“Patience is going to haveher hands full with that one,” Sophie said.“Strong-willed anddemanding he is, coming when he wanted as he did.”Another wailpealed out, and then soft grunts and rootings followed by the proudcooing of the new parents.“He knows what he wants and when hewants it, this Wilric does.Much like the captain, who told meyou’ve been waking from your dreams, calling out not only his name,but mine and Wolf’s and Patience’s every night since you dreamed ofthe massacre at Roncesvalles Pass.”
Lara winced as each name hit her likea physical blow.
“What happens in yourdreams?”
Lara shook her head.
“Sometimes sharing a fearcan lessen it greatly.”Sophie eyed her up carefully.
A rush of blood pounded through Lara’shead, and she licked at sudden dry lips.“What if it would onlyincrease the fear, person by person?”
Sophie’s face paled and she looked astired as Lara felt.Then she quirked her brows.“What did you dreamof Patience?”
Lara looked down at her hands, washedand clean of the leavings of childbirth.“There was blood.Too muchblood.I couldn’t staunch it.Patience—”
“Giving birth is a bloodybusiness.”Sophie repeated Lara’s own words that she’d used toallay Talon’s worry.“Patience and the babe are both doingwell.”
Lara let out a relieved breath.“True.”
“What did you dream aboutme?”
The blood that had been pounding inLara’s head drained to her toes.
“You can tellme.”
Lara clasped her fingers together inher lap and met Sophie’s gaze.“I, ah, I wrapped your death shroudover your face.”
“As you will, someday.”Sophie was too quick and too offhanded in her reply.“As it shouldbe.I’m glad it will be your face to see mine last.”
“As I saw Plutarch’s.”Hottears welled in Lara’s eyes.“Though it wasn’t my face he saw atthe end, but Hamm’s and the lady Isabeau’s.”
“Plutarch?”Sophie’s voicecracked.“Lady Isabeau?”
“He was the cook Itraveled with until my discovery.”Lara gave a sad smile.“He waskind to me, to Hamm.He told me tales of his life as a man-at-armsfor Reginald and his wife, Eileen.Of their daughter Isabeau andHarald, how they’d married in secret, how he’d grieved when hereturned to find her gone.Did you know this Harald?”
“I did,” Sophie said aftera long pause.“He was a man-at-arms under Orlando.”
“Your secondhusband?”
“We were never actuallymarried.Not by the church.”
It seemed Lara wasn’t the only keepingsecrets.“You never told me that.”
Sophie shrugged.“We lived as man andwife.We loved as man and wife.”
And Sophie had lost him to war.AsLara would Talon.
“Oh Tante.”She startedshaking as if she’d woken from one of her dreams.“I see him fall.In my dreams, I see Talon pierced through with an arrow and falloff the Black into a pool of his own blood.And his eyes…” Sheshuddered and her teeth chattered.“Oh God.His eyes are as dulledand unseeing as Plutarch’s were.”
Sophie laid a gnarled hand over Lara’sicy fingers.“So, you do love him?”
Lara shook her head as hot tears slidfrom her cheeks.“I can’t.”
“Yet you do.”
“I did,” Lara admitted.“Once.After the massacre at Roncesvalles.”
Sophie gave Lara’s hand a gentlesqueeze.“It was inevitable.Everyone could see it but you two.Every person in the valley’s been stepping around the chain pullingyou two together since the day you met, getting tighter and tighterthe more you both fought it.”She eyed Lara, her expressionserious.“Some people are meant to come together, whether for amoment, a day, a year, a lifetime.In the end, we can only love whoand when we can.”
