Page 61 of Five Nights to Claim His Duchess

“I am with child.”

He went still.

Then he drew back and took her face in both his hands and held it. There was nothing in his own face at all, nothing she could read.

“Say it again.”

“I am with child.” Her voice would not stay level. “The physician came this afternoon. He said five weeks.”

“You are having our child,” said Valentine.

And something came up behind his eyes, she saw it come, saw it break over him. Diana looked at it, and the panic went through her like cold water.

“I am not ready for this,” she said. “Your Grace, I am not — I cannot — oh, this is a mess. What in heaven am I to do?”

What shall I do?

Not we. She had not said we. She looked at him as though a disaster had come into the house, and asked what she was to do about it.

He rose from the bed. “The child is our agreement, and it stands.”

The room went silent.

Diana’s head came up. “What did you say?”

“You heard me.”

“I did not.” Her voice had gone strange and thin. “Say it again.”

“You agreed to give me an heir.” He heard himself go on and could not seem to stop it; it was easier to keep speaking than to stand in the quiet. “I did not force this upon you. You came to me twice this fortnight of your own choosing, and this is the result of it. It is the result we bargained for at the outset. I do not see what there is to discuss.”

What are you doing? Stop. Ask her. Ask her whether she is glad of it — ask her whether some small part of her wants this child as much as you have wanted it since the moment she told you — get down on your knees if you must, only ask her, his heart screamed.

He did not.

Diana stood very still by the bed, one hand pressed flat to her stomach, and looked at him as though he had struck her.

“That is all this is to you,” she said. “A debt I owe you. Collected.”

“It is what we agreed.”

“I did not ask you whether I was obliged to have it, Valentine. I am not asking you to release me from anything.” Her voice cracked in the middle of the word. “I do not know what I am asking you. That is the whole trouble — I do not know what I feel, and I came to you frightened and confused, hoping you might — hoping there might be some comfort in it, some⁠—”

“Comfort is not the same as an answer,” he said. “You wished to know what was expected of you. I have told you.”

Her eyes filled, and she did not bother to hide it, and something in his chest went tight and wrong at the sight of it — say something else, say the true thing. Instead he reached for his coat, because it was easier than reaching for her.

“I have business to see to before dinner,” he said. His heart was aching in a way it had never ached before. He was certain he couldn’t speak further without breaking down and what use was it to break down when things have come to this.

He walked to the door.

He did not look back at her. If he had, he was not entirely certain he would have found the strength to go through it. Some cold, frightened, long-buried part of him, the part his father had built, told him that going through it was the safer course.

The door shut behind him with a sound far too quiet for what it cost him.

“You are pouring that like a man who means to be carried out.”

“Then fetch a bigger glass,” said Valentine, “and stop remarking upon it.”