Chapter Twenty-two #2
She sighed and leaned into his chest.
The feel of her skin against his was the succor he’d been riding
back to since the moment he’d ridden away from her. He nibbled her
neck and ran his hand down her back, feeling her prominent spine.
His daughter lay naked on the bed, enjoying the warmth of the fire
after her bath, staring up at her pudgy fingers and kicking her
legs, which had three rolls of plump flesh along each
thigh.
“Your daughter would
rather eat, from the looks of her,” he said.
Lara nodded and yawned into his
shoulder. “The little leech never sleeps for any length of
time.”
Talon chuckled. “My mother complained
the same of me as a babe.” He gave Lara a hearty kiss that promised
more later. Right now, they both needed to eat. “I’ve cheese,
bread, sausage, and wine from Berta.” He went to his pack and
emptied it. “What shall we devour first?”
Their bellies sated, Talon stretched
out on the bed beside Lara and watched in fascination as she nursed
their daughter, whose perfectly formed little hands and feet turned
circles apace with her suckling until both slowed and eventually
stopped. After lifting the babe to her shoulder, Lara patted her on
the back until she let out a loud burp.
“She’ll sleep now,” Lara
said, stifling a yawn as she laid the babe down between them. Talon
offered his shoulder, pressing a kiss on Lara’s forehead as she
snuggled into him. Isabeau whimpered and Lara drew the babe into
her arms. “Shush, baby,” she murmured. “Your papa’s here. We can
both sleep. We’re safe.”
Talon tucked them closer. Lara had
told him the men who’d tried to burn her alive had done so on
Nithard’s orders, that she’d run, or limped, up to the Hollow
without letting anyone know she was still alive. Then she’d lived
here, pregnant and alone but for Wolf and then their infant
daughter, in constant fear and constantly on guard since. No wonder
she was exhausted and worn out. He vowed to deal with Nithard once
they returned to the keep and fell asleep curled around his
sleeping woman and child, planning retribution.
He woke to a small foot kicking him in
his belly and gray eyes studying his.
“Sizing up the interloper,
are you?” Isabeau kicked and gurgled with glee as her foot
connected with his belly again. He grasped her pudgy foot, and she
kicked harder, squirming and grinning at him. “You are your
mother’s daughter, aren’t you, you troublesome little sprite.” She
kicked and cooed and seemed to be waiting for him to answer. “Come
on then.” He scooped her up as Lara stirred. “Your mama needs her
sleep.”
He checked her changing cloth as he’d
seen Lara do. Happy to find it still clean and dry, he wrapped her
in a blanket and walked outside into the crisp fall night with Wolf
at their heels. The moon was a night away from full and cast a
bright light down on them as they took their first walk alone
together.
Isabeau’s eyes shone as bright as the
stars and her toothless smile smote him as surely as Lara’s ever
had. “Aye, you are your mother’s daughter. You have her sweet
smile, auburn curls, and big cat eyes, eyes I’d have wagered would
be a mossy hazel, whose dove gray make your papa’s breeches burst
with pride.” He nuzzled his daughter’s petal-soft cheek and his
heart melted at her coos of delight. “Isabeau Juditha Guiscard, my
little dove.”
They walked, talked, and stared at the
stars and each other until the moon was high overhead and the chill
of night began to seep through Talon’s tunic. “We’d better get you
back inside before you take a chill,” he told his daughter. “Then
I’d really be in trouble.”
Lara still slept soundly, and Talon
banked the fire and sat by it with Isabeau’s back propped up
against his legs, making faces and noises at each other until the
babe began to alternately fuss or fight her closing lids. Talon
laid her in the bed beside Lara and the babe rooted at her mother’s
breast. Lara groaned and her eyes fluttered open. She slipped the
sleeve of her nightshift off her shoulder and put the babe to her
breast, nodding off as the babe suckled until she too fell asleep.
Stripping his clothes off and slipping under the covers with them,
Talon closed his eyes.
***
Lara
Lara twitched her nose at the savory
aroma of roasting meat, and she opened her eyes to daylight
streaming into the cabin through the open door. The deep timbre of
a man’s voice and an infant’s cooing floated in from outside, and
Lara’s heart stopped for one horrible moment as she glanced down at
the empty space in the bed beside her where her daughter usually
slept. Then the man chuckled, and she recognized Talon’s deep,
throaty laughter. She tumbled out of the bed and stumbled out the
door to find two pairs of gray eyes smiling at her.
“Talon?” She still wasn’t
completely certain he was standing there holding their daughter in
one arm while turning a pheasant on the spit over the fire with the
other and that she wasn’t dreaming it.
“Aye, love. None other.”
He peered hard into her face. “You should sit before you fall
down.”
Lara plopped onto the bench as Wolf
left Talon’s side to sit beside her, still trying to fit the sight
of a cooing Isabeau in Talon’s arms in her muddled mind. Yesterday,
she’d woken to yet another day of endless chores, little sleep, and
a voracious daughter. Today, she’d slept in until after noon and
awakened to a meal being cooked and her daughter taken care of.
Feeling her empty breasts, she had a vague recollection of the babe
nursing in bed and Talon’s voice urging her to stay and
rest.
“How long did I sleep?”
she asked, stifling a yawn.
“The night and half a day
through. During which time we’ve been getting acquainted, haven’t
we, Miss Issy?” He juggled the babe, who gurgled and kicked him in
the belly with as big a grin on her toothless face as was on her
father’s. “She kicks like a mule, our daughter.” Talon grabbed her
foot and shook it gently. “I pity the lads she kicks in the shins
for getting too fresh.”
Lara leaned back, still a little
disoriented, and took in the horses grazing alongside the goats,
whose udders looked to have been milked. “You’ve been
busy.”
“That we have,” Talon
said. “Wolf caught us the bird while Issy taught me to milk a goat
and how to change her changing cloth, which is quite disgusting by
the way.”
Lara laughed at his screwed-up nose,
the first time she’d laughed out loud in a long time. She felt the
grit in her unkempt hair and smoothed the milk-stained front of her
tunic. “Do I have time to bathe in the river before
supper?”
Talon grinned. “You, we, have all the
time we want.”
Lara returned from the river in a
clean tunic and skirt, feeling more refreshed than she had in
months. And hungry. They feasted on the pheasant and a bowl of
freshly picked greens along with what was left of the bread and
cheese from Berta until they were both groaning with full bellies.
After supper, Lara nursed Isabeau, and woke up some time later to
Talon curled around both of them. With a contented sigh, she gave
herself up to blessed sleep.
When next she woke, the sun was high
in the noon sky and her breasts were only slightly full. She
dressed and went outside to find Isabeau sleeping in her basket on
the porch while Talon chopped firewood, shirtless.
“You let me sleep in
again.” She admired the play of his muscles as he swung the axe
down and split a log.
“You needed it. The way
our little leech of a daughter nurses, it’s not surprising you’re
so thin and worn out.”
Tears sprang to Lara’s eyes. “Is that
why you haven’t done more than kiss me since you’ve been here? Why
you don’t want me now? Because you think me too haggard and
skinny?”
Talon buried the axe in the log and
walked over to Lara. He ran his hand back through her hair and
cupped her chin, the scent of his sweat stirring urges that had
laid dormant in her for months now.
“I think you worn out and
half-starved from lack of sleep and proper food.” His voice, his
gaze, were both gentle. “I think you’ve given everything of
yourself to keep this demanding child of ours alive and thriving.
I’ve only been tending her for two days, without having carried her
in my womb for nine months prior, or nursing her from my own body
these three and a half months past, and I’m near worn out. I think
you deserve all the rest and nourishment and time you need to
recover enough so that I can show you how much I want you, you
beautiful, nurturing woman. And the fact that you’ve come so easily
to tears tells me you’re not there yet.” He tilted her chin up and
placed a tender kiss on her lips. “I’ve waited eleven months for
you, I can wait a few more days.”
***
Lara laid a sleeping Isabeau on the
bed and cocooned her in the soft woolen blanket Talon bought for
her in Tours. She turned to Talon with a hungry smile, though
they’d just finished feasting on venison steaks from the buck he’d
shot two days ago. The day after he’d told her he could wait until
she was rested up enough for him.
As grateful and thankful and somehow
not at all surprised that he’d dove right in to taking care of
Isabeau and the livestock and property while she rested, she was
even more eager to resume relations with him. She was ready to be
Lara and Talon again, not just mama and papa to Isabeau. By the
gleam in Talon’s eyes, he was ready too.
She pulled off her tunic, dipped a
cloth in the warm water left in the basin from Isabeau’s bath, and
washed any trace of her daughter’s nursing from her breasts under
Talon’s intent gaze.
“I have something for
you,” he said.
Lara dropped her gaze to his breeches.
“Yes. You surely do.”
He chuckled. “I have something else I
want to give you first.” He went to his pack and pulled out a
parcel wrapped in green linen. “I was waiting for the, ah, right
moment to do so.”