“Joanna and Geoffrey!”
“Nay, my lord! Joanna and Geoffrey and Felice!”
“Oh, my God! It is a fitting fate for your cousin, my love, and the precious Joanna!”
“We must, my lord,” Kassia said primly, “send my cousin and his betrothed a wedding gift.”
“Aye,” Graelam said thoughtfully, pulling her against him. “Mayhap a whip and manacles. I vow I would wager on Joanna’s success.”
Kassia raised her head at the sound of the departing band of horses. “Now, my lord, I wish to see properly to your arm.”
“And I, my lady, once properly seen to, wish to thrash you soundly.” Graelam drew her up against him and gently caressed his hand downward over her soft hips. “Mayhap I could bring myself to do it in fifty years or so,” he said, and kissed her.
Epilogue
Graelam quietly opened the shutters and breathed in the crisp early-summer air. A year and a half it had been, a year and a half since he and Kassia had returned to Wolffeton. And now he had a son. He turned slightly, a smile touching his lips as he stared at Kassia, suckling their son, Harry, at her milk-swollen breast. Her hair was much longer now, curling softly about her shoulders. The color of gold and brown and copper, he thought, the colors of autumn.
He shook his head, suddenly remembering how such a short time before he was in an agony of worry that she would die in childbirth. He spoke his thoughts aloud. “Four hours, my lady, and you present me with a wailing son. I believe there is much peasant stock in you.”
Kassia looked up, her eyes twinkling. “You wanted a good breeder, my lord, and now you complain that I was not sufficiently delicate!” She scarce believed that the pain had ended so quickly. Even now it was becoming a receding memory, now that she held her son in her arms and she was well and getting stronger, and so very happy that she wanted to shout her joy to all of Wolffeton. “He is beautiful, is he not, Graelam?”
“Aye, he will rival the vigorous looks of his father when he is a man, though I fear his eyes will be black as that rogue, Roland.” Graelam looked thoughtful for a moment. “I wonder how Roland managed in Wales. He was going there, you know, to perform some sort of rescue.”
“Roland is a man who lands on his feet because his tongue is so agile. Now, my lord, I wish to speak more of my beautiful son,” Kassia said, putting Harry to suckle at her other breast. “I cannot see that he carries even the smallest bone of his sweet mother in him. Even his hair will be black as all the sins of Satan.”
But Graelam didn’t smile. He was back into his agonizing memories. “You scared the very devil out of me,” he said, drawing close to the bed, his voice hoarse. “I was about to swear I would never touch you again if you but survived. And in the next moment, just before I was to take an eternal vow of celibacy, you smiled at me and bade me
look at the miracle you accomplished.”
“I wonder,” she mused aloud, “if you would have kept that vow. ’Tis a mystery never to be solved.” She hugged Harry to her and he looked up with blurry eyes, making her laugh. “He is a miracle, is he not, Graelam? He will be a great powerful man, just like his father.”
“Let us trust so—if he is to protect the sisters he’s certain to have in the next couple of years.”
Kassia merely smiled at that, all the pain of Harry’s birthing not yet relegated to the past. She lifted her now-sleeping son from her breast. Graelam took him, placing him gingerly in the crook of his arm. “I cannot believe I was once this small and fragile. It’s alarming.”
“And so dependent upon a woman’s care.”
“Ah, that I can believe. ’Tis a lesson I learned late in life from a mouthy little wench.” He raised his eyes from his son’s wrinkled face to study his wife. “You are feeling all right now, Kassia?”
“Aye,” she said, and stretched lazily. “But it is a pity he must look so much like you. It does not seem fair when I did all the work.”
“Mayhap his eyes will become an impudent hazel.”
“Ha! You’re right—they’ll be as black as Roland’s. Mayhap he will have dimples. I like the thought of that.”
He grinned at her and gently laid his son into his cradle. He lightly stroked his finger over the child’s smooth cheek, feeling a knot of pride so strong he could not speak. In that moment he vowed silently that his son would never know the coarseness and cruelty he had known. When he sat beside Kassia on their bed he looked uncommonly serious.
“Very well, my lord,” Kassia said, laughter in her voice. “He will not have dimples. I meant not to distress you so.”
“He can have dimples on his ass for all I care,” Graelam said, his voice gruff. “He will be a strong man, Kassia, but he will also learn that women are to be esteemed and protected.”
“He could have no better teacher, my lord.”
Graelam shook himself and smiled crookedly. “I grow overly serious, love, and I had meant to make you laugh. We have a message from your father.”
Kassia’s eyes sparkled. “Since you want me to laugh, I assume he is quite healthy?”
“Aye, as are Marie and the children. It concerns Geoffrey.”