>Bear in mind, too, that first pregnancies can be a lot less obvious, >both to the person who's preganant and the outside observer. Given >the time scale, Cawti could easily be 3-4 months pregnant by the >time Vlad takes off with neither of them having noticed. Not to be too indelicate, but if Cawti is an average woman with an average menstrual cycle then she would have noticed it after the first month. She might dismiss the first missed event as an aberration brought on by emotional stress. This is reasonably common in the real world and she was one of the leaders of the Revolution at the time AND having some serious marital problems. IMO, the second "miss" would have her using whatever means were at her disposal to verify the truth of the matter. It's perfectly plausible for her to have conceived shortly before Tekla but to not know the confirmed truth of the matter until sometime shortly afterwards. Occam's Razor would, in fact, be our defense against speculation about her having abnormal periods or other strange mcguffins to explain how she couldn't know she was pregnant. The real question is whether Cawti is enough of a witch to "feel" the pregnancy immediately or whether it's something she'd have to actively try to detect.