By the time they arrived, Drogo had Ninian on the damned bed, where she belonged. She clung to her book as she gasped and chanted and curled up in agony. He thought her pain would rip the heart and lungs out of his chest if it did not cease soon. Sweat poured down her brow by the time she straightened and handed him the book again.
“I’ve marked the place. You may start anytime. Your daughter is in a hurry.”
“My son, madam, doesn’t need any superstitious nonsense chanted over his head.” Drogo turned and glared at Lydie, who stood in the doorway bearing a bowl of steaming water. “Help her!” he commanded.
“There is nothing I can do yet,” Lydie said simply, setting the bowl down.
Ninian’s face looked small and exceedingly fragile against the pillows. The enormous lump of her stomach seemed to fill the bed as Lydie covered her with a sheet. Drogo swallowed hard. Ninian was too small. Even he could see that. He had thought her healthy peasant material, but she was like a transparent wraith who would shatter at the merest loud noise. Bearing his son would kill her.
“Ninian,” he whispered as she closed blue-veined lids over the lovely pools of her eyes. Her skin was like the finest glass as he brushed it with his fingers—and just as cool.
Her lids snapped open, and she smiled vaguely. “I’m afraid I won’t be of much use for a while. Dunstan must tend the filter, if you would be so kind as to see it’s done properly. The rains will start soon, and the legends say they will ruin the fields. Perhaps, if you send for Ewen—” She bit her lip and breathed deeply, her hand instinctively covering her lower abdomen.
“Damn the burn and Dunstan and all else. Just tell these confounded women what to do to deliver the child safely.” Drogo was aware of several of the village women lingering in the shadows behind him. Dunstan was back there somewhere too. He couldn’t concentrate on any of them.
She smiled faintly. “They can do nothing but wait, my lord, just like you. You would fare much better if you listened to me.”
“Fine, I’ll listen.” Firmly, he drew up a chair and gestured for someone to bring him the abandoned writing desk. This was something physical he could handle.
He obediently jotted down careful notes as Ninian rambled. He had no idea what he was writing or what she was saying, but just the exercise of applying quill to paper was sufficient to calm them both, until she whimpered and arched and clenched the bedsheets. Then the quill and desk flew into the air as he grabbed for her.
Drogo moved to the bed and held her awkwardly, not knowing how to offer comfort but giving what he could as Ninian bit back screams and clutched his coat sleeves. Her agony seared through him, and he could not imagine how much worse it must be for her. His son was tearing her apart. He was killing her.
He would surely die if she did. That would leave Dunstan.
Frantically, Drogo sought his brother as the contraction subsided, and Lydie hurried forward to wipe Ninian’s brow. He wasn’t any good at this comforting business. He needed something solid to sink his teeth into.
Without a word, he rose from the bed and elbowed his way through the crowd of onlookers until he located Dunstan pacing in front of the fire in the sitting room.
“If the child dies, and Ninian with it, I’ll have none other,” he announced as Dunstan swirled to look at him.
Eyes empty, Dunstan said nothing.
Drogo wanted to shake him. “Someone has to look after our mothers, the estates, the younger ones. I’m counting on you. Don’t let me down!” he ordered.
“You’ll live to be a hundred,” Dunstan replied bitterly. “Don’t look at me.”
“I’m killing her more surely than you ever killed Celia!” He didn’t shout. He was certain he hadn’t shouted. He paced, not daring to face his brother with his fear, not daring to meet the matching guilt in Dunstan’s eyes.
The wind howled down the chimney, shooting embers across the hearth. Drogo grabbed the poker and shoved the coals deeper into the grate. “Dammit, I thought I had this thing fixed.”
“Women have children all the time. She’ll live,” Dunstan answered crudely. “You’ll have your heir, and someday, a spare. You won’t need me.”
Drogo ignored him, lost in his own discovery. “We don’t give a damn what we do to the women as long as we plant our seed. That’s the curse of Ives. We plow and plant and walk away, content we’ve done our duty, when they’re the ones who toil and strain and dutifully produce our offspring until the soil grows barren and wasted from the effort. We kill them,” he announced vehemently. If not in body, then in soul, he added silently.
“We should rotate crops?” Dunstan asked. “Or fields? That’s what our father did.”
A scream echoed through the darkening chambers, bouncing off the walls. Terror pounding in his veins, Drogo swung on his heel and stormed back to the bed chamber.
Ninian lay serenely, eyes closed, apparently asleep.
Wildly, Drogo glanced around, but the scream still shattered the calm. No one seemed aware of it but him.
A movement from the bed drew his frantic gaze. She still breathed. She was alive.
The scream still pounded in his skull. Warily, he relaxed as Ninian opened her eyes and smiled, but she didn’t seem to be looking at him. She seemed to be hearing a voice beyond his range, and terror took root in his heart. He didn’t want her listening to voices from the grave. He wanted her here, with him. To his horror, Ninian suddenly gasped, drew up her legs, and grabbed her belly in agony. Her scream joined the one in his head.
Or in the walls. Someone was in the walls, tormenting her! The scene in front of him dwindled to a distance. He watched the women surround the bed, saw the golden waterfall of curls across the stack of pillows, knew it was his wife bearing down in agony to produce his child, but he was no longer with them. He stood apart, watching from afar.
The wind howled, the draperies blew inward in the draft, the fire in the grate leaped and danced, and the screams grew more insistent. Ninian writhed in pain, and he could do nothing.
Why didn’t the screams stop? Why did they torment her like that? Couldn’t they see she needed peace? She needed strength and calm, not hysterical shrieks.
Furious, Drogo strode past the bed and ripped the billowing draperies from their rod. If some prankster hid in here… Nothing but the black glass of nightfall. The reflection of candle flame flickered back at him.
Not here then. The chimney. Determinedly, he wielded the poker still in his hand. A solid wallop to the stone shook loose centuries of dried mortar. He slammed it again. Beat it from the outside in, from the inside out, beat it until the poker bent and broke and the shrieks screamed through every particle of his body.
A cloud of soot smashed into the burning grate, wafting outward into the room, coating everything in a film of black. Women shrieked and scolded and chattered like magpies. The ghost still wailed. He could hear it.
Dunstan grabbed his arm and tried to lead him away, but Drogo shook him off. Grabbing the kindling ax, he stalked the room, searching for the source of the haunting screams. Sarah had done this. She must have planted whistles in the walls.
Locating a knot in the paneling, he swung his ax and splintered the wood. No ghost would torment his wife. No legends would haunt his son’s birth. He was master here. He took care of all that was his.
“He’s gone mad,” one of the maids whispered as Drogo swung the ax into the paneling until it popped and peeled from the wall.
“It’s the ghost,” another whispered. “She haunts this place still. They say she drives Ives men mad.”
Behind her, in the shadows, Dunstan paled and looked grim. He watched as his eminently logical, sensible brother tore apart the suite of rooms in pursuit of something none could see or hear but him. All because of a woman. A Malcolm woman.
The frail figure in the bed seemed oblivious of the destruction. Ove
rcoming another contraction, she reached for the book her husband had abandoned.
Even Dunstan heard the wind’s howl in the chimney.
Frantically, Drogo swung around, searching for another target.
“Drogo,” Ninian called softly. “Hurry, please. I need the words.”
Words. Drogo blinked. He glanced blankly at the ax in his hands, then up at the havoc he had wreaked of the room. He absorbed Dunstan’s expression of horror and confusion. Puzzled, he set aside the ax and turned in the direction of the voice calling him.
“The words, please,” she whispered between pants, handing him the book as he returned to the bedside.
Words had no power. They were just… words. Drogo gazed blankly at the ancient page.
From memory, Ninian began to recite the first line.
Seeing the agony creasing her forehead once more, Drogo hurriedly offered her the next line, reading slowly so she could follow between breaths. She smiled and seemed to relax, even as she writhed with the pressure contracting and bearing down on her insides.
Together, they chanted the whole silly ritual of flowers and trees and birth and life. Drogo ignored it when she removed a pouch of herbs from her bodice and sprinkled the dust across the covers. He kept the pace of the chant for as long as it seemed to ease her.
Sitting on the bed facing her, his back to the women, he read and chanted in the flickering lamplight, blocking out the whistling wind and howling chimney and the screams echoing in his mind. Ninian reached out her hand, and he held it, and the screams dropped into the distance. Squeezing soft fingers in his, he read louder.
“Thank you,” she murmured, blue eyes opening and focusing steadily on his face—just before she raised her knees and groaned so deep, he swore the sound tore from the bowels of the earth.
“Here it comes,” Lydie shouted excitedly. “Gently now. Bear harder, Ninian.”
Hair matted and wet with perspiration, straining into the pain, Ninian didn’t tear her gaze from Drogo’s.
Heart in his mouth, he clasped her hand with both of his and willed her his strength, pouring everything in his power into her slender fingers. He could swear she smiled broader through her tears.
“I love you, Drogo.”
The words whispered through him even as Ninian’s face crumpled with pain and her scream split the air.
She’d said them once before, but he’d not listened. He’d not believed. He couldn’t believe she’d said them again, not after all he’d done to her.
Distance. He was supposed to maintain his distance. He should be downstairs, getting drunk, waiting for the women to bring him the announcement of his child’s birth. What the hell was he doing here, hearing words he’d never wanted?
An infant’s weak cry filled the silence following Ninian’s collapse.
She lay so still. Worriedly, Drogo watched for the blink of an eyelash, the restless rise of her breast.
Ninian, please, he pleaded inside his head, where none could hear but himself. He couldn’t show his weakness, but it was there, growing wider and deeper and clawing with terror at his rib cage. Ninian, don’t leave me alone.
Her eyelids moved, and he wept, great heaving sobs that shook his whole body.
He laid his head down on her breasts and cried like the babe she’d just borne as her hand squeezed his.
“Alana,” she breathed in satisfaction next to his ear.
Light poured through him. The screams subsided and serenity filled him with a strength he’d never known, not physical strength, but something far different as he lifted his head and looked into shining blue eyes. “Alan,” he declared firmly, grasping the invisible connection between them and holding on for all he was worth. “No mere slip of a girl could make that roar.”
She studied him for a moment, then turned her gaze wonderingly to the babe Lydie held out. The roars emanating from the bundle certainly had a masculine edge to them.
“Your son, my lady,” Lydie announced proudly, laying the squalling, kicking infant in Ninian’s arms.
Obviously stunned but smiling with astonished pride, Ninian offered up the black-haired babe for Drogo’s admiration.
As he daringly reached to push back a blanket edge for a better look, she murmured tauntingly, “He doesn’t have a temper either, my lord.”
Drogo’s grin nearly split his face.
Thirty-five
“You have your heir, Drogo,” Dunstan pronounced glumly, inspecting the babe in Ninian’s arms the next day. “With that hair, there’s no doubt he’s an Ives.”
“Had he been a girl, there would have been no doubt,” Drogo replied stoutly, experimentally brushing a black curl.
Ninian rolled her eyes at this exercise in competition. “You should be glad he’s not a Malcolm for all Malcolms are…” She blinked, bit back the word “witch,” and stared at her son in curiosity. “…are fair,” she amended.
Surely…? She had no way of knowing. A Malcolm had never carried a son. Of course, within living memory, no Malcolm had married an Ives. Was this the true foundation of the tales? If a Malcolm bore an Ives male, was there some danger he had Malcolm gifts?
An Ives witch? Or did one call them warlocks?
Oh my. Ninian studied rosebud lips sucking hungrily at a chubby fist, his puckered up face and closed eyes. Could he read emotions as she did? Was he sensitive to auras, like Christina? How would she tell?
She’d felt the ghost’s gratitude and relief the night of Alan’s birth, but what did that tell her?
She glanced up at Drogo, who had not stopped smiling since the child’s birth. He had no doubts about his son, that was certain. He had what he thought he wanted. Let him deal with it.
She held their son out for him to take. “I’m tired,” she said with her best dimpled smile. “You hold him.”
She saw the panic in his eyes, the reluctance as he looked down at the helpless infant squirming in the blankets. Other women might assume that men had only one part to play in the creating and raising of a child, but she had no such compunctions. He wanted a child, he could care for it as well as she.
“Just put your arms out,” she ordered. “Put a hand under his head.”
With Dunstan as amused audience, Drogo could do no less. Awkwardly, he tried to wrap his arms around the bundle and manage his son’s floppy head at the same time. Startled by the change in position, Alan whimpered in protest.
Frantically, Drogo tried to press the babe back in Ninian’s arms. “He wants you.”
“He doesn’t know what he wants.” Impatiently, she adjusted the blankets but refused to take him back. “We must teach him to want you as well. He’s an Ives, remember?” she asked maliciously.
The infant kicked the blanket from his feet, and Drogo hastily attempted to adjust it. Instead, tiny pink toes emerged from a long linen gown, thrashing in freedom.
“I can’t do this,” Drogo muttered, balancing a head of dark curls and tugging at gown and blanket while juggling the whole awkward bundle without dropping it. “I have to take care of…”
“Your son,” Dunstan intruded, watching over his brother’s shoulder with a hint of amusement. “He’s big. He’ll be climbing the castle ramparts in no time. You can’t ask Ninian to follow him.”
Dunstan turned to Ninian. “You have done a fine job, Countess. I congratulate you. Now, I must be on my way.”
“No!” she said sharply, catching him by surprise. “Not until the village’s water is safe. None of you have given Drogo time to live his own life. You owe him.”
Startled, both brothers stared. She glared right back. She might be half their size and nowhere as formidable, but by the goddess, she would have her way in this.
Drogo succeeded in balancing his son’s head in the crook of his elbow while tugging the blanket to cover his tiny feet. He raised questioning eyebro
ws at brother and wife but opted to leave the argument to them. He had his hands full already.
“Ewen is already at the mine. I’m working the filter. Once we save the water—providing such a thing is possible—I suppose there is still another task I must perform to fill this never-ending debt?” Dunstan asked dryly.
“If it’s punishment you want, then I think I’m best able to mete it out,” she agreed. “Why should you be allowed to end your suffering when Celia’s family must live with their grief for the rest of their lives? And what of her lover’s family? Did he leave children or siblings who will go hungry without his support? Have you even thought to find out?”
Dunstan appeared too stunned to answer. In another instant, he would be too angry. Ninian pressed on. “Your debt is so enormous you cannot begin to fill it should you live a hundred years. An honorable man would attempt to pay his debts.”
Fury blazed in Dunstan’s dark eyes. The pain and guilt still swamped him, but plain black Ives fury inundated his soul. “I thought you meant to help me, my lady.” He dragged the charm bag from his neck and flung it at her. “That’s the last time I’ll believe any woman.” He stormed out, slamming the door.
Alan wailed. Drogo hurriedly attempted to return him to Ninian.
Stubbornly, she crossed her arms over her breasts. “Dunstan is a grown man and will do as he wishes, no matter how much you interfere. He is beyond your help. Your son, however, needs you. It’s your choice.”
Dumfounded, Drogo looked from her, to the door, to the helpless infant whimpering in his arms. Defeat rose in his eyes as he hugged his son closer to his chest.
“We may both regret this,” he warned.
“I doubt any of us lead lives without regret.” Wearily, Ninian rested her head against the pillow and prayed.
***
Drogo sat before the fire, rocking his son and watching his wife sleep. His son. His wife.
He wanted to find that distance again, that undisturbed plane where he could look down on his possessions and responsibilities and manipulate them like men on a chess board. The child in his arms prevented it.
Merely Magic Page 31