Far from it.
Even though the day following the storm had dawned bright and remained so, the appearance of the sun and the rise in temperature had turned the roads into soup and the rivers into torrents. The snow was melting and the water runoff was great., More than once, the horses had been up to their knees in muck.
But that didn’t stop them.
Andreas was trying to be thoughtful of Gavriella and not push too hard but, as it ended up, she was the one pushing them and setting the pace. She was heavily clad in warm clothing, so she was protected against the temperatures as she pushed her sturdy horse through swollen streams and muddy roads like a madwoman. There was a frenzy to her movements, a desperation.
She had a son to retrieve.
It came to the point where the men were simply trying to keep up with her.
Andreas let her lead the way, mostly because there was no way to stop her, and it occurred to him how much the separation from the baby must have hurt her. He thought back to the moment he’d first met her, how hysterical and sad she had seemed. Guarded. She’s been rude and planted behind a shield of her own making. Given what he knew now, he understood completely, but the fact that she was rushing almost recklessly to collect her son told him much, much more.
How much she had been hurting.
It also began to occur to him what a rational nature she had because she didn’t view the child as something horrific, a reminder of the worst moment of her life. She didn’t equate him to the violent and vile act of his conception and Andreas thought that was quite remarkable. As a knight, he’d been trained to keep emotions out of the violence perpetrated in battle. An emotional fighter was often a man with a death wish. But a woman with that kind of capacity for reason and understanding of a violent moment in her life was remarkable, indeed. With every moment that passed, Andreas was more and more impressed by her.
And the group pushed on.
In truth, no one said a word about Gavriella wanting to push that hard. They simply followed her. When they reached spots in the road that seemed impassable, someone always found a way around it. Because the days were shorter, the sun set much earlier than normal and evening came beneath what was, strangely enough, called a wolf moon. It happened in January every year and was thought, by some, to have been called a wolf moon because the wolves seemed to bay at it more than any other moon.
Andreas thought it was rather appropriate.
That big, bright moon illuminated the countryside so they could see their way into Kelso. It had been dark for a few hours by the time they reached the border village with its great abbey, a soaring icon of stability and religion against the night sky. Andreas had been here, several times, and it occurred to him that he should probably send word to his Uncle Thomas about the situation since Edenside was his wife’s charity.
Mae de Wolfe, Thomas’ wife, had taken charge of the charity right after a scandal that had seen those in charge of the children selling them off for most unsavory purposes in most instances. She had taken a charity rocked by pain and scandal and mistrust and had made it into something fine and good.
When he first heard that Gavriella’s infant had been taken there, he knew the child would be well-tended. He’d tried to tell Gavriella that before they left that morning, but she had been too preoccupied with the idea of seeing her son soon. Until the advent of Andreas, it was something she could have never even dreamed of. A distant father, a dark situation, and no hope.
Andreas had once called her a new day. What he hadn’t realized was that he was her new day, too.
The village of Kelso was quiet at this time of night and Andreas forced Gavriella to slow down so she wouldn’t awaken the entire village by thundering through. Reluctantly, she did, and Andreas took the lead, directing the party through the village and to the eastern side, which had been heavily burned by the Scots. The road continued all the way to Berwick, but the Edenside Foundling Home was just a few minutes out of town along this very path.
Andreas could see it up ahead.
Gavriella, of course, had never been to the home, so she didn’t know they were there until Andreas reined his horse to a halt in front of it.
In fact, it didn’t look like a foundling home at all.
Edenside had been a fortified tower house many years ago before the church took it over. There was a big, round tower with tiny windows towards the top and the entire complex was surrounded by a masonry wall that was quite tall, having been built and reinforced by the Earl of Northumbria. There was a massive gate in the wall, heavy oak and fortified by thick iron strips. As Brodie ordered the escort to spread out and dispatched a few scouts to comb the area, Andreas helped Gavriella off her horse and, along with Will and Gareth, approached the gate.
There was a big iron bell attached to the wall next to the gate. It was meant to be used if a child was dropped off, but Andreas rang the bell loudly. As the echoes sounded off the walls, off the top of the tower, he looked at Gavriella, standing next to him.
He was holding her hand, but she was squeezing his hard enough to cut off circulation. Even through his gloves, he could feel it.
Her nerves had the better of her.
“Do not fret,” he said softly. “We shall have the child back in no time.”
She looked at him, her expression strained even though she was trying to smile. “I know,” she said. “I simply… God, Dray, you have no concept of how much it tore me apart when my father ordered my son away. He was so young… only a few weeks old. I know I should have hated the babe and I should have wanted him to disappear because of the violence he reminded me of but, as I told you, he was innocent. He was a victim as much as I was. But I will admit that when I first realized I had conceived, I prayed that I would lose the pregnancy.”
He squeezed her hand. “That is understandable,” he said softly. “What changed your mind?”
Her smile turned real. A soft, gentle gesture. “When I first felt him move,” she said. “Something changed at that moment. I am not sure why, but it did. When he was born, it wasn’t as difficult as I had been told. He came right out and when I looked in his face, I understood the meaning of true love. I… I’ve never really had that. Someone to love me, I mean. Not even my father does. But Storm… he was all mine and he loved me, and I loved him.”
“Storm?”
She nodded. “That is his name,” she said. “He was born on a stormy April morning, so I named him Storm. Mayhap someday, he will harness the wind as a great knight.”
Andreas smiled. “He will be raised as a de Wolfe,” he said quietly. “Storm de Wolfe. Does this displease you?”
She shook her head, gazing up at him. “Nay,” she said. “It is the greatest blessing I could ask for. That you are willing to treat him as your own. Truly, Dray… your compassion is astounding. I am humbled in the face of it.”
He lifted her hand, kissing it. “It is I who am humbled,” he murmured. “And you have someone to love you in me. Don’t you realize that?”
She nodded, her free hand coming up to touch his face, so sweetly and so tenderly. “I do,” she said. “But I still think I am dreaming.”
“If you are, then we are dreaming together.”
She grinned just as a small door within the gate lurched open and a small, wimpled face appeared.