The need to hold her nearly overwhelms me this time, but with her protectors close by, I dare not.
You are her protector too.
I shove away the thought.
“I said nothing to her . . . nothing about us, I mean. I was too embarrassed. But she knew something had happened anyway.”
I can’t help but smile. “A Garra, embarrassed?”
But Aedre doesn’t smile with me. Of course she doesn’t. Her Amma just passed away.
She looks down at her feet. “I do not deserve that title.”
“Of course you do.” Lifting Aedre’s chin, I force her eyes to mine. “Of course you do,” I repeat. “Why would you say such a thing?”
Now that I’m touching her, I don’t want to break our contact, however small.
“I never truly understood desire . . . love.”
Until now, no feeling has ever matched my yearning for my parents to be alive again. My drive to please the king. My devotion to my country. But this longing I feel for Aedre is so deep it stays with me, waking or asleep, and resurfaces at all hours. Every muscle in my body aches to hold her. To comfort her. Every thought in my head is for or of her.
But your situation hasn’t changed, a voice in my head reminds me.
Reluctantly, I drop my hand.
“Can a motherless woman care for a child?” I say.
“Aye, for certain.”
“Can a midwife help a woman give birth to a new babe even if she’s never carried?”
Understanding glimmers in her eyes, and she nods. “You will leave on the morrow.”
She changed the topic utterly without warning, but I’m becoming accustomed to her ways. To her habit of cutting to the point.
“Nay,” I decide, knowing the men will not agree. They have reason to object, and yet . . .
Had Aldwine not returned, we’d still be waiting for him.
“I would meet you,” I say.
If but for one last time.
Aedre glances at the crowd before she answers, and part of me fears she’ll say no. Mayhap she should. “I would like that very much.”
“Come, we’ll find your father.”
Though I want to take her hand as we walk back, I have no right to do so.
“I’m sorry, Vanni,” she says quietly. “I know Kipp has told you he’ll not go south.”
It moves me so much that she’s thinking of my disappointment, after losing such an important person in her life, and I find it hard to answer. Instead, I stop and look into her eyes.
She seems to understand.
I am sorry too. About Kipp. About Lady Edrys.
About us.
Chapter Twenty-Eight Aedre
All day I’ve waited for him, working alongside my father, letting the hammer’s rhythmic strike on the anvil lull me into some sort of peace. Not the kind that stays with you, but the fleeting kind that keeps the demons at bay.
But it never lasts for long. No more than a few minutes pass before I’m reminded that Amma isn’t sitting just outside the forge. Or the door will open, and I’ll look up, expecting Vanni to fill the frame. Instead, it’ll be a patron of my father’s or his apprentice, Amery.
This time, it’s neither.
“Agnar,” I greet him from my perch on a high stool. Punching is my least favorite duty, but it needs to be done. Still, if there’s any excuse to stop, I’ll take it.
“A ship has just arrived,” he announces.
“A regular occurrence here, but thank you for the information, Agnar,” Father says. He has not lost his humor, at least.
“From Breywood.”
Not a regular occurrence. We trade regularly with Highlanders, but almost never with the Edingham royal court. It is most unusual indeed.
“Breywood Castle?” I clarify.
“Aye,” Agnar says. “They say the queen’s commander is on the ship.” He scowls. “We’ve one too many of those already in Murwood.”
That surprises me.
“I thought you and Va . . . Lord d’Abella have gotten on? From what I hear, you’ve been training with him.”
In answer, he grumbles something and nods toward the door. “Are you coming?”
When an interesting ship comes to port, many of the villagers gather to meet it. I shake my head, about to say no, when Father answers for me.
“Take her. Go, Aedre.”
Normally my father is attempting to get me into the forge, not out of it. I’m about to ask the reason for the sudden change when I realize he’s attempting to distract me.
Mayhap I need to be distracted.
“Go,” he says, more forcefully than is his custom. “Bring back news of the visitors.”
“I will finish that,” Amery says, taking the punch from me and gently guiding me off the stool. When I’m next to him, I realize the boy we’ve come to depend on so much is now a young man.
“When did you grow so tall, Amery?”
He straightens even more. “Some time ago, Lady Aedre.”
I smile at him, forgetting for the moment that my world has been turned around, and hand over my tools. Taking off my apron, I hang it and bid Father farewell. I wash outside in the wooden bucket, then join an impatient Agnar, who talks the entire way.
I have little to say.
Amma is gone. Vanni will be leaving. I chastise myself for not having spoken to him again last eve before I returned home, unable to abide the crowd of revelers any longer.
By the time we arrive, we’re not the only ones hoping to get a look at the newcomers.
“I see nothing,” I say, angling for a better view.
It’s then I realize we’ve been separated in the crowd. Agnar is nowhere to be seen, leaving me to navigate toward the docks myself. I make my way toward the water’s edge and get a glimpse of blue and silver.
Agnar was right. It seems these men are from the queen’s court. How peculiar for there to be two commanders in Murwood End at the same time. Does Vanni know about it?
“Oh!” Grabbed from behind, I’m unable to reach my knife in time. But it seems I don’t need it.
Vanni pulls me by the hand, guiding me away from the
