Lady in Rags

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Promise Me

"You're pregnant," Richard repeated.

The colour drained from the woman's face. By degrees of her ankles and knees and elbows, she folded up on herself, until she was only a flood of scarlet silk and white flesh upon the floor.

She had fainted.

Cursing, he flew to her side – as quickly as a lame man with crooked knees and uneven legs can fly. Her lips were moving faintly, though no sound came from them.

"Miss Baker? Miss Baker?" He pressed a gloved hand hesitantly to her cheek.

She did not respond.

He was too small and weak to raise her on his own, and even if he hadn't been, there was nowhere for a fainting woman to lie. There was no couch, not even an armed chair. He had some confused idea of smelling salts: looking around, he saw the half-empty bottles of brandy on the mantelpiece. His confused idea solidified. He pulled himself to his feet and hobbled to the fireplace and back, with one of the bottles in hand. Down by her side, he uncorked the bottle and pressed it helplessly to her lips. A moment later, she spluttered and coughed, and her eyes blearily opened.

"Just lie there for a moment. You fainted."

He got back to his feet and sunk in the nearest chair with his legs splayed out in front of him, to ease the aches that had risen to his knees with the effort of squatting and rising. His boots almost touched her skirts where she lay on the floor, still coughing brandy from her throat. He took a surreptitious sip from the bottle himself, and grimaced as he swallowed. It was sour as vinegar.

Eventually, she swayed to her feet, and waved him back when he made to rise.

"Stay there."

He stayed. She went out to the kitchen, and then the garden beyond. When she did not come back after a quarter of an hour, a spike of unfamiliar concern assailed him, and he hobbled swiftly in her footsteps.

She had not fainted again. She was sitting forlornly on the edge of the well in the miserable, weed-strewn yard that lay behind the cottage.

"Can you get me some water?" she asked, not looking at him.

There was no real pulley, only a bucket on a rope. He lowered it, until he heard the splash, and dragged it back up again, his muscles protesting. She drank heedlessly from her cupped hands, and when she was finished, splashed her face and gasped.

"Better?"

"Better." Her chest was heaving in and out. Some droplets of water, spilled on her breast, danced with the movement. He bent over to fetch the cover for the well and drag his eyes away from her, hoping she had not caught him looking. "How did you know?"

Until that moment, he hadn't. It had only been a suspicion, driven by some jealous intuition of his own. Confirmed, he felt a spasm of unidentifiable emotion. His hands shook as he slid the well cover back into place. He forced them to relax, and sat down next to her.

"Intuition," he said flatly. "You were so proud – I knew you were keeping something secret, and what else does a woman in your position have, to keep secret?"

She gave an unpleasant cackle of laughter. "I won't be able to keep it secret much longer."

Richard wished he had never come to confront her with his suspicion. It would have been better to leave, unknowing. But he had a strong instinct towards clannishness, and it was Neil's child she was carrying. In his mind, it was more Neil's child, an Armiger child, than it was hers. And that made it his secret, as well as hers.