Alex leaned closer, then leaned back when the baby released another enraged cry. “He’s smaller than I thought bairns were.”
“That is generally how they begin,” Connor responded as he sheathed his sword.
The sound of metal sliding home made his men straighten, as if the act itself had given them permission to breathe.
He crouched and slid one hand beneath the child’s head, the other under his body, and then lifted him carefully from the basket and settled him against his chest. The baby gave one last furious sound, kicked inside the blanket, then suddenly fell quiet. Connor kept his gaze on the child. He was small and warm and furious and alive.
Who would do this?Who would drop a newborn babe at me gate?
He adjusted the blanket beneath the baby’s chin with his thumb. The baby’s mouth opened, closed, then opened again in a soundless complaint.
“Well,” Alex said quietly. “That worked.”
Connor looked at him.
Alex straightened. “I mean,of courseit did.”
Connor exhaled and returned his gaze to the basket. Something white and rather distinctive stuck out from it. He reached down and took the folded note. The child stirred against him as he opened it.
To the owner of this castle,
He belongs to you. He has no name.
The baby made a small sound against his chest as he folded the note in one hand. No one spoke. His men shifted because they knew the shape of his silence. Rage made some men loud. Connor had learned better uses for it.
Suddenly, as a sharp reminder of what he had been doing before he got distracted, Thalia’s voice came from behind him, thin and shocked. “A child?”
Connor turned to find her standing several paces away, pale enough that MacAdair reached for her elbow.
“So it seems,” he said.
MacAdair’s face hardened. His gaze darted from the baby to the note in Connor’s hand. “Ye expected me sister to sign herself into this?”
“This has nothing to do with the treaty, MacAdair. It is just as peculiar to us.”
“I would argue that it has everything to do with it.”
Before Connor could respond to the remark, Thalia stepped back. It was a small movement, but Connor saw everything inside it. Horror for the infant. Shame at being relieved. Fear of what the courtyard had just made public.
“Forgive me,” she said, her voice unsteady. “I cannae.”
Connor looked at her once. “Nay one is asking ye to.”
MacAdair placed himself before her. “I am afraid I must agree with me sister on this. The wedding is off.”
Connor’s hand shifted toward his sword, and every man in the courtyard saw it. The baby even cried once, sharp and furious, straight against his chest. Connor looked down and saw that the baby’s face had screwed up again, his mouth open in protest, his body stiff with the effort of being heard.
Alex took one careful step closer. “Me Laird?”
Connor removed his hand from the sword, and the silence that followed was worse than shouting would have been. He could feel MacAdair waiting for the threat, the refusal, the insult—something bloody enough to match the insult given and received in front of half his guards.
He gave him none.
“See that our guests are given food before they ride,” he instructed.
MacAdair stared. “That is all?”
“I wouldnae want to force yer hand into something ye daenae want.”
