A cold shiver unfurled through her. “Mary.” Fleur gathered the maid’s fingers in her own. She gave a light, comforting squeeze. “Tell me what troubles you. I can help—”
A tear rolled down Mary’s cheek. “It isyou, Lady Fleur.”
Fleur drew back, taking her maid’s hands with her. “I know I have been preoccupied and failed to see you are suffering—”
“No. No. It is…”
Fleur gave Mary the prod she needed to complete her thought. “It is…?”
“You have not had your courses since Lord and Lady Rutland’s masquerade.”
Mary’s voice was so whispery soft that Fleur could hardly hear. When she did, it took a moment for the words to register. When they did, Fleur still couldn’t process.
“Yes, I have.”
Her maid captured Fleur’s hands this time, returning the sympathetic gesture. “You have had blood, but not…your full courses.”
Fleur drew back, her mind working to tabulate the days and months. Since she had begun them, they were never predictable…but…
A pit formed in her stomach.
“You know, I do not always have them monthly. I go months without,” she reminded, deriving comfort in the assurances she gave both of them. Because if Mary thought logically and they together reasoned away the horror her maid was raising, then they couldbothbe free of it.
“Oh, my lady. This is not your fault. So many, too many, good women have suffered at the hands of a cad.”
Panic throbbed throughout her chest. “What is not my fault?” The reedy quality of her voice, she didn’t recognize. “I don’t…” But she knew what the older woman was saying, without having said it explicitly.
“You have also been suffering from stomach upset and exhaustion and…tears.”
“Tears,” she repeated blankly.
Then words came rushing in like river rapids over stones stuck in place.
“…Since when did you become a weepy female?”Henry demanded. “Never mind. I don’t care. Just stop.”
“…I am not a weepy female…”
With slow, sickening dread sinking in, she looked at the window, drew the curtain back, and stared at Rundell and Bridge’s.
She recalled her last time here when she moved between shrieking like a banshee and weeping like a ninny. She’d had absolutely no idea why.
Even playing with the prisms shooting off her fingertips had brought tears to her eyes.
Then last night, when she’d sobbed copiously against Lord Cassian’s shoulder and then, as if she hadn’t cried enough for two lifetimes, she did so inHenry’sarms.
“…The drying up a single tear has more/ Of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore…something about you makes me a watering pot…”Fleur had told him.
Instead of mocking, he had soothed her.
“…If I laugh at any mortal thing, ’Tis that I may not weep…”
A droning filled her ears.
“And your gowns, Lady Fleur,” Mary whispered softly.
No. No. No.
“I’ve had to…”