Alexia pulled her hand back in and tucked it under her chin. It was numb. Familiar sensation. “Yes. I miss him.”
“Even after what he did?”
Unconsciously, Alexia slid her other hand down to her stomach. “He was always a bit of a jackass. To be smart, he should never have married me in the first place.”
“Well”—Madame Lefoux tried to lighten the mood by changing the subject—“at the very least, Italy should be interesting.”
Alexia gave her a suspicious look. “Are you quite certain you entirely understand what that word means? I understand English is not your native tongue, but really.”
The inventor’s fake mustache was wiggling dangerously in the breezes. She put one elegant finger up to her face to hold it in place. “It is a chance to find out how you got pregnant. Isn’t that interesting?”
Alexia widened her dark eyes. “I am perfectly well aware of how it happened. What it is, is a chance to force Conall to recant his accusations. Which is more useful than interesting.”
“You know what I mean.”
Alexia looked up into the night sky. “After marrying Conall, I assumed children were not possible. Now it’s like some exotic disease has happened to me. I cannot bring myself around to being pleased. I should like to know how, scientifically, such a pregnancy occurred. But thinking about the infant too much frightens me.”
“Perhaps you just do not want to become attached to it.”
Alexia frowned. Trying to understand one’s own emotions was a grueling business. Genevieve Lefoux had raised another woman’s child as her own. She must have lived constantly with the fear that Angelique would come and simply take Quesnel away from her.
“I could be doing it unintentionally. Preternaturals are supposed to be repelled by one another, and we are supposed to breed true. By rights, I ought to be allergic to my own child, unable even to be in the same room with it.”
“You believe you are going to miscarry?”
“I believe that, if I do not lose this child, I may be forced to attempt to rid myself of it, or go insane. That, even if, by some miracle, I manage to carry through my confinement, I will never be able to share the same air as my own baby, let alone touch it. And I am so angry that my great lout of a husband has left me to deal with this alone. Couldn’t he have, oh, I don’t know, talked to me about it? But, no, he gets to blunder about acting all put-upon and getting sloshed. While I—” Alexia interrupted herself. “That’s a fantastic idea! I should do something equally outrageous.”
At which statement Madame Lefoux leaned forward and kissed her, quite softly and gently on the mouth.
It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but it also wasn’t quite the done thing in polite society, even among friends. Sometimes, Alexia felt, Madame Lefoux took that regretfully French aspect of her character a little too far.
“That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. Got any cognac?”
The inventor only smiled. “I think, perhaps, it is time for bed.”
Alexia felt very worn about the edges, like an old carpet. “This is exhausting, talking about one’s feelings. I am not sure I approve.”
“Yes, but has it helped?”
“I still loathe Conall and want to prove him wrong. So, no, I don’t think it has.”
“But you’ve always felt that way about your husband, my dear.”
“True, true. Are you certain you don’t have any cognac?”
They set down in France the next morning with surprisingly little incident. Madam Lefoux brightened considerably once they landed. Her step was light and cheerful as they walked the gangplank down from the dirigible, leaving the colorful ship bobbing against its tethers behind them. The French, who, in addition to a marked preference for ridiculous mustaches, had a propensity for highly civilized mechanicals, were prepared for vast amounts of luggage. They loaded La Diva Tarabotti’s trunks, Mr. Lefoux’s cases, and Floote’s portmanteau onto a kind of platform that floated, kept aloft by four aether-inflated balloons and pulled along by a lackadaisical porter. Madame Lefoux engaged in several protracted arguments with various staff, arguments that seemed to be more the general formula of conversation than embodying any genuine vehemence. From what Alexia could follow, which wasn’t much given the rapidity of the tongue, there appeared to be some question concerning the bill, the gratuity, and the complexity of hiring transport at this time of the morning.