“You’re going to have a baby?!” Rose exclaimed with amazement and delight after Josephine made her announcement to Madeline and Rose, the three of them closeted alone in the Duchess of Ashbourne’s private sitting room. “How wonderful!”
“I am very pleased for you,” added Madeline with equal but less surprised pleasure, hugging Josephine and then studying her. “You do look very well, I must say. Some ladies are quite ill when they first get with child.”
“I know. My sisters warned me of that before the wedding, but so far, aside from some tiredness in the mornings, and an aversion to boiled eggs, I am very well indeed. I’m so happy too!” Josephine told them, her face indeed glowing with contentment.
“Your husband must also be very happy, I imagine,” Madeline remarked. “Or is he one of these men who regard the whole business of getting children as somehow a women’s affair?”
Josephine laughed and shook her head.
“No, Cassius is just as delighted as I am. I told him only yesterday and don’t believe he has stopped smiling since. He certainly accepts his own part in the whole matter and will be a wonderful father, I am sure.”
Her initial burst of joy for her friend now fading into general goodwill, Rose felt her curiosity rising. Tentatively, she tried to form the question that was lurking on the edge of her conscious mind.
“Do you know how… how you got with child?” Rose asked.
Josephine and Madeline looked at her with mildly startled eyes and then at one another. Rose bit her lip, knowing that she had always been less knowledgeable in some matters than her friends but trusting that they would not make fun of her.
“Yes,” Josephine said kindly and carefully. “I am married now, and it is something we both very much wanted.”
“But how did it happen..?”
“This is a conversation you should probably have with your mother,” Madeline advised Rose, raising an eyebrow toJosephine. “I am unmarried too, and Josephine only wed three months ago. Your mother’s advice will likely be better informed than ours.”
Rose sighed and nodded, unable to imagine being able to raise such a subject with the brisk and busy Duchess of Westvale. Her mother was dutiful and loving but always entirely occupied with something else more important, whether charities, estate neighborhood matters, or for the past year, her ailing husband’s health.
“A husband and wife spend much of their time together, day and night,” Josephine said, evidently taking some pity on Rose’s unsatisfied curiosity. “You will understand better when you are married too, but do make sure you have this conversation with your mother before your wedding night.”
Rose nodded slowly again, trying to make sense of the little information revealed. A child somehow came from husband and wife spending time together, although it was hard to know how, or why this should be peculiar to married couples. Why did children not come from men and women being together in general? It was as well that it didn’t, or the world would be overrun. But still, why?
“Is the house party complete now?” Madeline asked then, changing the subject. “I know most of your guests came last night, including Rose’s family and I arrived this morning. Are we all here?”
“All but Dorian Voss, Duke of Ravenhill,” answered Josephine with a little smile that again seemed to convey some invisible message to Madeline, beyond Rose’s understanding. “He was unavoidably detained in Chelsea last night, but we expect him before luncheon.”
Madeline gave a small laugh and shook her head as though unsurprised to hear this. Rose thought again of the warning from Josephine’s brother-in-law Benedict Emerton last night, after she had expressed sympathy for Dorian Voss’s sudden and dramatic accession to the dukedom upon his cousin’s death:
You will find that His Grace the Duke of Ravenhill requires no special consideration, Lady Rose. He has almost as much charm as I do but uses it to far more deadly effect…
What did everyone have against the poor Duke of Ravenhill? If Dorian Voss was a truly bad character, the Duke of Ashbourne would not have him in the house, and Rose’s brothers would not have brought her to Ashbourne Castle to associate with him. Maybe he was one of these men who were always late, or always forgetting invitations and double-booking their social calendars.
Deciding that this was the most likely explanation, Rose asked no further questions for now although her curiosity remained active, even while Madeline moved on to an account of having to take charge of a younger cousin who was coming to live with her family
How lovely it would be if the Duke of Ravenhill were a softly-spoken and unassuming man whom Rose might talk to, and earn approval from Edwin…
When the gong sounded for luncheon, Dorian Voss had still not arrived.
“Luncheon could not have come at a better time,” sighed Benedict Emerton, throwing down his cards on the table with a chuckle. “There were never going to be any winners in our game, I feel, only the lesser losers.”
Madeline laughed ruefully too, laying down her own cards with equal chagrin.
“Yes, we are perhaps the worst bridge party ever, aren’t we?” she agreed. “I played everything wrong this morning, but then, so did you, Mr. Emerton.”
“I am the worst player in my family,” remarked Benedict, an amiable young man who preferred to be known as Mr. Emerton rather than Lord Benedict, despite being born the younger son of a duke. “Cassius and Josephine both run rings around me, as does my mother on occasion. Still, I only really play for the social angle, so winning and losing don’t matter so much.”
“Luckily for both of you, Rose and I are the worst card players in our family too,” Magnus added, smiling. “Edwin and my parents beat us every time, don’t they, Rose?”
Rose concurred with a nod.
“I enjoyed that game,” she confessed. “When everyone is too quick and determined to win, it takes some of the enjoyment away for me. That was far more fun.”
