Drogo wondered if the spiced cider his wife was serving might contain a strong percentage of brandy. Or if he should just lock the meddlesome creature behind closed doors and let her spin her tales to her ghost. He couldn’t believe his sane, sensible brother believed that faradiddle.
He could believe that Ninian was thoroughly convinced the child was a girl and that she was saving Dunstan’s life.
Standing, he reached for his discarded coat while Ewen watched him nervously.
Drogo shrugged and adjusted his neckcloth. “The woman’s a witch, but not the way you think. Come along, let’s make Dunstan grovel some more. Take it from me, earls in this family need to learn humility.”
Thirty-three
Ninian watched with more anger than trepidation as her husband descended the staircase with his dark brows curled into thunderclouds. She’d thought Ewen’s early departure from the festivities ominous, and Drogo’s stony face proved her instincts intact.
She would have been happy to discuss all this with him if he hadn’t ignored her all week. She could have returned to her grandmother’s house and raised cats for all the good it did to be married to a man like him.
She would have been better off at her grandmother’s house, actually. At least there she wouldn’t have footmen stationed at all the stairs, preventing her use of them.
Rebelliously, she decided she didn’t want to live alone. She wanted the love and acceptance she’d never known, the love and acceptance Drogo wouldn’t give her.
Tickling her cat’s belly, she watched resentfully as Drogo inspected the chair Ewen had attached to the banister with pulleys and slides. If Drogo meant to waste servants on guarding the stairs, at least now they were usefully pulling her up and down in Ewen’s contraption.
Laughter exploded around the mistletoe as the baker caught Lydie with her hands filled with pastry and planted a kiss on her cheek. Pies and scones flew everywhere, and a mad scramble ensued as the children chased after them.
She wouldn’t let Drogo spoil their holiday fun. The village was bleakest at this time of year with summer’s bounty far behind them and the worst months of winter still ahead. She wondered if it might be possible to find a curate who would settle this far from town. The village needed a church and a clergyman.
She wasn’t certain if her aunts would approve the use of Malcolm money for a church unless the clergyman was a Malcolm.
“Am I invited to this gathering?”
Drogo’s presence struck Ninian with such forcefulness that she could feel him deep inside her, where her heart should be. She no longer needed to seek his emotions to know where he was. She could sense him in ways she could sense no one else. She didn’t bother turning to look at him. She continued petting her cat.
“It’s your house. I can scarcely forbid your appearance.”
“Immensely practical.” He pulled up a chair beside hers and watched as two children scrambled to hide behind their mother’s skirts. “Do they see me as an ogre?”
“They’ve not met you before, and anything new can be terrifying, even for adults.” She adjusted her skirts so the cat could depart now that she’d had her required share of attention.
“Where is Dunstan?”
“Not that you’ve spent much time asking since his arrival, but he’s in the kitchen, turning the spit.”
“In the kitchen? Why the devil isn’t he out here instead of doing the work of servants?”
“I doubt that you’ll understand or believe me if I told you, so don’t worry yourself. He’s keeping busy, and I’ve hidden all the alcohol.”
“I am capable of understanding grief,” he replied stiffly.
“Perhaps, but you’re not inclined to share it. The rest of us poor mortals will simply have to wallow in our weaknesses while you pursue your more toplofty interests.”
“I do my best to provide for my family. That’s all anyone can ask.”
“Certainly.” She dipped her head in polite agreement, then beckoned to a small boy clutching a new whistle. “Come here, Matthew, show me what you have won.”
Warily skirting Drogo, Matthew clambered into Ninian’s lap from her other side, proudly displaying his latest acquisition. She felt Drogo stiffen beside her, and instinctively, without any thought, she dropped the boy into her husband’s lap. “Show Lord Ives how you can play, Matthew.”
To Ninian’s amazement, Drogo froze. He showed no evidence of knowing how to hold the child, how to show interest in the boy, how to even speak with him. Wide-eyed, child and man stared at each other in uncertainty.
Drogo had spent half his life providing for his brothers, but he’d never learned how to love them.
Startled, Ninian leaned reassuringly against his arm and placed the whistle at Matthew’s lips. He tooted on it briefly, then scrambled from Drogo’s lap and ran for his mother.
“You have six brothers!” she exclaimed impatiently. “Did you never once hold or play with them?”
“They had mothers and nursemaids to hold them,” he answered coldly, not looking at her. “It wasn’t as if I were their father. I was no more than a boy myself.”
The picture was too painfully clear. Denied his own mother at an early age, denied the company of the brothers closest to him, then denied the company of his youngest brothers by duty and their grief-stricken mother, Drogo had never been taught the affection and understanding of a close, loving family. He’d never been held by warm, grubby hands or cuddled a tot in his arms. What a horrible, horrible way to grow up. At least she’d had the village children to hold, and her smaller cousins, when they visited.
Tears rimmed her eyes as she pulled away from him and felt him relax. Even she made him nervous. He didn’t know how to deal with an emotional female who wailed and railed and expected understanding. He could bed her and protect her, but he would never know how to love her. Or even recognize love for what it was. How wrong she’d been to think he could change.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He looked at her with curiosity. “For what?”
“For asking far more than you can give.” Sadly, she pressed a kiss to his cheek and rose to pull Lydie’s daughter from under the banquet table.
It scarcely mattered that he didn’t ask her to dance when the fiddlers struck up their next tune.
***
“You’d best hurry up and have that babe so you can climb between your husband’s sheets again. He’s near snapped the heads off all the servants. Ewen just left for the minefields rather than tarry here longer.”
Lydie efficiently snapped a fresh sheet across an empty cot in the infirmary as Ninian returned from seeing off their last patient.
“I asked Ewen to check on the water in the mines to see if he could locate the source of the damage. I’m afraid many of these babies are being born too early because of that water. It’s never happened like this before.”
Ninian wearily settled into a chair and let Lydie do the physical labor. They really needed to hire more help.
“He did not even try to kiss me good-bye,” Lydie complained. “I must have lost all my looks. I should have joined Claudia and her sister in Paris so we can all grow old and decrepit together.”
Ninian smiled at this vanity. “You are all of seventeen. You have a few more years before decrepitude sets in. And I warned Ewen that I would have him shot if he played light and loose with you. Have some respect for yourself, and men will respect you.”
“And what good does respect do me?” Lydie grumbled as she tucked in the sheet. “They nod politely and keep their distance and go off to play with their flirts and marry the chits their mothers choose. And their mothers never choose the likes of me. Maybe Frenchmen are different. Claudia seems content with their attentions.”
“Men are the same all over, only in France, you wouldn’t be able to understand their flatter
y.” Ninian finished jotting down her notes on the treatment she’d used for the last infant’s cough and pulled herself up again. “If you are tired of living here, we’ll think of something else you can do once the roads are open. But I need you for a little while longer, if you do not mind.”
Lydie dropped the sheet and rushed to hug her. “I do not mean to sound so spiteful! I love it here. I love the babies, and I want to help with yours. I’m just mad at Ewen, and I’m tired of Drogo looking through me.”
Ninian hugged her back. “You must hit an Ives over the head with a large stick to gain his notice. Find someone who will love and adore you and worship at your feet instead. Large sticks are burdensome.”
“And Ives men are lousy at choosing idiots to worship,” a sarcastic drawl intruded from the doorway.
Covered in dirt from his toils at the burn, Dunstan leaned against the door frame, arms crossed, looking surly and disheveled but not angry. Ninian had known he was there, but he was so lifeless these days, she’d hoped to raise his temper. He merely looked bored and irritated, but she sensed a questioning restlessness just beneath his surface. He’d not shown that much life through the inevitable queries following Celia’s death.
She narrowed her eyes. “Is there aught we can do for you?”
“Besides strangle your husband? Probably not. But there’s someone in the woods who requests your presence.”
“You would rather Drogo strangled me? I swear, he has eyes in the back of his head, and if he catches me roaming the woods, he’ll clasp me in chains.”
“Rightly so, I daresay, but he must be blind in half those eyes you claim he possesses if he hasn’t seen your visitor before this. I think I must insist that I escort you.” Suspicion wrote itself easily across his expression.
Ninian threw up her hands. “You’re all madmen! Every last black one of you. Why does this visitor not come here like any decent…” Her eyes grew wide as she realized what she’d just said. “Adonis?”
“Is that what he calls himself?” Dunstan straightened and frowned even darker. “Bastard is more like it. If it’s a measure of the man’s desperation that he talked to me, you’d best see what he wants.”
Ninian halted Lydie’s protest with a pat. “I am fine. He won’t be far. Ives men may all have heads of stone, but they take care of their own.”
“I didn’t,” Dunstan muttered as he took her arm and helped her out the door.
“Even Ives men have limits,” Ninian answered callously. “Next time, choose a woman who can take care of herself, and you won’t have to worry.”
“There will be no next time.”
“There is always a next time, if not in this life, then in the next. God may forgive your mistakes, but He expects you to learn from them.” She leaned heavily on his arm, forcing him to adapt his stride to hers rather than pacing angrily ahead of her.
“Then God must have sent you to make Drogo pay for his failings,” Dunstan grumbled. “How in hell have you hidden yon Adonis from him?”
“I haven’t. Like any Ives, this one does as he pleases. You would prefer I turn him into a toad?”
“I’d say he already is a toad.” Drawing his lips grimly shut, Dunstan said no more.
Ninian had to smile as they reached a clearing not too far from the clump of birch she’d been eyeing with respect and wistful plans for a garden. “Adonis” sprawled his lengthy masculine frame upon some rocks and moss, much as a fairy king would oversee his kingdom while awaiting his attendants to present themselves.
“I see your boot shows no sign of disrepair,” she said with amusement as this strange Ives casually rose to his full height—not out of respect for her, she suspected, but to intimidate Dunstan, who glared at him ferociously. As much as these men frustrated her, she didn’t know how she had lived without their ever-changing entertainment. Men were so much more fascinating to study than women.
“My gratitude to you for that, my lady.” He bowed perfectly while still keeping a wary eye on her escort.
“If you had the proper respect for the countess at all, you would not force her outside in this weather but would come to the door like any civilized person.”
Ninian was quite certain Dunstan carried no weapon but his fists, but those were enough. She shot Adonis a warning look as she held Dunstan’s arm tighter. “I’ll turn both of you into toads if you do not behave. Now, what is it that you wish to tell me?”
“Besides the fact that you’ve married into a family of self-destructive Bedlamites?” Legs akimbo, arms crossed over massive chest, he appeared to guard the forest as he regarded Dunstan’s distrustful demeanor with amusement.
“I assume the insult applies to yourself as well?” Dunstan countered.
“It does, else I would not be here.”
“Stop it, both of you! I am weary of this posturing. You may insult your heritage after I leave. For now, tell me what it is I need to know so I may go back to my fire.”
Reminded of her delicate condition, they instantly retreated from battle positions, although neither looked particularly abashed about their neglect. Ives men didn’t know the meaning of embarrassment.
“I apologize, but I thought you might like to know that your husband’s new canal and the foundry he and his brother are building will directly affect the burn’s fate. They give no thought to the land they mutilate, nor to the effects of that mutilation.”
“That’s a damned lot of—” Dunstan raised clenched fists but halted immediately as Ninian grabbed his arm and moaned. A frown of pain creased her forehead as she tried to stand upright.
“Ninian?” Panicking, he grabbed her waist and held her up.
With a frown of concern, Adonis stepped forward, but Ninian waved him off. Panting, she let the pain roll away and straightened.
“I thank you for the warning, sir. I have asked both Ewen and Drogo to look into the problem. It would be most helpful if you could guide them, since they do not take me seriously.” Seeing Adonis stiffen and back away at this command, she waved it away. “I understand if you cannot. I might be a trifle… indisposed… for a while, but I shall do what I can.”
“My apologies, my lady, I should not have disturbed you.” Glancing to Dunstan with deep concern, he asked, “Shall I help carry the countess to the house?”
Hesitating, studying the stranger, Dunstan shook his head. “Drogo is in the village. Send someone for him. I think the child is early.”
Ninian would have smiled as the brawny stranger looked petrified, then recovered sufficiently to nod and run off, but the next contraction was swift and fierce, and she barely managed to hold back a cry of pain.
The child was not only too soon, but too quick. Malcolms generally weren’t that impatient.
Thirty-four
“You’d best have someone prepare a few guest rooms,” Ninian said absently as Drogo dashed into the suite, nearly breaking his neck on a cat wrapping around his ankles.
“They told me…” he started to say, but his otherwise-occupied wife waved away his interruption.
“My family has a tendency to descend without warning. I’m sorry, I should have informed you of that.”
Why the hell wasn’t she in bed? Damned women…
He may have made a mistake thinking he could overcome the Ives curse, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t take care of his son—and she would have him dropping on his head at birth. He approached her cautiously, hoping to capture her without protest.
She paced in front of a roaring fire in the master suite, wearing naught but a white ruffled shift. He couldn’t help staring at her huge belly, expecting his son to fall to the floor any minute.
“You need to be in bed,” he said firmly, uncertain whether it was safe to grab her and haul her off to bed.
She slapped a portable writing desk in his hands. “Better make a list. I don’t want
to forget anything. Adonis says that the canal and foundry are causing problems—”
“Adonis?” Drogo roared. Or thought he roared. He’d never roared before. Flinging the desk aside, he grabbed his obviously addlebrained wife, intent on placing her firmly in bed where she belonged, before she addled his son’s brains as badly as hers.
She slipped from his grasp, caught the back of a chair, and began breathing deeply and chanting under her breath.
Terror nearly blew the top off his head as he recognized the pain tightening her suddenly pale cheeks. His curses riddled the room, but he didn’t dare touch her until she released the chair.
Finally, she breathed easily and straightened. “Five minutes apart. We have time. Do take note, Drogo. I can’t do everything.”
She couldn’t do everything?
“You damned well can’t do anything!” he exploded. “You’re supposed to be having a child!”
“There’s that temper you don’t have,” she reminded him, pulling a heavily worn, leather-bound book from the shelves she’d filled from her grandmother’s library. “I’ve never done this for myself. I’m sorry this is happening so soon. I’d counted on my aunts…”
She flipped the book open to a marked page. “You’ll have to recite the welcoming ceremony. Perhaps I can say it with you, if you speak slowly enough.”
“Welcoming ceremony?” he shouted. Instead of grabbing his maniac wife, he sank both hands in his hair and pulled to make certain he wasn’t dreaming. Or having nightmares. Was she or was she not having the child? And if she was, why in hell wasn’t she lying in bed, surrounded by women?
“We always welcome new Malcolms,” she answered with a diffident shrug. “It seems to ease labor. I don’t seem to be dealing very well with the pain. I had no idea.” She gasped and bent double.
His roar brought the rest of the household running.
Merely Magic Page 30
