping her hands down her apron. “That pot will spoil while we stand about, and His Grace is not to be given a burnt supper on his first night home. You may see to the onions.”
“But Diana is—”
“Go on, dearest.” Diana squeezed her sister’s hand. “Go and be useful. And do not let that animal near the butter again.”
Arabella went, twice looking back.
The kitchen door swung shut.
Mrs. Fletcher sat herself down upon the bench, which she had never in six weeks done in her mistress’s presence, and folded her hands in her lap.
“Your Grace,” she said. “Forgive me. Might I ask you something not fit for a kitchen.”
“You may ask me anything.”
“Your courses.” The old woman said it plainly and without a flicker. “Have you had them?”
“They are due.” Diana turned the cup on her knee. “Soon. Any day. They come late sometimes, they always have, since I was a girl. It has been a busy few days, with Bella and the house and His Grace away, and I have hardly kept count of the—”
She stopped.
Mrs. Fletcher waited.
“I think,” said Mrs. Fletcher, “that you are with child, Your Grace.”
The kitchen went a long way away.
“What?”
“Sick in the mornings and not at night. Off your food this week and no fever with it. Courses gone by.” She was beginning, unmistakably, to beam.
“And you not able to abide the smell of that pot, and it a pot you asked for yourself not a half hour since. I have seen it a great many times in this house and in my own family. I would lay my quarter’s wages on it. ”
“No.” Diana heard her own voice from somewhere outside herself. “No, that is not — it cannot be so soon.”
But it can.
She knew perfectly well that it could. There had been a good deal since the night he had told her they need not have a child.
A great deal more than she had ever imagined there would be, and none of it his doing more than hers; she had gone to him, twice, and had not even had the decency to be ashamed of it afterward.
She had simply not thought that a thing done a handful of times in a handful of days could arrive at this, this quickly, with no more warning than a pot of soup on a Thursday.
“Shall I send for the physician, Your Grace?”
Diana sat with her hands in her lap.
“Yes,” she gasped. “Please.”
He came at four, and was very grave. He asked a number of questions in a low voice with his eyes on the wall out of delicacy. He felt her pulse and asked the same questions again in a different order.
Then he closed his bag.
“I congratulate Your Grace,” he said. “I should say some five weeks. You will want quiet, and beef tea. Also no jolting about in carriages more than you must, and I shall look in again at the month’s end.”
Mrs. Fletcher put both hands over her face and burst into tears. Betsy, standing by the door with her chin up but her eyes were streaming and she did not trouble to wipe them.
And the door opened a foot and a small face came round it.
“Are you having a baby?”
Diana looked at her sister and put on a smile from somewhere and made it hold.
“I suppose I am,” she said, feeling her heart sink.