She was remarkably prone to tears these days, which was entirely unlike her, and it was not as though she cried on a daily basis. She simply found herself crying at random intervals without any reasonable cause. Yesterday, she had cried when she had dropped a piece of ham from her fork onto her plate. Last week, it had been trying to adjust her stockings and being unable to do so adequately. Another time, she had cried when she had woken up in the morning and felt a sharp twinge in her hips.

She had cried when Emblyn had come over with a bouquet of wildflowers. Cried when Basset had smiled at her. Cried at a letter from Richard that had praised her companionship.

Surely she ought to be out of tears by now. There could be none left to give.

And then there was the pain. She hurt at every moment of every day in one part of her body or another. Her hips, her back, her legs, her stomach, her ribs. She hurt in her head by the end of the day, even when she spent the entire day resting.

It was not often that she spent the entire day resting, as there was too much to do and she had little patience for sitting around and doing nothing, but the point remained.

Constant discomfort was punishment, and she thought it monstrously unfair that she should have to suffer for something Basset had done as well.

He must have some guilt about the thing, as he took great care with her each night when she went to bed, ensuring she was warm and comfortable, not listening when she slapped his hands away, and even rubbing her feet when they ached too much. He was as attentive as a nursemaid without any of the fussiness of one, for which she was most grateful. With her quickness to tears also came a quickness to irritation, and the causation for that was more unpredictable than what spurred her tears.

No one was spared the bursts of irritation, even if they managed to be spared the tears.

No, indeed, she would not be pursuing this again. Not while she had sense in her mind and strength in her body.

Provided her strength ever returned to its previous level.

Adelaide hefted herself up from the divan in her drawing room, needing at least five hands to press against a sore spot but managing with one to steady her and another to hold her uncomfortably large stomach. How could she bear another six weeks of this madness?

She was likely to burst from the stretching of it all.

But in the end, she reminded herself, she would have a child.

A person at the beginning of its life, learning everything and anything from her and from Basset, from their neighbors and acquaintances, from its Aunt Emblyn, from Trevadden…