Dr Abernathy's words, "Her Grace is with child," echoed in the quiet bedchamber, weaving through the lingering haze of Suzy's returning consciousness. She blinked twice, her mind reeling, trying to align this astonishing pronouncement with the terrifying ordeal she had just endured, with the encounter she'd experienced.
With child?
A fragile smile, almost disbelieving, touched her lips. "Did I hear him right?" she thought, her internal voice a whisper of wonder. "I'm going to be a mother." And then, like pieces of a puzzle clicking into place, it made a strange kind of sense. The persistent fatigue she'd been experiencing for weeks, the occasional dizzy spells, the slight nausea she had dismissed as stress or a delicate constitution… "So that's why I've been feeling that way for a while." A soft groan, a mixture of returning awareness of her aches and the sheer emotional weight of the revelation, escaped her.
