Chapter 28

Wren's POV

I followed the maid through one walk and then another, into a smaller court that was quieter than the rest of the house. My legs didn't feel properly joined to me. I had my hands clenched so hard my nails hurt, and the closer we came to the door at the end, the louder my heart went.

The maid went in under the heavy curtain to announce me. I stood outside with my head bowed. But the curtain had caught on its hook as she passed, and through the gap at its edge I could see in.

The old woman from the side hall, Mistress Dunne, was walking up and down with a bundle in yellow wrappings, humming. The bundle was crying. A small red face, screwed up and furious, twisting in her arms.

I knew that cry.

My hands came open at my sides. For a moment my knees weren't there. That was Sol. He never cried like that. He was the easy one, the one who slept, who was always the first to stop. And now he was screaming himself raw in a stranger's arms, and it was my doing. I had put him in the grass.

Every part of me wanted to go through that curtain. I bit down on my lip and stayed where I was, and watched him through the gap as if I could hold him with my eyes. Tears came up, and I forced them back.

There was a man in the room as well. Young, tall, in a dark green coat, frowning, reaching out to take the pup from her.

The Prince. The prince with the riding crop, from the lane behind the Hale house, who had sent me to the Green Lamp in his own carriage.

"Highness, don't, not yet," Dunne said. "He won't settle at night now without you as it is. You didn't close your eyes last night. If he gets it into his head in the daytime as well that nobody will do but you, what then? You can't keep this up."

It went through me like cold water.

Sol wouldn't sleep at night for anyone but him? A prince of the blood had walked the floor all night to quiet him?

And then I understood it, and it hurt in a way I hadn't been ready for. He had taken Sol for his own. Why else would a man like him go to such lengths for a foundling with no name?

I ought to have been glad. Grateful. Sol had someone who would put up with that much for him. But the better he was to Sol, the deeper he would get, and if he ever learned the truth, or if I tried to take my son out of this house, I didn't know what he would do. I had only meant to get in and see that Sol was safe, and then find a way to get him out. I could see now it was not going to be anything like that simple.

I was frightened and relieved and confused all at once, and I couldn't sort one from another.

"What are you standing out there for?" Dunne's voice came sharp through the curtain. "Can't you hear him? Get in here!"

I put my feelings away as best I could, smoothed a front that didn't need smoothing, drew a breath, and went in with my head down.

I didn't dare look about. I let myself have one glance at the yellow bundle, still hiccuping, and my heart turned over. Then I turned and curtsied to the Prince.

"Your Highness."

"Never mind that." His eyes passed over me and went straight back to the pup, and the frown stayed.

I saw from Dunne's face that I had done it wrong. I had greeted the master before I so much as looked at the child.

"Well? What are you waiting for?" She thrust the bundle at me. "Don't you see the state he's in? Have you no sense at all? Take him. Quiet him. Try him."

* * *

My face burned, but I didn't dare argue. I held out my arms, and they were shaking, and she put him into them.

I almost wept right there. I made myself bend my head over him and settle him properly in the crook of my arm.

"Hush now. Hush, little one. Hush, hush."

I said it low, in the singsong he had always liked best.

He stopped. He went quite still, and looked up at me with his eyes swimming.

For one breath he only looked. Then his mouth went square and he let out a howl that was nothing like before. He cried the way a child cries when he has been hurt and has finally found the one person he can tell. Tears ran out of him. His whole small body shook with it.

He knew me.

"Oh, dear," Dunne said. "You too, then." She sighed and held out her hands. "Give him here, before he does himself harm."

I turned my shoulder before I could think and held him closer. "Mistress, please let me try. He's hungry. He wants feeding."

"I know he's hungry. Everybody knows he's hungry. He won't suck for anyone."

"Let me try." I said it quietly, but I didn't let go.

My breasts had been aching since morning. I wanted nothing more than to feed him. But I couldn't make my hands go to the laces. The Prince was standing a few paces away and hadn't moved, and I could feel him watching, his eyes going between the front of my dress and the screaming child.

"What is the matter with you?" Dunne said. "He's crying himself sick and you stand there!" She pointed at a narrow bed against the wall with a cushion on it. "Sit down and feed him!"

Then she saw that the Prince hadn't moved, and she faltered. "Highness... wouldn't you like to rest in the other room?"

"No." He said it without any expression at all. "I want to see for myself whether she can."

Dunne's mouth opened, and closed. Whatever she thought of a master standing by while the nurse fed, she didn't say it. She bowed her head and gave me a look that would have curdled milk.

My face was scalding. Then I thought of Sol, three days hungry, and I stopped caring.

I went to the bed and sat down with my back very straight and turned my shoulder to the room, so that my back and Sol's small body hid us from anyone looking. I took a breath, and pulled the laces loose.

He smelled me before anything else. All at once he was wrapped in the one smell he had been crying for these three days, and his nose worked, quick and frantic, and the crying stopped as if a door had shut on it. His eyes were closed. He pushed his face against me, rooting, and found me, and latched on, and pulled so hard it hurt.

The room went silent except for him. Quick, greedy swallows, and now and then a small grunt in his throat.

* * *

Dunne's face lit up as if somebody had opened a shutter. She looked at the Prince to share it.

"Highness..." she said, and her voice changed partway through the word.

There was a short cough from where he stood. When he spoke, his voice was flat and even.

"Keep her. And keep two more as well, in case."

"Yes, Highness."

I didn't look up. Still, as he turned toward the door, he passed close enough at the edge of my sight that I saw the tip of his ear had gone red.

Sol drank until he was full, and then lay heavy and content in my arm, and every little while he opened his eyes to look up at me. After a while he smiled. Two small dimples came and went in his cheeks.

Dunne bent over us and couldn't take her eyes off him. "Oh, look at the young master. Isn't he a picture? It does your heart good just to look at him."

I smiled too. I bent and rubbed my cheek, very lightly, against the soft hair on top of my son's head.

"Yes," I said. "He's the most beautiful baby I've ever seen."