Alfred and I have fallen into an easy routine of meals, journeys out for shopping or the theater, and we have even gone to a few dinner parties hosted by trusted friends.
The only other shade over our life together is my residual guilt over my original plot. I still have not told him the truth—that I always intended to get with child by him. Whenever I find myself accepting that I will never tell him, that it is no matter, the guilt resurfaces again, and I yearn to be free of it.
Nonsense, of course.
On one occasion, we visit a store that sells garments for children, including babies, and pick out little clothes for the child in my belly. I tell him it is too soon for such things, but Alfred says we will be restrained. We will pick only one item each.
When I find a little knit set—a cap and a gown—a soft, tender feeling pools in my belly.
I admire my husband more than ever. Nevertheless, all of this easy intimacy and admiration does not translate into that fire I know so well.
I would fear that I am bored of my husband, that I am truly a wanton that needs masculine variety, but it is not true. I have tired of lovers before, and the cardinal sign is finding their company irksome. But I want to spend more and more time with Alfred.
Indeed, the idea of bedding a man other than Alfred is abhorrent to me. It disgusts me. Where my lust for my husband usually resides, I feel only a pleasant blankness.
No, I know it is a symptom of the pregnancy itself. It is connected, somehow, to what is happening inside of me and the ailment that makes me tired and nauseous.
And I am terrified that I will lose Alfred because of it.
He has reassured me that he is willing to be patient.
But how could that be true? Under normal circumstances, I would not understand a relationship between lovers without frequent tupping.
No, I fear that Alfred is merely too sweet to tell me the truth.
That as the days wear on and I remain cold, he will lose interest. That soon he will want to pursue other women. He has suffered enough deprivation in that regard, after all. I don’t want to be another cause of it.
And yet I can’t abide the idea of him with another. As the days pass, I try to inure myself to it but fail.
One day, when Alfred is speaking with Mrs. Swanson about the menus for this week, I slip out of the house and into a fine furniture shop in Piccadilly. I feel a desperate churning in my gut that had nothing to do with pregnancy and everything to do with wanting to keep my husband. I spend an absurd amount of coin and try to swallow my desperation.
A week later, we are sitting in the little drawing room that has become our favorite for retirement. Alfred is reading and I am looking at numbers for a new investment opportunity—a ceramics factory in Staffordshire—when a knock sounds on the door.
Alfred answers it, and upon entry the footman addresses him, “Where should we put the delivery, sir?”
My husband looks to me in confusion.
“In here,” I tell the footman.
In moments, the footmen and the delivery men have the desk through the door.
“Here?” he asks.
I nod.
They set it down, I give a few coins to the delivery men, and they all depart.
Alfred turns to me.
“What is this?”
He approaches the desk tentatively, but his eyes have grown large. It is a beautiful piece, all golden, shining wood and embossed leather. Much finer than my own.
I approach the new piece of furniture, unable to look at him.
“It’s a desk. I wanted you to have something to write on. A place of your own.”
He runs his fingers over the smooth line of the tabletop.
