LITMIR.BIZ

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and giving babies.”

      Alina sighed. “Then Danica didn’t pull that monkey face of hers simply to vex me, did she? What else do I need to know, Tatiana? I shouldn’t wish to have to ask the baron the time of day, so I most certainly don’t want him to be telling me anything else. He should believe I am a woman of the world.”

      The companion, old enough to be Alina’s mother, but not accustomed to speaking frankly on a subject she knew about but, in her spinster state these past forty years, had no personal knowledge of, struggled to her feet once more.

      “Husbands do not care to think of their brides as women of the world, my lady,” she said, avoiding Alina’s eyes. “They get really put out about it, as I’ve heard the thing. Best you should do as Danica says, I suppose, since your mother didn’t see fit to explain the way of the world to you, and let his lordship tell you. Not that Miss Uppity knows any more than me, for there was never a man eager enough to brave that one’s embrace. Be like bedding a board.”

      Tatiana, an earthy woman for all she had been serving in the manor house for most of her life, ran her hands down over her own considerable curves, then hefted her massive breasts one at a time, so that they fit more comfortably above her corset. “Not that these things don’t get in the way, from time to time. Still, better a handful of these than those sorry pimples of Danica’s.”

      Alina giggled. “You’ve got considerably more than a handful, Tatiana,” she said, and then sobered. Swallowed. Looked down at her own muslin-covered breasts that were somewhere between Danica’s pimples and Tatiana’s impressive largesse. “Why should that matter?”

      “No reason, my lady,” the maid said hurriedly, pulling a handkerchief from between her bosoms and dabbing at her suddenly damp upper lip. “No reason at all, and I meant nothing by it, truly I didn’t. I could go to the kitchens and beg something for you to eat. You nary had a thing but some watered wine and dry biscuits pass your lips since this morning. The crossing was a mite choppy, and I didn’t eat anything, either, but I surely made up for that lack earlier. English food isn’t so terrible, my lady. Just let me nip off downstairs and—”

      “Tatiana,” Alina intoned severely, hiding her apprehension. “I asked you a question. Why should it matter if a woman…if she has pimples or handfuls?”

      “It’s…um…the thing is, my lady—your mother said kisses give you babies?”

      Alina was beginning to feel very silly. “I saw Jurgen in the hallway behind the silver room one day, and he was kissing Astrid.”

      “Astrid, is it? The girl is a round-heeled fool, tipping over for any who ask her.”

      Round-heeled? And what did that mean? Silly was rapidly escalating to uncomfortable. “That’s neither here nor there, Tatiana. We’re much of the same age, and I thought I should know what she was doing, as it was…she seemed quite distressed. Moan…moaning and everything, and saying in this absurd voice, ‘Oh, yes, Jurgen, my stallion.’ Um…so I asked my mother, and she told me that Astrid was a very reckless and uncouth girl, and that kisses lead to babies, and that was why I should have nothing to do with kisses until I was married and my husband kissed me, as she had done with my father, and as good and chaste people have always done.”

      Tatiana pulled a face, the more round-cheeked version of the same expression Danica had displayed a few minutes earlier. “And now Astrid has two babies and no husband. A stallion, indeed! Jurgen? But, see, my lady, your dear mother was correct in what she told you.” The maid turned companion sighed. “And that’s all she told you? Truly?”

      “You know how ill she was, Tatiana. I could see that the subject distressed her, so I thanked her and left her to her prayer book. And…and then she was gone, and I had never dared to trouble her with more questions. I suppose I could have applied to Aunt Mimi, but I didn’t want her to…to know that I didn’t know. I…I’m supposing there’s more than just kisses, and I’ve heard things a time or two at court.” She shook her head in denial. “But they can’t possibly be true. Nobody would do that.”

      Tatiana looked about the room, spying out the small table with a decanter of wine that had been sent up by the baron, whose man said that it was safer by far to sip wine than to get within ten feet of the inn’s supply of water unless it was for one’s bath. She hesitated only a moment before pouring herself a full glass and drinking the contents in three nearly desperate gulps.

      Wiping the back of her hand across her mouth, she then sighed, replaced the wineglass and sat her bulk down on a chair without asking permission.

      “Ah, that’s better,” she said, rubbing her palms together and looking at Alina expectantly. “Now, my dear, sheltered little girl, you tell your Tatiana—nobody would do what?”

      THE SMALL GILT CLOCK that had been a parting gift from the king chimed out the hour of ten o’clock from a small table beside Lady Alina’s bed. She sighed, supposing she would hear the lovely thing chime out every hour until dawn, her eyes still as wide and shocked as they were now, and staring up at the cracked ceiling.

      Tatiana had left her after an hour. Alina would have given anything to have their discussion forever erased from her memory.

      That’s what Jurgen and Astrid had been doing? Her parents had done this? The whole world did this?

      Why? Why would anyone do this?

      Yes, her mother had explained her monthly bleed when Alina had first experienced it. But she’d called it Eve’s curse, which hadn’t meant much, even when Alina had gone to the Bible in the study and searched it thoroughly. The snake, the apple, she knew all of that. But she hadn’t found anything about a monthly bleed, and had to content herself with her mother’s assertion that it made her a woman, and no longer a little girl.

      That had seemed a fair enough trade. After all, men like Jurgen and Luka and Papa had to shave every day because they were men. She only had to bleed once a month.

      Oh, if only she had known! She would never have agreed to the marriage had she known. Removing herself from her aunt Mimi’s jurisdiction, her constant disapproval, had weighed heavily in her decision, as had Count Josef Eberharter’s teeth. Pleasing the king had, of course, been paramount…even if displeasing the king by refusing probably hadn’t been a serious option in any case.

      The prospect of fine gowns, of moving in English society, of having a home of her own, these had all finally brought her around to the notion that, if she was not the luckiest girl in the world, she at least wasn’t cleaning out fireplace grates or living in some damp cave, worrying when next she’d have something to eat.

      But this? She hadn’t known about this. The so disgusting, so crudely violating, so intensely intimate this.

      She’d made Tatiana swear on her prayer book that she was telling the truth. She’d demanded the companion then swear on that same prayer book that people actually liked it. Tatiana wasn’t sure enough to put her immortal soul in jeopardy by swearing to the latter. But she was fairly certain men liked it. Men liked the oddest things.

      The soft knock on the door to her bedchamber all but had Alina jumping out of her skin.

      “Lady Alina? It is I, Justin Wilde. I see a spill of light under the door and feel impelled to disturb you. I believe we should have ourselves a small conversation.”

      Her wide eyes popped open even wider. It was him…God and all His saints help her…her stallion.

      “Forgive me, my lord,” she called out, wishing her voice didn’t seem to be a full octave too high, and piteously thin. Wishing she had dared to blow out her candle and face the dark, and the disturbing images Tatiana’s words had planted in her brain. “I am abed.”

      “Ah, but not asleep,” came the assured voice. “One could hardly expect you to be, if your bed is half so uncomfortable as mine. Please. We really do need to talk.”

      The disturbing images disappeared as her temper came to her rescue. Was the man always going to prove such a pest?

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