A Husband for Deva

Noticeably Worse

Looking at herself this way and that in the mirror, Deva silently admitted that the situation had become noticeably worse.

Twice the moon had grown to its round fullness and then slimmed to a crescent since that interview with her mother. Giving up her morning chocolate had proved no more effective than denying herself the sweet course at meals, but she'd been able to conceal the worst of her trouble with a tightly laced bodice under her pinafore and a thick shawl over it.

Somehow, overnight, her abdomen seemed to have swollen out even further. She tightened the lacing of her bodice as much as possible, but instead of a neat column running down her middle, the best she could manage was an uneven hourglass. Her newly ample breasts threatened to spill out up top, then the two edges met briefly around her ribs, but below that everything spread into an unhappy triangle straining across the rounded belly that she simply couldn't hide. She tried covering herself with a pinafore; gaping in the back and puffed out up front, the starched fabric seemed to emphasize rather than hide her curves.

A soft knock at the door signaled the lady-in-waiting's morning arrival.

Deva sat down at her dressing table and bunched her skirts up over her lap before calling out to Jenia to come in. A lady-in-waiting was supposed to be a confidante, a friend; Deva hadn't known Jenia long enough to be sure of her discretion. More than ever, Deva regretted the departure of her childhood nursemaid, in whom she could have confided.

"You're up early, Princess Deva," Jenia said, as though she hadn't found Deva in the same spot every morning for the last quarter-moon. She seemed unable to look directly at her mistress, and yet Deva was convinced that the girl's eyes kept sliding back to her midsection as though drawn by a magnet.

"Is there a problem, Jenia?" Deva asked at last, when her lady-in-waiting's hovering and fidgeting had become intolerable.

Jenia darted a glance toward the doorway, then squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. "I do most humbly beg your pardon for presuming, but... this... this..." Her hands fluttered in a circular gesture that might have been just fumbling for words, or maybe a delicate mockery of a large belly. "I took the liberty of requesting the presence of Princess Ashlen on your behalf... as I did not like to go to Her Majesty the Queen... yet."

Deva slumped against the dressing table, hiding her face in her arms, trembling with a confusing swirl of fury and relief. The decision to ask for help had been taken out of her hands. She could hear Jenia muttering and pottering around, but she couldn't find the energy to raise her head.

After what might have been some time, or only a moment, Deva heard a sharp rap on the door.

"Thank you for attending us in private, Your Highness." Jenia's high-pitched voice carried clearly across the room, in a cozy sisters-together tone that made Deva's skin crawl. "She will not confide in me, and there is something most definitely untoward occurring. If she were married, I would say she had been blessed, but as it stands..."

"The matter is now in my hands," replied Ashlen's rich, warm voice. "Leave us, and do not return until you are called for." After a moment of dead silence, Jenia's slippered footsteps shuffled away, and then there was the soft squeak of the door hinges and the scrape of the lock turning. The distinctive clicking of square-toed Islander clogs crossed the room toward her. "There, we are alone," Ashlen said. "Stand up and let me see you."

Deva heaved herself up and stepped away from the dressing table. Looking at her sister-by-marriage, she managed a small smile. The Islander always brought color and light with her, maybe because because of her flame-colored hair – which she insisted on wearing in four long braids banded with barbaric gold ornaments instead of neatly pinned up under a kerchief – or because her overskirts were of brightly woven Islander fabric instead of plain dark felted wool. Deva tried not to flinch as Ashlen's eyes assessed her. Then, thinking that Ashlen might as well know the worst of it, she lifted up her pinafore to reveal the unhappy condition of her bodice. "It wasn't so bad until today," she explained, "and I've been trying so hard – I've given up all sweets, and even my morning chocolate."