Annalise roused herself from where she had been sleeping on the opposing bench seat. “Are we there?” she asked as she straightened her clothes.
“Yes. How are you feeling?” he inquired as several footmen streamed from the house to assist with their luggage.
“Still a bit sleepy, but I am eager to view Shaw Manor,” she announced with a well-placed smile. She leaned forward to look out the window. “It is lovely, Navan. Shall we know snow? Alexander said there is often snow in Derbyshire.”
Navan appreciated her efforts to be delighted, and so he said, “Not as much as Derbyshire, but enough.” He unlatched the door and set down the steps before he climbed down to the ground and reached a hand back to her. “Come, my love. You are to bring life to another home that has been waiting for you for some years now.”
“I would never have thought all this possible. None of it, without you, Navan. Thank you for seeing me when no one else would,” she said as tears misted her eyes.
“I was not the only man who ogled you at the Beleward ball,” he said as he tweaked her nose in a tease. “I was simply the only one who dared to learn more of an enchantress.” He placed her hand on his arm. “Let us enjoy Shaw Manor and please remember it is perfectly acceptable for you to simply delight in this two-hundred-year-old estate. It is Christmastide. Our first Christmas together. We have a lifetime to bring this estate under your care. We will count this privacy as part of our wedding journey. Just you and me in our quarters.”
“I would enjoy a bit more privacy than we have had of late,” she admitted as she wrapped her hands about his elbow. “Lead on, Lord Beaufort.”
“Lady Beaufort, mylady,” the butler at the Smithfield dower house said, but Annalise entered quickly on the man’s heels.
“Grandmother!” she squealed as she circled the man to rush into Lady Smithfield’s arms.
“I am delighted you have come. Where is that handsome husband of yours?” her grandmother asked as they took seats side by side on a settee. “We will have tea, Mr. Chad.”
“Immediately, my lady.”
The man darted away and Annalise used the moment to say, “Beaufort is with my uncles at the main house. I came ahead because I require your advice, though I believe I know the answer before I speak. However, I have no one else to ask.”
“This sounds serious,” her grandmother said with a worried expression.
Annalise’s hand came to rest over her stomach. “Is it possible that I could be with child already?” she asked in a serious tone.
Her grandmother’s lips twitched in apparent amusement, and Annalise wondered if she had asked an ill-advised question. “As I assume you and his lordship have shared the same bed, why would you think otherwise?”
“Neither Theodora nor Lady Orson have yet to know the hope of a child, and they have both been married longer than I,” she admitted in embarrassment.
“God will decide when each of the other ladies know a child,” her grandmother assured. “Even if a woman has only lain once with a man, it is possible for her to become a mother.” Annalise had remembered the tale of her own mother’s conceiving Alexander before marriage. Such was why she wondered about her own condition. “Let us begin with a few questions. First, tell me when you actually married. The date you and Lord Beaufort exchanged vows.”
“The tenth of September,” Annalise explained, but added quickly, “However, we did not know each other in the Biblical sense,” she said with a deep blush, “until eight days later. Beaufort said as we were traveling first on a large fishing vessel and then by horse across the mountains, it would be too uncomfortable for me. It was only afterwards that I fully understood the actual kindness he showed me. Our first night together was after the village celebrated the wedding of Sean McArthur and Meredith Sagran. I will remember that night forever, first for the kindness Lady Klare’s cottagers showed me, and then…” She blushed even deeper.
“So the eighteenth of September,” her grandmother said with a pat to the back of Annalise’s hand. “Next, might you tell me when you had your last monthlies before you married?”
Annalise knew she frowned. She had not considered what her grandmother had asked. No one had ever explained how a woman’s monthlies figured into the conceiving of a child, but now that the question had been asked, she thought she should have had a talk with Theodora before they both married, or better yet, with Lady Orson. “Less than a week before we left for Scotland. Mrs. Dove-Lyon initially thought the blood from when Mr. Stark shot at me was blood from my monthlies, but I recall reassuring her it was not.”
“I do not like the idea that you were once in danger,” her grandmother stated in stiff tones followed by a heavy sigh. “So, a bit more than three months prior. You have had no monthlies since before you married Lord Beaufort?”
“None,” Annalise admitted, and a new realization arrived. “Could I be carrying Beaufort’s child?”
“It is a bit early to know with assurance,” her grandmother explained, “but it is a possibility.”
“Would carrying a child make a woman sick when she is traveling?” Annalise asked, still a bit dumbfounded.
“Each woman and each child’s delivery is a bit different. I have known some who were ill from day one and others who ate the most unusual foods possible. Generally, however, what is sometimes called morning sickness begins around four months along. If you became with child early on, you could be approaching that milestone.”
Annalise’s hand again caressed her midsection. “Such would be a glorious miracle, would it not?” she whispered.
“For you and Lord Beaufort, it would truly be a mark of God’s hand on your shoulders,” her grandmother said.
“What do I do now?” Annalise asked.
“Do you want to tell his lordship of your suspicions?”
Annalise shook her head in the negative. “Not until I know with some confidence, for I could not bear to disappoint him.”
“Then let us strategize. You and his lordship will be in this area until the first weeks of January, will you not?”
“Beaufort is to assist Lord Graham with a matter in Yorkshire sometime in mid-January,” Annalise explained.
Her grandmother said, “As you do not wish to raise Beaufort’s hopes unnecessarily, we will execute our own grand design. Shortlyafter the first of the new year, you shall come to spend the day with me, and we shall make arrangements for you to meet the local midwife. Perhaps we should say that we decided to call upon several of the Smithfield tenants, of which the woman is one, and take a basket around to those who missed boxing day for one reason or another. I shall, naturally, inform the woman beforehand regarding the necessity of our call and the necessity of secrecy. By that time, you should be far enough along for the woman to recognize whether you are truly with child or not and perhaps instruct you on what to expect going forward.”
