3 January 1895 — Ford's Room, Bartonburg

Roughly a month had passed since the incident, and the third floor of the Greengrass house had achieved an uneasy equilibrium. Ford worked long days and juggled debts in his ledger book each evening, doing the annual dance to try and make Christmas work. He was cordial to Jemima when he saw her. He asked perfunctory questions about her day and she answered them and returned them. He didn't ask how are you, or anything like it. He didn't ask any real questions. Nothing that could start a deeper and less comfortable conversation. They were pleasant strangers now, the way they had been in the first few weeks of their marriage. Under the circumstances he couldn't regret the shift; all things considered this was better than he deserved, he thought. She would have been within her rights to hate him. Maybe she did, somewhere below all that, but she was masking it well enough to keep up appearances even when it was just the two of them.

There were moments, sometimes, when they happened to be alone. Moments where their eyes would catch on each other's and he would see a glimpse of real emotion on her face and he would have the impulse to say something — something real, something sincere. He inevitably bit it back, thinking don't make it worse, and the moment would pass and he'd swallow down whatever it was he'd almost said. It was better this way. It was, at any rate, safer this way.

He'd been sitting at the small desk in his room when she knocked and he went to the door. Jemima asked if they could talk. Ford was immediately panicked but tried to mask it as he stepped back to let her in; his response veered far too bright and chipper as a result. If she'd bothered to come to his room when the door was closed then this wasn't a spontaneous conversation, and he knew there wasn't any version of a planned conversation that would be comfortable for him. But he supposed he'd earned that, being uncomfortable.

There weren't enough places to sit in his bedroom for both of them, unless one of them took the bed. That seemed a treacherous idea. Ford left the chair at his desk for her, if she wanted it, and stood awkwardly by the foot of the bed. "So, what's — what are we talking about?"

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Jemima Greengrass

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   Jemima Greengrass

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Set by Lady!

She had been trying to gather the courage for this, but as the days passed by the prospect had seemed to grow more daunting rather than less. She hadn’t told anyone yet. She had been keeping her distance from her own family, so that they would not make note of her drastically changed mood since then. It was easier to lie in letters – happiness easier to invent on the page. In the following weeks, Jemima had known that if she went home, someone would read her despair in a heartbeat, and she would fall apart on them.

Instead she had put all her efforts into putting on a brave face and lying to the Greengrasses as if it were her full-time profession, busying herself however she could, and only letting down her guard when she had finally closed the door to her room.

Ford was in his room now; she had heard him come upstairs a while ago, and had sat perched at the end of her bed, trying to force herself to move. But there, she had done it: knocked on the door, asked to talk, stepped in. The chair at his desk was angled as if someone ought to sit there, and Ford was standing guard at the end of his bed. It didn’t matter: she felt too restless to sit anywhere, so she shifted her weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other, expression fraught, her gaze drifting around the corners of his room for a moment as if she would find something to save her there. No. Just Ford. Ford, waiting for her to say something.

“Did you want to sit? There’s something I have to tell you,” Jemima said, rushed and a little high and off-pitch from the surge of nerves that came up whenever she so much as considered it. “And I know it won’t – help – anything.”

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If there was any more room for panic the way she lead in to the conversation would have triggered it. Something she had to tell him, and it wouldn't help anything. Anything was unhelpfully broad — there were a lot of things the matter with them, and now Jemima knew what they all were, so she could really have meant anything. She had made a resolution of some sort, he guessed — something she had determined that he wouldn't like. He braced himself for it, hoping he could keep whatever his immediate reaction was off his face. He didn't have a right to object to whatever she had decided, after everything, and they both knew it.

He didn't want to sit. Particularly not while she was hovering there, like she would rather be anywhere else (probably not a far cry from the truth — the last time she'd been in his room was when she'd found him and Tycho together. Was that what was going through her mind now as she eyed the corners of the bedroom? Wondering what else had happened in here that she hadn't been privy to?) But she had asked, and now he wasn't sure of a graceful way to refuse, so he nodded and went to the chair at the desk.

"It's alright," he said, preemptively and uncertainly. It had feeling of someone putting their foot out on ice, testing to see if it would crack under the weight. Could he just insist that he was fine with whatever she was about to say and make it true? He supposed they were both about to find out. "Whatever it is, it's alright."

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Set by Lady!

Jemima wasn’t sure how much of her spiking anxiety was from the current situation, and how much was just an echo of last month’s events, some flashback of that nightmare just sparked by crossing the threshold of his room.

She couldn’t afford to think about any of that right now, in the face of this – everything she had learned that night only made this that much worse, whatever Ford said to her face today. And Jemima had had time to think about this, as obliviousness to her symptoms turned to frantic denial and then to – well, a growing panic.

“Is it?” she echoed, although a small part of her was grateful he was already trying to talk her down, without knowing their predicament. If only she could believe it. Instead, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, forcing herself to get it out while she had the words prepared. “Because I’m having a baby, Ford. We’re having a baby.” And for all her considering, she couldn’t see how this was going to work, because they didn’t have any money and they didn’t have any trust and they were barely a we at all. Jemima hadn’t even been sure if she was prepared to be pregnant or to be a parent before all this – but she certainly wasn’t ready to do it alone.

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   Fortitude Greengrass

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She didn't believe him. He didn't believe himself, either. Probably he wouldn't have been able to reassure her regardless of what it was she wanted to say, with things the way they were between them at the moment, but then the word baby hit the air and he went very still. This was certainly not something he could smooth over with placating reassurances. He had known this was a possibility, obviously. Even if he hadn't been thinking about it from the day they married, Cash's situation over the summer and then into the autumn would have made it an unavoidable consideration. But just as he'd known it was a possibility, he'd known all along that he wasn't ready — that he would have to be ready someday, probably, but he wasn't there yet. He needed Clementine settled, he needed another year to pay down debts. He needed — well, he probably needed a wife who would have more than superficial conversations in passing, which he had been in possession of up until a month ago when that had been ruined.

That was another quite dire point of consideration. He had known this was a possibility, and he had been thinking of it as an inevitability too, because there were things they could have done to prevent it that he had never discussed with Jemima. He had assumed she wanted a baby, sooner or later — that she wanted a family. Having already deprived her of her agency in choosing a husband and much of her good standing in society, he had thought it wrong to interfere here. He owed her as much of a life as she could still reasonably have. But that had been before, and now he had to consider not just whether it was likely Jemima wanted children, but whether it was likely she wanted them with him. It seemed unlikely the answer to the latter question was yes — so now here they were. Another terrible thing he had inflicted on her.

"Oh," he said eventually. "And are you... alright?"

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Set by Lady!

Jemima had expected more of a reaction, but he seemed to have frozen. And she never knew what he was thinking nowadays. She had thought him easy to read at first, but of course she’d been wrong about a great many things; and if Ford telling her everything had finally laid his motivations bare, this last month she had spent retreating from him, locked up in her own head, hadn’t helped her much as much as she supposed with reading him.

She only wished the time to think had been any help whatsoever in understanding herself. But he asked if she was alright, and Jemima blinked at it, because she had thought the obvious answer was no. Did he mean well, physically? “I – mean, I feel tired all the time, and sick, and my bladder’s somehow always full and my breasts are sore,” she blurted out, with a beseeching look. And her heart was hurting and she was terrified, and she couldn’t seem to work out how else she felt or where they stood anymore.

And Ford, was he – actually calm about this? Did he care? She eyed him, baffled. “Are you alright?”

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From the way she blinked at him Ford guessed that asking if she was alright had been the wrong response, but he didn't know what the right one would have been. Surely given all she knew now, she wouldn't have expected him to be pleased. A month ago if she had given him this news he would have faked it, but he would have already been frantically planning in his head, deciding how they might best convert the empty bedroom into a nursery and how they could rebalance the budget to afford a nurse. What was the point of faking it now? They both knew how dire this was.

He hadn't expected to be met with a steam of physical symptoms, though. A full bladder and sore breasts was more information than he had ever wanted about someone else's body, and he couldn't fathom why she was telling him.

"Jemima, that's not what I meant," he said, sidestepping the question of whether he was alright (he never was; what else was new?) Maybe he'd phrased it too broadly for her to know what he was actually asking. Obviously neither of them were going to be delighted by the timing of this, but putting that aside he wanted to know how she felt about... the future, he supposed. Sharing a child with him. They couldn't have a baby together the way things were between them now, but he wasn't sure she was at all inclined to change them.

"I'll do whatever I have to to make this work," he said, which she probably already knew. She knew what lengths he'd gone to for his sisters. But removing the sore breasts and the lack of money from the equation, what he really needed to know was whether the prospect of this still filled her with dread. "Are you alright?"

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Set by Lady!

Oh – did he actually want to know how she was, emotionally? Because Jemima did not think that that answer would be any better than her physical state.

She thought she would have been happy, had that night in December not gone the way it had, if she had still been oblivious. Because Jemima had always wanted that happily ever after, of course she had – and it had always included a husband, and a house, and a happy family of her own.

“I –” Jemima stammered, because once again she felt the pressure of this conversation not only for the present, but for their whole future. This was a bad time for a baby, they could both agree on that. But they had not gone to bed together since before that night, and, frankly, who knew if they ever would again, so – what if this was the only chance at a child she ever had? A child might be nothing to Ford but another burden, yet another source of stress and duty to contend with, but at least they would be something to pour her time and energy and love into. Was this selfish of her to think? If she couldn’t have a husband who loved her, perhaps a son or daughter would be enough to make her feel less alone?

Pathetically, she wished Ford would stand up and hug her, even though she had just asked him to sit. She wrapped her arms over her stomach, though there wasn’t much of a visible bump yet to protect. He would do whatever he had to, he said. “I’m scared,” Jemima admitted. “And I don’t want this to make things harder when we aren’t even –” Happy? Together? On speaking terms? Not that this had been a choice; and although for the last few weeks she had been trying diligently to stay away from him for both of their sakes, he had preferred that she stayed, hadn’t he? – “...but I don’t think I can raise a baby alone.” Maybe she would find that she was capable of it, if they could not repair things enough for this to find a way to work in the long term – but he had already said he would do what he had to, and Jemima didn’t want to raise a child alone.

(She also didn’t much want her child to grow up under the shadow of debts or with a criminal or otherwise deviant father, but Ford had promised to fix things and besides, fixing those problems seemed like rather too much to ask for in an instant. So she would have to settle for a father who hopefully would care a little and wouldn’t outright resent his child, to start.)

But if she didn’t want to do this alone, did that mean she had to somehow forgive him?

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   Fortitude Greengrass

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The way she wrapped her arms around her stomach settled one question: however she felt about him, she wanted the baby. This was such an immediate and massive relief that he couldn't respond to anything she had actually said right away; he had to take a moment just to exhale and adjust his mental framework for the conversation. She wanted the baby. She wouldn't resent their child for existing, or for tethering her more deeply to a man she couldn't bear to speak to. She was going to love them, even if they did make everything else harder.

She looked so alone standing in his room and wrapping her arms around herself like that. He had the urge to cross to her and take her in his arms, but supposed that given everything that had happened that might not be as comforting as he would have intended. No, probably best to keep his distance. She had asked him to sit, and he didn't want to leave her feeling trapped.

(He wanted the baby, too. This was a new realization. He hadn't spent any time consciously thinking about it before this. When a baby had been theoretical he'd considered how Jemima was likely to feel about it, and how it would impact their finances, and how it might be managed logistically, but he had spared no actual thought for how he would feel about it. In the seconds between when she'd told him and when she'd put her arms around her stomach he had thought, in the shadowy way one could without consciously thinking it, that Noble made pregnancies disappear for desperate women. Despite how tense their relationship had become, Noble would have done that for Ford if he'd asked... and he would have asked, if Jemima hadn't wanted it. But the intensity of the relief he felt now spoke for itself: beneath all the concerns about how it would be managed, something in him wanted this baby.

He didn't think he could tell her that. It felt selfish and impractical even to think it. What right could he have to want to expand his family when he had done such a terrible job with the family he already had?)

"You won't have to," he said, but realized as he spoke maybe this was premature. He was willing to do anything she needed, anywhere along the way — that didn't meant that she trusted him enough to ask. "I mean..." he started, unsure how to address the enormity of the thing between them. "It's up to you. But I — want to be there."

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   Jemima Greengrass

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Set by Lady!

She let out a breath, caught on one word. I’ll do, he had said before – he would do whatever he had to. Because that was what Ford had been doing for the last few years, as he had told it: whatever it took to keep his family afloat, acting out of duty, necessity, regardless of his own feelings. But he had said want here, hadn’t he? I want to be there, so there was – something there.

Maybe he didn’t mean it, and was only saying what she needed to hear – but she had given him a chance, here, to suggest an alternative, and he hadn’t. And she had to give Ford some credit for finally telling her the truth about everything last month, and so Jemima supposed she could just about afford to hope that he was still being honest with her now. Even an ounce of willingness might make a world of difference. She could call herself trapped in this marriage, but she had, after all, decided to stay; and still she could not bring herself to stay and have this baby just to trap him into something terrible in turn. So – if she leant into this enough to let herself believe his assurances, the grim weight on her shoulders started feeling just a little less crushing than it had.

With it, she felt the urge to flee lessening. Instead, a little gingerly, she perched on the edge of his bed now, across from where he was sitting. “Alright,” she said, and attempted a slight smile to prove that she was alright with this. (It felt a little false and foreign, to be smiling at him when no one else was present to witness it – but if they were committing to this it felt necessary to start somewhere, and fake it until it perhaps one day felt natural again.) “If you’re sure we can make this work.”

“But then you have to promise,” she said, calm but light – as if it had only ever been a joke and not some gravely serious last resort on his mind – “you really won’t fake your death and leave us.” Ford would have done anything in the world to spare his sisters from ruin, Jemima believed that. He had used her if it helped his family’s chances... and she didn’t need him to ever put her first in that way, but she needed him to feel responsible for their child, whatever became of them.

And, given everything that had happened, Jemima was also a little worried that one day, if he failed to fix things, he would finally be too sick of his life and all the thankless responsibilities to stay, and snap – just cut and run one day. She wasn’t even sure she would blame him for it. And, well – Tycho would probably flee the country with him gladly. (It was hard to forget that piece of the puzzle, sitting here.)

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Ford was sure of nothing of the sort. Certainty felt like a foolish luxury, given their present situation. But Jemima had taken a seat and had smiled at him, and while it didn't feel especially warm it did make her look far less likely to flee the room at a moment's notice... and she was having a baby and they both, in spite of everything, wanted the baby. So maybe there was a chance of making things work, someday. Depending on one's definition of work, at any rate. Jemima might never be fond of him again, and she might never forgive him for the circumstances of her life now that she was married to him, but perhaps they could manage at least to work together for the sake of their child.

What she said next brought him up short, though. Her tone may have been light but he felt the accusation behind her words, and his expression was accordingly abashed. He ought never to have told her that. There were probably a dozen little things he shouldn't have told her, details that were not necessary to describing the situation when she had demanded the truth, and he would certainly be stumbling in to them in quiet moments like this for years to come.

"I was never going to leave you," he protested quietly. It was true, though she had no reason to believe him. Marrying her had represented a colossal shift in his future, in his obligations — she was the first truly permanent fixture in his life, the first responsibility for which there was no expectation of ever being finished with his duty of care. And that was before he had determined that he really did like her, besides.

Ford looked at his feet. "I promise."

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Set by Lady!

“Okay,” Jemima murmured, accepting his answer in good faith. She swallowed, and stayed where she was, letting them sink back into a long, swelling silence.

It felt like an impossible situation, trying to talk to Ford now. If she said nothing else to him, then they could not get past superficial small talk, and how could they ever make it far enough to raise a child like that? But everything she did say – anything honest – felt simultaneously like an attack. She hadn’t meant that remark as one (at least, Jemima didn’t think she had) but, still, Ford looked dismayed. He looked chagrined and sorry and forlorn enough that it felt like she was dealing out blows to a puppy, somehow – there was some hurt look in his eyes that tugged at her heart, in spite of all reason.

He had hurt her, she tried to remind herself. He hadn’t cared about her before, not really. She didn’t know why she cared so much about him. And she – she couldn’t just brush everything under the rug forever, even if it felt like it might almost be easier to, to forgive and forget and start fresh.

But she didn’t want to feel like this, either. At an impasse. It took another moment of worrying her bottom lip before she even dared to ask it, convinced he would take this question badly too. “Have you – have you spoken to him, since...?” She glanced at the window, as if the motion could fill in the spaces, the unsaid name. Tycho.

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   Fortitude Greengrass

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The incriminating glance at the window was unnecessary. His thoughts had already wandered that direction during the painfully awkward silence that had preceded the question, thinking how much easier it had been to talk with her before. Even if he hadn't already been thinking of it, there was nothing else she might have meant.

"No." It was an honest answer, but he wasn't sure how to expect she would take it. She hadn't explicitly asked him not to, but Ford had thought under the circumstances it went without saying that this ought to be his penance... except that it really wasn't much of one, because he didn't think he had much of a choice in the matter. Tycho wouldn't have wanted to talk to him anyway. Ford, who had been wistfully watching the window, hazarded a glance back at Jemima.

"We... weren't talking that much before," he allowed, as though hesitant to take credit for too much over the past month. Then, on realizing that this probably sounded like a lie given what she had walked in on, he added hastily, "I didn't know he was going to be here. He was drunk, I think."

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Set by Lady!

He hadn’t? Surprise appeared in her expression before she could help herself. So much had been said in that fraught midnight interaction that Jemima might have forgotten a few things she had said or heard, but she remembered, starkly, how Tycho Dodonus’ demeanour had changed just before he had left through the window, how hollow he had looked at the thought Ford had been lying to him too. Heartbroken, maybe.

And Jemima understood why Ford had been outside her bedroom door that dawn, intent on fixing things – she had been a liability, with the power to ruin him, and certainly more likely to do so than the man who was in love with him, who had been protecting and defending him with every breath just before. So he had come to her first, necessarily, and tried to pick up the pieces, find an uneasy truce with her there.

But it had been a whole month since then, a month of him giving her space. Most nights, once Jemima had retired to her room, she had lain there imagining that Ford must be taking advantage of the solitude, going to Tycho to try and repair things with him too. But – apparently not. It was not that she had wanted him to – she ought to be glad if this meant he had entirely committed to the marriage, such that it was, and he never saw Tycho again, obviously – but Jemima had half-resigned herself to it already. She was here, in his life, dependent on him, and he had to be here – but they had been in love.

Jemima frowned. She felt she should be happy or relieved by this; this was proof of his resolution towards this, maybe. It just – didn’t feel entirely like a victory, was all. Mostly it made her feel guilty, that, intentionally or not, she had only made things worse and worse for them, sorry that she had made two other people as miserable as she was. Twice over, maybe – that night and the coatroom. “You – broke things off,” Jemima hypothesised, reading into before, because of me, “when you had to marry me?” (She wasn’t sure if that was actually what he meant by not talking much; she wasn’t sure if they had still been seeing each other, or what they would have done that night Tycho had come to him, drunk, if she had not interrupted them.)

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Ford's shoulders drooped slightly, as though reliving the disappointment. "Yes," he said, but the word was drawn out almost over two syllables, like he had been called on by a Hogwarts professor and was only somewhat sure of his answer. It was that broke things off covered both too much and too little; he couldn't fit the phrase over his memories of that time of his life and compare whether it was a good fit. Those weeks had been such a blur, and all of the emotions too visceral, so now he could hardly remember what had been said. Had he ever explicitly ended things? Was that what Jemima was asking? Regardless of the words exchanged, did it count for anything when they had both been fully aware on the morning of the wedding that they were still devoted to each other? It was hardly a clean break; their relationship had become a ragged, limping thing that followed a few steps behind and lurked in the corners of rooms but was never entirely gone.

He pressed his fingers into the edges of his seat and shifted his weight so that he was half sitting on his hands. "There was never an expectation of — that is," he began, fumbling. "It wasn't a — It was never going to continue if one of us had a —" He glanced at her stomach and his cheeks flushed. "— a family."

He had asked Noble once if it was possible for someone to be a good person, yet a bad father. His brother's answer had been vehement: no. And of course Ford had already known Noble would answer that way, and probably that was why he'd asked it only to him. He'd already known the answer, he'd just needed someone else to say it out loud.

Ford wanted to be a good person. He wanted to be a good father — though he was certainly not off to an auspicious start.

"I wanted him to use our floo to go home," he mumbled. "I was worried he might hurt himself flying. That's why I let him in." He wasn't sure the excuse meant anything to her, whether she would believe it or whether it would make anything better, but he felt like the space between them was waiting for him to say something.

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Set by Lady!

She didn’t know how convinced she was, but asking him any more questions about Tycho was hardly going to help mend bridges, was it? They all felt incriminating, and the answers bound to doom them. So why was he still coming to your room in the middle of the night? Were you still sleeping with him all the while you were sleeping with me? But you were still in love with each other, weren’t you? She had seen Ford’s face, seen Tycho’s well enough. Really, she didn’t need to ask.

But things had changed – and so he had promised: Ford was trying to do his duty now that he had a family. Not that either he or his lover had probably planned on having families in the first place. (Certainly not at the moment, or in the way it had happened for Ford.) He would be within his rights to hate her too, just for all the trouble and pain she had caused him.

But Jemima believed that he really was trying. She didn’t know if that would ever be enough to make them good parents, or partners in any true sense of this marriage, but it ought to count for something. She was going to try too.

“Oh. Right.” She nodded at him again. She wanted to say I forgive you, just to relinquish all the weight on her shoulders and start fresh from here – but she wasn’t sure she could manage it, believably. Still, she honestly felt for him; she could manage something. “Well, I’m sorry,” she said carefully, because she was. It was good she knew the real situation now, but – she had torn through Ford’s room that night without thinking about the consequences for anyone else. “I hope you know I never meant to make things worse.”

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