Chapter 15

Morgan was dumbfounded.

It took a lot to leave him speechless. But the beautiful lass sprawled bare-arsed at his feet did just that.

The bawling bairn had been shocked silent as well.

Beside him, his maidservant Bethac, holding the red-faced infant close to her bosom, suffered no such affliction. She blurted out, “Who are ye? Where did ye come from?”

The wild-eyed lass didn’t answer. She scrambled to her feet and tugged down the hem of her leine. His leine, he amended.

“What the devil?” he barked.

Startled, the bairn resumed its wailing, filling the chamber with a long-winded lament.

Morgan’s plot to antagonize his captives by imprisoning them next to a loud and restless infant had proved a double-edged sword. The soul-piercing cries had kept Morgan awake as well. So in frustration, he’d charged in to the chamber to insist that if the nurses couldn’t stop the infernal keening, they should take the bairn downstairs.

When he first heard the banging at the window, he assumed it was a loose shutter stirred by the wind. The last thing he expected to see when he snatched open the shutter was Jenefer, the comely lass he’d imprisoned…in the chamber next door.

She looked feral and breathless in the firelight, her eyes crackling with life, her hair dripping like honey over her tempting shoulders. One of those shoulders was dangerously bare where his oversized leine hung off the side.

But more dangerous than her beauty was the fact she was standing close to his son and his heir. Too close.

“How did ye get in here?” he demanded.

The bairn arched his back and let out a particularly shrill cry. Bethac handed him off to the wet nurse, Cicilia. She tried to quiet him, encouraging him to take suckle at her breast, to no avail. The infant turned his head away and screamed all the louder.

Then, before Morgan could send the servants and bairn from the chamber for their own safety, the warrior lass reached out and seized the child from the mortified nurse’s hands.

The breath caught in Morgan’s chest. His heart hammered at his ribs. He froze. He didn’t want to incite the lass to some unspeakable act. But his gaze drifted to the open window behind her. For one horrifying moment, he imagined…

His mouth opened and closed, but he could find no words to prevent her.

He’d thought his son meant nothing to him.

He’d blamed the infant for his wife’s death.

But now that the bairn’s life hung in the balance…

The lass didn’t seem to notice his panic. She was holding the bairn, his bairn, awkwardly before her in her two hands.

“What ails you?” she demanded, scowling down at the child. “You’ve got food and drink, aye?”

To his surprise, the infant stared back at her, as if he were listening.

“There’s a roof o’er your head,” she pointed out, “and you’re bundled against the cold.”

Relief came gradually as Morgan realized Jenefer meant the bairn no harm. Soon, to everyone’s astonishment, as the lass continued speaking to him in words an infant couldn’t possibly understand, the lad’s whimpers softened.

Morgan glanced at Bethac, who looked just as puzzled as he. But as he continued listening, he realized, despite Jenefer’s sweet and tender tones, her words were as sharp as Spanish steel. The wicked firebrand was speaking ill of him…to his own son.

“Never mind that nasty brute’s bellowing,” she confided to the bairn. “He’s a horse’s arse who thinks shouting makes a man of him.”

“What?” Morgan demanded, almost certain he heard Bethac choke back a laugh.

The bairn had quieted now and was focusing intently on Jenefer as she clucked her tongue. “’Tis what comes when you’re raised by barbarians and dunderheaded fools.”

“What the—”

“There,” she said with a nod of satisfaction as the bairn studied her. “All you needed was a kind word from a good Lowland lass, wasn’t it? You come home with me, and I’ll see you get the care you deser—”

“Nay!” Morgan shouted, suddenly possessed of a strange possessiveness.

The bairn fussed at Morgan’s outburst, then quickly settled back down in Jenefer’s hands.

“Why should you care?” Jenefer asked, giving him a black look. “You Highlanders clearly don’t mind letting babes wail at all hours of the night.”

Bethac gasped.

“That’s absurd,” Morgan said in his defense, angry that he felt he had to defend himself. “I came in to send them downstairs.”

“Oh aye,” she sneered, “send them away so the noise won’t disturb your precious sleep. But the babe is clearly upset. Didn’t you wonder why? Maybe it’s swaddled too tightly. Or hungry. Or soiled. Or maybe,” she added cagily, “it doesn’t like being in a castle where it doesn’t belong.”

“Enough!” Morgan erupted, then glanced at Bethac. “Take him back.”

Bethac stepped forward. Jenefer shrugged and passed the bairn into the older woman’s arms. In the next instant, the whimpering resumed.

Morgan scowled at Bethac. “Can ye not keep the bairn quiet?”

Bethac tried jostling him, stroking his back, and even holding him out in front of her as Jenefer had, to no avail.

She passed him to the wet nurse, who tried once again to offer him her breast. The bairn’s cries only grew in strength and volume, making the nurse more and more distressed.

“Oh, for the love of Freya. Give him to me,” Jenefer said in disgust, holding out her hands.

The nurse looked up at Morgan with uncertainty.

Morgan fumed. It was aggravating to give the cocky Lowland lass the satisfaction of being right. And it was foolhardy to put his heir into the hands of the enemy.

Still, what choice did he have? He couldn’t even hear himself think over the wailing. Besides, if she attempted some foul deed, he could snatch up the fireplace poker in the blink of an eye and do her significant harm.

“Fine,” he decided.

To his chagrin, once Jenefer cradled the bairn in one arm against her waist, he silenced.

“He seems to like ye, Miss,” the nurse ventured.

Jenefer frowned down at the bairn, as if she doubted the lad’s good judgment.

Morgan doubted the lad’s good judgment. The lass might have calmed the bairn, but she was clearly a bad sort. How the hell had she escaped his room? And how had she ended up on the ledge?

“How came ye to this chamber?” he growled.

Jenefer gave him a smoky-eyed, one-sided smile. “Maybe I am a ghost, after all,” she slyly murmured, “and I floated through the air.”

He knew better. But rather than ask her questions she’d answer with lies, he swept past her to the window and peered out. A rope of knotted bedsheets flapped in the wind from the adjoining window.

He was so astonished, he almost hit his head on the window when he pulled it back in.

“Ye climbed o’er from the other window,” he guessed.

She gave him a cocky smile as she nodded.

“Are ye daft, lass?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “I made it, didn’t I?”

Suddenly, he looked at the beautiful, fiery maid with new eyes. He’d already experienced her hotheadedness and strong will. But now he saw she was clever. Brave. Daring. And brilliant. The combination made her a formidable adversary indeed.

“Someone had to do something about the infernal noise,” she explained. Glancing down at the bairn, who stared back at her with inquisitive eyes, she murmured, “What’s its name?”

“What?” he grunted.

“The babe. What’s its name?”

Morgan stared blankly at his son.

When he didn’t answer, Jenefer turned to Bethac.

Bethac worried her hands together and knitted her brows. “He hasn’t got a name yet, Miss.”

“What? Hasn’t he been baptized?” Jenefer glanced back at Morgan. “Whose babe is it?”

Guilt and shame tied Morgan’s tongue.

Cicilia began to answer. “Why, Miss, do ye not know? ’Tis the son o’ the lai—”

“The Lady Alicia!” he broke in before she could finish. He didn’t dare give Jenefer any more leverage over him. The lass might appear to have a way with infants. But if she found out this one was his son, he had no doubt she’d bargain with the bairn’s life to gain her freedom.

Jenefer smirked in disgust. “And where is this Lady Alicia, that she makes no effort to pacify her own babe?”

His eyes flattened. He’d tell her the brutal truth. That should shut her up. “Lady Alicia is d—” To his consternation, his voice caught on the word. It was too difficult to say.

Jenefer’s brow creased, and she turned to Bethac for an answer.

Bethac’s face fell. She murmured, “I’m afraid she’s no longer with us, Miss. She died givin’ birth to this wee lad.”