And now for something totally different...

"But what is to become of me now that you've had your sport and grown tired?"

"Your fate is of your concern and yours alone."

"And the child?" She stops, her hand resting of its own accord on the burgeoning belly, entreating him to stay.

"You must do as you see fit. A child was never meant to result." He turns to the door, his hand on the heavy door knob.

"Your heir..." She begins again.

He interrupts, fury shading the words, blackening his face as he speaks. "I have my heir! Just as I have a wedded wife or have you forgotten? I care naught for the babe you carry, for all your pretty words and honeyed promises the seed that begot it could have come from many but me."

She shrinks back, her face a mask of humility while her mind races. She had been so certain that she had only to fall with child and he would stay. And should she bear a boy, find a way to acknowledge him, and her, in time.

He is fastening his coat as she follows him into the yard. The snow that began to drift from the menacing clouds earlier in the day when he arrived had grown into a heavy lace curtain covering the ground, burying all traces of his footsteps.

She looks up at the slate grey sky and at the bare branches extending their cold forlorn limbs in shaking supplication for a comforting blanket of snow. He is pulling on the thick leather gloves and reaching for the reigns. She notes that he did not ride Blackwell, his favorite, today. This horse is grey with a flowing white mane and a plain nondescript saddle. Less noticeable, less likely to be remembered, a nameless creature from his vast stables.

Already he's distancing himself from me, she thinks and suddenly knows that he will not return. He came to make clear that all between them is over, to remind her of her place and, she thinks, of his.

Her hand drifts again to her belly, to the straining apron and caresses the outlines of the heavy dressmaker's shears. The shears she dropped in its folds in haste hours ago when she sprang up from her sewing upon hearing the horse's hooves on the cobblestones. Her fingers close and tighten on the ornate handles as her hand reenters the snowy gloom, scarcely visible in the rapidly descending twilight.

He turns to the horse, hand on the saddle, one foot already in stirrup. He would leave without a farewell. The warm glow spilling from the house illuminates the bulky calfskin pouch on his waist and without hesitation she steps forward, arms raised as if for a hug before the shears sink into the doughy softness of his neck.

The child will be his heir after all.