by Risu-chan
For one brief, completely sleep-hazed moment, I was eight years old again, sitting at home with my family, and my mother was stroking my hair. It was quite disorienting to have each of the pieces fall back into place: no, there had been a decade and more since then, and I was to be a doctor -- no, the fire; my family -- Master Cain...
Master Cain was stroking my hair, softly, quietly, with a touch almost as light as the sun shining through the window.
"Good morning," he said. "Much as it astonishes me, you were quite soundly asleep..."
"...Good morning, sir. I'm sorry, I--"
He put his hand more firmly on my shoulder when I tried to move.
"Careful, you're--"
Then, for a moment, all the world went white with pain; I bit down hard on a very undignified whimper, and felt his hands again, rueful and very gentle as he found the knotted spasming muscles in my throat and shoulder.
"...going to have a hellish crick in your neck," he finished with a sigh, rubbing with great care, but just then everything hurt. "I take back what I said. You have no business being a doctor if you're this great a fool."
When I could breathe again, and very, very gingerly sat up straight to return my head to something approximating the proper angle, I wheezed, "Then you'll have to keep me after all, won't you."
"No help for it, I suppose..." He watched me for a moment, with his head tilted to one side, and then reached over to touch my hair again. "You're rumpled. I didn't know you could be rumpled."
"You needn't sound as though it were the eighth wonder of the world, sir," I said, rather tartly, still trying to find out what actually was the correct alignment of my head.
Master Cain chuckled, and reached over to his desk for a comb. I was still too stiff to move, so I surrendered to his ministrations, because it would have hurt too much just then if I had tried to object that he was not to serve his servant.
He had a scientist's hands, deft and precise and gentle. "You really are an idiot, you know," he said, as he tried to salvage the mess of my hair. "You didn't have to go to that length to teach me a lesson; I'm not that slow on the uptake."
"What was your lesson, then, sir?" I asked.
He rapped the comb against my head lightly, and tossed it back onto the desk. "You will give me anything I ask for, whether or not you should," he said. "So I must learn to be more careful in what I ask of you."
"That was not the lesson I had in mind, sir."
"Would you not?" he asked, gazing at me steadily; the sun glancing through his golden eyes made it look as though they were lit from within by some hidden fire. "Did you not? I asked you not to leave; you took that much too literally, and I am quite certain it was on purpose. Would you not give me anything I asked of you?"
"You already know that I would, sir," I replied quietly.
"And so I must learn to be much more careful in what I ask." He shifted a little, and made a face. "My leg is completely asleep too..."
I took a breath to try again, to try to guide him toward realizing for himself what I had intended to offer him with the reminder of presence and concern; but just then the housekeeper knocked at the partially-open door perfunctorially, and walked in with a tray, and gave me a particular glare for not seeing to it that the usual order was kept. In her world, people slept in beds on schedule, and woke and dressed on schedule, so that they would arrive for breakfast on schedule; and crises of the soul should be scheduled so that they would not interfere with breakfast.
Perhaps that observation was unfair of me; or perhaps the housekeeper simply had less patience than I with crises of the soul, which, to be fair to her, were an all-too-frequent event in this house. In any case, the opportunity had been lost, and so I sighed a bit and stood to resume my place and my duties as a servant.
One of my duties for the day was to go and assist Althea with moving to the cottage at the edge of the woods; it surprised me when Master Cain blithely followed me out to the stables.
"Sir, I'm going back to Miss Althea's camp."
"Of course you are," Master Cain said. "And, of course, I'm going with you."
"Sir...?"
"There are already half a hundred whispered rumors about me, but you are quite an upstanding citizen," he said. "If you were to be seen settling a pregnant woman in a house off away from the village, they might begin to whisper about you; whereas I could hardly care less what else is whispered about me. I dare say it would be no stranger than the truth, at that. So." He pulled on his riding-gloves, and grinned up at me. "Shall we be off to add grist to the rumor mill?"
"Sir, I... we... Miss Althea and I -- we were also to go to the market, to buy clothes more suitable for -- for her condition's continuing increase, and for the baby..."
"So? The last time I checked, no one had issued a ban prohibiting me from entering the place."
The image in my mind of Master Cain selecting a woman's maternity dress was rather appalling, since it involved the application of his own preferences in outer garments to something feminine, and since his own criteria for selecting outer garments seemed to include only two: "black" and "sturdily woven so as to turn a casual thrust of a knife."
Although he had displayed more suitable taste in frills and lace when shopping for Miss Merry, he tended to dress Miss Merry as a type of large doll; for another adult, I was concerned that he might be -- to put it delicately -- overly practical-minded. The image of Althea's reaction to Master Cain's preferences was just as vivid and uncomfortable.
I opened my mouth, closed it, reconsidered what I had been about to say, reconsidered again, and finally managed, "I had thought you might find it rather dull, sir."
"Since there are no toxins readily for sale, you mean?" he asked, with a brow quirked sardonically.
"That will do for a reason, yes," I said, perhaps sounding a bit too relieved that he'd found for himself a different reason why I might hesitate.
He looked at me for a long minute; I bit the inside of my lip hard and worked on keeping my face straight.
"Well, then if there are no toxins for sale," he said, "I shall simply need to be more creative to entertain myself, shan't I. Come on, if you're still planning to come."
Althea was just as startled as I had been, but since she knew him less well, she had fewer reasons to be concerned. All that concerned her was the carriage which would take us to town, and finding a way to settle herself less uncomfortably in it. Her face and hands were slender; it was apparent that she was far from accustomed to carrying such girth, and so roundly thrust forward.
I took care to steady her as she stepped down from the carriage, because her balance was clearly affected by the weight and prominence of her enlarging womb.
"Thank you, ox," she said, with a challenging glitter in her dark eyes.
I sighed to myself, and said gravely, "You're welcome, wench."
Althea laughed and slapped my arm. "So: the ox hasn't been gelded after all. I like that." To Master Cain, she said, "You like your pets feisty, young master witch-boy?"
"I like my pets well-behaved," he replied, dry as winter ice. "With you, I can see that there is quite a bit of domestication still to be done. The last man to master you was rather lax."
She bristled at that, and then realized it was exactly what he had intended. Irritated both with him and with herself, she jerked away from the support of my arm and stalked up the road toward the market.
Grinning darkly to himself, Master Cain followed; so did I, completely at a loss for what else to do. I could hardly speak to him about misbehavior, let alone for a well-deserved comeback to deliberate baiting. On the other hand, asking her to mend her behavior would be like asking a thistle to come up velvet instead of prickles: both a waste of breath and completely unnatural.
So I resigned myself to a highly spiced afternoon of shopping. If nothing else, I could console myself with the thought that Master Cain was hardly likely to find himself bored.
* * *
The first order of business was finding Althea some clothing better suited to her condition, and to its further advancement. Despite her best attempts at concealing it, Master Cain and I had noticed why she wore a shawl about her shoulders: not because of a chill, but because she'd torn a strip out of her skirt and patched it into the back of her bodice, in order to try to close the gap caused by her changing figure.
As I held open the door of the shop he'd chosen, I couldn't help myself. "Please, sir," I said, "no black."
"There's nothing wrong with black," he said, somewhat irritably.
"But for-- for a woman, in such a state--"
"Whyever not?" he asked, clearly baiting me now. "I've been told that black is slimming."
"Sir--" My next recourse was going to be begging, and I hesitated to do so in the middle of the street, under the eyes of a dozen passers-by and the ever-sarcastic Althea. "Sir, please..."
"Yes, yes, fine. Trust me."
And so I trusted him... largely because, when it came down to it, there was nothing else I could do but trust him, watch, and pray the scene didn't become too bloody.
Much to my relief, Master Cain showed better taste in women's garments than I had been afraid he might; but to my dismay, Althea's taste was somewhat less tasteful than his. To my further dismay, Master Cain had no hesitation in debating with her on any point she cared to choose.
Althea kept trying to pull him toward clothing that might have fit her a year ago, but could never fit her as she was then; aside from her rather hopeless yearnings for dresses with tiny corseted waists, she was also drawn to bright floral patterns touched with painted glints of gold and silver.
"You're buying clothes, woman, not upholstery for a throw-pillow," Master Cain said, and reached toward a different sort of dress entirely.
Much to my relief, it wasn't black; it was a solid dark wine color which would set off her complexion quite nicely. And it was of an old-fashioned cut, likely considered outmoded these days; but the high empire-waisted design left room in front for a certain roundness to increase.
Since it was neither floral and gaudy with gilt nor designed for a woman with an eighteen-inch waistline, Althea was bitterly disappointed, and stalked off to look further.
After much searching and much vocal debate, they came up with three candidates. One of them had a plunging neckline and sharply pointed waistline and a gold-tipped rose petal print, simply because she insisted, and Master Cain rather bluntly informed her the waistline would have to be removed or raised half a foot in order for the dress even to approximate lacing closed over her abdomen.
Another was his burgundy-colored, empire-waisted selection, simply because he insisted; Althea just as bluntly informed him that she had no desire to go about dressed like an accident with a bulging winesack.
The third was of a solid, pale green fabric, thickly embroidered with flowers about the collar, but cut in the old high-waisted fashion, and with an inset of lace at the throat which covered more than she wished to cover; I silently prayed that that one would fit, because it was as close as they had been able to come to a compromise, and I dreaded the thought of beginning the search anew at the next store up the road.
The shop-girl showed Althea to a private alcove in the back of the store to assist her with trying them on for their fit. From her expression, I suspected she also felt as though she ought to do anything short of tearing a hole in the back in order to get that one to fit, and to get us out of her shop.
The argument was distantly audible, or at least Althea's half of it was; but it seemed that the rose-gilt dress truly couldn't have its seams let out sufficiently to permit one in her condition to wear it. The burgundy one might have fit, if she hadn't loudly refused to set foot in it. So, a few minutes later, they re-emerged, with the shop-girl looking rather battle-haggard and Althea stubbornly holding her chin up, in the spring-green dress with the embroidery. What clearly dismayed her the most was that the drape of the dress fell against her enlarged abdomen so that her roundness was still made visible, and so she was determined to find something else to criticize.
Tugging at the neckline of the bodice, she complained, "Can't you take off the lace? If I've got to put up with aching like an unmilked cow, at least let me get some use out of showing off the cleavage!"
"No one puts lace around a cow's udders," Master Cain retorted crisply. "Even if you have no intention of behaving like a lady, I expect to dress you like one." And he reached over and tugged the neckline back up into place.
She slapped his hand; his eyes narrowed, and he slapped hers right back.
The shopkeeper's eyes were enormous. She looked up at me with question marks floating in her pupils; with my face burning, I said, "I think I'll wait outside."
I had only managed two steps toward the door when Master Cain reached over and hooked the handle of his cane under my collar to keep me still.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"I... er... it's rather a small shop, sir... and... I thought... a little more space... perhaps...?"
He simply looked at me, with the imperious, unwavering stare of a hawk.
Defeated, I mumbled, "I suppose I'll just sit over there, then..."
While his attention was elsewhere, Althea had been readjusting the collar of the dress. He turned around, and noticed, and his eyes narrowed again. This time, rather than touching her, he took a step forward and tilted his head down a bit, to fix his scalding gaze on her deliberate display; his eyes glittered bright in the half-shadows in the shop, as hotly gold as molten steel.
The battle of wills lasted longer this time, because Althea didn't have to deal with his gaze so directly. It was the poor shopkeeper whose nerve broke first; she fled around to the back of her counter, and busied herself in looking for something.
Master Cain turned the focus of his irritation on her, for disrupting his silent lesson; Althea made a disdainful sound -- and surreptitiously tugged the bodice up a little, while he wasn't looking, letting her palm rest against her bare skin for a moment, as though the scalding he had given were almost physical.
I pitied the poor shopkeeper, who kept her head and shoulders buried in the shelves under the counter as she said in a wavering voice, "A corset -- we should find a more proper maternity corset; one must support the, er, the middle, and constrain it, so that one doesn't permit too great an increase..."
"No," I said, startled despite myself; she hit her head on the shelf when she flinched, and then backed out, and then I had all three of them staring at me, which was quite uncomfortable. "Your pardon, please, but -- no, you mustn't. I mean... I understand the fashion, but please, for the child's sake -- you mustn't bind her abdomen. I've seen too many children who were born with their bones twisted before birth--"
"Nonsense," the shopkeeper said, a little light-headed with the relief of being freed from Master Cain's regard. "Everyone says that it is far more dangerous to permit the middle area to grow without restraint, and of course anyone of sensitivity would be ashamed to be seen in such a state..."
"Which 'everyone' says this?" Master Cain asked, far too softly for my comfort; he hadn't yet found a sufficient target for his pent-up irritation. "Couturiers and seamstresses, and the most fashionable people, one would presume?"
"Yes, of course..."
"And doctors?"
"Doctors...?" She blinked a little. "What would doctors know of dressmaking?"
"I see." He scrawled his signature onto a cheque, flung it onto the counter, and took Althea's arm firmly. "Thank you for your time and services, madam; we've decided upon the one she's wearing at the moment."
"Let go of me, you--"
"But the lady's corset--"
Master Cain's suggestion as to what could best be done with the corset in question was sufficiently unprintable as to shock even Althea into a few moments' silence -- not many, of course, but enough to get her out of the shop still mute and staring at him in bemusement.
He was in a considerably improved humor after that; he steered Althea into a store where we'd often bought clothing for Miss Merry, and turned her loose with a comment about cows in china shops that got her temper up. She poured a torrent of creatively-worded abuse on his head; he took sly delight in baiting her into verbal duels which, in my estimation, he clearly won through finesse, although in several instances she fancied herself the victor because she hadn't understood his highly-educated and rapier-sharp use of the language.
It amused him to run her through her full repertoire of insults, curses, and berations, which was quite a bit more extensive than the rest of her vocabulary; he corrected her grammar upon more than one occasion, which inevitably produced another spate of invective -- with both mockingly improved grammar and considerably greater heat.
Two shops, several children's garments, and a cradle later, I was quite bemused to realize that she had begun to enjoy herself just as much as he had. Althea started a debate with him over how profanity held its weight better when delivered as a natural speaker would, and too much education and grammar simply made one sound as though one didn't know how to swear properly. His attempted linguistic analysis of the best way to structure a string of profanity was met by a fluent example that frankly defied any analysis.
I began to have concerns that by the end of the day, Master Cain would have decided either to kill her or to propose marriage to her. I was uncertain which prospect unnerved me more deeply.
I saw to securing the cradle to the carriage, because Master Cain's injured arm would have protested the treatment, and Althea was panting for breath after a particularly virulent round of insults. Her fatigue came from more than the ongoing tete-a-tete, though; we had walked quite a way, more quickly than we might have otherwise because of the heat of their argument. She was leaning heavily on the frame of the carriage, although sheer stubborn pride had egged her on to that point; I was certain that the same pride would cause her to laugh off any suggestion that we might rest for her sake.
"Master Cain," I called, "could you hold something still for me for a moment?"
"What?" he asked, coming around to the end of the carriage.
Much more quietly, I said, "Miss Althea, actually." I knocked my knuckles against the carriage so as to sound occupied for her.
Master Cain looked over at her again, more sharply this time; his eyes widened for a moment when he realized that her breathless, frustrated exhaustion was due to more than a lost battle of words. "Why didn't that stupid woman say something?"
"Would you have admitted to weakness in front of a rival, sir?"
"That's different!" A moment later, he sighed, and said, "No, it's not different, is it... Fine." And he marched back around the edge of the carriage, opened the door, and pushed her toward it firmly.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"Lunch," he said. "Unless, of course, you'd prefer we eat without you?"
Althea caught up a handful of skirts and scrambled with ungainly haste into the carriage.
* * *
Sheer determination had kept Althea moving all morning, but when given the opportunity to rest, the last of her strength was draining out of her faster than she would ever have wished to admit. She clung to my arm as I escorted her into a local inn which kept a private dining room for the members of the Hargreaves family and their guests; I was careful not to let go of her until she was properly seated on the padded bench along the wall, because it seemed unlikely that her knees would still support her unaided.
Her eyes lit desperately at the sight of a warm loaf of bread waiting on the table; she tore into it without even waiting for me to slice it, and shoved a handful of it into her mouth; then she sagged back to lean against the wall, blinking at tears of frustration.
"Miss Althea...?"
"I'm... so... I'm so tired of being tired...! I'm -- damn it -- this would have been nothing to me, last year, but now I'm so--" She stopped, and gulped hard, and choked, "I'm so heavy, so grotesque, how can you even bear to look at me...? Big as some bloated cow and so damned weak, and so tired...!"
She put the bread down and slumped forward over the table, burying her face in both hands, shaking with the effort to keep her tears silent, so as not to admit anything more in front of Master Cain and his sardonic golden eyes.
There was only a soft murmur of fabric to warn me of motion; then Master Cain sat next to her, and gathered her into his arms quietly, and let her rest her weight against him as she sobbed.
"I should have noticed sooner that I had pushed you past your strength as well as your temper," he murmured. "But also, you should have told me of your exhaustion, rather than driving yourself so much too far. So both of us have a fault to mend, I think."
"Damn you," she whispered, and thumped a fist weakly against his shoulder. "Damn you and your yellow eyes both -- don't you pity me! Don't you dare..."
"And what would you do if I did?" he asked, smoothing her tangled curls with a rueful hand. "Unleash another round of profanity laced with truly appalling grammar upon my defenseless ears? I shall have to take care, then."
"Damn you to hell, you bastard..."
"You're almost twenty years too late for that, my dear. Try again after lunch."
It was only a few minutes before a serving girl came to take our order; but in that slight a time, Althea's exhaustion had defeated her, and she was deeply asleep in his arms. I asked the girl to prepare tea and sandwich-makings and three bowls of the day's stew, but to wait for me to come and fetch her rather than to disturb us. Then I quietly tugged the table back a little, and helped Master Cain settle Althea more comfortably, lifting her feet onto the bench and taking a pillow from another chair so that we could settle her head into his lap.
With a light and rueful hand resting against the unruly mess of her dark curls, Master Cain said to me wryly, "This seems to be quite a day for being slept upon. Perhaps I should ask the barmaid if she has plans for the evening."
"If she follows the current fashion, sir," I replied, very much on my dignity, "you should first ask if her plans include a reasonable period of consciousness."
"An excellent point, at that."
I brought a tray with tea and the makings of lunch to wait for Althea to wake, and busied myself slicing some of the untorn bread to assemble meat and cheese sandwiches beside the stew. It seemed that her body cried for food nearly as desperately as rest; the scent of the warm vegetable stew had her blinking fuzzily in a few minutes, but sitting up was beyond her in her still-exhausted haze, and she made a small tired sound of dismay.
Master Cain cut one of the sandwiches into smaller pieces, and held a bit to her lips; she glared up at him and bit his fingers along with it. Perfectly satisfied with that outcome, he fed her the rest one bite at a time, and then looked at his abused fingers.
"I should have dipped my hands in vinegar first. I've heard that it's quite effective in teaching ill-mannered pups not to bite."
"And what of ill-tempered bitches?" she muttered, struggling to find the strength to sit up.
"We shall have to try it next time, I suppose." He leaned a palm against the side of her head. "Lie down. The stew can wait for later."
"The next lesson being 'roll over'?"
"Oh, that's later too," he said, with a malicious glitter of glee dancing in his eyes. "Right now the lesson is 'play dead.' Go on. Close your eyes..."
She did, more than half despite herself. "The poisoner says 'play dead'... that's disturbing."
"That's right," he replied. "And you have to make quite a good pretense to fool me. And so I bid you good night; or at the least, good afternoon."
So Master Cain and I had a quiet lunch, in order not to disturb Althea. Despite the fierce words, she lay very still in her sleep, through utter exhaustion. On the other hand, I knew from experience that asking Master Cain to remain still for long periods of time without something to focus his attention was an exercise in futility. If his mind was not occupied with some roving question, then the rest of him made up for it; so I pulled a well-used pack of cards out of my inner pocket and shuffled them.
I also knew from experience that Master Cain was deeply unnerving to play poker against; I unrepentantly dealt for piquet instead.
* * *
We had finished one game and begun another by the time Althea stirred again, well over an hour later. The remaining stew was quite cold, but when Master Cain wryly offered her another bit of sandwich, she bit him hard enough to make him yelp. Then she pushed herself far enough upright to lean on his shoulder and the wall for support, rather than lying in his lap.
"The bitch hasn't learned her lesson at all, has she," she said sourly, around a mouthful of sandwich.
"You play dead quite well," he replied, setting down his cards. "I would suggest not to be too assiduous in improving that skill. Obedience, however..."
Her reply was brief, pithy, and anatomically challenging to imagine; Master Cain laughed.
"Speaking of which, I recall that we were to resume your training with 'roll over'..."
The next reply was even more physiologically questionable. I hoped that the lamplight didn't show off my blushes as warmly as I felt them.
"I'm quite serious, you realize," he said. "When you've finished devouring that poor defenseless piece of cow, lie on your back so that Riff can examine you properly."
I was duly informed about my ancestors' questionable mating habits with assorted barnyard animals. But then Master Cain clamped a hand over her mouth, so fiercely that his knuckles were white with the pressure; her eyes rolled sideways toward him, in startlement that was tangled into outright fear.
"Mock me all you wish," he said, very softly. "Hate me all you wish; call me any sort of villain you might imagine. Riff is here in my service, and for your comfort, and you will take care to speak to him with a civil tongue in your head."
He let her go then; a little shaken, she said, "And if I don't?"
"Oh, but you will."
His tone brooked no argument whatsoever. Althea looked away, and said, "I will not lie about being prodded like a broodmare..."
"That is a different matter entirely," Master Cain said. "Riff, do you make a habit of prodding broodmares?"
"Er... no, sir, not as such..."
"There, you see?" He patted the bench invitingly, as though she were a puppy which might need enticement. "Lie down and roll over."
Master Cain was heatedly and extensively informed of several generations of his ancestors' questionable mating habits with creatures less savory than barnyard animals.
"For all I know, you may be quite right," he told her gaily, bending down to take her ankles and swing her feet back up to the bench. "After all, they were noble; and nobility becomes bored, inbred, and insane with depressing regularity. Lie back."
She tried to kick him, but couldn't get the leverage when he was leaning all his weight into her ankles; instead she saw to blistering the air at length.
"Master Cain," I said, uncomfortable, "if she objects so strenuously..."
"She's just being stubborn."
"Yes, sir," I said. "And so are you."
"Well, yes. But I dare say I'm quite a bit more stubborn than she is!"
"And if that isn't the devil's own truth," she spat, then turned a pleading look on me. "For the love of God -- you've already poked at me once; isn't that good enough? Don't humiliate me just because you can, you big ox."
"I certainly don't wish to humiliate you," I said, taken aback. "It's simply a wise precaution, to permit a doctor to examine you often, as your pregnancy grows more advanced. If the child turns awkwardly in the womb, the labor can be much more difficult; but if the child can be encouraged to turn again and to rest properly before the labor starts, with a combination of stretching and careful manipulation..."
"Shut up," she said aggrievedly, and dug a hand through her hair, and tried again to kick at Master Cain. "What are you going to do, poke at me again?"
"Well, yes. But also, if you will permit it, I would like to listen for the child's heartbeat."
She stopped struggling then, looking up at me in surprise. "You can hear that? I mean, I thought... don't they only start to live once they're born and take a breath?"
"You've felt the movements for yourself," I replied. "Even in the womb, they wake and sleep, and move, and kick, and play, and their hearts beat independently of the mother's. All that remains is that first breath; but even now, your child is quite truly alive."
Althea looked down at her midsection for a startled moment, and then up at me.
"Would you like to hear your baby's heart beating?" I offered, careful to speak gently and softly, so that she might not bristle and pull away again.
She shot a defensive look at Master Cain; but she saw no mockery in him at all, just the same startled wonder. After all, he had said himself that he studied life's thousands of different endings, not its single fragile beginning.
After another self-conscious and wary look at Master Cain, who still showed no sign of mocking her for such a moment of vulnerability, Althea let herself nod -- just a little. "What do I do...?"
"Just a moment," I said. "I left my stethoscope in the carriage, with the rest of my supplies."
Once I was safely out of the room, I let myself run for the carriage, and grabbed the whole bag rather than spend time searching for the stethoscope; I ran all the way back, hoping that their fierce personalities hadn't managed to set off more sparks during the brief interval in which I left them unsupervised together. When I returned, though, the scene hadn't changed; Master Cain was holding Althea's ankles on the bench and glowering at her, and she was propping herself upright on two locked elbows and glowering right back.
I bit back a sigh of relief as I opened my bag and took out the stethoscope, and cupped the bell between my hands to warm it before it was placed against her belly. "Sir," I said, "I believe Miss Althea will be more comfortable if she can stretch out her feet as she pleases."
He let her go then, and stepped back with a sardonic flourish of a hand; I took a tablecloth off an unused table and turned a chair around to sit beside her.
It was an awkward business to tuck the tablecloth over her lap for the preservation of modesty while gathering up the skirts of her dress sufficiently to bare her abdomen. I hadn't realized Master Cain was watching until I heard him take a sharp startled breath; he reached down over my shoulder to point.
"What...? --why...?"
"And you tell me I've got no sense of modesty!" she hissed, her cheeks blotchy crimson beneath her tanned skin. "Ox, do something about him--"
"What's wrong with her?" Master Cain asked, fiercely.
I held up both hands, trying to avert an all-out shouting scene. "Nothing's wrong with her," I said. "It's natural late in pregnancy to have marks of striation." In response to a blank stare from Althea, I amended, "Your skin has needed to stretch quite a bit, quite quickly, and the strain leaves marks. Some children have marks like this on their knees and hips, if they grow tall particularly quickly. They'll fade in time, after the birth. It may also help to rub salve into your abdomen; I'll apply some after the examination..."
"Get on with it, then." She looked away, both hands knotted in the fabric of her skirts, in an embarrassment so acute it seemed almost physically painful.
I looked up at Master Cain, who seemed oblivious to the fact that he should have left the room or at least turned away rather than standing there watching intently. Since I couldn't think of a graceful way to say so, particularly not in front of her, I sighed a little and turned my attention to my examination.
Her abdomen was greatly distended; it was both natural and inevitable, late in her third trimester of pregnancy. The curve of her womb was a bit asymmetrical; she carried the baby high and heavily forward, with a slight prominence toward the left side. A few moments' careful palpation of her womb revealed that the prominence was due to the baby's spine; it was resting with its back to the left, which made no particular difference to me. But its head was lowered toward her hips, which was a relief at this late a stage of pregnancy.
However, because the baby's back was resting outward, I couldn't be completely certain that she carried only one; another might have been able to rest behind it, cradled against her spine and concealed by the arch of her ribs and its sibling. Twins could explain both her discomfort from the strength of the movements within and her visibly strained and uncomfortable girth; but then, so would one particularly large and strong baby, since she was not a tall or large-boned woman.
I cupped a hand against her right side and then pressed fingertips against the baby's back on the left, to try to encourage a shift in position; Althea gasped as it stretched and kicked and rolled to its other side within her. But I felt no corresponding movement on the right before the baby shifted itself to that side; if there was a twin, it was much smaller, to be able to rest so completely behind its forward-canted sibling. Such things were not unheard of, when one of the children took more of its mother's strength than the other; but twins were statistically unlikely. It seemed most probable that she carried only the one child.
The baby seemed clearly to prefer resting with its back outwards; that tendency made it much simpler for me to locate the sound of its heartbeat, and I curved my hand over the bell of the stethoscope so that I could feel if the baby turned away while someone else listened. Then I offered the ear-pieces to Althea.
"Your heartbeat is the deeper sound, and slower. The child's is very light and quick. You may also hear the movement of fluids within the womb, as the child floats within you in a cushion of waters. Tell me if you can't hear it; I'll try to find a clearer place for you to listen."
She hesitated for a moment, then snatched the earpieces out of my hands and put them in her ears.
Althea listened for a long, silent moment. Unwilling to place any pressure upon her which might cause her to pull away again, I tried to look busy and unintimidating; I opened a jar of salve one-handed and cradled it in my palm to try to warm it, so that the chill would not startle her when it was applied to her skin.
"Would you like that warmed?" Master Cain asked softly, and startled us both; Althea sniffed and looked away.
"Yes, sir," I said, "but it's not critical."
He took the jar from me, set it in an empty teacup, and carefully poured hot tea around the outside of the jar.
For years I had taken a certain pride in keeping my voice as calm as possible through Master Cain's more unusual displays of innovation; this time was no different. "Novel, sir. And, I should imagine, likely quite effective... is this a technique you use often in your own chemical explorations?"
"Hardly," he said, with a wry quirk at the corner of his mouth. "This is based on a distillate of white petroleum, isn't it? Foul-tasting if a bit gets spilled, but not hazardous, and simple enough to clean. I know quite a few of my compounds would bond too much with any imperfection in a ceramic glaze, and react to light; the only safe way to handle them is while sealed in dark glass, preferably air-tight. I wouldn't dare put something like that in a teacup that would be used again."
"Do the two of you talk shop all the time?" Althea asked tartly, putting the earphones aside. "What fascinating dinner conversation that must make. 'Ox, I've forgotten, is that bottle your smelling-salts or my vitriol? Let's try it on the maid and see.'"
"Master Cain has never experimented on the help," I said carefully.
"Not on the help, no," he agreed. "On hens that were about to go into the stew pot, and dogs in the yard, and barn-mice. And occasionally houseguests. But not the help!" His grin held more than a hint of sweet sly malice, because she looked more startled than she wanted to be. "So, you see, it's much safer to be in my employ! Speaking of which -- I believe your past master's training regimen had hit a bit of a rut with 'roll over'...?"
Over an atmosphere-coloring string of profanity, I said, "Master Cain, was it completely necessary to agitate her when I've not yet finished?"
"Here, let me dry the jar for you." He fished it out of the hot tea gingerly, and wrapped it in a napkin so that the hot glass would be bearable to hold. Then, despite himself, he said, "The stethoscope--? If she's finished with it...?"
Althea glared up at him, all but incoherent with indignation. "Call me a beached whale and talk over my head like a dog and then expect me to smile and curtsey for you? Have you been getting into the ox's pharmaceuticals yourself, you pompous, arrogant, egotistic--"
"May I?" he asked quietly.
Althea stopped her tirade short, startled. She struggled between the effort to maintain outrage and sheer deflated astonishment for a long moment; then she looked away, scowling at the wall fiercely enough to singe the stone.
"Do as you like; you will anyway." But despite the surly tone, she held out the earpieces to me, and added in a nearly inaudible mumble, "It moved again, so..."
After a few minutes' searching, I relocated the baby's heartbeat, and offered the stethoscope to Master Cain. He took it quietly, and bent his head and closed his eyes in order to focus his attention on listening.
For once he looked his own age; he wasn't yet even of full legal majority, and the vulnerability in him at that particular moment reminded me strikingly of the boy he had been a decade earlier. In truth, he was still younger than one would expect; the bright brittle cynicism he maintained had aged him mentally if not physically, and he hardly seemed childlike with his guard up and the sharp-edged and wary brilliance held as a shield between himself and the rest of the world. But here and now, he was a very young man intent on observing a quiet wonder, with no sarcasm and no defensiveness at all; at times like this, it was easier to see in him the kindness of the child he had been, and of the man he might have become under happier circumstances. Althea stared at him as though this hushed and respectfully gentle person had been shipped in from some utterly foreign land, and she wasn't certain what to do about the sudden replacement of the Master Cain she was accustomed to.
I could have explained, if I'd felt like it; I could have asked her to reflect on her own sharp sarcastic defenses, and whether she thought she was the only person in the world to have been so badly used, and to be so in need of protection for a brutally savaged heart. But it would have disturbed the silence, and the child's heartbeat could be difficult to hear under the best of circumstances; so I kept my silence and dipped my fingertips in the now-warmed salve, and began to apply it to the marks of striation upon her abdomen.
I felt it almost as clearly as Althea did, when the child kicked and moved restlessly again; she bit her lip hard to keep from crying out in pain, and Master Cain reached over to take one of her hands so that she would have something to cling to. When she could breathe again without whimpering, he said, "Perhaps the baby dislikes resting against your backbone. Do you think you'd feel more comfortable on your side?"
"Like some beached whale," she muttered, glaring anywhere but at the two of us. "No thank you."
Stung, he pulled back, and made an irrelevant business of polishing the bell of the stethoscope; he reached toward my bag with it, and I said, "Just a moment, sir."
"What for?"
"Well, we've listened to the child's heart, but I should still like to check Miss Althea's own."
"What do you care about me?" she asked. "Either of you? All he wants is the baby."
Master Cain took a sharp breath; I jumped in hastily, before he could start another incendiary argument that would char the rafters. "You are a person in your own right, in addition to a child's mother, and as a medical student I have a duty to see to both you and the child," I told her. "That is, if you will permit it."
She grumbled and groused and glowered, but permitted me to help her sit up and straighten the gown; I timed her pulse with fingertips to her wrist, and checked her throat for swollen glands which might indicate some infection or other undue strain. I hesitated a moment over how to listen for fluid in the lungs, since her abdomen was roundly in the way, and settled on the expedient of listening to her back. Her reflexes were fine; when I set my palms under her feet and asked her to push, she gleefully did her best to knock me down, but it was enough to ascertain that the child's presence wasn't pressing on any of the nerves in her legs or causing undue difficulties with circulation. Her ankles were somewhat swollen, which was only natural after as much walking as we'd done that morning.
Finally, there was nothing left for it but to listen to her heart; and I completely froze. I scolded myself madly in the silence of my mind: you're almost a doctor; be professional! Why does a medical gown make it that much easier for you when there's actually more fabric in the way?
Because then it doesn't feel like I'm sampling goods offered by a woman putting herself on display to encourage the purchase of favors which I have no business knowing about, I answered myself, too promptly for the sake of winning the argument from the side I wished to win, and I flailed for a different angle to take with reproaching myself.
Althea tilted her head to one side, evidently relishing every moment of my discomfort. "Well?"
I couldn't move; I sat there with my hands in my lap, twisting the cable of the stethoscope around one finger pointlessly.
To Master Cain, Althea said, "For such an overgrown beast, your ox is remarkably cute at times, you know. The blushing is adorable."
She bent closer to me, to provide a better view, and she took a deep breath. I shut my eyes in scalding embarrassment; she chuckled, and patted my hand. "Completely adorable. Perhaps it's good that I never had a taste for virgin calf on the hoof; I'd eat the poor thing alive..."
"Stop tormenting him," Master Cain said, irritated; he reached over and took the stethoscope out of my hands. "What should I listen for?"
"It's all right," I said, now doubly humiliated, and took the stethoscope back. "If there's an irregularity to the rhythm, or a certain echo... I can't describe it. Never mind, sir..." I hoped that my hand's shaking wasn't too visible as I touched the stethoscope to Althea's breast.
She put her hand over mine; I must have jumped about half a foot, because she burst into gales of laughter.
"Althea," Master Cain said, with a clear warning in his voice.
"But I'm trying to help! I swear to heaven I am--!" She scrubbed laugh-tears off her cheeks and took the bell of the stethoscope in a hand that was shaking nearly as much as mine had, although for an entirely different reason; then she quite primly set it against the pulse-point of her heart for me. "See? I can be a good girl. I really can! See?"
Except, of course, that she ruined her innocent impression when another fit of giggles won free. If nothing else, it made it hard to hear her heart's rhythm. But I was hardly qualified to speak to her about controlling herself, so I bit my lip and tried to listen.
"I don't understand," Althea said, still shivering with half-suppressed giggles. "I mean, every woman in the world has breasts. But a belly like this only comes from sex; there's no other way to get yourself into this state, after all. So why is it you're fine with examining my belly but not my--"
"It's a question of intent," I said miserably, hunched over the stethoscope's ear pieces. "The baby is just... a medical condition to be observed, and innocent; your dress's collar is... um... not. Distinctly not... um... innocent."
She dissolved into hilarity again. Master Cain levelled a scathing glare upon her, then reached over and shook the folds out of a napkin and put it over her bodice. It was humiliating to have to admit even to myself how such a simple gesture helped steady me.
"I told you the garment was indecent enough to suit your lack of standards even with the lace," he said to her.
"Oh, for the love of God, don't even pretend to tell me you'd call him a reliable barometer of men's responses to a woman's cleavage," she said. "I wasn't kidding about virgin calf on the hoof! --I dare you," she added, reaching over to poke me in the ribs. "Tell me you're not. And watch me laugh in your face..."
"In that case, why should anyone bother telling you anything?" Master Cain shot back; I held up a hand weakly.
"Please," I said, "please, both of you, just one minute of silence so I can actually hear...? Please...?"
They glared at each other, then turned away to glare at opposing walls, in perfect synchronization; however, I valued my life more than I valued the potential entertainment in making the observation aloud in the vicinity of their combined tempers. And it gave me the peaceful moment I needed to listen for any irregularities in Althea's heart.
That brief, merciful silence was, alas, too good to last. "Well?" Althea asked, drumming fingertips against the table.
"Your heart is fine," I said. "If anything, I think your face and hands are a bit too thin for your advanced state, but rest and proper nuitrition should help compensate. You've tired yourself too greatly this morning, but if you take care to rest with your feet up as much as possible this afternoon, it's unlikely to cause any serious harm. Your child is strong and spirited; of course, you yourself can tell that much..."
"Like mother, like child?" Master Cain guessed.
Althea glared at him, then at me. "So I'm free?"
"You were never captive," Master Cain said tartly.
"I beg your pardon; who was it using all his strength to keep me trapped here just a few minutes ago?"
"You were never captive," Master Cain repeated, as though to a particularly dim-witted pupil. "You were being medically examined for your own good, since you clearly lack the sense to see to such things of your own will."
"Hah! You jumped-up sneering blue-blooded bastard, you go around twisting words to suit whatever strikes your fancy, and never mind the truth--"
I made myself busy repacking my stethoscope and the salve, and took notes on her pulse and my other observations. Just to be on the safe side, I wrote in Latin, so that even if she felt tempted to light-finger my notes she wouldn't have much amusement from it. And if Master Cain availed himself of my notes, he would hardly fault me for some less-censored observations than were strictly professional; however, one of my instructors had an Austrian correspondent with a penchant for theorizing that traits of personality were inbred. I thought it highly likely that the man would adore the opportunity to meet this woman's child in about ten years.
"Ox," Althea said, abruptly.
I sighed, and put my notes into my inner pocket, and said, "My name is Riff."
"Whatever," she said. "You said the marks would go away some...? How much?"
"Vain, are we?" Master Cain mused.
"Fine words from a man who never looks in a mirror! What are you, a bloodsucking vampire? What are you doing out in public in the middle of the day?"
To forestall the rest of that argument, I quietly rolled up the cuff of my pantleg so that I could show her the old, whitely faded marks on my own knees. "When I was about fifteen, I spent most of six months crying myself to sleep because of how my knees hurt while I was growing," I said. "I'm in my twenties now. The marks faded in less than a year, but whether or not they'll vanish entirely depends on how prone your skin is to scarring..."
Sounding startled, Master Cain said, "I never knew that." Then he cuffed me across the shoulder. "Why did you never mention that?"
"Your father gave me to you three years later," I replied. "It didn't hurt as much by then." To Althea, I said, "Remind me to leave the salve with you when we get to the cottage."
"So what are we waiting for?" Althea leaned heavily on the table as she pushed herself to her feet and set off for the doorway.
"I am not a vampire," Master Cain said, looking away. "What do I need a mirror for? You cut my hair; you tend to the rest of it for me. I trust your taste."
I tend your hair for you because you have always hated the sight of your own poor despised eyes, Master Cain, even though they are as they are through no fault of your own. "As you say, sir."
"Shouldn't I trust your taste?" he demanded.
"Of course you should, sir."
"Well, then." He glared at Althea's shoulderblades. "A vampire, indeed..."
For a moment, I envied the carriage-horse, which had only been asked to bring the carriage to town and back, and need care nothing for the tempers and slights of those it transported. This had already been a much longer day than any decent twenty-four hours should have contained.
* * *
Compared to the rest of the day, seeing Althea returned to the cottage and settled in was practically restful. Of course, she had opinions on where each thing should be placed, and found great amusement in directing 'the ox' in the rearrangement of the furniture to suit the cradle. Master Cain offered his assistance, but I set him to folding clothes and putting away kitchen supplies instead of furniture-moving; it would have hurt his still-fresh wounds to lift a bed or a chair.
Finally, though, Althea ran herself out of both suggestions and her remaining energy; she'd fallen asleep in the rocking-chair by the time I finished cleaning the windows.
It took some doing to convince Master Cain that the proper disposal of used cleaning-rags was not 'artistically draped in a vase in the middle of the table,' even for amusement. Sometimes, he was purely a teenaged boy despite it all.
I tried the logical approach. "But you won't be here to see her reaction..."
"That doesn't matter; I can imagine her reaction!" He'd found a vase left on the back of a shelf by some previous inhabitant, and was busily dusting it off.
"Then can you appease yourself with just the imagining, and leave the deed itself undone?"
"But it's no fun if I know she won't actually see it."
"Since you've done such a fine job with that vase," I offered, rather desperately, "it would be a shame to spoil your efforts; I'll go and bring some flowers from the forest." And I dashed out before he could stop me.
Once the flowers had been gathered, of course, there was nowhere else to put them but in the vase. Master Cain sighed, although softly, glancing over at Althea's sleeping form; then he made a wry business of folding the used cleaning-rags into a complicated little flower-pattern and set them beside the vase. I surrendered to the compromise, and shooed him outside, and closed the door very quietly.
Under ordinary circumstances, I wasn't often reminded so forcefully of how unlike a normal teenager he was; but on the rare occasions when he did revert to a mental age closer to his physical age, it was rather startling. Master Cain was full of questions during the trip back -- from my perspective, both unexpectedly and rather uncomfortably. He seemed to have taken the notion that, since I had been a medical student, I must therefore know everything that could possibly be asked about a woman's pregnancy and its development.
"You're certain she isn't going to -- I don't know -- burst a seam or something...?"
"No, sir, I'm quite confident she won't," I said, staring fixedly out at the road.
"But... she's quite full already; and you say she'll grow bigger still before the child comes...? She already felt quite full to me, when I felt the child moving. Nothing at all like an overweight person; so astonishingly, snugly round... and those marks..."
"They are only from the stretching, sir. I assure you she is in no particular danger of, er, 'bursting a seam.'"
"Remarkable..."
I thought that perhaps, mercifully, he had sated his curiosity for a time; it turned out to be a vain hope. "How do you know she won't burst?"
"Sir... women don't have seams."
He gave me a half-lidded glower. "I know that. I mean -- who's documented this? Has there been a study made of what size a woman must be in order for her body to successfully support a certain girth, a certain size of child?"
Taken aback, I said, "I don't know of any, sir." I carefully restrained myself from adding, Most men still have more respect for propriety than to invade a childing woman's privacy in such an embarrassing fashion.
"It would make the most sense to study women who go without corseting, of course, so that the data would not be skewed... and if that ridiculous shopgirl is any indication, those must be harder to come by than one would hope. Indigenes, perhaps? And the Hindus in India; perhaps one of our colonial outposts would be better suited to such a study."
"Master Cain... I rather suspect the colonial outposts are more concerned with ruling the natives than with scientific inquiries."
"Well, then -- women breed in every continent, of course; Althea herself is too far along to examine more than the end of the development, but the next time some incautious village girl gets herself into some trouble, I should imagine that she could be deprived of a corset without much difficulty, and the process of her enlargement measured and recorded from its beginning, in more natural detail... there is a photographer in these parts, is there not? If one were to put the man on retainer, and document the changes in her body each fortnight or so..."
I tried not to let my horror at such a proposal show too clearly. Master Cain's upbringing had been unconventional, to say the least, and it had been aristocratic as well. He was far from a typical aristocrat, and yet he had still been given both their blood and their education.
And the fundamental concept behind aristocracy held that unlike the Americans' precept, all men were not created equal. In order for an aristocrat to exist, other people had to be born in lesser positions, and there had to be a wide-spread agreement that those other people were lesser people: people of lesser value than the aristocrat.
In these times, it was impolitic to say so aloud; and yet, whatever trappings one wished to pretty it with, inequality of birth, of status, and of value was a fundamental part of the concept of nobility. And so when an aristocrat's deep-seated belief that 'lesser-born people were people of less value' intersected with a scientist's desire for pure analytical observation, untainted by such illogical, emotional factors as 'propriety' or 'compassion' or 'civility to one's test subjects'...
All in all, I found myself wishing he had decided to make an afternoon's treatise of dosages of strychnine instead; at least when he spoke of poisons, I could be assured that he would not make other humans the objects of his experiments whether or not those humans had been asked for their cooperation. I found the whole conversation deeply unsettling, and struggled to place a finger on the reason.
If nothing else, I was accustomed to Master Cain making an afternoon's treatise of poisons. This was rather unprecedented...
No; this was entirely unprecedented, I realized, with something of a shock. Until now, I had only seen Master Cain turn the brilliant focus of his mind on the moment of passage between life and death: poisons, cases of murder, seeking out the villains who hurt or killed others, charting out the border between the realm of being and the realm of non-being.
Today, perhaps for the first time in his life, Master Cain had turned that fierce attention on something that was its polar opposite -- the border of life's beginnings rather than its ends; the division between void and creation; pregnancy, the beginnings of new life, with a varied and fascinating future ahead of it, rather than death and partings and endings.
I felt rather like a proud but bewildered father watching my treasured one take his first steps in a direction I had never expected. On the one hand, I resolved to do everything in my power to encourage him in the idea that life could be just as fascinating as death, and indeed rather more so. On the other hand, while I had been lost in thought, Master Cain's speculations had taken a more alarming turn.
"What do you think, Riff? Like a workhouse, only not at all for work -- for the care and supervision, and of course the study, of unwed mothers-to-be -- I dare say the city would have a superfluity of them, at that. And in such a state they are unsuited to the workhouses; we would be doing the government a favor, even."
"Are you proposing a breeding stable for humans, sir?" I asked, somewhat numbly; then I shook my head and said, "Let me amend -- I would suggest that one should not propose a breeding stable for humans. I would, er, quite strongly suggest that."
"But I know that thousands of women die in childbirth each year; if such a place could pursue a more scientific study of the development and likely outcomes--"
"Sir, this is why we have hospitals."
He sighed, visibly frustrated, and looked away. "But women die of this," he said, "and children too. And I am not such a credulous child as to ask you to promise me that Althea and her child will be well, because right now science has not progressed far enough to make that promise possible. And yet I want so badly to know--" He stopped himself short, abruptly, knotting both gloved hands in the fabric of his coat.
"Master Cain...?"
He made a sound that could have been meant for a laugh, if it hadn't been so softly unhappy.
"Part of me still is that credulous child," he admitted. "Part of me wants to be able to ask you if it'll really be all right -- if she'll bear the child safely, if I truly can be trusted with a child given all the madness in my life -- I want to know whether it's safe to wish for this, because whether it's safe or not, I do wish it so desperately... and yet my wishes are such a danger to anyone for whom I wish."
I reined the carriage-horses in sharply, and turned to take him by the shoulders.
"It's not your fault," I said. "Delilah, your father, that mad doctor -- all that's happened to you, to those around you -- none of it is your fault!"
"It doesn't need to be my fault in order to be true," he said, low-pitched. "And it hardly takes a mathematical genius to recognize the pattern: anyone who comes near me comes near danger which has too often been fatal."
"Master Cain--"
"In truth," he murmured, "I should still send you away to that medical school. Because you would be far safer there than you are here with me; you and I both know it."
Despite it all, I was only his servant, not his father or his brother; I had no right to reach out and hold him and try to comfort the wounds torn into his heart as well as his body. But for once, I didn't care. This was neither the manor nor the village; no one else could see us; and so I silently cursed decorum to the nethermost hells and took him into my arms.
Master Cain's eyes widened in a moment's astonishment, and he took a startled breath; I put a fingertip to his lips, shaking, and held him close, and rested my cheek against the crown of his dark hair so that I wouldn't need to see it if the astonishment shifted to offense at my presumption.
"You are never," I murmured, "never going to be rid of me so easily. Never. I have my own free will, you see, and unless you have me taken to the Tower in chains -- no matter where you try to send me away, I will come back to you. I promised you. My life is yours. All that I am is yours. I don't care whether it's 'safe' or not. And I will spend the rest of my life at your side, and I swear that I will teach you that it's all right to wish for happiness. Those sick and twisted fools cannot possibly destroy everything in your life. As your servant and as a man, I refuse to permit that."
"Riff--"
"She's just a tramp," I said, desperately, still clinging to him. "She's a tramp who's gotten herself a bellyful of trouble. To your father and his minions -- she is completely beneath their notice. She is not a rich aristocrat with few or no heirs, to be killed and to leave them power or land or money. What on earth could they gain from her but an earful of foul language? What would they gain from her child but a pile of soiled laundry? No one has died. No one has been injured. No one has even been threatened. They aren't so omnipresent as to be able to taint and ruin every moment of peace in your life. And I swear before heaven that I will make you learn to trust in that."
His hands knotted fiercely in the fabric of my shirt; I could feel him trembling. His voice shook badly as he murmured, "I am nothing but a credulous child after all; I want so badly to be able to believe you, but I know that is a promise you cannot make..."
"Yes it is," I replied, holding him tight. "I cannot promise that Althea and her child will be unharmed, because no one on earth can make that promise. But the only danger that will come to her comes to every woman on earth at such a time -- it has nothing to do with you, or with your father's curse. She is simply a gravid woman drawing near to her term, and when that time comes, not even your father's madness can do a thing to change it. Neither Alexis nor Dr. Disraeli nor any other man in the world -- no one can change the simple fact that when it is her time, she will come to her childbed and must bear it with her own strength or not at all. You know that as well as I do. Believe it. Believe me. The only danger facing her is the danger she carries within her own body. It has nothing to do with you."
He gave a soft, half-muffled chuckle. "It's good to hear that they haven't taken the power of life as well as death, but the rest of it is not entirely reassuring. --I wanted you to tell me that she and the child would simply be fine."
"All I can tell you is the truth," I said. "You know it yourself. You know what promises I cannot make, and what I can. I cannot promise she will bear the child safely. But as a student of medicine, I can tell you that she has a very, very good chance. She's strong, and young, and healthy, and you yourself have had a taste of her determination when she puts her mind to something. She's not a large woman, but from my examinations, I don't think the child is too large for her to bear. In all honesty, I think nothing will go wrong. I think it is likely I'll be taught several new levels of profanity over the course of her labor, and then she will bear her child, and that will be that. The only thing I cannot give you is an absolute promise. But I will give you every assurance short of it, sir."
Finally, I could feel some of the tension in his body starting to ease. "So I have your promise's next of kin, then?"
"Something of the sort, yes, Master Cain."
"I'll be holding you to it, you know."
"I would expect nothing else, sir, since I have given you nothing but the truth."
He sighed a little, and dug a hand through his hair; still resting his head against my heart, he said, "What on earth are we going to tell Merry?"
"The same thing that you told Miss Althea, sir," I said. "You've found a new brother or sister, one in need of a loving home and family."
"She can get terribly jealous, though. For heaven's sake, look at what happens whenever I have so much as a conversation with a woman."
"Miss Merry adores you," I said. "She wants to know that she'll always have her place in your heart. If we put it to her that now she'll be the big sister whom the baby adores, just as she adores you -- I think she'll be delighted once she understands it that way."
"I'll tell her it's just like a better version of a doll," Master Cain mused. "One that can play back, and one she can teach to talk to her when it grows up some. That ought to get her interest."
"Yes, sir," I said dutifully, struggling to suppress the memory of Merry's voodoo-housekeeper liberally bedecked with hatpins. "I'm sure it will."
(part 3 coming soon!)