Page 25 of Corpse in the Canal

She laughed. “Don’t be silly.”

Still, he didn’t release her hand or her gaze. “Constance…you are not keeping something from me, are you? For what you imagine might be my own good?”

It was a reasonable assumption, considering. But she laughed and bent to kiss his forehead. “Of course not, daft man. I am hale and hearty and ready to investigate. Or I will be with some clothes on.”

To her relief, his brow smoothed and he let her go. “Then I’ll race you. Last person dressed questions the servants.”

She immediately splashed water over her face and heard him laugh softly as he padded across to his dressing room. The door closed behind him, and she reached for the towel.

What are you doing, Constance? She had crossed that invisible line between keeping her own counsel and lying. To Solomon.

She was keeping something from him, something she had told herself she had to be sure of before she told him, something that was unexpectedly hard to think about and she didn’t know why.

She patted her face and neck dry and set about completing her ablutions while mental chaos did nothing to calm her physical discomfort.

It was time. Why was she keeping this from her own husband? Because she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about it. With something like longing, she remembered their honeymoon in Venice and the few hours when she had believed she might be carrying Solomon’s child. Happiness had flooded her, helping her endure the dreadful sickness of poisoning. Realizing the truth had made her cry with disappointment and grief for what had not been.

And yet now that she knew, now that new life really was forming inside her, she felt overwhelmed with uncertainty, with fear. She didn’t even know why. She was just aware she could not deal with it now. She was not ready. She didn’t know what it meant for her, for Solomon, for Silver and Grey.

And so she said nothing, when she owed him everything.

Telling him was the only option, so why keep so stupidly silent?

Because it was not the only option. No one knew more than Constance about avoiding conception. And along the way, she had inevitably gathered other information about what to do when it was too late.

Her stomach gave a dry heave that forced her to stagger away from the washstand to the dressing table, where she sat down on the stool blindly, by feel. Dear God, what is the matter with me? I am carrying a child, Solomon’s child. My child.

And yet she couldn’t pretend the thought, however shocking, had not entered her head. Why am I not happy about this?

Tentatively, she placed one hand on her flat abdomen. Her secret, her wonder, that she was not yet ready to share, even with him. Was she happy? In the midst of nausea that got worse every morning and every time a carriage bumped and rattled her?

I am afraid.

Well, it was sensible to be afraid. Childbirth was the most dangerous experience most women ever faced. But that wasn’t what she truly feared. She was afraid of the change this infant would bring—to the adventure of her life, the dangers she walked into when she only had herself to consider, most of all the changes to her relationship with Solomon. When the child would come first, when their time alone together was over. There would be three, not two.

How much she had longed for that! An unspoken longing until Venice, when she had considered the real possibility. And yet now, with the reality, she was frightened, uncertain, torn, like some of the poor girls she had rescued off the street. Like Lizzie, now Lady Maule. Lizzie, living then husbandless in poverty and squalor, had had cause to fear both present and future. Constance did not.

And yet she felt it. The idea that the woman called Old Nursie had even entered her head. That frightened her more than anything else.

She became aware of her white face gazing back at her in the glass. At some point, she had donned her underwear and the autumnal-brown dress. There was little she could do about the shadows beneath her eyes, but she bit her lips to brighten their color and ungently patted her cheeks.

She had to sort this out and tell Solomon. Not necessarily in that order. Only how was she supposed to think with her stomach like a boiling cauldron of—

Solomon emerged from the dressing room, smart and elegant, almost dapper, from his neatly brushed hair to his shiny black shoes.

He picked up her hairbrush. “Breakfast. And then you get to question the servants.”

“So I do,” she managed, closing her eyes while he brushed out her hair in a soft, soothing rhythm. Surprisingly, breakfast sounded good. She opened her eyes and hastily wound her hair up and applied the pins. Anne, her maid, would not have been happy with the results, but it would do.

Solomon kissed her nape, making her shiver, and fastened the few hooks she had missed. Then he offered her his arm, and they went down to breakfast.

*

Almost as soon as she swallowed the first bite of dry toast, she began to feel better. Which was fortunate, because they did not have the breakfast parlor to themselves. Although Mrs. Harvey had remained in her room, Richard was applying himself to a large plate of bacon, eggs, mushrooms, and kidneys, giving the impression that he was eating merely to fill in the time until they arrived.

It was his way of coping, of course. He had to do something, instruct people, focus on the arrest of his son’s killer rather than on the tragic death itself.

“What are your first steps to be?” he demanded.