Chapter 16
“You seem distracted today, my dear.”
Gwen glanced up from a piece of vellum to find Ban looking at her expectantly. Scanning the letter again, she tried to remember if she’d already read it aloud. The words seemed familiar, but perhaps that was only the product of having stared at them.
“Is anything the matter?”
“No, my lord. How would you care to respond to Lord Pell’s letter?”
“I’m not certain,” Ban said. “Why don’t you read it to me first?”
She looked up, sheepish, and he winked at her.
Turned out Lord Pell was feeling the same restlessness everyone felt this time of year and wanted to meet with Ban in the spring.
“Won’t he be on campaign?”
“No, no. Pell’s all silver now.”
“I don’t think that will stop my father from fighting.”
Ban chuckled. “No, I doubt it will, either.” He looked at her closely. “Do you miss him, your father?”
Her thoughts had been a tumble all morning, but until Ban asked the question, she hadn’t realized that that was among the things tugging at her insides. “Every girl misses her father,” she hedged.
Ban squinted at her, then cocked his chin at the letter. “Pell has handed command of his forces to his sons. Spring and summer will feel interminable to him. Let’s invite him to come here, once the spring thaw has passed and the rivers are no longer swollen.”
“Will you—” She cut herself off, but he gave her a wry look.
“Will I be well enough?”
“Visitors are taxing,” she said lamely.
“I should know,” Ban mumbled. “You visit every day.”
She made a sound of mock indignation and pretended she might throw the ink pot at him.
She drafted a short letter to Lord Pell and carried it to Ban, holding it flat on the writing desk that straddled his lap so he could make his mark at the bottom.
“You could sign for me by now, I suppose. Did you write letters for Uthyr?”
“No, Master Philip wrote them.”
“You do miss him, don’t you?”
“Master Philip?”
But she knew that wasn’t who he was talking about, and Ban wasn’t going to let her evade the question again. He set the small writing desk aside and patted the quilted coverlet. “Have a seat.”
“You have more letters.”
“There will always be more letters.”
When she lowered herself to the edge of the mattress, he took her hand. His knuckles stood out under his skin, but his grip when he pressed her fingers was strong.
“Your color has been better,” he said.
“I’m with child,” she blurted.
He drew back, reconsidered her features. “Good tidings.”
Tidings. What an inadequate word for news that could turn one’s world upside-down.
“Young Arthur will be very happy.”
She felt as if she couldn’t take a full breath. As if unseen things were jabbing at her lungs. “I suppose.”
“Most men are.”
“What about most women?”
His fingers rubbed the back of her hand. “Don’t you want children?”
Not so long ago, she would have said yes. She’d wanted children with Elain. That had been the plan they’d all come up with together, the simple way to give each of the four of them what they wanted and what they’d thought the world needed to see to let their marriages pass unremarked upon. “I don’t know. Is that terrible?”
“Of course it isn’t. I gather it’s natural for a young woman to wonder what sort of mother she’ll make.”
The image of Elain’s face came to her then. Elain had had no qualms at all at Morien’s pronouncement. Gwen envied her to the point of pain, then felt a second stab because Elain hadn’t heard the bit about remedies failing. She should have turned back as soon as Morien mentioned it, but she hadn’t—she’d kept right on toward Ban’s. What did that mean?
“My Ella wondered how she would fare.”
“I’m sure she was a good mother,” Gwen said, because that was the sort of thing one said about the deceased.
“She was an excellent mother. A better mother than I was a father.”
She looked up at the regret in Ban’s voice. “Why would you think so?”
“Because I lost him.”
“Galahad?”
He looked at her sadly and nodded, and she felt it deep in her belly. No one should have to withstand the death of a child.
“You can’t blame yourself.”
“I can, and I do.”
The sorrow on his face was unbearable. “What’s your happiest memory of him?”
Ban’s brow creased more deeply, and she worried she’d only made his pain worse. But then it cleared as he drew a deep breath. “He was so good with a blade. Quick. Agile. And with a dagger, he could hit any target. It was something to behold.”
“Did he get that from you?”
“Me?” He snorted softly. “No. It was his gift, though only the gods know where it came from. I was a capable fighter, no more.” He gazed at the blankets, but his mind’s eye was elsewhere. “The men used to set up challenges for him. Strike a post from twenty paces. Thread a hoop from thirty. One day, he pinned my shirt to a door post from fifty.”
A memory brought Gwen out of her imagining—of Elain doing just that to Bedwyr the previous autumn. She and her brother had gaped at the dagger, which had missed his arm by a breath.
“I thought he’d meant to murder me. But it was only a game. He laughed, and his eyes—they were so like Ella’s. Blue as robins’ eggs.”
An invisible hand closed around Gwen’s heart.
“A couple years later, he was gone.”
“He died?” Gwen managed.
But Ban only shook his head. He was staring across the chamber, and Gwen thought him lost in the past. Until he blinked and exhaled softly, as if in disbelief. “You.”
Gwen turned to follow his gaze and found, standing in the doorway, a young man.
He stood of middling height, but had a proud set to his jaw. His deep chestnut hair was tied at the nape of his neck. A hide vest covered his shirt, which hung low over his trousers. A wide belt cinched everything, making it all look too large on his slim frame. The belt canted with the weight of a long blade on one side.
Gwen always lit an extra lamp for reading Ban’s letters and writing their responses, and so she was able to see the young man’s eyes. Blue, so blue, and soft in the strong angles of his face.
Of… of her face.
Gwen stood, feeling dizzy and disoriented. “Elain?”
Those blue eyes flickered, and she stepped into the chamber.