Ordinarily Mother Curran would not have thought it civilized to answer a knock at the door with a knife in one’s hand, but she now regretted having come unarmed.
Sir Malcolm had gone away only the day before, leaving his Baby and his Little Turtle in her care. Already they were in danger, and Mother Curran had nothing but her wits and her bare hands wherewith to defend them.
Ethelwyn had not intended to accompany Man-Flann and his daughters up into the hall. Catan had dragged him along by employing her favorite Ethelwyn-dragging trick, which consisted of talking to him steadily as she walked away from him, so that if, as a gentleman, he wished to be attentive to her conversation, he was obliged to trail along after her.
Vash had been little more than a child when the elves were last permitted to go abroad on the night of the new moon.
He knew now that the ban had first begun to prevent the elves from interfering with Druze and Midra when they woke and went among the men. No elf could have witnessed such savagery without attempting to prevent it—even knowing that it had been prophesied, even knowing that it was Fate.
“Who is it?” Sigefrith found it difficult to growl through a smile. He thought he had heard little boy feet skipping up the stairs, and so he could not manage to even pretend to be annoyed.
“It’s Cubby!”
“Eadwyn?”
For one dizzying moment, Theobald believed he had fallen asleep sitting up and that it was morning already. But the fire, unnecessary though it was at this season, still burned.
Eadwyn had thought he had a few minutes to be alone before dinner, but someone was knocking on the door even before he had a chance to stretch out on the bed.
“She’s in here,” Malcolm’s brother called from the kitchen.
Malcolm followed him in. “There you are! What are you doing, Babe? Why didn’t you answer?”
Ethelwyn hurriedly pulled a book from the shelf before him and opened it to a page somewhere in the middle.
“Enter!”
“Certain you won’t stay for supper?” the King asked.
“Oh, no! Estrid will have my hide if I miss supper again without warning her.” Brede was smiling, but it seemed he could not resist adding: “She can’t stand for me to get out and have fun if she’s stuck at home.”
There was a girl in Dunstan’s bed, and he didn’t know what to do about it. He had expected her to get up and go away afterwards, but instead she had curled up on her side and appeared already to be sleeping.
And yet of all the times that he had gone to shake Bertie awake at some advanced hour of the morning, Dunstan had never found a girl in bed with him. Did young housemaids rise too early to be seen, like the deer? Did Bertie tell them to go away before they fell asleep? Did Bertie not actually have all of the adventures he claimed to have?
“Prop me up if you can, but if I start to fall, you tell everyone to get out of the way.”
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