Chapter Twenty-two
Isabeau Juditha
Lara
Sleep. Lara wanted sleep, needed
sleep, craved sleep, but with Isabeau howling to nurse, the goats
needing to be milked, and the last of the squash needing to be
harvested, she wasn’t going to get it any time soon. Yawning and
leaning her head back against the headboard, she put her daughter
to breast and gave a weary sigh as the babe suckled with vigor. At
least one of them was thriving. With every pennyweight of flesh
Isabeau gained, it seemed Lara lost two. Her gowns, let out for
pregnancy, now hung on her like sackcloth, but she had neither the
time nor the energy to take them in. There were more important
things to tend to, such as keeping the Hollow producing and her
child fed and clean and clothed. A never-ending cycle of gardening,
cooking, and nursing and changing cloths, a basket of which awaited
her now.
She let herself doze while Isabeau
nursed, then set the babe in a front sling, slung her bow and
quiver of arrows across her back, picked up the basket of washed
laundry to be hung to dry, and opened the cabin door.
“Come on,
Wolf.”
The hound loped after her, free of the
limp that had plagued him for a month after the fire. The pads of
his feet had been blistered when they’d climbed out of the smoky
cellar and run across the smoldering ruins of the house, despite
Lara having wrapped them in strips of wet cloth. The soles of her
boots had been singed as well when she’d kicked white-hot embers
down into the cellar, making sure it burned.
With their sore feet and her belly
heavy with child, it had taken them three days to reach the Hollow,
a journey that would normally take a day on horseback. But Lara had
left all three horses in the stables and had only taken her best
two milking goats with her, leaving the paddock gate open so Denys
would think they’d wandered off. She’d made sure to leave no signs
she’d survived, not even a message scrawled in the dirt floor of
the barn for Denys, whom she’d been teaching to read. It was vital
that Nithard think her dead.
She set the bow and quiver against the
drying line post, settled Isabeau into her own basket with a
blanket tucked around her, and began to hang the laundry, Wolf on
guard beside the babe’s basket. She was hanging the last of
Isabeau’s changing cloths when Wolf’s ears stiffened, and the jay
that had been scolding them nonstop went quiet. She picked up her
bow, slung the quiver over her shoulder, pulled an arrow, and
notched it to the bow’s string.
“What is it, Wolf?” she
whispered as the dog stood at full alert, his ears cocked toward
the high brush along the stream’s edge, a low growl rumbling from
his chest.
There was movement along the edge of
the brush, movement that took the shape of a man, thick-set and
crouching low as he crept toward the yard. She set her sights on
the man’s head, which was covered by a cap and his face with a
full, dark beard. She lowered her aim to the man’s chest and let it
fly. The man dropped.
“God’s blood, woman,” a
familiar voice yelled as she set a second arrow to her bow. “You’ve
shot at me.”
“Talon?”
“Who else bleeds for you
on sight, you troublesome wench?”
Lara threw down her bow and quiver and
ran straight for him as he stood to his full height and stepped out
from behind the brush.
“Talon.” She threw herself
into his arms. “It’s you. It’s really you.” She leaned back to see
the tear in the upper sleeve of his jerkin. “Your arm.”
He laughed it off. “It’s only a
scratch from a wildcat.”
“You were sneaking up on
me.”
“I wasn’t sure of who or
what I’d find here.” He pressed her close. Lara burrowed her nose
into his neck and inhaled the scent of leather, horse, and
him. He ran his hand
back through her shoulder-length hair and held her face in his
hands. “Thank God, I’ve found you alive and well,” he rasped. “And
our babe?”
Of course, he knew. He’d have ridden
through the valley, where any number of people would have told him
of her pregnancy. “Our daughter is alive and well.” She lifted her
chin toward the yard, where Wolf stood guarding the babe’s basket,
wagging his entire body, waiting for the okay to come greet
Talon.
He slapped his thigh, and the hound
came bounding over, leaning up against Talon’s legs, whining and
wagging his tail as Talon rubbed his ears and patted his rump.
“Thank you for watching over my wildcat and her kitten, old man.”
Talon gave the dog a good-natured thumping along his
ribs.
He straightened and wrapped his arm
around Lara’s shoulder. “Introduce me to our daughter.”
Lara wrapped both arms around his
waist as they walked toward the basket.
“Denys told me what
happened,” he said. “The fire, the shod hoofprints around what was
left of the house: the fact that two of your best milking goats
were missing. It was the missing goats that gave him the idea for
the graves to make people think you dead and buried.”
“Graves?”
He stopped and held her tighter to
him. “I thought you dead,” he whispered fiercely. “I lay on what
was meant to be your grave, thinking you gone from me forever.” He
pressed his lips to her hair until his ragged breath eased. Then he
loosened his hold, stepped back from her, reached into his tunic
pocket, and held out a ring of gold encircling an emerald the size
of a hummingbird’s egg. “Marry me, Lara? Be my wife?”
Lara opened her mouth to say yes, to
shout it to the heavens, then clamped her mouth shut. “When did you
acquire this ring?”
He cocked his head. “September. I
played the Bishop of Tours for it in a game of Shah. I put up my
best new broodmare in the wager.”
Lara chuffed. “At least I know my
worth.”
“Your worth?” He cocked
his head the other way and the muscle in the side of his jaw
started to twitch. “What are you talking about?”
“When did you find out
about the babe?”
“At Christmas. Phillipe
let it slip.”
“I see.”
“I don’t.” He stood at his
full height and squared his shoulders. “Nor do I see why you didn’t
tell me you were pregnant with my child before I left.”
“Because,” she snapped,
suddenly ridiculously close to tears, “I didn’t want you worrying
about me or the babe while you were gone. I wanted you to come back
to me for me, not out of any sense of obligation.”
His steel-gray gaze pierced hers, and
the scar across his right cheek shone white. “My child is my blood,
not some obligation.
“And you, you beautiful,
thorny, troublesome, maddening wildcat of a witch, are the love of
my life.”
“I am?”
He snorted. “Which is why I asked for
and was given Crossroads Keep and three hundred acres of
pastureland for my service, from which I’ve been
released.”
“You did?”
He nodded curtly. “After which I sent
Anglbert and a few others to the keep to watch over you and my
claim whilst I rode north to Frisia, where I bought two dozen
broodmares for the Black to cover so I could breed horses and
secure us a good and prosperous life in the valley, thinking you
loved me as I loved you.”
Lara sucked a shaky breath in and
burst into tears. “I do love you, you arrogant ass.” She threw her
arms around his neck.
“Enough to marry
me?”
Lara sniffed. “Enough to marry you and
drive you mad for the rest of your days.”
He bumped his pelvis against hers.
“And nights?” he rumbled.
“Oh yes.”
He kissed her, long and hard and
demanding, and Lara gave him all that was left of her, panting and
falling into his solid chest as he broke the kiss. “Can I meet our
daughter now?” he whispered in her ear.
Lara took him by the hand and led him
to the basket where their daughter stared up at Talon with wide
gray eyes.
“Talon Guiscard.” Lara
lifted the babe out of the basket and placed her in Talon’s arms.
“Meet Isabeau Juditha Guiscard.”
He pushed the swaddling blanket back
from her head and grinned at her soft cap of red curls for a long
moment before he lifted his gaze to Lara’s. “Isabeau
Juditha?”
“She’s named after her
grandmothers.”
“You said you didn’t know
who your mother was. That Sophie never told you.”
“She didn’t. Not while she
lived. They came to me in a dream the night of the fire. My mother
told me the babe was to be Isabeau, as she was before her, then
Sophie told me to run. They saved our lives.”
***
Talon
Talon’s empty belly growled as he
returned to the cabin from the stream where he’d bathed. He hadn’t
eaten at the keep yesterday, insulting Berta no end. But he’d been
in such a hurry to get to the Hollow, and hopefully, Lara, that
he’d only stopped there long enough to speak with Anglbert and
Phillipe and to saddle the roan and fill the sorrel’s packs with
bread, cheese, sausage, wine, and a sack each of flour and oats.
He’d left the Black at the keep to stud, whispering in the
stallion’s ear that he’d be well pleased with two dozen black foals
come next summer, and then he was off and a third of the way to the
Hollow before it became too dark to ride. He’d built no fire, just
chewed his hardtack and slept a bit, waking in the dark and back on
the trail as dawn broke, never stopping until he hit the ground as
Lara’s arrow grazed his arm.
He entered the cabin and stopped
still, his breath sucking in at the sight of Lara’s pear-shaped
buttocks as she bent over, dipping a sponge in the rinsing bucket,
then squeezing the water out and down the long, lean length of her
leg to her foot. He let his breath out in a great rush, sounding,
and feeling, like he’d been gut-punched. Lara straightened and
turned, showing him the full roundness of her milk-heavy
breasts.
“You are a sight for sore
eyes, lady.” He closed the distance between them slowly, taking in
the thatch of auburn curls at her sex, the mouthwatering curves of
her hips, the nip of her already slender waist. Then he noticed how
pronounced her hip bones were, how her belly, always taut, sunk in,
and how sharply her collarbones jutted out. He looked long and hard
at her face, at the dark shadows beneath her too-large eyes, the
deep hollows of her cheeks. “You haven’t been eating?”
“I have. It’s just, I’d
rather sleep than eat given the chance, and I’ve only so many
chances in a day.”