Chapter 9

202 5 2
                                    

"Baby, look at him," Mariposa de Valois-Angouleme whispers to her husband, showing him the phone screen where her best friend had sent her a photograph. "Isn't he precious?" Mary asks quietly, thumbing over the picture of the newly born baby boys cheek. "Our little nephew." she finishes, looking closer as her husband wraps his arms around her trim waist to look at the photograph closer. The party's still going on, it's not really a reception anymore without the bride and groom, but it's still got food, drink and music, so it's an enjoyable time nonetheless. Having been told with Henry and Catherine and Diane seperatley about their newly born baby nephew, the husband and wife duo have taken a few moments away from the party to look at the picture together. 

"River. River Daniel de Portiers." he says, reading the little caption that Kenna had sent that was just underneath the picture of a newly born baby wrapped in a blanket. "Isn't that marvellous?" he hums into her ear. "A little boy."

"Kenna wanted a girl." Mary says quietly.

"Maybe their next try will be a girl, you never know." Francis says. Mary nods, unable to keep the bite of jealousy back that she had always felt inside. Kenna's ability to miraculously get pregnant and her future fertility would always, always be a sore spot for Mary, and she knew that. Why could Kenna, who didn't even plan to have a baby, get pregnant so easily, and could get pregnant so easily, while Mary herself had to suffer two miscarriages after planned pregnancies? What had Mary done wrong, to deserve that kind of desperation and pain? Those pregnancies, so short, so quick that the two of them barely knew that those babies existed before they came to an end. Pregnancies that were so wanted, would have been so adored and protected and cared for, pregnancies that could only be represented by two candles on the mantlepiece in their living room back in Scotland.

But, like she's learned to do over Kenna's entire second and third trimesters, Mary swallows the bite of jealousy, the venom and the pain so she doesn't have to feel it anymore. Her best friend has everything she's always wanted. A rich, handsome husband and now a perfect little baby. A family of her own, to be needed and respected and loved in a way only a husband and child could do for her. That's all Kenna ever wanted, who was Mary to think bad thoughts about a girl who had always been there for her and cared for her. That was a good thing, the pregnancy and the baby. It's not Kenna's fault Mary's womb didn't work, just like it's not her fault that her womb worked. It's just one of those things, hmm?

"Does it hurt, seeing the baby?" Francis asks her suddenly.

"Hmm?" she asks, spinning around so she doesn't waste a moment of his handsomeness to stare at.

"Looking at the baby, and our-" his eyes flick downwards, and Mary begins to understand. "does it hurt, seeing-"

"No," she lies. "little River, he's a good thing, right? He'll make Kenna and Sebastian happy beyond belief, how can that be a bad thing?"

"You don't have to lie, Mary. I know that Kenna having a baby and us-"

"Not having one?"

"Yes, that. I know it must hurt, seeing the three of them like that."

"What do you want me to do, Francis? Continuously cry over the fact that I can't have babies and Kenna can? What kind of a life is that?"

"No, I'd never wish that." he sighs. "Mary, you know that it'll be us one day, right? That it'll happen for you and I just like it happened for my brother and your best friend."

"If there's one thing I hate in the world, it's the concept of some day, maybe, one day, if." she cracks a smile.  "I can't blame her or him. It's not their fault that I can't have children, Francis. And River, he's a good thing. I'm not angry, I just wish it was us right now. But it's not, and it won't be. I'm sorry."

The One Winged RavenWhere stories live. Discover now