Letter from Katherine Pryde, Paris, France to Alice Blaire, Hotel , Prague, Bohemia

Dear Alice:

I know I've never written a letter to you before this, but there isn't really anyone else I could confide inâ€"not about this. Auroré wouldn't approve, Kurt is male, Illyana hasn't the experience, and the Professor is out of the question. I don't even want to think about Sir Erich's reaction.

When you visited the Opera House a few weeks ago, (A/n: Re-read chapter 3 for the details.), you gave me some advice on how to manage to avoid getting into troubleâ€"the sort of trouble that only increases over nine months. I told you then that I didn't think I was going to need your advice any time soon. You were skeptical.

You were right. 'Anytime' has come sooner than I thought. Not that I've actually done anything! Not yet, anyway...

There is a man here, to whom I am intensely attracted, and it is all that I can do to keep myself from doing something that I think would regret immenselyâ€"that is, over time.

Because I don't want to marry himâ€"not at present. Oh, I know this must be confusing to you, but if I go into great detail about itâ€"if I start dwelling on himâ€"it only makes things worse. He's giving me voice lessons, and I have to keep the upright piano between us at all times. If it weren't thereâ€"if I kissed him on the mouth just once, it wouldn't end there. We'd wind up on the piano bench and then on the floor, and not only would I not be resisting, I'd be helping him!

Please don't tell me to go ahead and do it, as long as I have the fresh lemon and a sharp penknife on hand, or else the small sponges and vinegar, because if I once gave way, it wouldn't be just onceâ€"or just an affair, if that makes more sense. He would take it as either equivalent to marriage, or excusable only if followed by our marriage shortly thereafter. If I told him I didn't want to marry him after that, he wouldn't believe me.

And if I did manage to convince him I meant that I didn't want to marry him, it would break his heart.

I know it is my body that's doing thisâ€"because I can think clearly about why marrying him now is a bad idea, and while I do feel for him, it isn't love, or not the love that leads to forty happy years together, but my body isâ€"very insistent. It wants me to have a baby, it has been wanting me to have a baby for over five years, preparing itself month after month, and being disappointed every time.

It is all biology and instinct. He is big and strong and healthyâ€"and so my body is saying, 'Look, he seems able to fight off predators and kill plenty of game. Your children will be big and strong and healthy too. Go to it!' I know this! Intellectually, I know this, and I'm glad I do, because otherwise I might mistake it for love, and I know what I feel in my heartâ€"it's what I feel somewhat lower that's the problem.

I cannot believe I just wrote that. Oh, Alice, what can I do?

Yours desperately,

Katherine Pryde.

Dear Kitty:

I think that as far as barriers to conception, you could not possibly do better than keeping as large and solid an object as an upright piano between you. Then again, considering your powers, an upright piano might not be enough. Perhaps you should have your lessons at the opposite ends of a concert grand. It might be safer.

Seriously, though. My advice is that you should avoid drinking anything alcoholic when you are alone with him, or likely to be alone with him shortly thereafter. It will only lower your inhibitions, and from the sound of it, you need all the inhibitions you have, and perhaps you might benefit from cultivating a few more.

You might also benefit by meeting other menâ€"not with an eye to anything serious, but merely as a way of seeing whether it is this particular man who affects you so powerfully, or if any man who is sufficiently large, strong, healthy, and presumably able to fight off tigers and kill mammoths, will provoke the same reaction in you.

Finally, let me say, as a slightly more seasoned campaigner in the lists of love, that virginity is not only a physical condition, but a mental one as well, and matters that seem monumental now, can be seen in a much more proportionate perspective afterward.

But do not forget the lemons or vinegar, either.

Your affectionate friend,

Alice Blaire

PS. Is he a good vocal instructor? I could do with one. My current teacher is not working out very well. Besides, I find I have a lot of interest in meeting this 'big, strong and healthy' man....