Read Online War Chest: Even Gods Fall in Love, Book 5 by Lynne Connolly - Free Book Online Page A

a bow and carried on. He hated pomp, barely put up with it when he needed to employ it, like at court, a place he avoided like the plague.
    A sound drifted down to him from above. A cry, like a woman in distress.
    He didn’t stop to think, but hurtled upstairs, taking the steep oak steps three at a time. Two floors brought him up to the nursery level, where the sound grew clearer. Familiar smells assaulted him: furniture polish, soap and chalk, an elusive smell that sank into its surroundings and never quite went away.
    Following the noise, he opened the door to the night nursery. Moonlight glimmered through the windows and a shaded candle stood on the table.
    Instead of the nursemaid, he found the woman he couldn’t get out of his thoughts. She was in a shapeless robe, just the kind of thing he’d been thinking about, only hers was worn, the pink faded to almost white by frequent washing. Underneath a white frill poked out at the neck. Her hair was neatly braided, and while one braid was coiled around her head and pinned at the top, the other had fallen free to tumble down her back, the ends unravelling as she rocked the wailing baby in her arms. The child was robust, too big for Ruth’s fragile frame.
    Before he could out-think himself, Marcus stepped forward and took the struggling child from her.
    The baby’s squalling stopped, and it hiccupped as it—he—stared up at Marcus. They gazed at each other, and Marcus watched as the face screwed up and he prepared for another yell. “Be quiet,” he said. At the same time, he spread his senses and entered the child’s mind. “He hurts,” he said absently. “His mouth.”
    “He-he’s teething.” Marcus glanced at Ruth. Her mouth was open and her eyes wide, for the instant before she recovered herself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know they would disturb you.”
    “They didn’t. I was awake anyway.”
    “I just managed to get Peter to sleep.”
    He glanced at the crib. Not the rocking ones he’d ordered from York, but older ones that sat firmly on the ground. “Do you think they hate the cribs?”
    “I think it’s a mixture of getting used to new sleeping places and the pain. How did you do that?”
    He gazed at the child. He could take some of the baby’s discomfort, and really he’d undergone much worse in his time. To a child unused to pain this would be an alarming intrusion. The baby’s eyes were drooping. The poor scrap must be exhausted. He glanced at Ruth. So must she. “What are you doing attending to them? Where’s Andrea?”
    “Sleeping,” Ruth said. “She spent the past two nights sitting up with them, so I said I’d take charge tonight.”
    “I see.” His lips firmed. He’d send a message to the agency in York first thing in the morning for another maid. He did not want Ruth acting the part of nursemaid, even though he’d told her she must do it. He didn’t like to think of her attending to someone else’s children, wearing herself out on the tasks someone else should be doing. He wasn’t a monster, not a complete one at any rate. He understood babies needed attention at these times.
    “The experts say to leave them,” Ruth said. “If we did, nobody would get any sleep. They’re stubborn.”
    It was on the tip of his tongue to say “Like their father,” but what did he know about that? “Like their mother.”
    “You knew her?”
    He frowned at her. Her response was too eager, too needful. He felt her anxiety, saw it in her wide eyes and hopeful expression. “Yes, I knew her. In both senses of the word.” He did not want her thinking him a saint, which he might appear if he let her.
    “When you said earlier—”
    “I know what I said.” What madness had driven him to confess the truth to her? “I meant it. The timing is wrong, for one thing.” He could not father children willy-nilly. Immortals needed to put some thought into the making of children. “She was already pregnant when she invited me into her bed. Then