For Life or Until (Love and Warfare Series Book 1)

by Anne Garboczi

  “All right, I suppose. Nothing that would win a race.”

  She blinked. “Why?”

  “I haven’t taken them out. They’re growing pasture sour.” He shrugged.

  “But your horses were born to race. I’ve never seen such horses.” She gestured toward Cedric. Snow wet his wool cloak and clung to his face where the ungroomed beginnings of a beard lined his cheeks. He looked far older than a year ago.

  His shaggy hair fell over his eyebrows as he shook his head. “Not now. A flabby, pathetic lot, you’d be ashamed of them.”

  “I doubt the fault lies with the horses.” She bit her tongue. Was that too harsh? He had lost wife and child, but he at least deserved the solace of riding his horses.

  With reluctance, he smiled. “You’re right. Maybe come spring, I’ll take them out again.”

  Her braid fell over her shoulder as she tilted her head. He’d conceded her point? Aquilus never did that. Her gaze roved outside to where the snow gathered in drifts.

  Cedric followed the line of her gaze. “Sorry, I’ve been keeping you.”

  Nodding, she reached for Wryn.

  “I’ll carry him back for you.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  He closed his arm around the babe. “I don’t mind.”

  So, as the snow blew and the ice frosted on the quarter-mile trail, Cedric carried her son.

  Chapter 9

  The Catuvellauni lands, Aprilis, 87 A.D.

  Ness moved toward the bubbling kettle, water jar in one arm and Wryn in the other, while Eric reared up from the floor and looked dangerously interested in the hearth fire.

  Elbow-deep in flour, Mother favored the wrist she’d broken last fall. “Add more ashes, Isobel.” Mother coughed, the same cough she hadn’t been able to shake since winter.

  “You shouldn’t work so hard, let me.” Sliding Wryn down next to Eric on the pollen-covered floor, Ness reached for the massive wooden bowl.

  Eric pressed a pudgy thumb into his brother’s eye and Wryn screamed.

  “No!” Abandoning the bowl, Ness pounced on the babe. “Your brother might need those someday.”

  Letting out an earth-shattering wail, Eric twisted against her arms.

  “Where’s the milk pail?” Isobel’s copper braid swung as she leaned her head out of the lean-to.

  Ness pinned Eric more firmly to herself. “I milked the goats already.”

  Milked with five interruptions. Between Wryn deciding he was hungry, Eric deciding that no one ate before him, Wryn squalling at having to share his mother, and Eric grabbing Wryn’s hair and yanking out a fistful, it was a miracle she accomplished that chore.

  Ness reached for the bowl again.

  Mother motioned her away with a hand that had grown thinner in the last year. “You take care of the children.”

  Ness narrowed her gaze, but worry wouldn’t heal Mother. Seizing Eric and Wryn, she plopped them in a basket and headed toward the field Father had loaned her. The twins’ weight bore down on the reeds as they, and the hoe she’d grabbed, increased the ache in her back.

  The spring breeze blew across her face and tugged at her plaited hair. Both babes’ bellies were full, which gave her at least an hour to work.

  At the field, she set the babes down and picked up the hoe. Raising it, she started down the never-ending furrows, swing after aching swing.

  With Marki gone to his own house, Father planted fields alone as well as helping Marki clear new fields, and trees didn’t fell themselves, even for the chief of the village. Guilt slid over her. She’d brought more work to her parents too, coming here with twins.

  Eric crowed and mounted the basket’s edge. Setting down the hoe, she scurried back to pry his brown fingers off the wicker and plop him back. His howl rose above loosened dirt to the green leaves just budding in the trees that surrounded this clearing.

  Bending, Ness stroked his dark cheeks and smiled. “Say Mama.”

  Eric pressed his lips together in a frighteningly surly expression.

  She laughed. Turning, she knelt on sore knees and started shaping ridges into mounds of the proper depth. Fingers moving at the frantic rate known only to mothers of infants, she launched into a Celtic song that told of brooks, horses, and bairns stolen for changelings by the fairie folk. Both babes’ eyes grew wide.

  Something small bounced against the back of her neck. Music dying in her throat, she leaped and turned to see acorns hit the ground and Cedric’s laughing face.

  “Don’t stop.” He flicked another acorn at the open neck of her dress.

  She slapped her hand against her chest before it could roll inside. “Don’t you have work to do?”

  With a shrug, he sprawled beside the twins’ basket.

  She kept moving, jabbing seeds into the ground with increasing vigor. She had seen him enough over the long winter, more than enough. Her sons seemed to comfort him and that, more than likely, was why he’d imposed himself at her family’s hearth almost nightly. Perhaps he wished to restore the friendship they had before. After all that had passed, she didn’t have the heart for the teasing sort of friendship they’d had.

  Cedric flicked Eric’s arm with a blade of grass. Eric lunged toward it, mouth open. A grasshopper jumped on the blade and Eric clamped his mouth down over it.

  “No. Nasty.” Cedric made spitting faces at the babe.

  “You expect that to work?” Rising, Ness moved toward her babe.

  Hoisting the babe up in one big hand, Cedric set Eric beside him and dug the insect out with his finger. Eric chomped down hard and Cedric jumped to a sitting position.

  “You should have named your son wolfbane, not Eric.” Cedric rubbed his finger against his trousers.

  She reached back into the seed bag. “Perhaps you shouldn’t stick your finger into babes’ mouths.”

  Cedric directed a disapproving look at Eric. “Perhaps you shouldn’t sharpen your teeth with a file every night.”

  The babe laughed in his face and extended both arms upward.

  With a frown, Ness leaned over the dirt mounds and directed her eyes to the time-sensitive planting. Still, the image lingered in her mind. Cedric holding her sons, her sons reaching for him.

  As Cedric sprawled on the sunlit grass and the twins crawled on his big frame, she dug into the dirt, sending clods flying until she reached the place where Cedric’s body blocked the row. “You’re in the way of progress.”

  Cedric squinted at her through half-opened eyelids, then sat up, lifting the twins with him. “Come on boys, or your mother’s going to plow over you like that village elder four summers ago, when—”

  Her cheeks heated. “My sons do not need to know about that.”

  He grinned. “She stole my chariot and, as she raced it away from me, a village elder with a pot of blue dye stepped onto the village green. Rather than swerving—”

  “No!” She slapped her hands over her ears as the image of that elder walking around for a month with blue eyelashes and a glare came back to her. “I’ve tried to live down that incident for three years.”

  He shrugged and tossed Eric and Wryn in the air. “Tell you when you’re older, boys.”

  Despite herself, she watched Cedric.

  He met her gaze and slowly he opened that large jaw of his to talk. “What about you? How was Rome in all its splendor?”

  A shadow passed over the sun as she looked at the raven soaring up over the far trees, almost to the clouds. She shoved the seeds into the ground. “I hated it.”

  Cedric picked Wryn up and blew into his face before looking back at her. “Did you learn more there?”

  “Only a little Greek.” She shivered.

  Aquilus’ hands had swept down her hair like the tumbling waterfall. His fingers covered hers as she moved her hand down the lines of words, hour after hour. Then, when the evening grew late and he tried to push the scroll away and fall asleep for an early army morning, she would twist around. Kiss his falling eyelids, his for
ehead, and his mouth until, with a sleep-filled smile, he gave in and finished reading.

  “Greek? You had time to be quick-witted even in Rome?”

  She raised her shoulders, rumpling the coarse fabric of her work dress. “Anyone can learn languages. I’ll teach you if you want.”

  He shook his head. “I’d hate it—and never learn.”

  She waved away his words. “Modesty.”

  He shook his head more vigorously, flapping his hair against poorly shaven sideburns.

  A smile crept to her lips. “But it’s a rare enough virtue in men, so I won’t try to cure you.”

  A laugh rumbled through Cedric’s broad chest, making Wryn smile as the babe clutched his jerkin. “Why all this?” Cedric gestured over the expanse of field. “Surely your father is planting enough for the family?”

  She shook her head. “I’m going to do it on my own. I want a sheep farm too. If I can get a high enough price for this in town, I might be able to purchase a lamb or two after a few harvests.” She intended to pay Father and Mother back for all they’d provided for her this last year too.

  The sound of birds and the spring breeze flapping budding foliage filled the silence as she bent back over her seeds.

  “I have to go hunt,” Cedric said, making no move to leave. “Out of food.”

  Ness spun around. “Your fields are the richest this side of the mountains! Don’t tell me you ran out of grain before harvest with just one mouth to feed.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t really harvest last fall.”

  “Why not?”

  “Didn’t have the heart for it,” Cedric muttered. He didn’t look at her now and he let the boys wander off.

  “Oh. You saved enough for seed crop at least?” She pressed her thumb against her palm. While it was scarcely her place to tell him, Cedric needed to stop wallowing in his grief before he ran his farm into ruin.

  “I guess. I haven’t really planted.”

  She jumped to her feet. “You’re a week late already! Two weeks by the time you finish plowing all those fields your father left you. You shouldn’t be here.”

  Cedric leaned further back. Eric tugged at the pommel of Cedric’s dagger. Cedric swatted him away. “I don’t see the point.”

  She marched over to him, bare feet plowing through overturned dirt. “Look here, Cedric—” She squatted next to him. “You have a right to grief, but are you really going to give up? You aren’t the first man whose wife died in childbirth, and you sure as sticks won’t be the last. Go take that hulking frame of yours and do something with your life. Many people would kill for a bundle of land like yours and—”

  Cedric fixed his gaze on her.

  Cheeks heating, she stood. “Not that it’s any of my business.” Her gaze averted, she bent back over the rows.

  “You did learn something in Rome, you know. You never told me off that good before.”

  She thrust the last seeds into the ground instead of answering. The clouds over the sun grew larger, threatening rain.

  Gathering her tools, she bent to take the twins off of Cedric’s lap. Her hair fell across his legs.

  Touching her hair, he flicked it back behind her shoulders as he’d done at seventeen.

  She stiffened.

  He shrugged, a smile on his lips.

  Tightening her arms around her babes, she stood. “Thank you for watching the boys, and sorry for the lecture.”

  “Not at all.”

  As she walked away, she got the unsettling feeling that his gaze followed her.

  Shaking her head, Ness watched Isobel stir the pot hanging over the hearth while the shadows outside grew longer. Enni sat beside Ness on the shelf beds that lined the circular house and the scent of drying herbs wafted from the flowered greens she’d just hung up inside.

  “You’ve grown so tall, Isobel.” Ness rubbed shoulders that ached from four days in the fields.

  Isobel held her newly acquired woman’s body tall and pushed a bit of copper hair back into the loose braids that showed off the curve of her cheek. “Of course. I had my fifteenth birthday.”

  “A week ago.” Ness tugged a wool strand into another loop.

  “You’re not doing that right.” Leaning forward from the shelf bed where she perched, Enni took the wool and demonstrated.

  Ness scooted closer, shifting aside a dried bunch of turnips that hung from the roof. “You did promise me this would become a blanket, true?”

  Isobel swung her ladle in a lethargic circle around the lye kettle. “I don’t see how you bear to spend so many hours working at those things.”

  Ness’ lips twitched. “That’s because you’re still young.”

  “Am not!” Isobel flicked hot lye at her. Ness ducked.

  “I’m glad I don’t have the raising of you.” She reached down to pry Eric’s fingers away from a fistful of wool.

  Isobel brought her chin up. “I can raise myself very well, thank you.”

  “Remember, the stitch goes like this.” Enni tried to fix her impossible wool. “I have to go soon.”

  Ness flopped against the wall. “Where to, romantic dinners with the husband?”

  Isobel scoffed. “Marki hasn’t a romantic bone in his body. He used to slurp soup out of a boot.”

  “Ah, but that’s because he’s our brother. I’m sure Enni tames the savage in him.” Ness waved her hand dramatically. Her fingers hit the wool basket, sending it across the room.

  Enni turned beet red and scrambled for the wool.

  “Don’t blush. I’m beginning to feel bad.” Ness dropped to her knees and grabbed at the rolling yarn.

  “When I marry,” Isobel said, “I will choose someone tall and brown-haired who—”

  Ness looked up from the packed-dirt floor. “Like Gavin, the boy you make eyes at every first day?”

  Isobel blushed crimson.

  Ness sighed. “The boy’s no thicker ‘round than a willow wand and he’s barely plowed his father’s fields yet, let alone cleared his own.”

  Isobel dropped the lye spoon. “He’s not so young! Fifteen, and three months older than me.”

  “Exactly. You’re children. Enjoy it while you can.” Ness plopped another skein of wool into the basket.

  Isobel tossed her head as if to say, I like him, do your worst.

  A smile tugged at Ness’ lips. “Besides, I’m not letting a boy near you for at least a decade.”

  Isobel sniffed more like a small child than a woman of wounded sensibilities. “Marki says he’s going to string up any man who’s interested in me.”

  “Only if the man survives the horse whipping I’ll give him.” Ness scrambled back on the shelf bed. She would so much rather herd the sheep than twist their wool into these impossible knots.

  A blast of cool evening air hit her face as Father swung the low-hung door open. Dirt from plowing still covered his clothes and he looked weary.

  “You’re late.” In the far corner, Mother rocked Wryn back and forth in her arms.

  Father frowned. “Problems from Vocula. I called a meeting of the landowners tonight, but you’ll never guess who I had to drag out of his fields.”

  Standing, Mother dipped up a bowl of cold stew. “Who?”

  “Cedric. He’d just hitched his oxen and was plowing like his life depended on it even as the light faded.”

  Ness sucked in a breath of air. Cedric had decided to plow. She shook her head as she tried to clear the image of him holding her sons from her wits. More than likely now that he’d reinvested in his own work, he’d stop coming here.

  Darkness had closed in and Wryn had nodded off by the time the landowners began to file in. They looked weary, sweat staining hands and bodies that had been hard at work since dawn.

  “Why is the soap not done, Isobel?” Mother drew her face in, which emphasized how much weight the winter had taken off her. Ness furrowed her brow. Mother’s coughing spells lingered on even during these warm spring days.

  Isobel grimaced.


  Ness stood. “Here, put Wryn to bed and I’ll finish.” The still squirming Eric in one arm, she took the ladle from her sister and leaned over the fire’s flames.

  Heat and the bitter smell of lye assaulted her face as thirty landowners crowded into the dwelling.

  “I received a message from Legate Vocula.” Father stood at the back of the circular house. “He requests that we fill twenty day laborer positions on the docks starting this fall.”

  “That’s harvest!” Mailmura erupted in fury, gnarled hands up. “Take our men and we’ll starve by spring.”

  An older man slammed his mug on the shelf bed where he sat. “In a western village, Vocula massacred two households for refusing his requests.”

  “That’s against the law,” Gavin’s father said. “A legate doesn’t have the power for forced labor.”

  “I don’t like how so many Romans have been passing through our village of late either.” A woman in a plaid skirt folded her arms.

  “Agreed. I found a legionary lurking behind my barn. The next day three pigs were missing and what does Vocula do about it? Nothing.” Mailmura slapped a hanging leg of smoked mutton.

  “But what will we do about it?” Gavin’s father asked.

  Someone flicked the back of Ness’ leg. Twisting, she saw Cedric, half a pace away, sitting at the edge of the landowners’ circle. He winked at her. Elbows on his knees, he leaned forward. “What do you think? Against Roman law or not?”

  Her ladle slipped into the lye as she moved back. Her one arm cradling Eric’s now nodding head, she leaned toward him and whispered low enough not to interrupt the meeting. “I don’t think it’s technically legal, but the Emperor doesn’t care about Britain right now and it takes months to write to Rome.”

  “The expert speaks. You should lead this meeting.” Cedric flicked her skirt, eyes teasing her.

  “Shh… you’ll disrupt them. I have soap to make.” She turned back to the fire.

  He caught the end of her lye spoon.

  She turned back to him.

  Shifting on the bench, he touched the open space he’d made. “Lots of room.”