Ballard’s pulsed raced. “Is it finished?”
“More or less.” Ambrose’s voice took on a worried note. “She’s asking for you.”
He abandoned his view of the land and faced his magician. The man wore a look of dread. “She’s still raging then?”
Ambrose shook his head. “No. Quite calm—for a viper. Be careful.”
A pointless warning. Three years of marriage and he’d learned to be wary of his wife. He gestured to the nurse in one corner of the room. “Give him to me.”
She rose at his command, carefully cradling a swaddled bundle that twitched and snuffled. He lifted the baby from her arms and gently unwound the blankets to reveal a pink-skinned creature with curled fists, a cap of fine black hair and bright infant blue eyes which would soon change to gray or darkest brown. Ballard’s hands, dark and battle-scarred, spread over the boy’s small body as he turned him enough to view his back.
For countless generations, children of Ketach blood bore a sickle-shaped mark above their buttocks. Ballard had it, as had his father and grandfather before him. Smooth but not unblemished, this child’s back revealed the truth of his paternal heritage. The rosy mark stretched between the two tiny indentations on his lower back. Most definitely his son—not that he’d reiterate it to the boy’s mother. Ballard valued his head.
“You can give him to Gavin to foster when he’s older. I don’t like these new traditions of the boys staying with their parents. Spoils them. Gavin was fostered until the curse struck. He can foster his brother and do a good job of it.”
Ballard disregarded Ambrose’s suggestion, bewitched by the infant’s fine features and the tiny hand that clenched one of his fingers and held tight. Unlike Ambrose, he didn’t miss the old fostering tradition. Gavin would make an excellent mentor, but he and Cinnia had children of their own now. He doubted Cinnia would be any more willing to send them to Ketach Tor fostering than he was to send this child away from home. Louvaen’s flat refusal was a certainty.
The baby’s eyes blinked and slowly focused, catching Ballard’s gaze and holding it for one eternal moment, stripping him down to the bare essence of his spirit. For the second time in his memory something extraordinary moved within him, awakened and stirred—that ferocious instinct to claim and protect. The instinct went far beyond the powerful compulsion to guard Louvaen from harm.
He bent and brushed his lips across the baby’s forehead. This child was his by blood and spirit; not the heir of Ketach Tor and its lands but still part of its legacy. He would thank Louvaen on his knees for giving him so gracious a gift.
He looked to Ambrose who watched him with an inscrutable gaze and then to the nurse who smiled. “This is Thomas de Sauveterre,” he proclaimed in a soft voice. “Son of Ballard; son of Dwennon; son of Udolf; brother of Gavin de Lovet; child of Ketach Tor.”
“Proclaimed and recognized.” Ambrose bowed. The nurse curtsied.
Ballard swaddled his son once more and tucked him into the crook of his arm. He was eager to leave this chamber and carry the boy to the woman who had labored to bring him into the world.
The bower where Gavin had been born and where Cinnia once slept smelled of soap and newly laundered sheets sprinkled with dried lavender and pennyroyal. During her pregnancy, Louvaen had been in the bloom of health, even in the early weeks when she woke him each morning to the serenade of retching in a basin.
As the nausea passed and her belly swelled, he’d been like a man possessed—lusting after her until Magda threatened to drown him in the fish pond if he didn’t quit interrupting Louvaen at her work and dragging her off to their bed.
He’d been grim and sick with fear when her pains struck, and he carried her to the bower. She’d panted and stiffened, digging her fingers into his clothes with each cramp. He’d kissed the top of her head. “What can I do, Louvaen?”
Her gravid belly had tightened before his eyes, and she bared her teeth in a white-lipped smile. “Bring me my spinning wheel. I’ll spin you a mail hauberk.”
He stood sentry in the corridor after Magda chased him out of the chamber with her abrupt “Woman’s work. Get out.” Ambrose had managed to lure him to the solar where Ballard proceeded to worry himself into a sweat from the litany of agonized groans echoing down the hall and memories of Isabeau’s fatal blood loss.
When the groans changed to screams, he raced for the bower. Ambrose and two retainers barely stopped him from kicking the door down. Louvaen’s screeching oaths to deal him several forms of excruciating death made him blanch. He shook off his captors and cracked the door open enough to peek inside. Something slammed into the wood, sending shards of broken pottery through the opening. He shut the door and spun to face the other men. Ambrose stood before him, arms akimbo, an “I-warned-you” expression on his face. The two retainers grinned.
One offered a bit of sage advice that lessened some of Ballard’s terror. “It’s a good sign when they’re threatening to rip your entrails out and feed them to the hounds. You worry when they’re praying or quiet.”
Now, wan and tired, Louvaen reclined in the bed, propped up by pillows and swathed in a gown big enough to swallow her whole. Dark circles ringed her eyes, and damp tendrils of hair stuck to her temples and neck. Ballard thought her the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
Her eyes, a cool slate instead of the hot ash he’d glimpsed earlier in the day, glittered with excitement. She wore a wide smile as Ballard limped to her beside, little Thomas cradled against his chest.
“Your son, Louvaen.” He eased the baby into her waiting arms.
She peeled back the swaddling and glided her fingers over his round belly and limbs. She counted his toes and laughed when he pursed his lips and blew spit bubbles. “You sire lovely children, Ballard.”
He chuckled. “We’ll see. He’ll sport an impressive nose no doubt.”
Louvaen sniffed. “A face with character, my lord. The most interesting kind.” She pressed the tip of her finger to the baby’s lips. “Magda said he’d want to eat soon. I haven’t the first idea how to go about nursing him.”
Ballard floundered. Unless his son could gum a chicken leg or a slice of mutton, he had no idea what to do either. “Should I get Magda?”
Louvaen shook her head. “Not yet. She says we’ll know when he’s hungry and she’ll help me then. I’m guessing that means he’ll howl the roof down around our heads.” She patted the empty space beside her. Ballard sat gingerly, ready to dodge a blow. She gave him a puzzled look. “What’s wrong?”
He found it difficult to reconcile the peaceful woman beside him with the screaming, wailing, pitcher-hurling demon of a few hours ago. “Do you remember what you said earlier?”
