Egelric is poorly treated

Egelric did not know by what miracle his boys had not heard his arrival, unless it was by grace of their own high-​pitched chattering.

They were all in the hall: Wulf flirting with Cat; Gils explaining something to Flann with his typical, mind-​numbing attention to trivial detail; Lili plucking softly at the strings of her harp; and his new baby last of all, kicking her feet in a cradle pushed up against the cold fireplace.

Only Iylaine and her husband and son lacked, and he had stopped briefly to see them when he and the King had parted ways on the road.

And Finn. He never forgot to think of Finn.

“Who’s first?”

Everyone claimed that right, but only Gils offered a justification for it.

“I am first,” he exclaimed, “because I almost got killed!”

“I heard about that!” Egelric said. “Something about how you saved a dog from a vicious Wyn?”

“No!” he laughed. “Wyn saved me from a vicious dog! What happened to your shirt? You got blood on you!”

“That’s because I didn’t have you to save me from a vicious Wyn.”

“What did happen to you?” Cat asked.

“A round of kisses first,” Egelric said, “a round of questions after.”

He kissed Wulf and kissed the girls, while Lili and her twenty years of wisdom waited to be kissed last so that she could be kissed best.

How dull everything had seemed since he could not laugh wickedly over it with Lili!

“Miss me?” he whispered.

“Did I?” she cried. “Forty days is long enough. Sixty is too-​too much!”

“You are telling me?”

“But what happened to you, you old devil? You have blood all down the front of you.” She wiped at the blood on his tunic and recoiled when she found it still damp. “Did you get in a fight first thing after you came home?”

“I told you all—I didn’t have this pup here to protect me from a vicious Wyn!”

“You got in a fight with Wyn?” Cat asked.

“I went to thank the lad for saving this pup, and instead of saying ‘You’re welcome’ he socks me in the nose!”

“Ach, no!” Lili cried.

“And gave me a lecture about how to raise my boys. I’ll be damned if that’s not the first time anyone ever told me I needed to put the fear of ‘Dog’ into someone! Hear that, boy?”

Egelric laughed, though it was more from his happiness at being reunited with his family than it was at the humor of Ethelwyn’s reaction.

The sour mood and even the punch in the face might have been amusing, but in addition to criticizing the boys’ behavior, Ethelwyn had said a few rather unpleasant things about Egelric’s young cousins. Even if they had been true, Egelric had never heard Ethelwyn employ such unsavory words when describing women who were ladies.

“And he hit you?” Cat asked dazedly.

“Not necessarily in that order.”

“You must forgive him,” Flann murmured.

“Ah! Must I?” he chuckled. He had wondered which would be the one to fall for Wyn.

“He has been feeling ill last night and today.”

“Are you certain of that? Wyn thinks he’s falling ill all the time and actually goes through with it almost never.”

“He had a fever when I felt him last night.”

“Ach, I think he always gets feverish whenever ladies ‘feel him’,” Egelric chuckled, already half-​distracted by the sight of his baby daughter after a month of absence.

“And then he slapped her!” Gils announced.

“Whisht!” Catan scolded.

“He didn’t mean it,” Flann said to the boy. “I only startled him.”

Egelric frowned, sweet baby face notwithstanding. He had left Ethelwyn to watch over the ladies and the children, and other than saving Gils from the dog, it was beginning to appear that he must have been a poor caretaker. Speaking ill of ladies was one thing, and punching one’s employer in the nose was bad enough, but actually slapping his cousin was something Egelric could not tolerate under any circumstances—even if she had been ‘feeling’ something besides his forehead, which he would not quite put past Catan at least, if not Flann.

He told himself he would have a talk with his steward later, but for now there was this baby face: sweet, insofar as any face containing his mother’s mouth and eyes could be sweet to him. But if anyone could make those features sweet, he thought it would be this granddaughter of hers.

Then, as he brought her closer to smell how sweet she was, little Jehanne proved just how much of her grandmother she truly had in her. Egelric yelped and drew back his head.

“Did she spit up on you?” Wulf laughed.

“The devil! What did I do to deserve such treatment today? She just socked me in the nose!”