“Before dawn?” she asked.
“Aye.” He turned toward the door. “Daenae be late.”
He made it three steps before she called his name.
“Connor.”
He stopped, though he did not turn around.
Violet hated how easily it had come out. His name had left her mouth as if it had already found a place there, and that unsettled her more than the command to train.
She forced herself to continue. “I want to see the baby first.”
Connor turned enough for the low light to catch the hard line of his profile. Whatever answer he had prepared changed when hesaw her face. Violet knew it, and she hated that too. She must have looked as shaken as she felt.
“Aye,” he said, his voice quieter this time. “Moira will bring him here tomorrow when ye have rested a moment.”
“That wasnae an agreement to rest.”
His gaze lowered briefly to the hand still pressed near her shoulder. “It was close enough.”
“I am nae one of yer soldiers.”
“Nay,” Connor agreed. “If ye were, ye would already be sitting.”
The answer should have irritated her. Instead, it landed with the same severe care that had made his praise difficult to throw back at him.
He was still commanding her. Still impossible. Still far too certain that his will could stand in for sense. But beneath it sat the plain fact that he had noticed the pain she was trying to hide.
Violet looked away first.
Connor did not press. He opened the door and paused at the threshold.
“Ye can see him tomorrow,” he said. “For now, sleep if ye have any wisdom at all.”
“And if I daenae want to?”
“Then tomorrow will punish ye for it.”
He left before she had found a proper answer, the door closing behind him.
Violet remained on the edge of the bed, with her fingers curled into her skirt. Her shoulder throbbed where Henry had shoved her, and her arms still felt empty where the baby had been torn away.
Her body still remembered, with traitorous clarity, how safe she had felt being carried through the castle by the same man who kept rearranging her life without permission.
She had wanted a way to protect herself and Jane’s son. Now, Connor meant to put a sword in her hand before dawn.
Even worse, some reckless part of her wanted to go.
7
Violet reached the nursery the next morning before the first servants even began to stir.
The passageway outside was dim, with only a low lamp burning near the bend, and she kept one hand curled in the side of her skirt so the hem would not trail over the floor.
She had dressed herself as quietly as she could manage, though dressing for a lesson with Connor had proven more difficult than she cared to admit.
Her gown was plain enough for morning, dark enough not to show every speck of dirt, and entirely unsuited for being thrown about a training yard by a man built like a castle gate. She had considered changing twice. Then she remembered Henry’s hand closing around John.
