“I don’t imagine you’d want to sit inside and stitch for the next few months, would you?”
She sank down onto the edge of the well next to him. “Stitch what?” she asked blankly.
That, he supposed, was answer enough.
“Never mind,” he said, trying to wring out his tunic and finding it a hopeless task. “Do you think we could go inside and sit by the fire so I could dry out?”
She nodded uneasily. “I’ll pinch my nose closed.” She looked at him, apparently rather panicked. “It could just be bad ale.”
“It could,” he agreed.
She rose, swayed, then steadied herself. She held down her hand for him. “I’ll think on it.”
He allowed her to pull him to his feet, but said nothing. He had the feeling the time for thinking was long past.
A pair of hours later, he sat at one of the long tables in front of the fire, dry, and nursing a cup of wine. Morgan was looking at the food in front of her suspiciously, as if it intended to merely reside for a bit inside her, then liberate itself at a most inconvenient time.
Miach buried his smiles in his cup.
He finally gave up on his wine and simply rested his chin on his fists and watched his wife as she ignored her supper in favor of discussing swordplay with Hearn. That, at least, seemed to bring some color to her cheeks. She was, in her own way, as opinionated about swords as Hearn was about his horses. In truth, she could have been discussing with the man what variety of turnip to plant in their garden and Miach would have found it fascinating. She was, as he had remarked quite often to anyone standing nearby, a remarkable woman.
“Besotted,” Hearn said with a sigh.
Miach realized that both Hearn and Morgan were watching him. “What?”
“You’re besotted,” Hearn repeated. He turned to Morgan. “ ’Tis a wonder he gets any work done.”
“He manages,” Morgan said with a smile, “even though he slips out of more council meetings than you’d suspect. But back to the matter of horses, my lord. I wish you would let us pay you for Fleòd and Luath, at least. Or let us return them to you.”
Hearn snorted. “I won’t have money for them, missy, and I certainly won’t have them back. The last time you brought them home, they spent all their time corrupting my other beasts. All I hear now is
wings
,
wings
,
wings
until I’m ready to silence the entirety of my stables.” He shot Miach a dark look from under his bushy eyebrows. “Don’t you turn any more of my horses into dragons, lad, or I won’t let you back inside my gates.”
“At least I turned them into something fleet,” Miach said with a smile. “They could be begging you to turn them back into slugs.”
Hearn pursed his lips, then turned to Morgan. “Don’t know how you live with him. You also flatter him overmuch. Too many more
my lieges
and he’ll be impossible.”
“I don’t curtsey to him very often,” she said, “but I do have particularly sweet kisses for any kind words thrown his way, including all those kingly titles, so I persist.”
Hearn rolled his eyes. “I don’t know if I want to know anymore, lest it upset my supper. Miach, how is the sweetening of my well coming along?”
“Nicely,” Miach said, “but it might need a final bit of work. I’ll see to it.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
Hearn looked at them both, laughed, then shook his head and turned back to his ale.
Miach took that as dismissal enough. He thanked Hearn for the supper he at least had enjoyed, then pulled Morgan with him across the great hall and out the front door.
He slowed once they were walking across the courtyard, took a deep breath of fresh air, then looked at his lady.
“How do you fare?”
She shot him a look, then continued on with him for a moment or two in silence before she stopped and looked at him again. “Do you think it’s possible?”
He looked about him to make certain he was comfortably far from anything he might be pushed into before he dared answer. “I think so.”
She hesitated, then turned and put her arms around his waist. Miach gathered her close and rested his cheek against her hair. He closed his eyes, content to simply hold her and enjoy the very fine weather—and the fact that he was still dry.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said in a very small voice. “About . . . well, this.”
He tightened his arms around her briefly. “We’ll celebrate first, then we’ll manage with the reality, just as we’ve done with everything else.”
She was silent for another minute or two. “If it’s a lad, we’ll have to name him Hearn.”
Miach smiled. “I imagine so.”
“It would mean your brother might stop sneaking into our bed-chamber to fondle your crown.”
“Rigaud?” he asked with an uneasy laugh. “Does he?”
“I caught him at it the other day. He was completely unrepentant.” She sighed, then looked up at him. “Thank you, Miach, for still being you beneath that crown.”
“Who else would I be?”
She shrugged helplessly. “Power corrupts, sometimes. Instead, you take your duty very seriously and yourself with vast quantities of modesty.” She smiled. “It suits you as well as your crown does.”
He thought it might not be inappropriate to thank her properly for her kind words. He was just beginning to think he’d begun to make a decent job of it, when she pulled out of his arms, laughing. She leaned up and kissed him, then turned and walked away.
“Perhaps we’d best make certain of all this, Miach. Continuation of the line and all that.” She shot him a look over her shoulder. “Don’t dawdle, my liege.”
He watched her go and smiled to himself. Almost a year ago, he’d been in Tor Neroche, feeling a chill settle over his heart as he watched the realm be assaulted by an evil he couldn’t name and wondering, when he’d had the stomach to, if his life might ever include anything but darkness, weariness, and the endless grind of seeing to his spells.
And then Morgan of Melksham had walked into his life and turned it upside down.
He had loved her from the start, but he’d sorely underestimated how much that love would continue to grow. He loved her strength, her courage, her uncompromising sense of honor and loyalty. He loved that she looked at him blankly when he attempted the occasional courtly flattery, that she blushed when he brought her flowers, that she grew quiet and a bit misty-eyed when he found her a particularly beautiful blade in the treasury. He loved the dragon wildness that lingered in her eyes after they flew, the way she was still wont to turn him around and stand against his back when she was startled, the way she had mastered Sìle’s look that warned overzealous ministers that they were nigh on to wasting the king’s time and exhausting his patience.
And he admired to the depths of his soul how she had passed through the fires of her past and all that went with it, yet not allowed it to embitter her. She was Morgan, wielder of blades and reciter of Weger’s strictures; and Mhorghain, heir to vast power and elven magic. And she was the keeper of his heart, which was his favorite incarnation.
And now, heaven help him, the mother of his future child.
She turned and looked at him. “Miach?”
“What?”
“Thinking about your turnip crop?”
“Actually, nay,” he managed. “I wasn’t.”
She smiled, a very small, private smile he’d been favored with only when he’d done something that had particularly pleased her. Then she turned and walked away toward that hayloft that kings had despaired of ever sleeping in.
He smiled to himself and ran to catch up with her.