Sophie shivered and didn’t say anything else.

After Dr. Lambeth had paid her a visit, she obediently told Patrick that the doctor saw no cause for alarm. He nodded and said nothing.

They ate dinner together, they ate breakfast together—but they never spoke of the child Sophie carried. Once or twice Sophie knew that Patrick must be thinking about the babe, because he abruptly spanned her growing waist with his large hands, almost as if he was measuring it. But he said nothing, and every time she brought it up, he changed the subject or left the room.

“He doesn’t want our baby,” Sophie whispered to herself, her eyes anxious. She crossed her hands over her stomach. There was nothing new in that, after all. Patrick had made his feelings about children clear long ago.

Perhaps he resents the fact that we can’t make love, Sophie told herself hopefully. Her mother had stated that when a woman is in a delicate condition, a couple may not have marital relations. When she mentioned this idea to Patrick, he merely nodded, and from that day he had hardly touched her. Sophie didn’t know how to confess that she hadn’t meant to follow her mother’s advice. At the very least, she thought they ought to ask Dr. Lambeth.

But she was too shy to broach the subject. Instead they slipped easily back into the limbo state in which they had lived after returning from Wales. Patrick took her arm on the way in to dinner. He guided her up the stairs. He looked at her appreciatively, but not hungrily. They said decorous farewells at the door to Sophie’s room.

For her part, Sophie found herself thirsting for her husband, surreptitiously looking at his long legs, longing to touch his back. She dreamed of his kisses, of the way he used to brush her whole body with butterfly touches. Sophie was too bashful to instigate a caress. After all, she had been the one to report her mother’s opinion of marital relations during pregnancy. And Patrick seemed as indifferent to her as he had when they had stopped sleeping together before. He had certainly returned to the embraces of his black-haired courtesan; once or twice each week he returned to his bedroom in the early hours of the morning.

Perhaps, Sophie thought unhappily, perhaps Patrick dislikes the fact that I am growing plump. For a moment she looked at herself and saw extra flesh everywhere … breasts, cheeks, stomach. Disgusted, she dropped her hands and turned away from the mirror.

In the park, the carriages of high-flung courtesans mingled with the carriages of the nobility. Sophie searched the faces of those with black hair, comparing their slender elegance to her rounded form, their dark beauty to her tedious blondness.

But I am clever, Sophie told herself stoutly, in moments of desperation and shame. I am not stupid.