(no subject)

I lean heavily against the wall once I am back in Shaun's study. I must compose myself before he comes home, though I haven't the slightest what to tell him about the wall. And I'm sure my back is going to be all shades of purple by the time we go to bed, so I'll have to find myself something to sleep in.

I can't tell him what happened, not yet. And I suppose I had better make sure that Craig doesn't mention it either. I still cannot quite erase that fear, the thought that he might have to come home and find blood in his study, find the servants cleaning up after Urban's whore...

And there is...something else. As I'm beginning to be able to breathe again...I have the slightest seed of a mad idea beginning to be sown.

The girl is with child--presumably mine. It was certainly the first, when I took her, and it would be too soon to know if the child belonged to a customer at the Rose. I do not know, of course, what passed between the time when she left here and when she turned up at the Rose, but I find the odds fairly good that it is, indeed, mine.

Her brother is angry, I expect, because of what he thinks I've taken from her. But I could offer much in return for the bearing and caretaking of an heir, should I take the fancy to do so. Urban can put her up, of course, and keep her fed and dressed and give her an allowance--and he will, surely, if his pet tells him to. But he cannot be a father to a child that he knows is mine, I am sure of it. Nor, of course, can Master Wood. I can offer all those things, and extend my protection to the child. Let him never be called a bastard, nor wonder who fathered him.

But...I admit, it is a strange and fanciful idea. I wouldn't even begin to know how to propose it to Shaun, and beyond that...I don't know whether I would live through proposing it to Miss Wood and her--associates, shall I say?

I had better think up an explanation for the hole in the wall, anyway.