Page 117 of The Guardian
“That was to comfort Sìleas,” Ian said—and ignored the snorts from the others.
“If the two of ye have been unhappy here,” Connor said, “you’ve done a good job of fooling everyone.”
They’d been too happy. Ian feared they’d made the faeries jealous.
“Ian,” his mother said from doorway. “Ye can come up now.”
She stepped aside to let him run by her, and he took the stairs three at a time. When he entered their bedchamber, Sìleas was propped up on pillows, flanked by Ilysa and Dina.
His wife looked tired but radiant.Praise God!He never wanted to go through this again.
Ilysa moved aside so he could take her place next to the bed. “We’ll leave ye alone,” she said. “Just call if ye need me.”
“I’ll say good-bye, because Gòrdan will be coming to fetch me soon.” Dina patted her own expanding belly and gave them a broad wink. “He’s a very…attentive… husband.”
When Ian asked Gòrdan to watch over Dina, he never suspected he was fostering a lasting union. It appeared to be a love match as well. Having a steady man like Gòrdan had settled Dina, and Dina added a spark to Gòrdan. The shouting matches between Dina and Gòrdan’s mother, however, were the stuff of legends.
When the door closed behind the two women, Ian brushed his fingers against Sìleas’s cheek. “Are ye all right,a chuisle mo chroí?”
“I am,” she said.
“Ach, ye sounded as if ye were being tortured.”
“I was,” she said, but when she smiled up at him, Ian’s heart did a turn in his chest. Sìleas had an inner glow that made her unbearably beautiful.
“Ye haven’t looked yet,” she said.
The blanket over the bundle in her arm shielded the babe’s face from him.
“What is it?” he asked. “A boy or a girl?”
He hoped for a boy, only because the thought of having a girl frightened him half to death. What if she was a bairn like her mother, falling into trouble at every opportunity? He’d be an old man before his time.
“Take your daughter,” Sìleas said.
When he lifted the bundle from her arm, the babe weighed nothing at all.
“She is a wee tiny thing, isn’t she?” He pushed the blanket back to see her face—and his daughter held his heartstrings from that moment. “Ah, but she is a beauty! She’s going to have lovely orange hair, just like you.”
“My hair is not orange.”
It was, but he didn’t argue.
“Do ye want to see the other one now?” she asked.
“What? There’s more?”
“Just one more. Another girl.”
He hadn’t noticed the bundle in his wife’s other arm until now. She lifted it up and rested it in the crook of his arm.
“This one has orange hair, too,” Ian said as he looked at his second lovely daughter. He grinned at his wife. “There’re going to be trouble, aren’t they?”
“More than likely,” she said, sounding quite complacent about it. “You’re going to be a wonderful da.”
Sìleas always had such faith in him.
“What shall we name them?” he asked.
