Читать книгу The Beauty of the Wolf - Wray Delaney, Wray Delaney - Страница 17

IX

Eleanor looks at Gilbert, naked, holding the infant close to him and her breasts ache. They feel full, painfully full, just as when she’d had her own babes. Leaking milk, she takes the babe from Gilbert and begins to feed him. With each thirsting suck he assures his place in her affections. She looks up at her new lover.

‘Tell me what has happened to us – do you know?’

Tears fill his eyes.

When the infant had finished feeding, Eleanor searched hungrily for a mark upon him for she had no doubt that her husband had been faerie-taken, no doubt that this was his child.

The infant fell asleep and Gilbert wrapped him warm and snug and laid him in the cradle. And as he did so, the steward felt that time had gathered itself in quick, aching heartbeats, each beat becoming a month, the months becoming nine. This faerie child was as much his and his mistress’s – born in a flame of a desire – as ever it was his master’s.

Gilbert awoke only when there was a tear of light in night’s icy cloth. Eleanor had the babe at her breast once more.

She reached out towards her lover and whispered softly, ‘I will not give up the child. He is ours. What will we say? What should we do?’

Gilbert kissed her.

‘Leave that to me,’ he said.

In a basket near the bed lay a heap of bloodied sheets. Blood spilt on the floor, jugs of water, pink in colour, clothes and all such stuff to dress a stage for a woman who had given birth.

When Agnes finally stirred she was confused first by how late the hour was, then mystified at the sight of her mistress propped up on pillows with a newborn babe.

‘Oh, my lady,’ said Agnes, ‘why did you not wake me?’

‘I tried,’ said Lady Rodermere, ‘but you were fast asleep and it came so quick upon me.’

‘Was no one with you, my lady?’

Not a beat did Eleanor miss.

‘Yes – Gilbert Goodwin.’

After all it was the steward’s duty to make sure that any child born to Lord Rodermere’s wife was no usurper.

‘I am most truly sorry,’ said Agnes. ‘The thought of you being on your own, and you never knowing you were with child.’

Eleanor felt the smile deep within her and kept her face solemn as she said, ‘If asked, perhaps it would be best that you were to say you were with me all night.’

‘Willingly,’ Agnes said.

And by doing so is caught in the nest of lies.