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"Kate? Kate?!"
Anthony's bellows for her are not uncommon, the loud tenor of his excitable roars often shaking the walls of their house. But now, their volume seems distant and tinny, as though he were calling for her from across a giant canyon.
Everything seems distant now, and unimportant. Kate inhales sharply and presses a palm to her flat belly.
"Kate!" Anthony exclaims, pushing past a blushing housemaid who does her best to vacate their chambers as quickly as possible without resorting to actual fleeing. "There you are, my love. Did you not hear me call?"
"No, I did."
Anthony, fresh from a morning meeting with their solicitor (theirs, now! How odd is that - she has an English solicitor of her very own!) skids to a halt as he surveys her.
"Something's wrong." he says, approaching her silent figure, standing like a statue against the large bay window that overlooks the vast gardens (another novelty! A house in Mayfair that has an entire field of its own, that too in cramped confines of the city!). He encircles her waist from behind and presses his nose to the nape of her neck. Despite herself, Kate smiles and raises a hand to rake through the soft bristles of his hair. He hums happily and props his chin on her shoulder.
"What happened?" he asks.
Kate says nothing, merely taking one of his hands wrapped around her and placing a warm palm on her stomach.
"I suppose I should be relieved I'm still capable of it. Congratulations, my Lord. It seems you haven't married an old maid after all." She feels Anthony's breaths, previously steady and deep as he enjoyed his customary morning neck sniffs (ridiculous man, she thinks fondly), halt completely as he slowly registers her meaning.
"Do you mean-"
"I'm fairly certain, yes. I can't keep anything down, and no, it's not food poisoning from the curry house I took you to, before you say anything," she says, ignoring Anthony's sheepish grin. "My breasts are sore and my courses are late past two months."
"You do pride yourself on your punctuality."
She turns her head, finally, to look at Anthony, to carefully gauge his reaction. If he doesn't want-
No. He's a Viscount, a member of the English Peerage; it is his duty to beget heirs. It is her duty to bear them.
Why should he be unhappy?
Even though Kate knows better, knows that even if Anthony did not love her (which he does, of course he does), the bonds of matrimony are sacred. His honor even more so. He would not leave her. He would not disregard any child she bore.
He won't leave her. She knows that.
Anthony's grip physically reinforces her thoughts, almost crushing her momentarily as he hugs her tighter, hiding his face in her neck, breaths becoming deeper and more ragged. Until she realizes-
"My love?"
"No, no. I'm fine," he says, voice muffled. But as Kate feels the hot residue of tears beginning to trickle down her neck, she grows more and more worried.
"Are you crying?"
A sniffle. Then another muffled noise.
"No."
"Anthony," Kate says, the inflection of her tone betraying a loving, long-suffering patience.
"No, I'm really happy," he says. But his voice is rough, and when he raises his head and loosens his grip so she can turn around in his arms, she sees that his eyes are red.
"I'm just-" Anthony impatiently wipes his nose with his sleeve. "I can't lose you, Kate. I can't. If something happens-"
"I thought we had both agreed to stop fretting over things we can't control," Kate says, lifting one hand to touch his cheek as the other keeps its place on his chest. Over his rapidly beating heart.
Anthony's eyes meet hers, conflicted with happiness and pain and grief. Her own sting.
It should be a happy moment, but it is bittersweet, marked by the harrowing past that still haunts them both.
"I don't want to not know my future child," Kate murmurs. "To have them constantly wonder who their mother was."
"You're afraid, too."
"Terrified," Kate affirms. "The only thing that makes me feel better is knowing that you will be by my side."
"Always," he vows, pressing his forehead to hers.
"My love," he murmurs. "The mother of my child."
Kate smiles, astonished to feel a curious wetness on her cheek. "We're going to be a real family now. I'm going to have a child of my own. I never thought..."
She had accepted, at the age of twenty, that she would never be a mother. Poured all her attention and focus on Edwina, the child she would have for but a few more years, and Newton, the son she adopted to prepare for the years ahead, the years after Edwina and Mary would leave and Kate would be alone.
"You'll never be alone again," Anthony says, voice light and teasing but also carrying a certain gravity. "You'll have a little one now, chasing after you."
Kate rolls her eyes. "Being as vexing as you are, no doubt."
"She'll learn from the best."
"He," Kate frowns. "I want a boy."
"Well, I want a girl," Anthony parries. "And I want her to have your eyes, and your curls-"
"And my air of menace," Kate says loftily.
"She's ours, darling." Anthony sighs as he chivvies Kate onto their large bed and drops beside her with a groan. "Of course she'll be absolutely terrifying."
"She'll send half the ton running for cover when she debuts," Kate laughs. "Likely worse than Eloise."
"I don't want to think about that!" He caresses her belly and studiously ignores Kate's peals of laughter as he hovers over her body, kissing that spot on her neck where that bee had once stung her.
There's a blissful silence as they curl into each other, limbs entangled together, two hands on one stomach.
Two hearts, soon to be three.