Lili and Sophie pledge their aid

“Well, ladies,” Sophie said, “I think we did a good job on this one.”

“Isn’t he delicious?” Lili agreed.

“If I had known it was this easy to produce a gorgeous man, I would have made a few for myself years ago.”

Lili snickered. “You would have had to make them twenty years ago, if you’d wanted them ripe enough to eat now!”

Angharat stood quietly by, blushing.

“I like them when they’re still a little tart and crunchy,” Sophie said. “And you like yours overripe and old and wrinkly, Lil!”

“Egelric is not old and wrinkly!” Lili protested. “Nor overripe!”

Sophie gave Lili’s waist a pinch. “Not even a little bit soft?”

“Not even at all!” Lili said. “Just fit to eat!”

“Not even a little bit sour still?” Sophie asked, reaching around to threaten a pinch to Lili’s behind.

Lili laughed and slapped her hand away. “No! Now stop it, Soph! You’re scaring Ana.”

Sophie spun around and pretended to repine. “How many times have you said that to me in the last week?” she groaned. “Poor Ana! She’ll never get married now, after listening to us go on for a week.”

The three girls had spent the last week at Sir Baldwin’s castle awaiting the birth of Lady Affrais’s second baby. The young gentleman had been expected for the end of the month, so his early arrival threatened to cut short the girls’ plans to make the most of jest, candy, and dancing before the season of Advent began.

Lili was particularly disappointed, for she had a little secret that, if told, would have made clear to Sophie the urgency of making the most of their time together. Soon Lili would not be able to make the long ride of nearly two hours to Sophie’s house. Perhaps she would never be quite so free again.

Nevertheless, Lili was not unhappy. She so longed for a baby, both for herself and to give to her husband, and she had not had to wait quite a year since the death of her little son to know that she would be having another.

It seemed to her that the moment she had admitted to Egelric her shameful suspicion of Iylaine, when she herself had finally seen how unlikely it was, a sort of curse had been lifted from her. Her pain that day had only been the ordinary backache of sitting too long sewing. She had not known it then, but she was already blessed.

She had not yet told her husband, but although she had tried to hide her symptoms, she thought the canny old devil might know her well enough by now to have suspicions of his own. Still, she would keep her secret as long as she could: it would be a great joy to tell in the future, but in the meantime it gave her a delightful feeling of self-​importance, and Lili meant to savor it.

Her self-​importance was even greater here at Sir Baldwin’s home, where, though she was only nineteen years old, she was the oldest lady in residence.

She also was the only one of the four ladies with a real, fully-​grown, delicious, devilish husband at that perfect stage of ripeness. Sir Baldwin was a dear, of course, but he was a little too polite and effete for her tastes. Sophie’s husband Sir Leofwine was quite the opposite, to the point of being a boor. Angharat, of course, had no husband at all.

Thus Lili had had a week of fun, bossing the younger girls a bit, smiling to herself over Affrais’s enormous belly, flirting in French with Sir Baldwin, and of course indulging in jests, candy, and dancing until she went to bed sick every night—and missed her husband intensely until the morning.

“I think we’ve said very nice things about our husbands,” Lili protested.

“You and I might think so,” Sophie said. “I am not certain that everything we said was fit for maiden ears.”

Angharat shook her head, blushing still pinker. “Oh, no!”

“She doesn’t even know whether she likes them soft or hard, sweet or sour,” Sophie continued. “But look at her blush! I think she would like to try out a few to see what she likes.”

“Try out a few what?” Sir Baldwin asked softly as he came in. “Babies?”

Sophie laughed in delight at his innocence. “It may be, but she can’t have this one! I want him for myself.”

Baldwin smiled and bent over the crib. “No, this one is reserved for his mama, and right now she’s wanting him.”

“Ach, no!” Sophie cried. “You must give me another one just as handsome if you’re going to take this one away from me.”

“Ask your husband, Sophie.”

“I insist! Leof is only ever going to give me brown-​eyed babies, and I don’t want pretty green eyes like yours and mine to go to waste.”

“That is all the more reason not to, Soph,” Baldwin said. “If you give him a green-​eyed baby, he’ll be storming my castle within the hour.”

“I shall tell him it was my Uncle Brandt gave it me,” Sophie giggled.

“Sophie!” Lili scolded. “Your own uncle!”

“Because the fact that he’s a priest didn’t bother you at all!” Sophie cried.

“That too!” Lili laughed with her.

“Ladies, ladies,” Baldwin sighed. “Aren’t you tired? It’s almost dawn.”

“Somehow I’m never tired after a baby comes,” Lili said. “It’s so interesting.”

“Interesting!” Sophie groaned.

“Isn’t it, Ana?” Lili asked the baby’s young aunt.

“It’s… a wonderful thing, I suppose,” Angharat said dazedly.

“Ah! She wants one, too,” Sophie said. “Don’t you have a spare brother, Baldwin?”

“My father only had the two sons. Sorry, ladies. Excuse us gentlemen.”

“What are you calling this one, Baldwin?” Sophie asked before he could turn to go back into the bedroom.

“I was thinking Crumb,” Baldwin smiled.

“Button, Nubbin, and now Crumb!” Lili laughed. “What’s next? Mote?”

“Come back in a few years and we shall see. Excuse us, please.”

“Speck?” Sophie proposed after the gentlemen had gone back to the new mother.

“Fleck?” Lili countered.

Sophie sniffed. “I think a speck is smaller than a fleck.”

“I am not certain about that at all!” Lili huffed. “And my English is better than yours, so!”

“I don’t think there’s a difference,” Angharat said.

Neither Sophie nor Lili seemed particularly pleased that she was unwilling to come down on the side of one or the other and make at least one of them happy.

“Well, anyway,” Sophie sighed and flounced over to the couch. “That’s over. I shall be dog tired any minute now and fall over snoring.”

“It was very interesting,” Lili said. She went to sit before the hearth in the most fetchingly careless position she could assume, given her weariness. “I think second babies are much easier than first.”

Angharat went quietly to the other couch.

“They are when they’re coming,” Sophie grumbled. “But once they’re here, it simply means that you now have a squalling baby and meanwhile a screaming toddler running around.”

Lili was silent. In her case it was not to be so.

Angharat came to her rescue. “I don’t think he’ll have green eyes at all,” she said. “Did you see them? Nubbin’s eyes were already blue-​green when she was born. This baby’s eyes were lighter and duller.”

“What color eyes could he have?” Lili asked. “What color were your parents’?”

“Our parents both had green eyes. But Baldwin’s father had hazel eyes like Lord Hingwar. And the King and practically everybody else in that family.”

“So his mother had green eyes?”

“And still does,” Angharat said. “She’s still alive.”

“So perhaps baby Crumb will have hazel eyes,” Lili mused. “Or only another color of green.”

“What about you, Ana?” Sophie asked. “We need to find you a green-​eyed man too. Lili and I are already out of luck with our boring brown-​eyed husbands.”

“Egelric is not boring!” Lili corrected.

“Oh, bother!” Sophie sighed. “Don’t say a word against Sir Egelric, or Squire Lili will have your tongue. His eyes are boring, sweetie.”

“They are not! They are dark and brown and devilish and delicious.”

“If you’ve been licking his eyeballs, we need to have a talk. I think you misunderstood what he was asking.”

“My uncle wants me to marry Lord Windhlith’s brother,” Angharat interrupted with a soft-​spoken insistence.

“What?” Sophie cried. “Who’s this?”

“Never met him,” Lili said, as if that were proof of his uninterestingness.

“He’s Lord Windhlith’s younger brother, that’s all,” Angharat said. “He’s twenty-​four and very dark and rather short, and I don’t like him. And he lives a two days’ ride from Thorhold, and even farther from you here,” she whimpered. “Perhaps we would never meet again. Perhaps I would never see Freya again.”

“Now, that’s simply nonsense!” Lili cried. “We won’t allow that. We need you to marry someone right in this valley, so you can stay with your friends forever, and we can come and help one another’s babies be born, and when they get old they can marry one another, and everything!”

“You must marry someone who lives precisely midway between Lili and me,” Sophie commanded. “That way we can meet at your house.”

“I want to live close to Freya,” Angharat said.

“But no one lives all the way out here except for Baldwin’s tenants. You need to marry at least a gentleman, if not a knight or a lord.”

“But who is there?” Lili asked.

All three girls were, exceptionally, silent for a long moment.

“Are they all married in the valley?” Sophie asked.

“There’s Eadwyn,” Lili said. “The Duke’s squire. He will soon be a knight.”

“But he’s Eada’s brother,” Angharat protested. “That would be like marrying my step-​uncle, or something.”

“Well, there’s Stein,” Sophie proposed. “He’s cute if you like pale men.”

“But he’s probably going away to Norway,” Lili interrupted, “and that’s much farther than Wind-​wherever. I know whom you can marry!”

“Whom?” Angharat and Sophie asked together.

“Ethelwyn! Egelric’s steward. Then you can come live with me!”

“A steward!” Sophie cried. “I protest!”

“He’s not only a steward. He’s the second son of old Lord Dyrnemoras’s second son. And his father was a knight. And so!”

“Then why isn’t he a knight?” Sophie grumbled.

“Because he was very ill when he was a young man and was too weak for many years to ride and fight. But he read and wrote instead, and now he is quite clever.”

“He doesn’t need to be clever,” Sophie said, “but he does need to be cute, which I shall grant you that he is. However, he is also very old, and he—”

“He’s only thirty!” Lili interrupted.

“That’s practically twice Ana’s age. And he’s insufferable! He’s so vain he thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow, and he’s grouchy besides.”

“That’s only because he doesn’t like you, Soph.”

Sophie laughed. “Why? Because I told him I didn’t know whether I liked him better coming or going?”

“I don’t think he would have understood what you meant if you hadn’t pinched his behind.”

“That is the best way to make a man understand!” Sophie hooted.

Lili hopped to her feet. “Well, that’s that,” she said to Angharat. “There’s Bertie, too, but he’s a peasant’s son.” Lili had momentarily forgot that her delicious, devilish husband was no more than this. “You must marry Stein or Eadwyn or Ethelwyn. All of the other suitable men who are your age or older are married.”

“Or,” Sophie said, “you can find a man who will come here to live rather than taking you away.”

“I don’t know how to find a man,” Angharat whimpered.

“Bother!” Sophie sighed. “We shall help you, silly. Shan’t we, Lil?”

“That we shall!” Lili agreed. “It will be almost as much fun as finding one for ourselves.”

“Not that much fun, I hope,” Sophie snickered. “As I recall, you found yours by sneaking into his bed.”

“And you found yours by inviting him into yours!”

“It worked, though. Too well!” Sophie groaned.

“Perfectly well,” Lili sighed happily. “Never you fear, Ana. Next year this time, we’ll be sitting around considering the color of your own baby’s eyes. My word of honor!”