Author's note: Thank you, so much, for all your encouragement. It's still grim, and it will be for a while, but I promise there'll be a happy ending. Thank you for all your reviews too. Please keep reviewing.

He'd tried, vainly, to compose his resignation. He'd go to Madrid, sell up the apartment, then take off and travel. He wanted to travel, wanted to see the world. With a grumble of fury he set the letter aside again and decided he needed to go for a run and think of what he needed to put in there. It should be easy to draft a letter of resignation - he'd done it before – but he was resigning from something else too. He was resigning her; giving her up despite his cruel words and her bitter ones and the love that had grown between them.

It wasn't quite sun up but he needed to get fresh air and he decided to go quietly through the kitchens. He thought he'd be on his own but he realised, very quickly, that he wasn't.

"She was throwing up," Priscilla's voice, even though whispering, carried through the door, "Again."

He stalled, flattening his back against the wall as quietly as he could. He didn't know why he was hiding or didn't want to be seen but he knew who they were talking about.

"I don't think you should tell anyone," Violetta's voice answered.

"Why not? You don't think...?"

"It's not our job to conjecture. I'm just saying that you should tell no one, are we clear?"

"Yes," she answered, "The king will be pleased."

"Hmmm,"Violetta's voice was non-committal.

He felt suddenly very hot.

"The queen, pregnant, at her age. I know she's only in her forties but that's shoc-"

"And none of our business," Violetta barked, shutting down any comment at all.

He fled then, clattering into the table of flowers in the hall and leaving a riot of shattered porcelain and petals behind.

Pregnant? Fucking pregnant. There was no way she was pregnant.

Well, logically, of course there was.

He'd done plenty that could theoretically get her pregnant but she seemed pretty sure she was unable to get pregnant.

The word kept flashing in everything he thought. He ran faster, trying to run away from it, but it wouldn't leave his head.

Not bothering to shower, he went to the back stairs and climbed two at a time, emerging in the servants' corridor which ran parallel to the royal apartments. He couldn't catch a breath, no matter how much he tried. He felt deranged, as if someone else was controlling him. Stealing out of the door he slipped into her chambers, both annoyed that the footmen weren't there and relieved.

She was coming out of the bathroom, idly toweling her hair. It was like he'd forgotten what her body looked like over only a few weeks and he felt stunned to see her, so vulnerable and beautiful, in front of him again.

She stalled when she saw him, her towel falling out of her hands. She gripped the one around her body, as if he might pull it from her at any moment.

"Pregnant?"

She looked at him as if she'd never looked upon him before.

"Pregnant?" This time he shouted it and had to hold himself in the chair.

"I have no idea what you are talking about."

The tremble in her mouth and the flicker of her eyes gave her away.

"It's mine?"

She said nothing as she began to shake violently. Stumbling forward she fell into the chair beside his.

"I-"

"So it's mine?"

"You were not supposed to find out Joseph."

He looked at her then and saw her vulnerability, her melodramatic plan to push him away. He wanted to reach out to her but he knew she would reject him so he refused to allow himself to act.

"You weren't going to tell me?"

She looked up, "You would never have known."

"Oh," he suddenly understood and felt sick, "Clarisse, I…"

"Don't hate me," she shook her head.

"But Clarisse – "

"I don't have a choice," she wouldn't look at him, "There is no choice. I have to. I can't carry your child."

There was a different sort of pain now, the type that was like acid, slowly stripping away anything that ever felt good. He could see it in her too.

"You don't have to-"

"I do," she whispered, her hand ghosting over the soft towel covering her abdomen, "I can't carry your child."

"It's illegal. You can't do that in Genovia."

"There are ways," she said softly, "It is that or I go back to his bed. I can't do that to him or to me. I won't lie to him. I've lied enough as it is."

He was embarrassed then by her honesty. He shook his head.

"Clarisse, it's my child...our child."

She was silent for a moment and then she met his eyes, "Don't you think I've cried over that every night? I've pictured what it could be Joseph, and it's beautiful. I-"

"I could take you away! I could make you, I could make us, safe," he knew he sounded pitiful and desperate as he lunged forward to clutch her hand.

This desperate dream, so quickly having become a reality, was bleeding out in front of him and he was helpless.

She didn't pull away.

"No."

"Why not?"

"There are too many reasons but my boys…my sons…" she sighed, "You would never have known Joseph."

"And who, who was going to help you?"

"I would have found someone," she murmured, "But now…"

It took him a moment to fully understand her. His brain couldn't catch up with her thoughts, no matter how he tried. She was miles ahead of him, childless already, back in her own life. He was here though, in the midst of a terrible revelation.

"You're asking me to help you get rid of our child?"

He was incredulous. It wasn't disgust but he certainly never imagined this conversation taking place. He'd wanted children but he'd never had them because he couldn't have them with her. He had thought their punishment would end here but apparently it hadn't. His mind was a melee of thoughts that ran together with no pauses or rests. It was disconcerting and frightening, to hear no breaks in his thinking or in his words.

"Clarisse," he shook his head, "Clarisse you need to think about this."

"I have," she stood and disappeared into the bedroom, re-emerging wearing her robe, "And you are the only one I know I can trust."

"Clarisse-"

"Joseph, Priscilla will be here soon," she said quietly, icily, "I promise you we'll speak later."

"No I want to speak now," he stood up.

"Yes, and I do too but Joseph we can't."

"You're pregnant."

He was convinced, if he just kept repeating it, he'd somehow believe it. The silence that followed was both awkward and stilted.

"Yes. I'll see you this evening. I promise."

"Yes, yes okay."

He turned to go when she called him back suddenly, gripping the back of the couch.

"Joseph!"

"Yes?"

"Please hold me."

He hadn't seen the tears in her eyes until that moment, simply because it was easier to blame her.

-0-

She let him go eventually, relinquishing him when she knew she only had minutes to spare. In his arms there was a calm she hadn't felt but a sudden fear too. A fear that she couldn't simply dismiss him, dismiss his child, as if it had never altered and changed her. Then he was gone, ghosting out as if he'd never been there. Maybe he hadn't, maybe he was simply a figment of her imagination. As soon as the door was closed she sunk to the couch, trembling from the force of her own determination as it crashed around her feet.

It was only when Violetta entered that she finally pulled herself from her own terror.

"Your Majesty," Violetta asked quietly, "Are you okay?"

"Violetta," she smiled, though she knew it was tight, "Of course."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," she snapped, regretting her tone instantly.

"Perhaps you need some time to yourself today?"

"No," Clarisse stood up, "Absolutely not."

"As you wish Your Majesty," she nodded, setting a folder down, "We're not due to meet until nine a.m. but you should read this for the afternoon briefing from the prime minister. He is meeting with yourself and the king."

"I'm sorry Violetta," she said gently, stopping the woman.

"Do you need me to do anything?"

She looked at her assistant, a woman too distant to be her friend but too close to be simply an employee. She was under the impression, of course, that Violetta knew. Violetta always knew.

"I-" she shook her head.

"I'm sure I can find a way to help you."

She couldn't meet her assistant's eyes, "No, that won't be necessary."

The woman nodded, "As you wish, Your Majesty."

The day passed in an agony that she had never known before. Gone was the nausea that had plagued her when it seemed so simple. Now there was something deft about the sickness, as if she was rotting from the inside out.

And she knew it was a manifestation of the terrible decision she'd made. The terrible, beautiful decision.

He met her in the quiet of the library, as she'd expected. He knew she retired here when she needed to escape the pressures of her role. Now though, they seemed to follow her everywhere. He was calmer looking but his black suit hung limp with the heat of the day and the visit to the polo field with the king in the late afternoon.

"How was it?" She asked.

"Hot," he answered quietly, taking the seat beside her on the couch, "Listen-"

"Let me speak," she whispered.

"No," he touched her fingers, "Clarisse I've been thinking. It's wrong of me to ask you to do this. It's wrong of me. I'll do whatever you need me to."

She would have sworn he was on the verge of tears then and the rumble of his voice was cracked with emotion.

"Thank you," she said softly.

"Just, I…" he shook his head, "Let me arrange it all. It's safer for you then. The trail won't lead back to you. Don't talk to the physician, talk to me and let me deal with it. My friend is a doctor and he…"

The phrase hung between then, along with his silent pleading. She wondered if he thought that looking as if he wanted to do it was a charade in the vain hope she'd reconsider. She couldn't, despite how much she wanted to.

"Imagine her," he said softly, suddenly.

"What?"

"Just imagine her for me, just for a second."

She saw her plainly then; a perfectly pink infant, tucked between her father's arms. She had ebony hair and dark, silken skin. She looked like a sin, a work of art, a garden of earthly delights made flesh.

"You think it's a girl," against her own will, against her better judgement, she caressed her stomach. Between her fingers and flesh and the soft, gentle murmuring of a body in agony, there was a bond forged in something stronger than steel and gold.

"Yes," he wouldn't look at her.

"I would have to sleep with him," she said, the very thought repulsing her, not because Rupert was unattractive but because it had been so very long and it had never been something that happened between then intentionally. Drunken and unfulfilled fumbles were their specialty.

"I won't ask you-"

"I don't know if I can," she said suddenly.

"I know," he insisted, "I know."

"No," she shook her head, "I thought it'd be easy, to get rid of it. You've made me see her. I don't know if I could live with myself. I don't know if I can…" Her voice gave way to tears and she fell against him, "Our baby."

"Our baby," he repeated her words as if they were a gentle prayer.

His arms wound around her and he held her to him as he hadn't done in weeks.

"Clarisse, take time. Think. Whatever you need me to do, I'll do it."

She knew his vow to be as true as all his others. Perhaps this time she didn't want it to be.

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