blueberry yoghurt and honeydew with butterscotch and sprinkles
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: With Child
Rating: PG-13
Challenge: Blueberry Yoghurt #6: alibi, Honeydew #15: temptation
Toppings/Extras: butterscotch, sprinkles
Wordcount: 383
Summary: Lady Ashdown knows that she is pregnant, amongst other things.
Notes: Isobel Ashdown is Edward Ashdown’s mother. The Dowry details her grim history. This is what becomes of her.
The moment she discovered she was pregnant, she knew it wasn’t her husband’s child. Making love to James Ashdown was like making love to a block of marble: so cold, so uncomfortable, so dreadfully dull. She would have been surprised if the two of them could conceive at all, as she found that he had the sexual allure of a damp sock, and he probably felt the same about her.
Lady Ashdown sat upon a window-seat, watching the garden as she liked to do. Her very own garden in the home she grew up in.
How funny the world is, she thought with a reflective sigh. Her uncle, Arthur Bedford, who had stolen everything from her when he father had died, was now himself dead. He had died scarcely a year after stealing her property and her money, meaning that it all slid back to her in any case. Her marriage to James Ashdown was been for nought: but then again, it had not. If she had not been married, the stolen wealth would have gone to her child nephew Robert Christchurch instead.
So, indeed, it was a good time for pondering upon the peculiarity that was the world and the Wheel of Fortune. She rubbed her belly idly, wondering when it would begin to show.
She was not worried in particular about the birth of the baby. James Ashdown worked away from home often and for long stretches of time: he was an officer in the navy, soon looking towards a promotion to commodore. Her lover, Percival Ingram-a reclusive harpsichord-player-was light in complexion and blue-eyed, just as she. Perhaps she would have worried had he been noticeably darker, but fortune seemed to have decided to grant her a rare smile and that was not the case. The secret would remain secret.
Although she was no expert on such things, Lady Ashdown was quite certain that she loved Percival Ingram. She had been frequently making love to him long before she married Ashdown, and had continued for long afterwards. It felt like nothing Ashdown could ever provide her with: not only a honeyed physical pleasure that would sometimes snap into her mind in the centre of a busy day but the feeling of closeness...
She was glad it was Ingram’s child.