Queen of Swords
Page 21

In Luke’s arms the boy first examined every button, working his way up to the neck of his shirt, where he wound his fingers in a few chest hairs and yanked, crowing with satisfaction at his father’s grunt of surprise. Luke captured the offending hands and the boy promptly lifted himself to a standing position and bounced, flexing his knees and stamping like a drunken sailor on a dance floor. He babbled the whole while in a language that rose and fell like English, but contained not one recognizable word.
Luke had never let himself think too much about the fact of his own fatherhood, out of dread, out of superstitious worry. That they would never find the boy; that they would, and he would have Dégre’s dark hair and eyes. These were things he would never say aloud. Jennet, who had borne so much by herself, should not have to carry the weight of doubts that had lasted only until she put the boy in his arms.
She had named him for Luke’s father. A gesture of hope, certainly, but not without a certain amount of irony. Luke had grown up without knowing his father, had not even seen him until he was on the brink of manhood himself. For the first time, Luke began to understand what it must have been like for Nathaniel Bonner to learn that he had a son who had been kept from him. A new kind of anger, one he hadn’t been able to imagine.
He helped Jennet bathe the baby, handing her the things she needed, letting himself be splashed, obediently lifting the rosy pink boy with his perfectly round belly and the evidence of his sex below it, and wrapping him in toweling. Deposited on the bed he attempted escape by rolling away, and then, resigned to being dressed, kicked his legs with vigor, flung out his arms, contorted his face and mouth elaborately, as if he were reciting an epic poem and required their full attention.
Almost shyly Jennet said, “Dr. Savard says he shows no ill effects from his—from the early separation. He seems healthy, does he no?”
Luke looked Jennet directly in the face and smiled. “He is perfect.”
For the moment that seemed to be enough for all of them.
When Hannah came in the evening, looking very tired, even ill, Jennet came suddenly fully awake. The disquiet and tension that had drained away from her over the course of the day were back.
“Hannah,” she said. “Are ye fevered?”
“Just very tired,” Hannah said. “Clémentine has had a cot put in Rachel’s room for me. Will you forgive me if I go straight to sleep?”
It was not really a question; she had already turned away before the last word left her mouth.
“We have things to talk about,” Jennet said, and Hannah paused.
“Tomorrow is soon enough,” Luke said, and he saw an expression flit across Jennet’s face. Disagreement, frustration, and something that looked like panic.
Later, when the boy was asleep and they lay down together, as nervously as twenty-year-olds newly married, Luke smoothed the curls away from Jennet’s face and kissed her. He kissed her gently, though he was thinking of the last time they had been together: the heat and strength of how she had come to him. Now she felt limp in his arms, empty of desire of any kind, drugged.
She trembled a little, pressed her face to his, sighed. She said, “I want to go home.”
“I’ll take you home,” he said.
“Tomorrow? Can we set off tomorrow?”
He put a thumb to the corner of her mouth, smoothed it over her cheek. “If it’s in my power,” he said. “We’ll set off tomorrow.”
She nodded, her eyes fluttering closed. “Don’t leave me again.”
“Never,” Luke agreed.
And then she was asleep. He pulled her closer so that her head was bedded on the hollow of his shoulder, and listened to the sound of her breathing.
To Hannah’s great relief, she found that Rachel had already retired and was deeply asleep. In the light of a small candle she undressed down to her chemise and slipped between the sheets of the cot Clémentine had made up for her. Clémentine, who had looked at Hannah with her piercing dark eyes when she had made the request.
“Rachel’s chamber?” she had repeated twice, and Hannah, thinking of the early morning hours she had spent in a bed over Clémentine’s kitchen, nodded resolutely and willed herself not to blink.
There was no help for it. If she never went back to Ben’s bed again, the damage was done. She hadn’t seen him all day, something that at first had seemed a kindness on his part, and then, as the hours passed, began to feel like something else. Not so much a threat as a demonstration, and a challenge: I can stay away. Can you?
Hannah was so weary that the room seemed to tilt and spin even in the dark. Eyes open or closed, nothing changed except that she had lost her balance and had not the first idea how to get it back again.
Chapter 30
Hannah stood for a moment on the gallery with her shawl wrapped around her head and shoulders and considered. She had spent last night in Rachel’s room, and though she had been bone tired she had slept very little. Out of anxiety and worry for Jennet, she told herself, but also because she wasn’t sure she was where she should be. She wanted to go back to Ben—about that she must be honest, with herself at least—but the idea also frightened her. He frightened her, in a way Kit Wyndham never had.
Because I could control Kit, she reminded herself, and winced.
Hannah went down the stairs, out into the open courtyard. There was a cold sleet coming down but she went slowly, wondering if Ben might be at his window, and watching her. When she finally allowed herself to look, she saw that the room was dark and the window had been shuttered closed.