The Concubine (Unexpected Circumstances 5)

Hadley seemed to mull this over for a while.

“That could be some time,” she finally said. “Children take time to bear, and if the first child is not a boy, I would need to bear another one.”

I agreed, for there was no denying it. It could be many years before Hadley was available for marriage.

“He would be wed to another in that time,” she said quietly.

“Possibly,” I said, “but he is young and not looking for marriage now. He may very well wait for a woman of your station.”

“Is my station truly so great now?” Hadley asked. “A knight waiting for me does not seem possible.”

“A prince taking my hand in marriage did not seem possible either,” I said. “It is a strange thing how stations I always believed to be enduring can change.”

“I suppose we should consider ourselves favored,” Hadley said.

As I thought upon her words, I felt my mouth turn up in a wry smile. There were probably many who would consider us lucky to have been elevated from our previous stations. When I had been a mere handmaid, I believed the lives of the nobles to be a simple thing, especially the royals. They rarely had to lift a finger, and everything was brought to them when they asked for it. Now I knew better though I would trade none of it. To desert my station would mean to not have my Branford, and being his was worth the difficulties that came with being his wife. Still, I did not think the word favored fit us.

“I am not so sure about that,” I responded.

And that is when I realized being of royalty would never guarantee an ease of life.

Chapter 3—Moderately Mollify

Branford did not come to our rooms that night, but I learned from Dunstan that he did not return to Hadley either. It wasn’t until morning when I found him again. He was in the practice fields with his men and eventually acknowledged me when I went around the fence and right up to him. He dismissed me almost as soon as I arrived and did not return to our rooms until late that night, either. I tried not to think much of it, for there were times when he needed to be on his own and work his thoughts out in solitude, and I was not surprised this was one of those times.

The next day, a baby girl blessed the Sawyer family. Ida and Parnell named her Emma, and I accompanied Sunniva on a journey to meet the new child as Branford stayed behind to look after Camden. The king’s health had taken a turn for the worse, and he was not fit to travel. He would wait and meet his grandchild in a fortnight when she would be brought to Silverhelm.

If the king lived that long.

The child was beautiful with bright blue eyes to match her father’s. Though I could not help but feel the pang in my stomach and longing in my heart for a child of my own—a child of Branford’s—I also could not stop myself from smiling at the joy in Ida’s face as she held her daughter to her breast. Parnell stood quietly behind them both with his hand resting upon his wife’s shoulder and a look of awe in his eye.

We were gone for only a handful of days, but when we returned to Silverhelm, Branford immediately announced he had to journey north and took his leave of us. When I asked him about it, he shook his head at me and refused to give me any details. He was already prepared to go.

He did not even wait until morning to leave.

When he returned, his mood was most foul, and he immediately began barking at servants left and right in ways he had not in quite some time. When I tried to speak with him about it, he snapped at me as well before storming out of our rooms.

Again, he did not ret

urn in the night, and Dunstan informed me he was with the men on the practice field so late, he had decided to sleep in the barracks.

Even as winter deepened and came at us with biting winds, Branford began to spend his days fighting in the practice fields and teaching some of the younger men who would replace our lost soldiers and guards. He would stay there until it was quite late, often sleeping in the barracks and only returning to our rooms when he knew I should be sleeping. As the days passed, his beard grew, but when I offered to shave him, he said he did not have the time and suggested we do it another day.

As I tried to respect his wishes, I felt my body grow as cold as the look in his eyes when he gazed upon me. I no longer saw the passion he had so readily displayed or the desire for me that had so often consumed him.

He had not held me since the night we spent in the kennels.

I tried to convince myself that this was understandable—he detested what he was forced to do and knew I wanted to be the one to bear his child—but to be left sitting in our rooms alone at night weighed heavily upon me.

I felt more a failure as his wife now than I had the first week of our marriage.

It was not just my apparent inability to give him what he needed most, but he had avoided my company so completely that I had not even the opportunity to do those simple things I had done for him every day. He took his meals elsewhere when he ate at all, and his hair and his beard both grew longer than they had been since our marriage. He no longer asked me to read to him, as had been our habit since I had first learned the letters, and he no longer lay his fingers at the top of my head to stroke my hair.

He was certainly not spending his nights with me. Indeed, as the time passed, he barely spoke to me at all. Times when we were to appear together, he would smile at the other court members, take my hand on the dance floor, and sit with me through official dinners, but as soon as he was able, he would take his leave.

I tried to give him the space he seemed to require, hoping that as soon as Hadley was with child, he would stop berating himself and come back to me. I went to our bed alone at night, waited for him for some time, and then would end up falling asleep alone. If he was there when I woke, he would leave before breakfast was brought to us and even before I could heat water for his tea.

When he spoke, his sentences were short and succinct.