A Shocking Revelation

The kitchen of Mae's manor was alive with activity from the three female slaves currently in it. The two younger slaves were chatting as they did the dishes (well, Vivian was chatting, Kyrie was mostly listening), and Dessi was across the room cleaning the counter and floor and preparing the slave's dinner now that the lady's was done. Since Vivian hated interacting with Dessi, anything she said was never directed towards Dessi, in fact, to Vivian it was as if the third woman in the room didn't exist at all. Usually Dessi might chime in with something or other, nothing to provoke, just to be conversational, but today she was quiet as she went about her work: she was looking at the remains of Mae's meal as if it spoke a language that only she understood. Kyrie had noticed Dessi's slightly furrowed brow and uncharacteristic silence, and she couldn't help but wonder just what was going through the older woman's head.

If Vivian noticed the drop in Dessi's mood, she certainly made no indication of it. She simply took each dish that Kyrie finished washing and dried it while her mouth continued to run.

"Lady Dandridge has been acting even stranger lately. Remember how I mentioned to you that she never asks for help getting dressed? It doesn't usually take her very long to finish putting her clothes on, but lately it's been taking longer and longer before she calls me in. A full hour passed today before she called for me! She couldn't be sleeping in, could she? That would be just as strange as her taking a while to dress..."

That did sound... rather uncharacteristic for Mae: usually she was very punctual. Now that Vivian was prompting her in this direction, Kyrie's expression got a bit thoughtful as she pondered her own interactions with the lady. Had she particularly noticed anything out of the ordinary? Kyrie hadn't been around for very long, a little over four months now, but she had picked up on certain things; in addition to being punctual, Mae was always very direct with her words and she efficiently did her tasks because she always had something else that she had to be doing.

When Kyrie thought about Mae's interactions with her in the menagerie, she really couldn't think of anything that the lady had been doing that was out of the ordinary. Though... Now that Kyrie thought about it, perhaps she looked a bit more tired than usual? Mae had a very prim appearance, but lately there were the littlest of things that might be interpreted as haggard. A slight slowness in her reactions, a darkening under her eyes, perhaps being a little paler than usual...

"Maybe she's been unwell?"

"You think so? I don't think I've ever seen Lady Dandridge sick. Or if she ever has been she really doesn't show it. I suppose she could be sick, that would explain why it's been taking longer and longer for her to get up and going. Still... That doesn't sit quite right… Why is it only getting worse and not better? This has been going on for close to a month now."

Vivian scrunched her eyebrows up as she dried off another pot that Kyrie passed her.

"I think Lady Dandridge is pregnant."

The sudden interjection from Dessi caused both girls to snap their heads over to her, and for a moment, Vivian forgot her hatred of the woman.

"P-Pregnant?!"

Vivian's brain struggled to process this, though the look on Dessi's face made it clear that this was no joke.

"That's... That's impossible! She couldn't be pregnant! I mean, that's just--"

Here Vivian cut herself off, putting a hand up to her mouth as her mind raced around this information. That's just absurd was what it was! She would never have imagined a person like Mae actually taking someone to bed, that was the first objection. The second objection was who in the world had she even slept with?! Her husband had been dead for years, and Vivian couldn't remember seeing evidence of lovemaking on Mae's bed when she went to change the sheets in the mornings. The only other people around the house were a small set of guards that had no contact with the household staff and solely followed Mae wherever she went. She couldn't have slept with one of them, could she? There just wasn't anyone else though! Their master barely ever had visitors over, and certainly not for enough time to stay the night!

This entire scenario was beyond belief.

Despite her comparatively short time in the manor, Kyrie found this to be just as surprising as the other slaves. She never would've guessed that the lady of the house had a baby hiding under her belt! It had been rumored when Mae was still married that she was entirely sterile: she had been married to her husband for 3 years and never conceived, after all. If Dessi was right though, then it wasn't Mae that was sterile, it was her husband who was! Or maybe neither of them were... It was entirely possible that Mae purposely hadn't become pregnant.

"Why would you think she's pregnant?"

All work had stopped in the kitchen at this point, with the two younger women looking at the older one; one eager to hear the answer to her question, and the other still wanting to call Dessi a horrible liar.

"I recognize the signs: her eating habits have changed, she takes longer in the mornings before she feels fit to be seen by other people, she's been looking unwell lately... All of these things just make it clearer and clearer to me that our lady is pregnant."

"What would you know about determining a pregnancy? You're no midwife."

Of course Vivian's natural resistance to the woman made it hard for her to really believe what was being said. Before Vivian could continue on a vitriolic vein though, Dessi cut her off with her own bit of fire, something that surprised Vivian into silence.

"Do you think we are given that draught every week just because? Lady Dandridge didn't offer it originally, it was only after she learned of my unwanted pregnancy that she started."

This turned Vivian even more to stunned silence. The draughts that Mae gave them were designed to prevent pregnancy. Vivian had originally thought that Mae gave them to her staff because she expressly didn't want them to have children, but in light of this information that Dessi just shared, perhaps that wasn't the case at all; maybe she gave the draught as a courtesy to her slaves for if they didn't want to be pregnant? It was a strange thing to think that the lady was giving her slaves courtesies, but Mae was a strange master in general.

Satisfied that Vivian wouldn't try to cut in again, Dessi continued on.

"I recognize the signs because I am intimately familiar with the signs. I am almost positive that she's pregnant, and I can't imagine that she'll be able to hide it for that much longer."

"But, the lashback of this..."

Kyrie trailed off, her expression getting rather sad when she imagined how much society was going to turn against Mae even more. Not only was there the perception that she killed her husband, but the Dandridge family as a whole especially hated her because she'd seized her husband's inheritance and mining business which should've gone back to them. She hadn't exactly been on good terms with the royal family when she was married off: not a single one of them had even bothered to visit or reach out to her aside from for official functions that she had to be at... All that wasn't even accounting for the fact that she was a woman in politics, which tanked her popularity all the more. What could possibly have possessed her to let this happen? She had her draught which clearly worked considering none of her slaves had any children, so then why had she gotten pregnant herself? It just didn't make any sense; it seemed like Mae was making so much more trouble for herself by actually going through with this.

"Forget about the lashback, the real question is why? And with who?"

Vivian had gathered her wits enough to bring these questions to the room, though neither of the other women had anything to respond to her with. Dessi may have some more insight than the two other girls since she'd been working in the house for longer, but it was clear that she wasn't going to share by the silence in the room.

In the end, Dessi gave both of the girls a rather level stare before finally speaking.

"These are not questions that slaves should be asking of their master. What we should be asking is how can we help her?"

Kyrie gently bit the inside of her lip and looked down, feeling ashamed that she'd spent so much time basically gossiping about the lady. Vivian pursed her lips but also looked away, crossing her arms in a halfway defiant manner. She too felt a bit of shame to be told what her job was by Dessi, but she bit back any fiery response she might've had. Mae's predicament was a much bigger deal than any of their problems, and Dessi was right: they had to figure out how to help her.

"Should we tell Isaac and Renard?"

Both Vivian and Dessi looked at each other with slightly scrunched eyebrows, unsure of whether Kyrie's question was a good idea at this stage. Considering Dessi was taking charge of this situation, it wasn't surprising when she was the one that eventually answered.

"Not yet, I don't think. If Lady Dandridge continues on to the stage where she's beginning to show, then we can tell them. They should be brought in the loop at that point, I would think."

"But what about us? What are we supposed to do now?"

Kyrie's voice was soft as she asked this, clearly seeking guidance from who she viewed as her superiors. Though to be honest, Vivian was at a loss as well. What could they do for the lady? Mae hadn't told them about her pregnancy in any clear terms yet, so should they really do anything? It would be infinitely better to wait for Mae to inform them. But would she? What could they do in the meantime? While Vivian and Kyrie remained paralyzed by questions, Dessi was not.

"I suppose the best we can do is cater to her even more. I'll cook foods that are better for her condition, and we should be vigilant in getting to her and doing whatever she asks. I know that you two already do this, but do it even more now. Try to predict what she might want and be ready practically the moment she asks it. I know it's not much to go by, but without her expressly confiding in us we can only act in subtle ways."

"Wouldn't it be better to tell her that we know?"

Of course Vivian was the contrary voice, but back in the usual pattern, it wasn't really ruffling Dessi's feathers. Instead, she was giving the statement the due consideration that it demanded.

"Would you feel comfortable broaching the subject with Lady Dandridge?"

Vivian made a face at this and turned away, roughly picking up the still wet dish that she'd put down when this whole conversation started.

"Well... if any of us do, we need to make sure to tell each other about it. Our master's health and happiness is our paramount duty whenever she's at the house, and this is just an extension of that."

The two younger woman gave their own form of acknowledgment to the question; Vivian with a bit of a grunt and Kyrie with a firm nod. With that, the three of them turned back to their duties that had been temporarily left by the wayside. Now it was silent though; each of them thinking about the information that had been shared this evening.

Despite herself, Kyrie was once again wondering what kind of man Mae would take so far into her inner circle to allow into her bed. Did Mae have a hidden side to her, one that actually did have some kind of love? Her emotions rarely showed, but the way she treated her pets hinted to Kyrie that the woman had a heart. One that had many walls around it, but one nonetheless.

It was all rather romantic, and her fingers were just itching to draw. There was beauty and emotion in this story. Or perhaps there wasn't, but Kyrie's mind was prone to exaggeration. Pictures that evoked emotion, those were always her favorites to try and draw. She wasn't sure how good she was at ones purely done from the imagination, but to sit there and imagine the feeling of those on her paper: it was something she easily got lost to.

Vivian's mind was in a much darker place than Kyrie's; she was also thinking about Mae's secret lover, but a part of her suspected Renard. Logically, she knew this didn't make any sense; she'd heard about how he'd been rebuffed before, and she'd even seen how he interacted with the lady now! He couldn't even look Mae in the eye for longer than two seconds! It couldn't be Renard, it just couldn't! And yet... there was that irrational jealousy that flared in her. Perhaps it was the thought that if Mae had accepted his advances, Renard could very likely be the father of her child. Renard was promiscuous enough for that to be the case.

Despite all of Vivian's efforts to keep him satisfied, to keep him solely on her, he still wandered. Why did he wander though? Was she not good enough?

Frustrated by her own thoughts, Vivian rubbed at the pots with even more vigor, as if that would help to release her negative emotions. No matter what the situation was, her mind always found its way back to Renard somehow.

When dinner preparations were finished for the slaves, each of the three women compartmentalized the information that had been shared in the kitchen. Vivian ran at Renard with open arms, Kyrie smiled shyly at Isaac, and Dessi laughed at the young love in the room.

A storm was coming though, and they had to be prepared when it hit.