Epilogue
“Naught but four summers old and just look at him.” Pride made Jeros’s heart swell near to bursting. “That is my son, Darkcord.” He thumped the fencepost. “My son.”
Darkcord clapped him on the back. “The lad was made to ride unicorns. Her Majesty is barely controlling the mount with the lead.”
“Torian, don’t kick him,” Lexi said to her exuberant son. “Lean forward a bit and think to him, asking him nicely to go faster, and don’t forget to say please. He’ll hear you.”
“Pweeze,” the child said aloud, then covered his mouth with his little hand and wrinkled his nose, obviously thinking the command because the unicorn stallion increased its speed.
“Fearless, he is,” Jeros said, barely able to contain himself.
“Absolutely fearless.” Then he noticed the sheen of sweat across his dear one’s brow, his very round and heavily pregnant dear one, sure to give birth to his wee daughter any day now.
Since he didn’t wish to startle the unicorn, he called to her from the gate.
“Lexi, my own. Do ye not feel that’s enough for today? Ye should be resting.”
“I know,” Lexi said while smiling at her son. “I just wanted as much one-on-one time with Torian before he had to share me with little Gwenna.”
“I am coming in.” Jeros quietly opened the gate once the unicorn circled around and could see that it was him. He joined Lexi at the center of the paddock and took the lead rope from her. “Sit ye down, my own. Rest where he can see ye. He is more interested in the unicorn than either of us.”
Arching her back, she rubbed it with both hands and winked at him. “It’s better if I stand right now. It’ll move things along faster.”
“Move things along?” Jeros slowly repeated as he realized what she meant. “Darkcord! Fetch the nanny for Torian and the midwife for—for our queen! Alert the household! Her Majesty said it’s time!”
Darkcord and Aylryd took off like a shot while Lexi cut an amused sideways glance at Jeros and slowly shook her head. “I thought you would be calmer this time,” she said. “Remember how easy everything went with Torian?”
“That does not mean I wish my daughter born in the paddock or the stable.” He halted the unicorn, then wound up the lead line, and held out his hands to his extremely disgruntled son.
“No, Papa.” Torian stuck out his bottom lip and shook his head until his fair curls bounced. “No! More riding.”
“He’s going to be mad at you,” Lexi warned, her lighthearted tone clarifying that Jeros was on his own with his petulant offspring. “I promised him a long ride. We just got out here.”
“Torian, do not tell Papa no. Mama has to go get baby Gwenna.” Jeros scooped the lad off the saddle and settled him on his hip. “Don’t you wish to meet your sister?”
The toddler eyed him as if he thought him crazed. Torian pointed at the unicorn. “Want to ride. Get baby Gwenna a ’corn for her to ride too.”
“Very logical,” Lexi said, her snickering unmistakable. “And what a good boy wanting to share the unicorns with his sister.”
“You are not helping,” Jeros told her.
She grinned. “You are right.”
The gate creaked, and Jeros breathed a sigh of relief as Nanny rushed forward and took the lad, tickling and making funny noises until little Torian cackled as they hurried back inside.
Determined to regain control of the situation, Jeros wrapped an arm around his wife and slowly but steadily walked her to the manor house. Torian’s birth had been uneventful, but that didn’t mean that this one would be. Any risk to his beloved Lexi shot fear straight to his heart.
“Hang on a minute,” Lexi said just as they reached the doorstep to the second kitchen. She leaned forward the slightest bit, her breathing strained. “Wow. This one’s a good one.”
Water splashed between her feet, alarming Jeros even more. “By all the gods and goddesses, is she about to come out on the doorstep?”
Lexi squeezed his hand and held tight to his arm. “She’s close,” she said with a low groan. “Just get me to the library. I don’t think I can make it up all the steps to the bedroom.”
He started to sweep her up into his arms, but she stopped him. “No! I don’t want to be carried. Help me make it to the library, or she’s going to be born in this kitchen.”
Clenching his teeth to keep from arguing the point, he held her close and helped her down the hallway after sending a maid upstairs to notify Rill and the midwife of the change of plans.
As soon as they entered the library, Lexi latched hold of the back of a chair and wouldn’t let go. “Your daughter is impatient.” She panted and groaned while leaning forward to stretch her back.
“How the hell long have ye been in labor?” Jeros glanced back at the door. “And where the hell is that feckin’ midwife?”
Bent forward and resting her forehead on her arm, Lexi noisily breathed in and out while rocking in place. “Since about midnight, actually, but the pains haven’t been bad until now. They were more like muscle spasms that didn’t hurt. That’s why I thought Torian and I had enough time for a ride.”
“Ye thought wrongly, my own.”
“It would seem so.” She huffed and puffed, then lowered herself to a squat with a long, low groan. “Get ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“To catch your daughter.”
“Aww feckin’ hell.” Jeros crouched behind her and yanked her skirts up out of the way. “I dinna have a cloth or a blanket or anything.”
“Your hands will be fine,” Lexi said with another groan. “I’m pushing.”
And then, with the slickness of a wee selkie, his tiny daughter, red and growling, slid into his hands. “Lore a’mighty,” he said in an awe-filled whisper as he cradled her close. “Lore a’mighty.”
“How is she?” Lexi said, with a breathlessness made even worse by her impatience. “Let me see her.” She turned and lowered herself to the floor, her face wreathed in smiles.
“Here she is, my own.” Jeros laughed as he reluctantly handed over the squalling infant. “What an angry wee lassie! She has the temper of her mother.”
“I do not have a bad temper.” Lexi kissed the wee one’s head and murmured unintelligible words that only mother and daughter understood.
Rill and the midwife burst into the room.
“Oh, Yer Highness. On the floor!” Rill said.
“No, Yer Highness. Do forgive us. Here…let us help ye. Let us help ye,” the midwife chimed in.
Both women fretted and fussed, bumping Jeros out of the way as they helped Lexi to the sofa they covered with the birthing sheet. They helped her expel the afterbirth.
“Here now! Let me in here.” Jeros took his rightful place at his beloved side, kneeling beside her. “My lovely ladies,” he crooned as he pressed a kiss first to Lexi’s cheek and then to his daughter’s head. “She’s an impatient lassie, I’ll grant ye that.”
“If she has my temper,” Lexi said while putting the child to her breast, “she has her father’s impatience.” She laughed. “And her brother’s appetite.”
“Ye should not have waited so long to tell us she was coming.” Jeros barely traced the curve of the baby’s velvety cheek. “We were ill-prepared.”
“We had everything we needed. Didn’t we, Gwenna?”
The infant ignored her mother and continued nursing.
Lexi smiled up at Jeros as she relaxed back into the pillows. “Are you happy, my king?”
“Happier than ye will ever know, my queen.”