Lady Eadgith is reminded

“Ba ba ba? Mum mum mum?” Leia asked.

Lady Eadgith laughed softly. “No, no, no more of your stories. It’s time for sleep! Time for sleep, little lady. Lie down now.”

Leia giggled drowsily and lifted her arms up to Eadgith.

Eadgith laughed in delight and leaned over to hug the baby in her crib.

She had been spending a good part of every day with Leia for the past week, but she had always had to surrender her to Leofric as soon as he finished his work. She had never had the chance to put the baby to bed, and she had so longed to do it! Putting her down for her nap was not the same as saying goodnight.

“It’s goodnight time, little lady,” she cooed and laid the baby down.

Leia sat up again at once. “Ba ba ba!” she exclaimed.

“I know all about your ba ba ba and your mum mum mum.”

“Ba ba ba?”

“I know,” Eadgith laughed.

“Ba!”

“I know, I know,” she laughed until she thought she would cry over the sheer beauty of the girl.

Her time with the darling child was filling some old, aching need Eadgith had not noticed until it had been eased. Her daughter was utterly absorbed in her newborn and would scarcely let Drage out of her sight, and while Hilda appreciated Eadgith’s presence when her children were unruly, she was also jealous. Hilda always seemed to work to prevent Eadgith’s grandchildren from loving her too much, or Eadgith from getting her fill of them. She could never get enough of her grandchildren. And even if she could have, they were not her own.

There had been times when she had hated Leofric not only for what he had done to her, but also for what he had denied her. Hilda was not yet twenty, and she had already borne more children than Eadgith had in her thirty-​nine years. And she knew that her time had nearly run out. He had not given her the children she wanted, nor had he allowed her to find a man who would.

But this child had no jealous mother who would try to divert her love away from Eadgith. If she did not consider the matter too deeply, it was as if the child had had no mother at all, only a father who loved her desperately. And Leia’s father was her husband. She could love her husband’s motherless child.

“Ba!” Leia insisted.

“Ba?”

“Mmmm… Ba!”

Eadgith only smiled and shook her head.

Satisfied that she had had the last word, Leia sighed and let herself fall back onto her little bed. “Ma ma ma,” she said for good measure, and then she popped a thumb in her mouth. “Mmm mmm mmm,” she continued.

“I’m certain you’ll still be talking in your sleep,” Eadgith said and stroked the soft fuzz of the baby’s head.

“Mmm mmm mmm.” Leia was trying to keep one dark eye on Eadgith, but her eyelids were proving too heavy to lift.

“Mmm mmm mmm?” Eadgith repeated after her. She hoped she would not fall asleep quite so quickly after all. She would have to call the nurse in once the baby had fallen asleep.

She was already taking a risk by putting her to bed. She was permitted to visit Leia during the day in the nurse’s room, but Leofric himself always put her to bed. Eadgith did not think he wanted to find her in his room again.

But it was just as well, she thought. That curious sense of familiarity she had felt the first afternoon she had spent in this room seemed to be more intense at night. The dull orange twilight shone only darkly through the blue glass of the window, and she had lit but a single lamp beside the bed. The room was deep in shadows, and signs of her husband glowered in each.

When she had come in, she had laid Leia on the bed a moment while she cleared the toys from her crib, and when she had leaned down to kiss her before picking her up again, she had nearly lost her balance in the shock of the odor that met her face.

Though she had not had it in her nose in fourteen years, she had recognized it at once, and more than that, she had been entirely swept back those fourteen or twenty years to the time when she had breathed it all the night through. It was nothing more than the sweat of her husband’s hair on the pillow.

Now she stared at that pillow as she stroked the baby’s head. How innocuous it now appeared! It could have been anyone’s bed. No one’s bed. But her seventeen-​year-​old self was no farther away than that pillow. Her twenty-​three-​year-​old husband was lying beside her.

It was strange, she thought, how an odor could hurl one so far in time and space, so suddenly… so briefly, perhaps, but if one closed one’s eyes and breathed it deeply and tried to believe…

She gasped and whirled around at the sound of the door latch. In her confusion she imagined he would be able to tell what she had been thinking—what she had very nearly done.

Leofric stopped in the doorway and stared at her. His shoulders sagged. The corners of his mouth drooped. He looked tired and old. He had not been that twenty-​three-​year-​old husband in over twenty years.

“I beg your pardon,” she said softly. “We—we waited as long as we could. But she was so tired…”

“I was with Brede’s reeve all this time,” he sighed in exhaustion. He crossed the room and came to look at the baby. “She’s already asleep.”

“She talked herself to sleep,” Eadgith said with a hesitant smile.

“God knows I wish I understood her,” he muttered. “I think she must be very wise.”

“She tries to tell us what the angels tell her.”

He smiled sadly.

“So,” she said after an awkward silence. “I shall go. I’m sorry to have come in, but we—”

“Hush,” he said gently. “I should thank you again.”

She hesitated for a moment, and finally she dared: “Then do.”

“Thank you.”

She watched him stroke his big hand over the baby’s head. It was still amazing to her, though it had long since ceased being a surprise, to see of what tenderness he was capable. Surely he had never hurt her as badly as she remembered. It had been another man. It had been the wine. This man before her was only a tired, tender, unhappy man.

“Are you getting enough sleep?” she asked suddenly.

“What? Son of a serpent,” he muttered. “Am I eating? Am I sleeping? What’s next, mother? Have I washed behind my ears?”

She flushed in embarrassment, but he chuckled, and his weary smile was not unkind.

“I don’t know,” she said with sudden boldness. “Have you?”

He lifted his hair and turned his head aside. “I know you,” he teased. “You won’t believe me until you have seen for yourself.”

She stood on her tiptoes and tried to look behind his ear. She realized too late that he had meant it as a joke. She had brought her face close enough to him to breathe the sweat of his neck and the odor of his hair. She gasped in her surprise, but that only brought the taste of him into her mouth. This was another old, aching need she had not noticed until he was there to awaken it.

“Son of a serpent, woman!” he said and grabbed her by the shoulders. “I didn’t mean for you to look! God knows I haven’t washed behind my ears in fourteen years.”

He was smiling at her, but his face slowly changed as it looked down into hers. She did not know what he was seeing, but she knew she was helpless to hide it.

“I shall wash them first thing tomorrow,” he said softly. “I give you my word.”

He gripped her shoulders ever more tightly, and though it had become distinctly painful, she did not want him to stop—not as long as he would look at her with those eyes. No one had looked at her with such eyes in so many years.

He squeezed her arms until she thought she could feel each of his fingers piercing her flesh. His eyes were growing alarmed, as if he feared she would allow him to hurt her more than he had intended. He did not seem to know how to stop.

Finally she could bear it no longer and opened her mouth to cry out. He released her shoulders at once and wrapped his arms around her to press her against his chest. He laughed softly in his throat, as relieved as she.

“But tomorrow,” he said.

Eadgith laid her face against his neck, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply the odor of his hair.