I held his gaze. Behind my mild expression, the pieces arranged themselves with satisfying clarity. Lady Elira Thorne. Garrick's wife. In the original novel she was mentioned once in a throwaway line — 'the knight's pregnant wife, lodging at the manor.' I had not paid attention then. I was paying attention now.
She was pregnant. Heavily, from what the household whispers suggested. And Garrick had installed her here — in 'my' manor, in the countryside, far from the capital's crowded wards and expensive physicians — because a declining noble house still retained one thing a common knight could not buy: access to a proper doctor. The old Veyne family physician, a man named Aldric who lived in the village at the base of the cliff, still answered the household's call out of residual loyalty and the faint hope of eventual payment. Garrick wanted his child born under that care. That was why he remained. Not duty. Not honor. A birth.
He had planted his wife in the former lord's chambers like a flag on conquered soil, and he stood in my training yard with my capital-funded sword and told me to stay indoors.
I kept smiling.
"I thought I might pay her a visit," I said lightly. "It seems only proper. She is a guest under my roof, after all. I should ensure her comfort."
Garrick's mouth worked for a moment. Whatever protest he wanted to make died against the wall of social obligation — a lord visiting a guest was not something a knight could forbid without making the hierarchy explicit, and Garrick's entire position depended on the hierarchy remaining 'implicit.' He could sneer. He could condescend. He could not openly refuse.
He bowed. It was the shortest, stiffest bow I had ever witnessed. A folding of the waist that somehow communicated 'I hope you trip on the stairs.'
"As my lord wishes."
"Wonderful." I clapped him gently on the shoulder as I passed — a gesture so familiar and so misplaced that I felt him flinch. "Do give the men my regards. Their dedication to… standing near things… is an inspiration."
I left him there, jaw clenched, scar white against reddening skin, and walked back into the manor with the unhurried stride of a man who owned every rotting floorboard beneath his feet.
The former lord's chambers occupied the eastern wing, a suite of rooms that had belonged to my — to Caelum's — father before the drink took him. The door was heavier than the others, carved with the Veyne serpent in relief, though years of hands had worn the scales smooth. I knocked twice, softly.
"Enter."
The voice was warm. Young. Tinged with the slight breathlessness of a woman carrying significant weight.
I opened the door.
The room beyond was the finest in the manor — which was to say, it had a bed with four posts, curtains that retained most of their original color, and a hearth that actually drew smoke upward rather than filling the chamber. Someone had made an effort. Fresh flowers sat in a vase on the side table, their petals already browning at the edges from the salt air. A sewing basket rested on a chair. The windows looked east, toward the cliffs and the thin ribbon of road that led eventually, after much unpleasantness, to civilization.
Lady Elira Thorne sat propped against a mountain of pillows on the great bed, and the first thing I noticed was the belly.
It rose before her like a pale hill beneath a light linen dress the color of cream, the fabric stretched taut across the curve, the hem riding up enough to reveal ankles swollen from the body's patient work of building a human being. She was perhaps twenty-four, with soft brown hair that fell loose around a round, pretty face — the kind of face that belonged in a baker's shop rather than a knight's household, all warm eyes and a mouth that smiled easily. Her cheeks were full, flushed with the high color of late pregnancy. One hand rested on the peak of her belly, absently stroking in slow circles.
She looked up as I entered, and her face brightened with genuine, uncomplicated welcome.
"My lord!" She made to rise, struggling forward against the weight of herself, and I raised a hand quickly.
"Please — do not trouble yourself, my lady. The journey from door to bed is a campaign I would not ask of you."
She laughed — a clear, unguarded sound — and settled back against the pillows with visible relief. "You are kind, my lord. Thank you. And thank you again for allowing us this chamber. It is more comfort than I have known in years. The bed alone…" She patted the mattress beside her. "I have told Garrick a dozen times that your generosity shames us."
'Generosity.' The word sat in the air like a joke only I could hear. Garrick had taken this room. He had moved his wife into the former lord's bed and dared the household to object, and the original Caelum had been too weak or too distracted to stop him. Elira did not know this. Or if some part of her suspected, she had buried it beneath the sincere belief that the young lord of House Veyne was a gentle soul who opened his best rooms to pregnant guests out of the goodness of his ash-grey heart.
I could work with that.
"It is the least I could offer," I said, drawing a chair to the bedside. The legs scraped against the floorboards — a small, domestic sound. "A house this empty echoes. Having someone living in it… someone expecting something 'new'… it makes the walls feel less like a tomb."
Her expression softened. The hand on her belly slowed its circling.
"That is a lovely way to put it, my lord."
I glanced at the side table. Among the browning flowers and a half-drunk cup of something herbal sat a thin book bound in cracked green leather — a children's collection, the kind village mothers read aloud to keep little ones from setting things on fire. The gilt lettering on the spine had flaked away, but I could still make out the title: 'Tales of the Clever Fox and Other Foolish Creatures.'
"May I?" I picked it up, turning it over in my hands. "I used to… that is, there was a time when stories were read in this room. It seems a shame to let the tradition die entirely."
Elira's eyes lit. "Oh — would you? I have been meaning to read it myself, but the words swim when I am tired, and I am tired so often these days." She shifted, wincing slightly as the child within her made some private demand of her ribs. "They say a child can hear its mother's voice in the womb. I wonder if it can hear others as well."