"Are you putting on weight?" Alisa's question was quiet and speculative. No further word had been mentioned concerning Stefan Bariatinsky, but Nikki was sure a relationship had existed before his cousin reached Saint Petersburg. When Alisa had mildly suggested he was being too cynical, that surely every woman in Stefan's proximity wasn't automatically involved with him, her husband had only said, "Dushka, he was at the siege of Kars for months… months without a woman. Need I say more?"
That circumstance wasn't to be ignored, and knowing Stefan's reputation under even benign conditions, she'd had to admit Nikki was probably right. So quickly calculating the number of weeks Lisaveta had been in Saint Petersburg and the approximate date of her rescue by Stefan, Alisa considered that Lisaveta's added weight might have a more consequential base than simply overeating.
"Do you think you might be pregnant?" she asked, her own experience with the early signs of pregnancy contributing to her abrupt question. "I'm sorry," she added as Lisaveta turned pale and swung around from the mirror to face her. "Was I too blunt?"
"No…well, yes, I suppose…in a way," Lisaveta stammered, her golden eyes wide with astonishment. "I mean-I- how could I be…that's to say," she quickly amended, not naive enough to discount her many weeks with Stefan. "I can't be…can I?" Her gaze was blank or internally focused, as though she were contemplating an interior dialogue without proper answers.
"I don't know," Alisa softly replied, moving to her side and guiding her over to a chair. "Could you be?"
Sitting down like one stunned, Lisaveta leaned back against the cabbage rose chintz and inhaled deeply before answering, her mind swiftly counting days and weeks. "I can't be" she repeated, but she was finding that the arithmetic didn't fall conveniently into place.
She wasn't naive about the possibility of a pregnancy; she was, however, totally without experience with pregnancy. Having been raised in an unconventional milieu without childhood playmates, girlhood chums and young women's intimacies of conversation, she had no knowledge of the actual bodily changes provoked by pregnancy. She felt fine, and while her menses were slightly more than two weeks late at this point, that kind of variation had happened to her before. She couldn't be, she repeated silently.
It was denial pure and simple.
It was an absolute essential in her present state of mind. "Is it Stefan?" Alisa asked.
Lisaveta straightened her shoulders, and her voice was normal again when she spoke. "I'm sure there's another explanation," she said, bolstering her belief in some other more reasonable interpretation for her gown not fitting. "And in any event, Stefan's engaged to Princess Taneiev." She said it as though that fact excluded the possibility she might be pregnant.
"I'm sorry…you're right."
"Don't be… really. Everything was very civil. He's not to blame in any way."
"He has responsibilities at least," Alisa said, her pansy-colored eyes grave.
"As do I. Ours was a mutual attraction, Alisa, I wasn't seduced. He's not the villain." She smiled then at the odd word for Stefan's extravagant loving. "No, definitely," Lisaveta went on, her tone softly reminiscent, "I've no regrets about what we did."
"Do you love him?"
"Every woman he meets loves him, as do thousands more who adore him through his engravings and heroic deeds." It was an equivocation, but an answer nonetheless.
"An engagement isn't necessarily binding," Alisa quietly offered.
"His is for his own reasons. Thank you for the concern, Alisa, but-" Lisaveta lifted one bare shoulder in a small shrug of practicality "-I'm not some young innocent."
Regardless of Stefan's engagement, his reasons for it and Lisaveta's extravagant courtesy, under the circumstances Alisa felt impelled to suggest, "Stefan should at least know."
"There may not be anything to know. I'm sure there isn't. And think how embarrassing that would be to unnecessarily accuse him." Lisaveta gave a reassuring smile to her hostess. The color had returned to her face and her expression was without anxiety. "Look…I'll wear something else tonight, and after Katelina's birthday next week, I'm planning on returning to my country estate anyway." Lisaveta's voice was moderate; she was dealing with the situation as she normally dealt with issues: logically assessing a problem and then resolving it. At least that was what she believed. "Before I came to Saint Petersburg," she went on, "no one knew me, and I'm sure my leaving will cause little stir. I like my country estate, I'm very much looking forward to my studies again, and I'm not," she finished, her smile appearing again, "likely to miss the frantic schedule of a society belle."
"You're taking this all remarkably calmly." Under the circumstances Alisa was surprised at Lisaveta's tranquillity. She should have been hysterical or angry or sobbing or concerned… or at least open to the suggestion of pregnancy, considering her time with Stefan.
Was it possible, Alisa briefly thought, that Lisaveta knew of some unusual, esoteric method of birth control, discovered in some old manuscript, learned from some ancillary reading to Hafiz, unearthed among the tribes of Kurdistan? Was she unconcerned because no real possibility of pregnancy existed? But as she had known Nikki's cousin for only a few weeks and since Lisaveta had never confided any of the details of her relationship with Stefan, Alisa felt awkward asking such an intimate question.
"If falling into a faint would help, I'd consider it. However-" and Lisaveta smiled ruefully "-it won't change or alter a minute of my past. So…do we pin this offending neckline together with your brooch or substitute the burgundy silk."
She apparently was intent on changing the conversation, Alisa decided. "It is looser," she said, debating whether she dared pursue the topic further.
"The burgundy it is."
"How can you be so cheerful?" Alisa inquired. Hesitant or not, she was disturbed by Lisaveta's serenity in the face of a possibly portentous issue.
"How can I not be when I think of Stefan. He's a remarkable man." Lisaveta's smile was self-assured when she stood abruptly in a swish of silk. "And I'm sure you're wrong."
While Lisaveta changed, Alisa excused herself and went to speak to Nikki. As usual, having dressed swiftly, he was patiently waiting for the ladies in his study, his feet up on his desktop, a glass of brandy half-drunk. He looked relaxed, leaning back in his chair, and he smiled in greeting.
"Madame Drouet has outdone herself, darling. You look exquisite." Alisa's pistachio-green damask gown was festooned with garlands of pearls and crystal, her fine shoulders and bosom rising above a low décolletage trimmed with pink silk chrysanthemum petals.
"Thank you, dear," Alisa automatically said, making sure the door was closed behind her. Turning back to her husband, she announced, "I think she's pregnant." She stood stiffly, her back to the door.
"Who's she?" Nikki asked, but his feet had already dropped to the floor and he was sitting upright, his posture belying his casual inquiry.
And he knew the answer to his question before his wife said in a short expulsion of air, "Lisaveta."
"Stefan."
"Of course." Her reply seemed distracted for a moment, her mind in the grip of unresolved pique over Stefan's cavalier treatment of Lisaveta.
"Damn!"
"Thank you," she crisply said. "My sentiments exactly." In her voice was affront for the casual victimization of women in these circumstances. "And she's cheerful," she added, her astonishment evident.
"Are you sure?"
"That she's cheerful?"
Nikki raised one dark brow in contradiction. "That she's pregnant."
"She says no, or probably not or maybe not, all in a calm, deliberate way that unnerves me, but the signs rather disagree. She's not had her menses since she's come to Saint Petersburg and her gowns are getting tight. She's eating too much, she says, like a young naive girl would."