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“Past it.”
“Gods, Liam, you could have–” He cut himself off, and attempted, unsuccessfully, to choke back the worry that boiled in his chest and up his throat.
Liam said, “But nothing happened! I can be quick as a hare, and quiet as a mouse. No one even saw me!”
“Yes, but someone might have.”
“But they didn’t.It’s not fair.” He kicked a good-sized pebble off the path – it went skittering off into the grass, not at all mouse-quiet – and Reggie wondered how callused his toes must be for it not to smart them. “I’ve always been able to go off into the wood. Why can’t I now?”
“Things are different now.”
“Because of thewar,” Liam said with contempt. He spent half his time thrilled by the array of soldiers in their armor, sword practice, the collection of sleek horses on the picket lines…and the other half grumbling about the new rules by which he was forced to live. The boy had been born and lived his first years in the deeps of the Inglewood, and now suddenly found himself a lord’s son, his mother dead, the crumbling ducal estate the center of a war camp. That was a lot of change for a very young person, Reggie could allow.
“Yes, because of the war,” he said, patiently. They’d reached the fringes of camp, now, and passed through another pair of torches onto trampled, bare ground, the path now lined with tents, some of which were dark, some of which blazed with lantern light. He heard singing, and conversation, and someone snoring like a wild boar. “In peace time, things would be different – though I shudder to think of your father allowing you to run wild in that forest. There’s bears, and boars, and wolves, and lions. Given there were drakes slumbering in caverns, who’s to say what else might be lurking in the shadows?”
“I’m not afraid of bears, and boars, and wolves, and lions.” With his free hand, he mimed a sword thrust. “And the drakes all like me,” he said, small chest puffing out with pride.
“Yes, they do all like you,” Reggie had to admit. “My point remains about the war, however. A Sel in gold armor won’t be as easy to frighten off or bewitch as a woodland beast. Everyone has to take precautions, now, adults included.”
The tent flap to their right lifted, suddenly, light spilling forth across the path, and Reggie reacted on instinct: he tugged Liam close and then behind him, so he stood between the boy and…
His own father, it turned out.
Connor stood loose-limbed and unbothered in unlaced trousers and an open shirt that revealed a trim waist, lightly-furred chest, and an array of ugly scars that Reggie tried not to stare at. His hair was wild, his eyes half-lidded, and a dark love-bite was blooming on the side of his throat, too high to be hidden by any collar. The source of said bite must have been one of thetwonaked camp followers sprawled on a bedroll behind him, a tangle of bare limbs and tousled hair, snoring softly.
“What sort of nonsense are you scaring him with now, Lord Priss?” Connor asked, scratching at his stomach and smirking.
Slowly, as the days crawled past, Reggie was gaining some skill in ignoring the baited lines the man insisted on dropping. The first night on the estate had helped with that: seeing him drunk and pathetic after finding his dead wife’s corpse. Sheer dint of will had carried him the rest of the way.
Still, the sight of him disheveled and half-naked, and so casual about it, the scent of sex wafting off of him…it did things to Reggie’s insides better not thought of.
“Speaking of precautions…” Reggie drawled, gaze sliding purposefully to the naked women and then back. “You might want to take some of your own unless it’s your intent to give Liam a brother or sister.”
Connor snorted, dark gaze sparkling with amusement.
Hateful man.
“Daddy!” Liam exclaimed, and tugged loose from Reggie to launch himself at his father.
Connor stepped out onto the path, tent flap shutting behind him, and bent to catch his son and scoop him up into his arms. Liam flung his arms around Connor’s neck, and even if Reggie didn’t approve of the man’s lackadaisical parenting style, there was no doubt that his son loved him, and was loved in return.
Barefoot as the boy, Connor fell into step beside Reggie and nodded them along down the path. “Where are we off to at this horrid hour of the morning, gentlemen?”
Liam recalled his original, thrilling news with a gasp. “Daddy, there’s a princess!”
“A princess, really?”
“Yes, coming up the road in a jeweled carriage. I saw her!”
Reggie noted, with a pulse of melancholy, the difference in the way Liam spoke with his father. Around Reggie, and all the other men and women of the camp, Stranger and Aquitainian alike, Liam tried to play the little grownup. Still the boy, yes, but it was easy to forget that he was only five, until he launched himself full-bore at Connor with a squeal of “Daddy!”
“The trumpets just sounded,” Reggie said, voice dropping to the frosty register he preferred to use with Connor. “We’ve a new arrival.”
“One who likes to show up unfashionably early, eh?”
“A princess, I said,” Liam insisted.
“Oh, of course. Perhaps a Northern one?” He twisted slightly, as they walked; Reggie could see and sense his attention, at his periphery. “Did young Oliver finally get his king down here, do you think?”
