Violet stepped forward before she seemed to realize she had done it. Moira handed John to her without being asked, and Violet took him with a care that tightened Connor’s chest. Shedid not kiss his head. Her cheek bent toward the blanket instead, barely brushing the fabric near his temple.
Connor noticed, and so did Lachlan, though he gave no sign beyond the flexing of his fingers.
John stirred, and Violet adjusted the cloth under his chin. It was made of fine linen, with a narrow strip of blue fabric worked along one edge.
Connor had seen that blue fabric before. Violet had kept it near John since the beginning. It must have had something to do with Jane.
The priest paused before the basin. “And the bairn’s name?”
Connor meant to answer alone, so his voice came first. “John.”
Violet’s hand moved over the blanket, her lips parting as well. “John.”
The word nearly broke her. He saw it in the catch of her breath and the way her lashes lowered. Before she could retreat from the moment, he set his hand on the small of her back.
“Breathe, lass,” he said, his voice low enough for her ears only.
She did, and soon, the priest dipped his fingers in the water and spoke the baby’s name into the chapel.
“John Reed.”
Connor’s jaw tightened.
The baby who had come in a basket at the gate now had a name spoken by a priest, a family standing around him, and a place in Moore Castle. He was no longer only a threat to a treaty, a question of blood, or even the personification of Lachlan’s shame placed in a basket. He was John Reed, and he belonged in the castle.
John fussed when the water touched his brow, and Violet murmured to him at once, that soft nonsense she spoke whenever he was cranky. Connor watched the way she shifted him before the cry gathered strength. He reached to move the blanket from the baby’s mouth at the same moment she did.
His fingers grazed hers, the touch sending shivers down his spine. Violet glanced up at him.
He copied the small motion she had made earlier, gently pressing the blanket with his knuckles instead of pulling. John grew quiet faster than he had expected, lulled by Violet’s voice and their care.
The priest continued as Violet checked John’s breathing twice. Connor found himself doing the same after her, watching the rise and fall of his little chest beneath the blanket and waiting for any catch or strain.
Moira wiped her cheek with the back of one finger and pretended to adjust a fold in her apron. Alex shifted closer again, a silent guard at her side, while Lachlan said one soft “Amen” near the end.
When the ceremony ended, the healer checked John once more near the chapel door.
“He is relaxed for now,” she said. “Let him sleep, and keep watch through the night.”
Connor nodded. “Moira, prepare him for bed.”
“Aye, me Laird,” Moira said, taking John carefully from Violet.
Violet’s hands followed the baby for half a second, then stopped midair. She clasped them together before anyone else could notice. Anyone but Connor, of course.
“I will retire too,” she said, her voice too even.
Connor let her go because he intended to follow and because he truly believed whatever was bothering her could be handled.
But then she crossed the threshold without looking back at John. The baby had just been given a family, and she looked like a woman preparing to remove herself from it.
The bath did not wash the nursery from Violet’s skin, no matter how hard she tried.
Warm water slid from her hair onto the linen the maid held around her shoulders, and still she could feel John’s hot cheek against her gown and could hear Lachlan’s careful voice asking whether her illness should be kept from a fevered child.
The maid lifted her nightdress from the chair, but Violet’s gaze had gone to the folded cloak near the bed and the small bag half-hidden beneath it.
A few things. No more.
