Chapter Twenty #2
“Unless I miss my guess, it’s called pregnancy.”
Lara’s belly lurched.
“Are your breasts swollen
and sore?” Patience asked.
Lara nodded dumbly. She’d thought them
tender from her and Talon’s play, which had only advanced to
intercourse seven days ago. Still, she’d tended other women who
swore they became pregnant one night and threw up the very next
morning.
“When was your last
menstrual flow?”
Lara tried to think. It had been
before market day, before the Hollow, over a month ago now. She
looked at Patience, who stood rocking Wilric with a sympathetic
smile.
“Since you didn’t know
yet, I take it the captain doesn’t either.”
“No.”
“When are you going to
tell him?”
“I’m not.” Lara decided
that then and there.
“He’s a good man, Lara.
He’ll do right by you and the babe. I know it.”
“What you don’t know and I
do is that’s the last thing he wants: to be tied down with a wife
and child.”
“But—”
“His orders have come. He
and his company are to join the king in Worms by month’s end, and I
cannot, I will not send him off to war worrying about me and the
babe. He may not want a wife or child, but he will worry about us,
because he’s a good and honorable man, and I love him too much to
have him thinking of me and the babe, to be worrying about one or
both of us dying during childbirth, as his mother did, when he
should be worrying about some Saxon trying to split his skull open
with an axe.” She shook her head and squared her shoulders. “As
selfish as this sounds, as selfish as it is, if he does come back,
I want him to come back to me, to come back for me, because he
wants to, not because he’s tied and bound to me by an oath he’s
spoken before God to give our child a name.”
“Are you sure?” Patience
asked. “Pregnancy can make a woman do and say some crazy things,
your speech just now being a good example.”
“Yes, I’m sure.” Saying
it, Lara felt a peace settle in her chest, though her belly still
roiled. She saw Patience’s pruned face and made one of her own.
“And no, I won’t be changing my mind about it.”
“But raising a child on
your own?”
“Married or not, I’d be
raising this child on my own until he came back.” She closed her
eyes against the unbidden image of Talon lying pale as death in a
pool of his own blood in the meadow. “If he comes back.”
“Still, if you were
married before he left, your child wouldn’t be born a—”
“Bastard?”
Patience had the good grace to
blush.
“I may have been born a
bastard,” Lara said, “but I had Sophie. I was raised with love, and
so will my child.”
“Of course, it will.”
Patience offered a kind smile. “And when the captain returns from
the wars in Saxony and marries you, your child will know its
father’s love as well.”
“If he doesn’t strangle me
for not telling him first.”
***
Lara was putting a berry pie into the
oven when Talon, Phillipe, Tree, and Dardinel rode in. Wolf loped
over to greet Talon as he handed a stablehand the Black’s reins,
and Berta, who’d been watching Lara like a hawk since she’d
returned from her house that afternoon, glanced meaningfully at
Lara’s belly as Talon started toward the kitchens.
Lara sighed and wiped her floury hands
on her apron. She’d bet every piece of coin she’d made selling her
pies to pay off her 152 ergild,
coins Talon had never asked for, that Berta had come to the same
conclusion about her condition as Patience had. What she wouldn’t
bet a single coin on was how long her condition would remain
secret.
She’d left her house not long after
Patience’s visit, leaving the property and livestock in Denys’s
capable hands. She’d left Gaea there in her home barn with Honey,
and ridden Shadow bareback to the keep rather than walk. She knew
it was normal to feel tired during the first few months of a
pregnancy, but knowing it and feeling like you could fall asleep
standing on your feet was another thing entirely. Still, she wasn’t
ready to add fuel to Berta’s fire of conjecture, so she’d gone to
the kitchens and pared berries and rolled out dough enough for four
pies, her thank you for the troop’s sincere welcome backs. And the
way they all acted as if her staying here at the keep and sleeping
in the captain’s chamber were nothing unusual.
Which had her wondering if it weren’t.
If he’d had mistresses live with him before. He’d told her he
needed her up at the Hollow, that he wanted her more than he’d ever
wanted any woman, but he’d never told her he loved her, not even
after she’d confessed her love to him. She more than understood his
need for freedom, and she refused to trap him with her love or
their child. She’d meant what she told Patience. If he came back,
she wanted him to come back because he wanted to, to her, for
her.
Wolf nosed her leg, and she glanced
from him to Talon as he strode past the table where three more pies
sat, ready to be baked, the muscle along the side of his jaw
ticking.
“I instructed Berta you
weren’t to serve in the kitchens anymore,” he said.
“I know, she told me as
much. I wanted to bake pies for you and the men.” His brows
quirked. “Free of charge.”
He chuckled as he leaned in close and
ran a hand down her back. “I liked it better when you baked pies
just for me,” he whispered hotly.
Lara slapped at his hand on her
backside. “I’m sure you did, you greedy man.”
“Greedy for you, my
sweet.” He nibbled her neck, raising goose bumps on her
arms.
“Greedy for my cooking,”
she chided, shrugging his nipping lips off her neck.
“I am.” He bumped her
backside with his pelvis. “Both in bed and out.”
Heat flushed from Lara’s core to her
cheeks, then her uncertain belly threatened to revolt. Clamping a
hand over her mouth, she held her other up to Talon, motioning for
him to stay where he was, and bolted for the stables, Wolf on her
heels. She glanced back over her shoulder at Talon standing where
she’d left him, gape-jawed and head cocked, then she disappeared
into the dusky coolness of the stables and made her way to Shadow’s
stall. She leaned against the wall as a wave of nausea overtook
her, then left her midday meal on the straw-strewn floor, rolled
her forehead against the wall, and swiped her mouth with her
sleeve.
“When are you going to
tell him?”
She swung her head around and leaned
against the wall until Phillipe stopped swimming before her. Then
she shuffled straw over the puddle of her vomit with the toe of her
boot.
“I’m not.” She fixed him
with a jaundiced eye. “And neither are you, or Berta, or Patience,
or anybody else who knows. Who else knows?”
“Berta told Anglbert her
suspicions, and he told me.”
“Swear to me you won’t
tell anyone else, that they won’t tell anyone else, especially
Talon.”
“Why not Talon?” Phillipe
asked. “I assume he’s the father.”
Lara raised a chary brow. “Of course
he is.”
“Then why not tell him? He
has a right to know.”
Lara shook her head, adamant. “You
know him as well as I do,” she said, her cheeks flushing hot as he
glanced down at her rumbling belly with raised brows. “What do you
think he’d do if he knew?”
“Marry you. Give your
child a name.”
“And when he leaves for
Worms, for Saxony? When he’s on a battlefield and should be
worrying about himself, his men?”
“He’d be worrying about
you and the babe. About you both surviving childbirth.”
“Exactly,” she said,
assuaged by the fact that his best and longest-standing friend knew
this about him as well. “I want him to come back to me, alive and
in one piece. You understand now, don’t you, why he mustn’t know.
Not until he comes back and finds me and his child alive and
waiting for him.”
“I understand. But I don’t
agree. Neither will Talon.”
Lara took a deep breath in and let it
out slowly. “You let me worry about that.”
“I don’t know.” Phillipe
shook his head. “If he ever finds out I knew and didn’t tell him,
there’ll be hell to pay.”
“Please, Phillipe. I need
you to do this for me. Promise me.”
He laid a hand on her shoulder, giving
it a brotherly squeeze. “All right. I promise.”
“What’s this?” Talon’s
voice boomed from the stable’s door. He strode over to them and
glared at Phillipe. “Still trying to steal my woman from
me?”
“Damn.” Phillipe winked at
Lara before turning to face Talon. “You caught me red-handed.” He
held his hands palms out. “Alas, as always, she will not have me.
It seems her heart is set on a certain arrogant ass.”
“Aye.” Talon laid a
possessive arm around Lara’s shoulder and pulled her into his side.
“An arrogant ass who bleeds for her.”
He leaned in to kiss her, and Lara
turned her face so his kiss landed on her hair rather than her
mouth, which surely reeked of vomit. His arm stiffened around her.
“What were you two talking about?”
Phillipe shrugged. “Nothing in
particular,” he said before sauntering away.
“It looked a serious
conversation for nothing,” Talon rumbled, shooting daggers into
Phillipe’s back.
Lara tried to shrug as nonchalantly as
Phillipe had. “We, ah, I ah, made him promise me
something.”
“What?”
“To bring you back to me
alive and in one piece.”
His arm relaxed around her. “Is that
so? Afraid I’ll find some big-bosomed Saxon wench to warm my
bed?”
Lara stepped out of his embrace and
glared at him. “More afraid you’ll smash your thick skull against
some big-chested Saxon’s axe.”
***
Talon
Talon lay with Lara, her head nestled
into his shoulder as he watched the inexorable gray of dawn creep
its way into their chamber. He heard movement in the hall below and
closed his eyes with a heavy sigh. Their time together was coming
to an end.
He buried his nose into her
chin-length curls and breathed in the spicy sweet scent of her rose
soap. She stirred, and Talon slipped his arm from under her head
and kissed her cheek, as cool and soft as a petal. His smile was
bittersweet as she burrowed her nose into his pillow and then he
slowly slipped out of the bed she’d been openly sharing with him
since they’d returned from the Hollow.
Her nightshift lay at the foot of the
bed where he’d tossed it after stripping it off her and making love
to her last night. They’d been saying their long good-byes every