Chapter Thirty-Seven:

Seto stepped out of the hired car and looked up at the house in front of him. It was a brick, Colonial-style three-story with a white four-column facade front. The front yard and border of the house was covered in flowers, mostly roses of different shades, and Seto suspected that was Marianne's handiwork.

"Big Brother!"

Mokuba was standing on the porch, waving to him. Seto climbed the front steps and joined him on the porch, ignoring the driver, who had pulled his bag out of the trunk and was following him. Mokuba grinned at him; he had no idea the reason of the visit. Seto had lied and told him he was just making up for missing him in Domino the previous week.

"Hello, Mokuba."

"How are things going?"

"They're fine."

"Um, okay. Well, come on in, I'll show you the house. It's too big, I feel lost in it. I forgot that's how I used to feel when we first moved into the Kaiba mansion."

"Where's Marianne?"

The driver handed off the suitcase to the butler, who turned around and headed upstairs, apparently aware of where he was supposed to put it. Mokuba led Seto towards the living room, which looked more welcoming than the entrance hall. Mokuba settled down on the plush white leather coach and Seto sat across from him in a matching armchair. A big-screen TV was showing an English-rugby game, but Mokuba picked up the remote and shut it off.

"Marianne's fine. Her mother took her shopping. To celebrate."

"Celebrate what?"

Mokuba leaned forward, his grey eyes shining. "She's pregnant!"

Seto blinked, startled. Though he was plenty smart and worldly enough to know what transpired during a two-month-long honeymoon, he hadn't expected this to come up this fast. Somehow he'd have thought they would have waited until they were farther along in their marriage.

"That's great."

"I know, isn't it?! She just found out yesterday, when she went in for a check-up. She's only about nine weeks along, but--"

"Nine weeks?"

Mokuba made a guilty face. "I know, I know. We did the math, too. I got her pregnant before the wedding."

Seto shrugged his shoulders. "You won't hear any recriminations from me. Do you know the gender?"

"No, not yet. The doctor says you won't be able to tell for sure until she's three months along. Right now, Marianne's only buying maternity clothes. We'll go out to buy baby furniture next week sometime."

"A baby, huh."

Mokuba nodded, now looking a tad anxious. "I know! Oh, gods, Seto, I'm already nervous and there's still over thirty weeks left!"

"You'll be fine."

"I hope so. Marianne wants to talk about names and we don't even know what it is yet."

"Then just think of a name for each gender and you'll be set."

Mokuba laughed, shaking his head. "That's you, always prepared for everything. But it's like there's no real preparing for a baby. I mean, when I think about all you've got to do for one--"

"Mokuba, at nine weeks the baby is a peanut. Relax or you'll have a coronary before it even gets here."

Mokuba let out a breath. "I'm just so excited! I think we should have waited a little, but now that's she's pregnant, I just want the baby to get here. It would be great if it was a boy. I'll teach him sports and how to drive a car and he can be a partner in Kaiba Corp."

"He's a peanut, Mokuba," Seto stressed. "Is the mother like this?"

"I'm worse!"

Marianne walked into the living room followed by her mother. She sat down on the couch, took both of Mokuba's hands and kissed him while Mrs. Coltrane sat down primly in the other armchair.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Kaiba."

"Mrs. Coltrane."

"If you think Mokuba is excited, you should get out now while you have the chance," Marianne said, turning to Seto. "I'm already designing the baby's room upstairs. Next door to ours, none of that nanny-raising-the-baby stuff. I'm going to be a hands-on mother, like my mum."

Mrs. Coltrane smiled a little. "Dear, you really should slow down a little, until you know whether it's a boy or a girl. When we had you, your father had so much blue stuff in that bedroom that we just started on a different room when we found out you were a girl."

Marianne giggled. "I know, I know. But it's going to be a boy, I'm sure of it. A mother knows, doesn't she?"

"Not always. I did my share of knitting blue stuff too early." She spoke to the room at large. "I did the silliest thing and tried to determine the gender myself with an old wives' tale. Completely off the mark."

"Well, we did decide one thing for sure," Mokuba said. "If it's a boy, he'll have a Japanese name, if it's a girl, she'll have an English one."

"Like the parents!" Marianne gushed. "And don't call my baby a peanut."

Seto smiled reluctantly. Marianne was the type of woman he usually loathed; always sunny, boisterous, talkative, but he didn't seem to mind her like he did others of her type. He did know that she was a very smart woman and she had her streak of steel, maybe that was why he could stand her.

"Well, dear, I must be getting home," Mrs. Coltrane said, getting up. "It's nearly supper. Ta-ta, honey."

"Good-bye, Mum. Tell Dad I said hi."

"I will. He's already making a trust fund for the baby, that man. Good-bye, Mokuba, Mr. Kaiba."

Mokuba got up to see Mrs. Coltrane out with Marianne and Seto looked around the front room. It was very different than the front room at the Kaiba mansion. Mokuba's touches were in the big-screen TV and the leather upholstery, but Marianne definitely dominated in the color scheme, the flowers on the coffee table, the landscape prints on the walls. He felt very out of place.

"So, Seto, how long are you staying?" Mokuba asked as he and Marianne came back in. "Maybe I can show you what Oxford looks like. And you should see the library at the University. They have more books than you've ever heard of."

Seto wondered if he really should tell Mokuba about Takanawa. He decided against it, at least for the time being. Mokuba was so happy about the news that he was going to be a father that he couldn't bring himself to spoil it with his problems. He just hoped that he hadn't endangered Mokuba's new family by coming here.

"Not long. But I'll let you show me Oxford, I know Marianne won't take no for an answer."

"You've got that right. What do you want for dinner, Seto?"

It was very weird to hear someone other than his brother call him by his given name. "Uh, anything's fine."

"I already told the cook to start on that pot roast recipe you like," Mokuba informed her.

"Oh, aren't you sweet." She put her arms around his neck and kissed him again. "I'm going to go upstairs and start putting the new clothes away. Why don't you two catch up some more. Tell him about our trip!"

She got up and dashed off. Mokuba shook his head. "That woman never walks anywhere. She's going to be at a loss when her stomach is too big for her to run with."

"How was your trip? I received your post card."

"Just the one?"

"The one from Hawaii."

"Oh. Well, you'll see one from Moscow when you get home, I guess. We stopped there for the night at the last minute. She wanted to see the Kremlin."

"How's Russia?"

"Cold. I think it was 15 degrees when we were there. I never thought the forty of here would feel warm."

"Domino was buried in snow when I left."

"Yeah. England's known for it's rain. We started at Oxford on Monday. That school is enormous. I got lost about six times just the first day."

Seto smiled. "You'll get used to it."

"I already am. Marianne's really hitting it off. She found a new friend the second day. She and Joanna and going to London tomorrow for a play or a symphony or something. I don't know, because I'm not going. It's lucky our first week we didn't much homework."

"How's Marianne's pregnancy going to affect her college?"

Mokuba bit his lip. "Yeah, I thought about that, too. Oxford is an uptight, proper kind of school. I don't know how she'll be treated when she's starting to show. That's why I wish we'd waited, but we weren't, you know, thinking. Truthfully, Marianne's just going to be with me. She wants to be a mother and a wife first and foremost and she certainly doesn't need to work. I think she'll probably drop out once she's a little farther along and start focusing more on stuff here. You know we have a racing horse now?"

"No."

"Yeah. Marianne's cousin owns race horses and he gave Marianne a foal as a wedding gift." Mokuba shrugged his shoulders as if to say he didn't understand the unusual gift either. "She saw it a couple of days ago and she's in love with the thing. It's a mare, about three months old. She named it Dancer."

"Of course she did."

"She's not going to have it run. Dancer's going to be her riding horse, I guess."

"Do you have one?" Seto asked in amusement.

"Nope. She's trying to talk me into taking riding lessons with her. But now that's she knows she's pregnant, she's going to have to give up on that. I'm not going to have her risk herself on the back of an animal."

They talked for a while longer and then Marianne came in to announce that supper was ready. Seto and Mokuba got washed up and went in to the table. The dining room was just as impressive as his own at home, only done in blue rather than red. The pot roast was something unlike what Seto was used to, but good in its own way. Marianne pestered him with questions about Japan at that time of year, would he come in to England when the baby came, and what he wanted to do the next day. Mokuba kept sneaking apologetic looks whenever Marianne looked away, but Seto managed to keep his temper. He was just glad Takanawa had not had the gall to try anything.

He hoped that bastard was gone for good. He had no idea whether Takanawa thought the blast had killed them, but when the cops got there and sifted through the wreckage, they wouldn't find any bodies, and that would tip him off. Hopefully the bomb had been one last 'screw you' and Takanawa had taken a well-needed retirement somewhere far away.

tbc…