A/N: This fic follows Chapter 19 of A Girl in Black, but I waited to post it until after I posted Chapter 21, to retain an element of surprise for a particular plot twist. So if you don't want to be spoiled, be sure you're caught up with AGIB before reading this. As always, thanks very much to ju-dou for beta-reading, and for proving more helpful than Google Maps. ;)

Speculation

The evening editions are hot off the presses when tea concludes at Fortnum and Mason, and Richard buys a Telegram from a newsboy who doesn't recognise the man who publishes the papers he hawks for a halfpenny on Piccadilly. A copy awaits him in his office and another in his study at home, but it's nearly an hour drive to drop Frida Uhl at her house in Hampstead Heath, and Richard has had more than his fill of conversation for the day.

Unfortunately, Frida apparently has not reached her capacity. She stepped out for a cigarette during the quarter of an hour he debated the merits of chivalry aboard the Titanic with the Crawleys.

"Did Mary seem peculiar to you?" she asks, opening her handbag to take out another as Richard's chauffeur manoeuvres the Silver Ghost into the Christmas shopping district traffic.

Richard unfurls the broadsheet with more force than is strictly necessary in the hope that Frida will think he missed her voice in the ruffling of the newsprint and spare him answering.

Clearly thinking no such thing, she goes on, "Of course you know her better than I do, but-"

"I don't think Lady Mary is best pleased with me." Richard finds himself drawn into the conversation even as he holds up the Evening Telegram as if erecting the walls of a fortress between them.

The snick of Frida's sterling silver lighter precedes the acrid yet tempting odour of tobacco. When she waves the cigarette over the top of the newspaper, its glowing orange end entices Richard to take it from her. As he drags from it, he hunches lower behind the paper. He prefers cigars, but the curling tendrils of smoke and the smell of it mingled with ink and paper provide a semblance of the relaxation he would feel if he were back in his office now, after his uncomfortable-in more ways than just physically, crammed between Mary and Lady Rosamund on the sofa not designed for three-afternoon at Fortnum's.

"Do you know what you did to offend her?" Frida lights another cigarette for herself and puffs on the end of her jade holder as she settles back against the ostrich leather seat, her ermine stole pillowing her neck as she turns to loll her head to look at Richard behind the paper.

"I didn't write. Or phone."

Frida exhales a long o of cigarette smoke. "Richard-"

"It was her turn."

He steadfastly ignores his friend staring at him, though he's too conscious of her attempts to scrutinise him to read his paper, and after a moment she turns her head to face forward in the automobile. He lets out his breath and resumes scanning the headlines, only to be interrupted before he can finish the front page.

"She is unwell, I think."

The Silver Ghost decelerates to a stop at an intersection, the brakes of the car in front of them screeching, and Richard cuts his eyes sideways at Frida. "You mean ill?"

She nods, and he puts the cigarette to his lips again, mulling over this new possibility. Mary was quieter than usual today, but he thought she was giving him the silent treatment, or perhaps she was simply worn out from a day of shopping in bustling London, a decided change of pace from what she's more regularly accustomed to in Ripon and York, with the added frustration of...whatever went wrong with her new gown that he failed to give his full attention to. Illness never occurred to him.

He frowns at his newspaper, the top corners drooping like a sad dog's ears as his grasp slackens. Mary may, perhaps, have a point about his being an inattentive suitor. A bit of one, anyway.

"I think she may be pregnant."

The rear of the car in front of them fishtails as it accelerates at the change of the traffic signal and meets an icy patch in the street. Instinctively, Richard presses the ball of his foot into the floor, teeth grinding together with the expectation of a collision, though thankfully his capable chauffeur avoids the obstacle, turning the Rolls Royce onto Regent Street. Only then does he look at Frida.

"I'm sorry, but did you just say you think Mary may be pregnant?" He manages not to stumble over the word in his surprise; he is, after all, the publisher of much more shocking things every day. He does, however, immediately take a steadying drag from his cigarette.

"She was sick in the toilet. "I heard her."

"In that case," Richard says, holding his cigarette carefully away from the newspaper as he smoothes smooth the dog-eared corners, "she may have the 'flu."

He hopes Frida doesn't point out the obvious, that he's being rather too blasé about the possibility of his girlfriend, as she likes to refer to Mary, contracting a frequently fatal illness.

Instead, she replies, "I notice you don't say Frida, you're a bloody fool. It is impossible that Lady Mary could be pregnant."

Richard leans his head back against the headrest, his trilby tipping over his forehead as he rolls his eyes. "Frida, you're a bloody fool. And I am many things, none of which is a liar, so no, I don't say it's impossible. Only unlikely."

"What makes you so sure?

"Do you really expect me to discuss the gory details of my sex life?"

"Most especially if there is gore."

"Says the woman with the habit of threatening her lovers at gunpoint."

"But this is precisely why you can trust me to be discreet, darling!" The plumes on Frida's hat tickle Richard's cheek as she hunches over, the husky smoker's laugh rattling out from her throat. "One of the many things you are is ruthless. If I reveal your secrets, you reveal mine, and I am forced to abandon my Cave. You don't want that fate for a place that holds so much personal meaning for you, do you?"

"We're still discussing the Cave of the Golden Calf?" He glances out the car window just in time to see the sign as the Silver Ghost sweeps past, a neon blur of well-endowed bovine.

Frida jabs him in the shoulder with the mouthpiece of her cigarette holder. "You had your first date there. Which makes it the most appropriate venue for your wedding reception."

Richard cannot help but picture Mary's family forming a stilted receiving line at the nightclub, surrounded by Diana Manners and her Coterie dancing to the slightly out of tune tickle of ragtime music on the piano. Smoke puffs from his nostrils with his snort.

"What a splendid idea. I'll be sure to pitch that to Lord Grantham after I convince him I'll make a suitable husband for his daughter."

He rolls the window down a crack to flick out his cigarette onto the street—Oxford Street now, he notices, spying an art dealer's shop with which he is familiar, thanks to Frida. The fresh air is a relief, but needles of sleet prick his cheek, forcing him to put up the window up again. He picks up his Telegram from his lap and squints at it, though the wan nearly-winter sun has sunk down too low during their brief drive for him to make out the print anymore, and Frida is not done with their conversation.

"I wouldn't mention getting her pregnant the one night you spent as his guest, if I were you," she says. "That is when the deed occurred, isn't it?"

"The next afternoon, as a matter of fact," Richard hears himself admit in crisp tones as he folds up the broadsheet. "While everyone else was hunting foxes."

The heavy lids of her eyes open wider than he is accustomed to seeing them; shocking Frida Uhl is no small feat, even for a tabloid news publisher.

"You weren't kidding about the gore," she says.

"I don't believe any foxes were killed."

"Only Turks. And the passion when you left Lady Mary's bed to break the news. Oh, Richard," Frida says in husky dismay as she sits back against her ermine and takes a long draw from her cigarette. "No wonder she is not best pleased with you. You loved her and left her...with a nauseating little parting gift."

Richard's mouth opens automatically in retort, only to press shut without making an argument as he remembers Mary's face when she found him in the hall, dressed in travelling clothes and holding his briefcase, poised to hop the train to London the instant he heard Dr Clarkson's post-mortem. Pale. Brown eyes round. A sharp gasp through her slightly parted lips and her slender waist hitching inward. As if she received a blow to the gut. Delivered by him.

He slips his fingers beneath the brim of his trilby to scratch an itch at his hairline, and swipes away beads of perspiration. How could he have been so preoccupied at the time that he missed her moment of vulnerability? And then he told her she was being childish.

Though wasn't she? The hinges of his jaw shift as he grinds his teeth together. Refusing to give him a proper send-off at the station? Replying snippily to his telegrams? Resorting to the silent treatment? Resenting him for the next six weeks? It's a laundry list of childish behaviour.

Or perhaps the behaviour of being with child...

"Apart from the vomiting," he says, turning to face Frida as the car turns past Marble Arch, "what makes you so certain Mary is pregnant? She didn't look pregnant to me."

"It doesn't show right away, especially if there is much vomiting." Frida's tone and expression of incredulity making Richard wish for another cigarette. Or perhaps a swig from his hip flask. "Also Mary is long in the waist. More room for the baby to stretch out. She may never look very large in pregnancy. And surely that story about being measured incorrectly for her gown is good evidence for our hypothesis?"

"Your hypothesis." Richard's intended sharp correction comes out hoarse, tired-sounding; he has talked at length today. He rubs his hand over his jaw, massaging an ache at the joint where he's tensed it, and the slight growth of stubble prickles the pads of his fingers. "Fine. I'll admit that in most cases, all of those things might well suggest pregnancy. But in this case you're ignoring the most compelling argument against it."

"Of course, Richard Carlisle is always a special case. Do tell!"

Ignoring her mockery, he says, "If Mary was pregnant, she would have told me."

"When? In one of those letters you've exchanged? During one of the telephone conversations?"

"Today. She would have told me today."

"When she was angry with you for not writing or phoning after you abandoned her in bed?"

"For God's sake..." The leather creaks as Richard shifts in the seat to delve into his trouser pocket for the Scotch which is now very much a necessity. "We'd already got out of bed, and I didn't abandon her." He twists off the cap and lifts the spout to his lips, pausing as the cool silver touches them to say, "Mary's only having a bit of a sulk." For a month and a half. "She's spoiled."

"And sheltered. And afraid."

The Scotch goes down wrong, and Richard sits silent for a moment, mulling over Frida's statement as he quells the urge to choke. At length, he rasps, "Why should she be afraid?"

"Ugh, don't be stupid, Richard." Without asking, she snatches the flask from him and swigs from it. "Falling pregnant out of wedlock is the worst thing that can happen to a young woman like your Lady Mary."

"But we are going to be married. We discussed it, in no uncertain terms, before we acted."

"In that case, your pragmatism surely instilled her with confidence of your fidelity."

"Frida." Rankling at her sarcasm, Richard holds out his hand for her to return his Scotch, but she raises it to take another drink. "I am a man of my word. You know that."

The look she gives him is plainly dubious as she returns the flask. "Have you set a date, then? Given her a ring?"

Richard's gaze drifts once more out the car window, where the lights blur at the side of the road, "I told her I want Lord Grantham's approval before we enter into a formal engagement."

"Lord Grantham, who doesn't like you the slightest bit."

"He doesn't know me."

"Richard, even you are not so vain as to think everyone who knows you likes you."

"Mary does."

Or does she? The silhouette of a sprawling tree on the roadside takes him back to when he stood beneath the cedar at Downton and held her by the shoulders and demanded to know, Why did you want me here, Mary? To get a rise out of your parents? Or to enjoy the pleasure of my company? Later she admitted that it was because she wanted to annoy Robert, which hurt, but the salve for his wound was that she wanted Richard to stay for another reason. She didn't articulate what that was, though he thought, since she trusted him enough to invite him to her bed, that it was the same reason that brought him there.

Frida's hand comes to rest on his forearm. "What I am trying to say is that Mary is very young and very naïve. If she already doubts her father blessing your union with time, imagine what she fears when you ask for her hand prematurely, because there is a baby on the way? Not that you would have to marry her."

"Of course I would."

"She wouldn't have to have the baby."

Richard sits rigid, his eyes darting down to where his forearm tenses beneath his companion's hand. Stiffly, he disentangles himself from her, and says in a low voice, "I like you, Frida, and I want to continue to like you, so I will forget you suggested a child of mine could be aborted." The word makes his stomach turn. He meets her gaze and adds, "I hope you were not stupid enough to suggest it to Mary."

"I was subtle," Frida says with an air of unconcern as she flicks her cigarette butt out her window, then packs the jade holder back into her handbag. "She did not know what I meant. She is very young."

"And very sheltered, yes, you've said that. She wouldn't know how dangerous such a thing could be, either. My God, Frida, if anything happened to her because she acted in desperation…" His grip tightens around the silver flask, trembling. He lifts it and takes a drink, then screws the cap back on. "This is absurd. It's just the speculation of a bloody fool."

Frida smiles. "A bloody fool who has been known to speculate rather wildly."

"Quite."

Richard offers her the flask again as a truce, and they pass it back and forth in a companionable silence for the next twenty or so minutes. As he puts it back in his pocket, empty, he observes the Victorian houses set back from the road, lit by lamps and Christmas trees in front drawing room windows, as they come into one of the roads running perpendicular to Hampstead Heath. In another moment the car turns into one of the drives, gravel crunching beneath the wheels. The chauffeur hops out, but does not open the door as Frida makes no move to disembark the Silver Ghost, instead turning toward Richard.

"But if my speculations are not so wild, I take it you will not be displeased to learn you are to be a father?"

"It's probably the last thing I expected to happen this year," Richard answers, the question catching him nearly as off guard. "Even meeting someone I wanted to marry…"

He remembers Mary as she first caught his eye, at the edge of the ballroom in her black mourning dress, very beautiful and very bored, and then proving herself anything but; in fact she was the most interesting woman he'd spoken to at one of these stiff society parties. It's all too easy to imagine himself at her side, pushing a pram down the pavement in Knightsbridge, nodding smugly to the neighbours who stop to admire the pretty dark-haired baby wrapped in pastel knitted blankets. A grin tugs at the corner of his mouth.

"No not displeased at all. Very pleasantly surprised."

Frida gestures to the chauffeur, who opens the door, offering her a hand as she slides her legs out onto the ground. "Then I know what to give you for Christmas."

"A nanny?"

"A box of very expensive cigars."

Richard chuckles, but tries to restrain his premature happiness. "Mary really may not be pregnant."

"Not at the moment," Frida acquiesces. "But soon." She leans back into the car and pecks his cheek, then scuffs her finger across to wipe away the sticky stain of her lipstick. "Always best to be prepared."