“Like this,” she told me, putting her into my arms.
I followed her instructions, but the baby turned and wiggled until she were in the crook of my arm, against my breast. The midwife smiled. “Just like that. Make sure to hold her head,” she told me, positioning my other arm.
“I’ve held babies before,” I said. “She’s just . . . tiny.”
The midwife beamed at me and nodded me toward the door.
One of the women opened it for me, and all the men were there, looking like they hadn’t moved in hours, big broad shoulders and tall heads overfilling the space. I knew I were meant to look for Much, but I saw Robin first, and he came close, grazing his fingers on her little cheek and looking back up to me.
He kissed me, and I knew how it could be. Us, with a family, with little babies just like this. Our family.
“Is that . . . ?” Much breathed beside me.
I pulled away from Rob, showing Much the baby. “Your daughter,” I told him.
His throat worked as he looked at me. He didn’t deny that it were his. The way he looked at her, even if John were the father, she were Much’s daughter. “Let me hold her,” he told me.
I nodded, and Much slipped his arm along mine, catching her up in one hand and using his other arm to hold her underneath. He nodded at the door, not looking away from his daughter. “Open the door, Scar,” he murmured.
“She doesn’t want—” I started.
He grinned at his daughter, then glanced up to me. “Let me go be with my wonderful, miraculous wife, Scar,” he said.
I opened the door for him.
Rob caught my hand and tugged it. “Come on. You need some rest,” he said, kissing my temple.
Taking his hand, I let him pull me away from the other people, but I stopped him when we were alone. “I don’t want to go back to that room, Rob.”
He stared at me. “Will you tell me why?”
Nodding, a small sigh escaped me. “I just—later. I will tell you later. Is that enough?”
He kissed me again. “Yes.”
There weren’t any other rooms without people in them. Rob took me outside into the late morning, to the stables, nodding to the stable hands.
“Don’t tell anyone,” he whispered to me. “But I come up here to think sometimes. It reminds me of the Oak, in a way.”
I wanted to tell him his secrets were safe with me, but he knew that already. And I were too tired to form the words. He led me to a ladder and we climbed up it slow.
There were a door in the hayloft to pitch hay down from, and Rob opened it, letting the sun and fresh air in as he arranged bales and loose hay. He brought me to it, kissing me and pulling me down to lie on his chest.
I laid my cheek on his chest, drowsy, bare able to keep my eyes open. “I love you,” I whispered.
“I love you too,” he told me, threading his fingers through mine.
CHAPTER
I woke up only a few hours later. It were still daylight and Rob were breathing deep beneath me, chest rising and falling under my cheek, his heartbeat drumming light and steady in my ear.
“I can tell you’re awake, you know,” he told me.
I lifted my head, and he opened his eyes. “We have to get to work, don’t we?” I asked.
His nose nudged along my cheek. “I’m more interested in you telling me these secrets. Particularly the ones keeping us from sleeping in a bed.”
I pushed off him, sitting up.
He sighed, sitting up too. “Work it is, then.”
We joined the rest of the shire in the city, laboring along just like we’d done before. As we got to houses that were ruined but still half standing, we had to get the bigger men to do most of the work. Most of the women went to cook and prepare food, look to the little ones, and tend to a hundred other tasks that had to be done now that the knights were with us and stronger men could do the bulk of the hardest work.
Robin set them all to tasks, and I watched, as I’d become a bit useless too. My muscles were sore and I felt the grime of days of sleeplessness and sweat and pain upon me. I went to see Bess. She smiled when she saw me, and I sat by her on the bed. The tiny little girl were in her arms, silent and sleeping.
“She’s peace itself,” I said.
Bess laughed. “Until she starts wailing for something. Sometimes I don’t know what she wants. But she’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
She blinked her eyes open like she knew we were talking about her, and she looked at her mum, then over at me. Her eyes watched me steady. “The most beautiful,” I told her. “What’s her name?”
She sniffed. “I wanted to call her Hannah, but Much—he insisted we call her Maryanne.”
“Why?” I asked.
“It was John’s mother’s name,” she told me soft. “He wanted her to have a piece of him to hold on to. Always.” A tear slipped from her eye and she wiped it off. “And we both liked the closeness.”
“Closeness?”