“No.”
“I—I see.”
His son’s answer was flat, and ice-cold.
If he’d at least gotten something definitive—’we’ve decided to wait, we’re using contraception’—the itch of uncertainty might have been easier to bear. A clear answer he could live with.
But Karson was too hungry for a grandchild to let this rest.
“And there are no… other plans?”
“What kind of plans?”
“Oh, you know. The sort where you decide to take your time and enjoy married life a bit longer before—”
“Well. I’m not sure.”
“…I see. Wait—’not sure’?”
Does that mean yes, or no?
Karson pressed on, unable to stop himself. Kael kneaded the stiff muscles at the back of his neck and spoke.
“If you’re thinking of putting pressure on my wife about the matter of an heir, I’d ask you not to.”
“N—no, I don’t think I quite did that—”
Karson reviewed the conversation he’d had earlier with Jane.
He decided to throw his daughter-in-law’s mother ever so slightly under the cart.
“It’s just… Ivelina seems to be hoping for a child. Her mother mentioned something, and apparently she’s brought it up with her on a few occasions—that she wants a child who looks like you. That she keeps wondering how sweet it would be.”
Kael let out a quiet, involuntary sound of amusement.
‘Wanting a child who looks like me rather than herself.’ It was so entirely like her. He shook his head slowly, something soft at the corner of his mouth.
But as endearing as the thought was—as much as he held his wife’s heart in the highest regard—his position on the matter of a child was decided.
“I’m not ready yet.”
“N—not ready?”
“I mean that I don’t want one. Not yet.”
Kael said it with his eyes narrowed slightly.
A chill ran down Karson’s spine.
‘Wait. What is that? That secretive, calculating, deeply suspicious quality in his expression?’
“You’re not—deliberately—”
Kael gave a thin, quiet smile.
Karson knew immediately.
‘That—that terrible, cunning, shameless—’
He shuddered, pushed himself to his feet in search of Katherine, and left without another word.
Kael remained alone. He let out a long breath into the open air.
‘A child.’
He felt no particular longing for one. Men were said to harbor an instinctive desire for offspring—for a continuation of their bloodline. He did not share this feeling in any notable degree.
The only desires he carried were about his wife. Entirely and solely her.
‘”She wants a child that looks like you. She’s brought it up with her mother a few times—how sweet it would be, she said.”‘
He knew.
He had stopped taking the suppressant himself, under the pretext of preparing for the possibility. But the truth was that the idea of someone—anyone—entering the space that existed between him and Ivelina still didn’t sit easily with him.
* * *
In the small hours past midnight:
“I’ve been tricked again, truly!”
“And yet you were tricked last time, and the time before.”
“I would never have fallen for an ordinary lie! He’s taken to using ‘you’ as his excuse now, Emily!”
“My. The master is growing more resourceful by the day. He truly is a man of exceptional intelligence.”
“What am I supposed to do! It was my own reception! What if the guests are whispering that the duchess has no sense of decorum?”
“No one with any attachment to their life would dare. You have the master himself as your guarantee, my lady.”
“That may be, but—”
“Please don’t worry. Brides traditionally leave the reception ahead of the groom. There’s preparation to be done in the bridal chamber, and it takes time—so it’s customary for the groom to see out the festivities on his own.”
“Oh, thank goodness. What a relief.”
I exhaled deeply and settled my shoulders.
Wait—bridal chamber?
“Speaking of which—my friends gave me a gift and I never collected it! I was carried off before I could even grab it—”
“The red boxes? I put them over there. I’ve been keeping an eye on them.”
Of course. Emily was absolutely the best.
“Shall we open them now, my lady?”
“Yes!”
I scrambled off the bed.
Emily brought the boxes in, and they piled up across the bedroom floor. There were at least thirty of them, each one wrapped in the same red with pink lace ribbon—a small mountain of crimson filling half the room.
“I wonder what could be inside. Dorothy made such a point of saying I had to open them in the bridal chamber. Even when I said I just wanted a tiny peek, she absolutely refused.”
“At this point, I’m curious myself.”
I untied the ribbon on the first box.
‘Da-dum. What could it be?’
“…What is this.”
What I held in my hands was an extremely thin, extremely small piece of fabric. I held it up to the light and could see the lines of my own palm straight through it.
“It’s a silk slip, my lady.”
“Good heavens.”
I spread it out on the floor and stared at it. I had never, in all my years on this earth, seen a garment designed quite like this.
“Why is there a hole where the—the back is concerned?”
“There’s also a hole at the front. Both sides, actually.”
“If you cut out all the important areas, how is anyone supposed to ‘wear’ it?”
“I believe that’s rather the point, my lady. So the important areas remain visible.”
If someone asked me: ‘Would you rather give up dessert forever, or wear this in front of your husband?’ I would give up dessert without a moment’s hesitation.
I squinted suspiciously at the next box.
“Don’t tell me they’re all like this.”
“Only one way to find out, my lady.”
I opened the second box.
The contents were, if anything, more alarming than the first.
“What is this. Is it netting? Is it mesh?”
“Both, I’d say.”
This was considerably worse. It wasn’t a matter of sheer fabric. This was a set of underwear constructed entirely from net material—riddled with holes, like something dragged up from the sea.
“Never mind important areas. If I put this on, I’d look like someone drew outlines on a naked body with a ruler.”
“It is rather aggressively sparse.”
“I’m so relieved I opened these before Kael could see them.”
“Yes. The imagination runs rather alarming places at the thought.”
“I might not have seen the outside world for at least two days.”
“Possibly a month, my lady. Perhaps we should open one more, just to see. There might be something more practical in there.”
I stared at the box Emily offered with deep distrust.
“There has to be at least one normal thing in here.”
“One would hope.”
I opened the third box.
“My goodness. ‘What’ is this?”
“A white rabbit ear headband—and a matching underwear set with rabbit fur trim. The base material appears to be mesh.”
“Completely unhinged. There’s even a fluffy tail on the—the ‘back’.”
“The little white puff is rather charming, objectively.”
I shuddered visibly.
“What’s the matter?”
“A memory from six months ago. I tied a single ribbon under my chin for my husband’s birthday and paid dearly for it.”
“Ah. Yes. This does bear a rather similar energy.”
I shuddered once more and began packing the underwear back into the box as fast as I could.
“I’m so glad I opened these before anything happened. That could have been catastrophic—”
“Oh—wait. My lady, there’s an envelope at the bottom of the box.”
“An envelope?”
I opened the bright red envelope. Inside was a small folded note.
‘Ivelina, do you remember?’
‘Back at our debutante, when we all talked about what we imagined for our honeymoons.’
‘You remember—the bunny-and-hunter game, the mermaid-kidnapped-by-a-pirate, all of that…!’
‘You said you wanted to spend wild, breathless nights with your husband while wearing something terribly naughty and terribly adorable.’
‘We thought for a long time about what to get you for your wedding, and that conversation just came straight back to us!’
‘So Kate and I pooled our money and had these specially commissioned.’
‘There’s a shop I adore—the most fashionable among young noble ladies right now—and we had to put in our order three months in advance just to get them.’
‘These represent three months’ worth of both our allowances combined.’
‘Wear one on your wedding night, and take the rest on your honeymoon!’
‘Since you’ll be gone for a month, we made sure there’s thirty sets—plenty to keep you going.’
‘All for the sake of your incandescent nights.’
‘P.S. Look for the box with the yellow ribbon. We packed it full of energy tonics, because you’re going to need them. Recover well and burn brightly! Nobody has friends like us!’
‘— Your devoted friends, Kate and Dorothy.’
“Incandescent nights. I’ll be reduced to ash.”
“It’s true, the selection doesn’t suggest the fire will stay at a manageable level.”
I folded the letter and shoved the lingerie back into the box with considerable force.
“By the way, my lady—did you actually have those kinds of… aspirations?”
“What? Absolutely not! That was entirely their conversation—I was only sitting there listening!”
“I thought as much.”
I remembered it clearly, now that I thought about it.
At the debutante, I had sat blinking at an increasingly alarming pace as those two held what could only be described as a thoroughly adult discussion.
I hadn’t followed most of it. At least ninety-five percent of the vocabulary had been entirely foreign to me.
‘What were they even saying… something about a… position? Or was it a technique…?’
In any case—I had not known such garments existed in the real world. I had assumed they were purely the province of scandalous literature.
“‘Sigh.’ Emily. When we pack tomorrow—don’t put any of these in the luggage. Do you understand? Not one of them. You cannot make a mistake.”
“Of course. I’ll remember.”
“I’m serious! These must absolutely never fall within Kael’s line of sight. If he saw me in any of these, I would die in that bed. Actually die.”
* * *
