To Love Again - Bertrice Small [185]
Aurora, half asleep, was heavy in Cailin’s arms. “Nellwyn,” she called to the nursemaid, “take Aurora and put her to bed.” Then she turned back to her husband. “Make inquiries in Orrford to see if any young men need wives. If you make Aelfa choose between Albert and Bran-hard, there will be hard feelings between those two. She is in love with neither, but rather plays with each like a cat with a mouse. Corio is taken with her, but she is not the right woman for him. Best we send her as far from Cadda-wic and Braleah as we can. That way, none of her admirers here is apt to see her again for a long time, if ever. By summer’s end, Aelfa must be wed.”
“I must make a tour of all the villages soon to see how it goes with them,” Wulf told his wife. “I but wait for the son you have promised me before leaving you, lambkin. I will personally seek out and find the right young man for Aelfa to wed in Orrford.”
“Good!” Cailin said, but despite their agreement in the matter, her voice within nagged her yet. She remained on her guard, but for what, she was unable to tell.
Royse Wulfsone was born on the nineteenth day of May. Unlike his sister’s hard birth, his entry into the world was a swift and easy one. Cailin awoke in the hour of the false dawn to realize her waters had broken. Within minutes she was being racked with labor, and in the hour that the sky began to lighten with the new day, the baby was born, howling lustily, his face red, his small arms flailing. Nellwyn had assisted her mistress with the birth, but Aelfa swooned at the sight of the blood involved and had to be carried from the solar.
Cailin and Wulf’s son was strong and healthy from the moment of his birth. He suckled eagerly at his mother’s breasts, and always seemed hungry. Denied her daughter’s infancy, Cailin reveled in her motherhood. Sensitive, however, to Aurora’s feelings, she involved the little girl in her brother’s care as much as she could so that Aurora would not feel neglected. As a big sister, Aurora, who would be four in the late summer, did admirably, running to fetch her mother at her baby brother’s least cry, helping to dress him, watching over him with Nellwyn.
“She is so patient with him,” Cailin observed. “He is going to be very spoiled, I fear. He already recognizes her.”
“Do you see how strong he is?” Wulf said proudly. “He will be a big man someday. Perhaps even bigger than I am.”
When Royse was six weeks old, and Cailin fully recovered from the birth, Wulf Ironfist set off to visit his villages. Before he left, he called Aelfa into his and Cailin’s presence. She came meekly, looking particularly pretty in a pale blue tunica she had made from a length of fabric Cailin had given her on Beltane.
“How may I serve you, lord?” she inquired politely.
“Has your memory returned yet, even in part, maiden?” he asked her quietly, his voice both gentle and encouraging.
Aelfa’s light green eyes grew visibly misty. “Alas, my lord, no,” she answered him. “I have tried to remember something of myself, but I cannot. Ohh, what will become of me?”
“It is time that you were wed,” Wulf answered her.
“Wed?” Aelfa looked startled. This was obviously not something that she had even considered. “You would marry me?”
Cailin hissed angrily. The nerve of the wench!
“Not I,” he said, somewhat startled himself by her words. “I go tomorrow to tour the villages belonging to my holding. Since you can remember nothing of yourself, and we have heard of no lost lasses in the time you have been with us, then it is time for you to begin a new life. As lord of this land, your welfare is my responsibility. I will therefore seek out a good husband for you, and you will be wed as soon as it is possible. Before the summer’s end, I think.