Oh, to be young and in love. (pt. 1) The cups on the desk stacked higher and higher. From her place on the couch, Anne rolled her eyes and sighed heavily. She didn’t even bother to get up, knowing that the moment she moved, her husband would whip around and demand to know why she was so insistent on disrupting her pregnancy. She loved Will, she really did, but he was just so overprotective of their unborn baby. It was as if he was frightened the the slightest jostling would kill it. The moment she had begun showing he had ushered her onto that couch in the parlor and refused to let her move. She could work from there, he said, so long as it didn’t stress her out too much. However, Will also seemed to think that on top of being a gifted writer he was also a skilled legilimens and had taken to abruptly taking Anne’s work out of her hands and locking it up in a drawer if he thought she looked too stressed.
“I’m not stressed, Will,” she would say when he did this. “Just bored because you won’t let me do anything!” To which he would just smooth a curl out of her face and kiss her on the forehead and go back to his manuscript. And Anne would take out some embroidery and mindlessly make stitches. It had been five months of this nonsense and Anne really didn’t know how much more of it she could take. She understood that he was just trying to be helpful and caring but it was quite annoying. She never said anything to him of course, because she didn’t want to add to his stress (he was already on the outs with his family because of his job, but then he’d gone and gotten a halfblood pregnant and married her), but she could think it all she liked.
Sometimes Anne worried that Will would come to his senses and leave, abandoning her and their unborn child and go back to that horrid witch he’d been betrothed before she had come forward with the pregnancy and she and Will’s marriage had been rushed. Anne wasn’t even sure if Will truly loved her. They had only been seeing each other for a few months, completely under the radar before The Incident. Even her own family hadn’t known about it. But they’d found out soon enough and basically paid the Montegreenes off—Whateleys, though of mixed blood, did not involve themselves in public scandals at whatever the cost. Monetary or not. Anne furrowed her brow as she carefully embroidered a rose petal on the muslin pillowcase that was to be for her new baby. “What are you thinking about?”
Anne looked up from the cloth momentarily into the dark, worried eyes of Will who had put his quill down and turned in his chair to look at her. Though upset with their son’s actions, the Montegreenes had not turned their backs on them completely. It was a matter of family pride, Anne had been made to know, that no Montegreene (even if he did marry a witch of inferior birth) was to live an impoverished lifestyle. And besides that, their last chance at an heir was residing in Anne’s belly since Will only had sisters (and one brother, who had died as as infant). Anne lowered her eyes, her long lashes covering the brilliant blue color of them. “Nothing, dearest,” she said. “Go back to your writing.”
She didn’t hear him get up, much less walk across the floor in his padded house slippers, but she did feel the movement of air as he knelt in front of her and clasped her hands in his, forcing the needle to drop from her finger. She watched as it swung gently, still attached to the pink thread, before gracefully coming to a still on her dress. “I know you too well, Anne,” he said. “Stop thinking about them. They don’t matter anymore. All that matters is us, and this little guy.” He placed a hand on her stomach which had just begun to show a couple months ago. “Right?” He looked up at her and against her better judgment, Anne felt her cheeks flushing. He always managed to make her feel like this.
“Right,” she said, leaning forward to kiss him on the cheek. He turned his head, catching her lips with his and she giggled. She hoped it would always be like this.