March 13th, 1890 — Oakshire Hall, Kent

Tig looked down at the additional item on her breakfast tray with annoyance. He'd ignored her for almost three weeks and then broke the silence by with a vial of poison? It wouldn't do. She'd been left in limbo with no further explanation from him - was he actually looking into poisons or had he left her to her own devices indefinitely? What still infuriated her was that she couldn't see the logic in his behavior. It wasn't as though he'd been pleased when that healer had first declared her infertile, since when was her well-being a greater priority for him than an heir? The very idea was preposterous in the extreme, she'd probably gamble his life to get something she really wanted so why the hell would he let that stop him?

After wolfing down her breakfast down, she dressed to a minimum without actually being indecent and grabbed the vial. She was going to get to the bottom of this now damn it! Striding purposefully across the house she finally arrived at his door and at least gave him the courtesy of loudly knocking on the door before entering. Or she would have if the door hadn't been locked. "It's me, your wife! You might remember me from when you had poison sent up with my toast!" She had somehow gone from irritated to aggressively sarcastic since reaching his study door which hadn't been her intention at all.

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Tiberius Lestrange

  

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There was a reason that Tiberius primarily staffed his house with house elves, and that the few human servants he had were all magically forced to be discreet. Antigone loudly announcing that he'd given her a vial of poison from outside the door was a perfect example of why this sort of thing was necessary. She might have grown and changed in many ways since he'd married her, but one thing she had not gained was a sense of decorum regarding things like this.

It wouldn't do to have her carrying on like that in the hallway indefinitely, though, or it might test the limits of even the most trusted servant. With a sigh, Tiberius found his wand and unlocked the door while remaining at his desk.

"And?" he asked dryly as the door swung open. "I'm assuming your presence here means you elected not to take it?"

  

"For now." She took a moment to glare at him from the doorway before walking through and shutting the door behind her. Approaching his desk, she placed the vial down upon it rather forcefully and stared at him some more for good measure.

Tig folded her arms across her chest defiantly. "I'm not going to drink poison just because you want me to. No matter how safe you might think it is, it's hardly going to be an enjoyable experience and the consequences will be irreversible." Not that she thought he didn't know this already, but she felt he might need reminding all the same. "I'll take it, right here in front of you, if you can answer my questions first." She didn't know how he'd take to being interrogated but she didn't care, she'd get what she wanted from him one way or another.

"I want to know why you don't want it, the real reason. And I'll know if you're lying to me." She wasn't entirely confident that she would know if he was lying or telling the truth about it but she'd have to trust her instincts and how well she knew him.

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Tiberius was not particularly enthused by the rules of this game, as she'd laid them out. Why ought he to take demands from his wife, particularly when she'd stormed in like a harpy to deliver them? The first question she put to him was relatively mild, however, and he saw no harm in answering it. Besides, he did want her to take the poison. That was the whole reason he'd gone through the trouble of procuring it and delivering it. At this point he didn't think he could poison her surreptitiously. Well, he could, but she would know something was amiss when she lost the baby, and blame him. Besides, the last time he'd tried to poison his way out of an unwanted pregnancy, it hadn't exactly gone to plan. Although he'd researched this potion well and was confident it was safe, he still wanted her to be fully apprised of the situation so that she could alert him to any ill side effects — just in case.

"Because it could kill you," he said coolly, after considering her for a moment in silence. "And there's no reason to risk that when I already have other avenues of obtaining an heir. The wheels are in motion as we speak."

(Well, hopefully. Cassius.)

  

He was still claiming that was his reason? She couldn't think of a more convincing one and he had consistency in his favor... If that was really true then it meant he'd rather have a bastard for an heir than have a legitimate heir and lose her. That made her feel strange. He definitely couldn't be lying, there was little to gain from admitting something like that, it was probably embarrassing for him. It ought to be anyway. She'd be embarrassed at any rate. That only made it worse, he almost might as well have declared love for her which was a highly disturbing thought. Maybe she was a little under the weather and that was why she felt funny.

Against her better judgement she pressed him for clarification. "Then you don't care if it's mine or someone else's? If it's technically illegitimate?" Maybe he no longer cared about that and it wasn't as unsettling an admission as it first seemed.

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   Roberto Devine, Tiberius Lestrange

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Tiberius frowned sharply. "It's legitimate if I say it is," he responded. Why would he care whether the eventual inheritor of his estate had Antigone's blood running through his veins or not? If she was feeling territorial about it, that would be one thing, but the child they raised as his heir was going to be his offspring one way or another. As long as the other half of the bloodline was pure, why should he care who it belonged to?

The other side of the coin was that it wouldn't be acceptable by society's standards, of course, but he saw little danger there. He didn't anticipate ever involving Cassius' future wife in the decision-making process, so the only people who knew what was really afoot would be himself, Antigone, and Cassius. Tiberius obviously wasn't going to let it slip, and Cassius wouldn't dare. A secret like this would be inconvenient if it got out, true, but it would not ruin him, the way Cassius' perversity could, if it came to light. And as for Antigone...

"Who's going to say otherwise?" he sneered at her. "You?"

  

Oh so he didn't care then? That was a relief. And also a little insulting the more she thought about it. "Obviously not!" she snapped. As if she'd tell anyone about it! There was nothing to gain by bringing that sort of scrutiny upon both of them. "But you must want a good quality heir which means both its parents have to be of a high caliber - if the mother is ugly or unintelligent then any son you have will likely be... subpar." Before he could reply she added, "I have so many good qualities, I'm sure I needn't list them for you. Wouldn't you prefer for it to take after me instead of whatever second rate female you manage to find elsewhere?"

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   Roberto Devine

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Tiberius actually laughed at that, though it was a cold, mirthless laugh. "What would a son inherit from you except an exceptionally short temper?" he asked contemptuously. Her argument was not entirely without merit in the abstract, but without having an actual human to compare her to he was having difficulty imagining that whatever woman was selected could be any more of a gamble than having children with Antigone. She was not entirely without her good attributes, it was true, but she had plenty of faults as well that were just as likely to be passed along. And genetics could not account for everything — the same set of parents had produced his cousin Valeria and Cassius, after all. One was practically a goddess (or had been before she'd sullied herself by submitting to her cad of a husband), and the other was... Cassius. And their mother had been a vapid idiot.

"Is this some sort of... do you have some particular attachment to it looking like you?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "Is that why you suggested your sister as a surrogate?"

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   Antigone Lestrange, Jupiter Smith, Roberto Devine

He was laughing but it wasn't funny and it was highly irritating. If he hadn't just taken a dig at her temper she mightn't have tried as hard as she did to keep it in check. "No I do not!" Her jaw clenched tightly as she fought herself against derailing the conversation. She had reason and purpose for this and she didn't want to have to pick this up with him for a third time. "You like me so it stands to reason that you'd like my contribution to your heir!" Looks she'd barely considered seeing as it was a son and would inevitably look more masculine even if it did take after her. "My sister was just convenient because if it looks a lot like her then it won't seem suspicious. It's not some pathetic vanity thing!" It wasn't too far from the truth though.

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Tiberius thought it was a bit of a stretch for her to state so confidently that he liked her, but decided to let the remark go without further comment. He'd already said his piece, and the aggravated tone she'd responded with made it clear that she'd heard and understood him: whatever her contribution to this child was, he did not think it important enough or valuable enough to merit the risks of the pregnancy.

"Did you have another question?" he asked after a moment.

  

"Several." He'd given little acknowledgement or acceptance of what she said but he also made no rebuttal and she was irritated and impatient enough by now to grudgingly accept the stalemate. She had other issues to get to and if she did decide to get rid of the thing then she was quickly running out of time. "What if you regret getting rid of it? What then? What if I can't ever conceive again? What if I'm completely healed and this keeps happening?"

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Several implied that they were going to be here a while, but fortunately she seemed inclined to ask them all at once, which would save them a bit of time, he supposed. The answer to the first was easy, but the second and third posed more of a challenge. This was so unexpected that he had focused his efforts so far on addressing the immediate problem that had arisen, not on measuring what the implications of this revelation might be for the future.

"I won't regret it. And..." he continued, hesitating. And what if the healers had been wrong? What if she was capable of carrying a healthy child to term? He had no problem choosing not to risk it in this case, based on the information that they currently had available to them, but if it kept happening... well, that would be problematic, he supposed. He couldn't just keep feeding her poison every few months for the rest of her life without ill consequences. Sooner or later he'd have to accept the risk of the pregnancy in the hopes that she really had been healed, but there was always the chance that he'd guess wrong, and they'd end up with another deformed birth — or that she wouldn't survive the birth.

"And we can have a healer come and look at you, after it's taken care of," he offered. They both needed more information before they could make real decisions about how to move forward, he decided. "So we'd know, at least, one way or the other."

  

Tig rolled her eyes and scoffed. "If you can find a healer that's not utterly incompetent!" Two healers ago she was declared barren and the last one confirmed the complete opposite, the last was only trustworthy because it was so damn obvious! While she'd proudly take the credit for overcoming her infertility as a testament to how exceptional she was, Tig was also quite ready to say the healer who had declared her as such was an idiot and a fraud while it actively inconvenienced her.

Her hand reached out towards the vial and slipped her fingers around it, suddenly stopping before she actually lifted it off the desk. "Do you really think I'm too weak to do what every other woman can?" Her eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly and her lip twitched as if preparing to curl. She had to know, before she did anything else, she had to. It was a matter of pride.

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Tiberius pursed his lips as he watched her hand hesitate over the vial. "I wouldn't put it that way," he said mildly. Weak was not the right word, particularly given the role that Tiberius may have accidentally played in getting her to this state of affairs. He did think, however, that the risk of her suffering some fatal mishap during the course of this pregnancy was real, and significant enough to factor in to their thinking as they approached this scenario.

"You've done it twice," he pointed out. "Some women die from less."

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   Antigone Lestrange

Her brow furrowed slightly as his response was closer to a compliment than the inflammatory remark she had been readying herself for. When she'd asked him why he wanted rid of the thing he'd cited the possibility that she might die. Now he refuted the idea that she was particularly fragile? That left one conclusion, that he was being irrational, didn't it? The possibility of her dying in childbirth had never bothered before, certainly not to the point of sacrificing his own child. It made no sense, it was irrational, it was also exasperating, and deeply unsettling. Tiberius was a great many things, mostly variations on obnoxious and frustrating, but he wasn't irrational. Tig wanted to unequivocally know what sort of logic he was using but she was gripped by some instinct that said she really didn't want to know.

Consequently she decided to act as though she'd never asked the question and thus never heard the response.

"What is it?" Tig lifted the vial off the desk and shook it. "What is it going to do to me?"

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It seemed the interrogation portion of this little interview was drawing to a close. At least, she was getting physically closer to taking the potion. Whether her mind was changed to any degree since they'd started talking was another consideration, and one Tiberius couldn't even start to wager a guess on.

"It causes labor," he explained. "Which, from what I understand at this point, just means bleeding."

After what had happened last time, it had been important to him to ensure that the potion he found had neither guaranteed negative side effects for Antigone, or for the baby. In case this didn't work, he didn't want to have been responsible for another unfit, deformed child. There were plenty of potions that induced harm to the child, which would cause her body to reject the pregnancy of its own accord — but in case it didn't, it was a risk he was not comfortable taking.