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Her head was nodding before the words reached her tongue. “I do. I do love you. A love that I didn’t think existed—or shouldn’t exist—as I don’t recommend the shreds it has torn my heart into during the past days.”
His right cheek lifted in a half smile. “It may not be recommended, as long as it’s true.”
“It is.” Her eyes closed as she drew in a shaking breath. “And I…I don’t want to lose you to the fear I have of this—of us. I want all of the things that I’ve never let myself want.”
His left hand wrapped around the other side of her neck. “Tell me what you want.”
Her eyes opened to him. “You. Your children. A life with you in that monstrosity of a castle but with bright tapestries and scrubbed walls and a great hall that is used to welcome family and friends instead of hay and arrows. I want you in a real copper bath with me that we would install in the room next to your chamber. I want to see the snow falling on the curves of the land, blanketing the green from the cold. I want you to pluck me springtime flowers and tuck them into my hair. I want your boys running about the towers playing hide and seek. I want your girls fighting over the fastest horses and challenging you to races. I want your hand in mine when it is old and wrinkled and you are playing at ill so our eldest grandson will stop carousing about at life and get himself married and give us great-grandchildren.”
“That is all?” His smile evened, spreading wide on his face. “You’ve been keeping all this inside, never wanting it for fear you cannot have it?”
Her bottom lip tugged under her top teeth as she nodded.
He chuckled, mirthful and warm. “What else do you want?”
Her arms went wide at her sides. “I want…I want to matter to you. I want you to matter to me. I want it all. And I want it all with you.”
“Well, then.” His hands moved upward to clasp about her face. “Since we already said our vows, I can only give you this: there will be no higher honor in my life, than to make sure your heart gets every one of those things you desire. My duty, my honor, my life are yours.” He leaned down, finding her lips, kissing her with the promise of the thousands of days to come. He pulled up slightly. “And more.”
“More?” She chuckled against his lips, her fingers finding his chest, releasing buttons.
“I know ye have an imagination, lass. Always leave room for more.”
“I will note that.” The last button on his waistcoat popped free and she worked her fingers under his lawn shirt, his muscles tensing under her touch. “But for now, my husband’s skin against mine shall do nicely.”
{ Epilogue }
Life flooded the room, the blinding lights of pain and determination giving way to a first breath as an innocent, fragile glow took over the room.
A cough.
Another breath.
Evan looked down at the soaked forehead of his wife, her hair matted with sweat against her head, deep lines etched into her forehead and her cheeks from the pain, her lips parted, gasping at breath.
She’d never looked more beautiful.
He hoped he hadn’t broken her hand. He thought it would be the other way around—Juliet breaking his hand. But watching her body writhe in agony, he couldn’t control his muscles, squeezing her hand back with just as much intensity as was surging through her veins.
With her last scream, he thought that was it, that her bones couldn’t survive his grip any longer and he’d surely snapped them.
She didn’t look mad about her hand. Not at all. Her blue eyes huge, she looked up at him, desperate for an answer.
Evan leaned to his right, peeking at the squirming bundle of limbs slick in the midwife’s hands. He searched. Searched again. And one last time.
He looked back to Juliet, his voice stunned. “It’s a girl.”
“What? Are you sure?” She sat up slightly, trying to see the midwife’s hands past the sheet bunched up about her bent legs. “But, but—”
“I know.” A laugh exploded out of Evan. “By all the saints—a girl. Agirl.Grandfather will be beside himself. The first girl in fifty years.”
Juliet exhaled a breathless chuckle, then quickly gasped a seething breath. “But I was sure—” Her words cut off with a brutal scream that sent her face into torture as she lifted her shoulders off the bed, trying to ease the pain.
“What is wrong?” Panic instant, Evan looked to the midwife who was handing his daughter off to her apprentice. “What is wrong?” he screamed before his look flew back to Juliet’s contorted face, the torment in it slicing his heart in two.
No.
Not Juliet.
