“No. It’s just a touch of something I ate. I only need to lie down.”
He got me back to bed, draped cool cloths over my forehead, and pulled the curtains closed so I could rest. But after he planted a sweet kiss in my palm and backed out of the room, I stared at the wall for a long time, thinking. I was pregnant, of course. The feeling was the same as it had been before, in London. Somehow Emma had suspected before I had come to the truth myself.
I knew I needed to tell Mansfield, but after the business with Messenger Boy and the way he’d reacted to Maia Carberry’s death, I was terrified to bring it up. The pregnancy would only intensify his concerns about me. That was clear. What if he wanted not just to swaddle me but to curb me? What then?
While I was still stuck in a cycle of worry and doubt, Mansfield finally guessed. “Aren’t you happy, darling?” He clasped my hands and gazed into my eyes.
“We’re just getting started here,” I tried to explain. “There’s so much to do to make a farm run smoothly and get the horses in line.”
“How terrible would it really be to take a little time off? When you’re ready to get back to it, the horses will be here.”
We were lying in our bed in the dark. His white pyjama shirt seemed to float and jump in front of my eyes. “I don’t want to stop working, Mansfield. Please don’t ask me to.”
“Surely you’ll stop riding…at least until the baby is born. You have to take care of yourself.”
“This is how I take care of myself, don’t you see? If we have this baby, I’ll need to do my work just as before. I don’t know any other way to live.”
“If we have this baby?” He pulled back and his eyes hardened. “Surely there’s no question.”
I backpedalled. “I’m only afraid of how things will change.”
“They will, of course. We’re talking about a child, Beryl. Some dear small boy or girl who will look to us for everything.”
His voice had taken on an intensity that sent me spinning. He didn’t seem to understand that the very idea of throwing off the life I knew best for any other terrified me. There were women who never thought twice about giving themselves over to domestic life, the needs of their husbands and children. Some actually craved that role, but I’d never seen more than a hint of this sort of home life. Could I even do it?
“You’ll learn to be a good mother,” he said after I’d been silent for a long time. “People can learn all sorts of things.”
“I hope you’re right.” I closed my eyes and lay my hand on his chest, feeling along the slick buttons of his shirt and the perfect piped edge of the cotton, the hem made so carefully and so well it wouldn’t, couldn’t, ever unravel.
The whole world would read about the royal visit—how the train station in Nairobi was festooned with roses and painted welcome banners. Hundreds of flapping flags. Thousands of people from every possible race in peacock-hued ceremonial robes and headdresses, fezzes and toques and velvet slippers. Our new governor, Sir Edward Grigg, bellowed his speech into a megaphone before the two young princes were whisked away to Government House on the hill, for the first of many grand fêtes and supper parties and sweeping, exclusive balls.
For a month, every white woman within a hundred miles had been practising her curtsy and wringing her hands over what to wear. It was a lottery of entitlement—all the honourables and baronets, and first or third earls of where-have-you rolled out in their finest form. I was four months pregnant and too distracted to be concerned about any of it—and I also wasn’t nearly ready to share my news with others. To buy time, I’d begun to wear loose blouses and forgiving skirts—me, who was never out of slacks. I saw it as my only solution, along with hiding out as much as possible, but Mansfield was insisting we be present for everything. “Let’s just tell people, darling. They’ll all know soon enough anyway.”
“I know…but it just seems so personal.”
“What?” His forehead wrinkled. “It’s happy news, silly.”
“Can’t you go to the parties alone? I don’t feel like myself.”
“You can’t honestly think of begging off. It’s an honour to be invited, Beryl.”
“You’re sounding like Karen.”
“Am I?” He gave me a strange look. “I suppose that must mean you sound like Finch Hatton.”
“What?” I met his eyes. “What are you suggesting?”
“Nothing,” he said coolly, and strode away.