LITMIR.BIZ

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with the sisters. Over a three-day period all six girls had expressed individual regret at the boys’ departure in ways that until then, had been beyond either of their imaginations a year earlier.

      They hurried through supper, anxious to visit their friends. After they left, Marie looked around the otherwise deserted tap room of the inn and asked, ‘Are you staying here tonight?’

      Caleb rose and offered his hand. ‘We are staying here. I told the boys to sleep in their old beds tonight.’

      Marie said, ‘I expect they’re old enough to know what’s going on.’

      ‘They’ve known for a long time, Marie. But let’s just say that now they have a much fuller understanding.’

      ‘Oh!’ she said, as he led her up the stairs to his room. ‘You mean—?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘They are becoming men, aren’t they?’

      ‘That’s more than any mother should know,’ said Caleb as he led her into his room.

      The next morning, Caleb and Marie found Tad and Zane asleep in the small hut where they had been raised. Caleb roused them from the pallets with a couple of playful taps from his boot. ‘Get up, you two.’

      The boys arose with pallid complexions, bloodshot eyes and groans of protest. ‘Someone found a bottle of something, it seems,’ said Caleb.

      ‘Matthew Conoher and his brother James,’ said Zane. ‘It was … brandy, he said. Tasted more like wood varnish.’

      ‘But you drank it anyway?’ said Marie.

      ‘That we did,’ said Tad. He stood, stretched and yawned, wearing only his trousers.

      His mother looked at her son’s chest, stomach, shoulders and arms. ‘Where did you get all those scars?’ she asked, her voice revealing alarm and her eyes narrowing as she crossed the hut to trace a particularly nasty-looking scar on his right shoulder with her finger.

      Tad flinched as her touch tickled him. ‘I was carrying a pretty big stone up the path from the beach and it just got away from me. If I’d have let it go, I would have had to walk all the way back down the path and pick it up again, so I tried to hang on to it and it ripped right though my shirt.’

      She glanced at Caleb, then at her son. ‘I thought for a minute—’

      Tad grinned. ‘What? That Caleb had been beating us?’

      ‘Only a little,’ said Caleb. ‘And only when they needed it.’

      ‘No,’ said Marie, her expression slightly petulant as she became annoyed by their teasing. ‘I thought that perhaps it was from a weapon.’

      Tad brightened. ‘Not that one.’ He pointed to another faint scar along his rib cage. ‘Now, this one was from a sword!’

      ‘A sword!’ exclaimed his mother.

      ‘I’ve got one, too,’ Zane said, pointing to a long mark across his forearm. ‘Tad gave me that when I didn’t get my blade around fast enough on a parry.’

      ‘You two,’ she said firmly, pointing to the boys. ‘Get dressed.’ Turning she said, ‘Caleb, outside.’

      She led him out of the hut and said, ‘What have you done to my boys?’

      Caleb shook his head slightly and said, ‘Exactly what you thanked me for last night, Marie. I’m turning them into men. Things didn’t happen exactly the way I wanted …’ He paused for a moment. ‘Let me tell you about the ambush.’

      Caleb told her about the ambush, without glossing over how injured he had been nor overstating how resourceful the boys had proved. He told it as calmly as he could. ‘So, when it became clear that my father thought they were my apprentices anyway … well, let’s say we were too far down a particular road for me to drop them at some fuller’s or baker’s door and say, ‘Turn these lads into journeymen, will you, please?’ They are now my responsibility and I’m going to take the best care of them that I can.’

      ‘But teaching them to fight, Caleb? Are they to be soldiers, then?’

      ‘No, but they will need to know how to take care of themselves. If they’re with me and working for my father, they will be in danger occasionally. I want to make sure that they are able to survive those dangers.’

      Marie seemed unconvinced, but said nothing for a moment.

      Tad stuck his head out of the door of the hut and said, ‘Can we come out now?’

      Caleb waved the boys out and Marie said, ‘I’m their mother and they will always be my babies.’

      ‘This baby would like something to eat, now,’ said Tad.

      Marie slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Then we must go to the market and get—’

      ‘We’ll eat again at the inn,’ interrupted Caleb, ‘but there is something I need to discuss with all of you first.’

      They stood in the early morning chill, the boys still half-asleep and squinting against the glare of the low-hanging sun. Caleb said, ‘There are perhaps, better times and places for these things, but this is where I am, so now is the time.’

      ‘Caleb,’ asked Marie, ‘what are you talking about?’

      ‘Your boys have been cast by fate into my care, their lot decided by the unselfish act of returning to see to my welfare, and in so doing, saving my life.’

      He looked at the boys and said, ‘You know I love your mother more than any other woman I know, and I have been true to her for years.’ He looked at Marie and said, ‘I can not promise to be here any more than I have in the past, so I want you to leave Stardock and come and live with my family.’

      ‘But this is the only home I’ve known,’ said Marie.

      ‘We’ll make another home, the four of us.’

      ‘What are you asking, Caleb?’

      ‘Let us wed, and I will name the boys as my adopted sons. If all of you will have me.’

      The boys grinned at one another and Tad said, ‘Does this mean we get to call you “Papa”?’

      ‘Only if you wish to be beaten,’ said Caleb with a smile. But his eyes were fixed on Marie.

      She leaned into him and said softly, ‘Yes, Caleb. I will go with you.’

      He kissed her, then said, ‘Zane, go to the inn and tell Jakesh to break out his best ale and wine. Tell him to prepare roast oxen, and trot out his best foods, for tonight we shall treat the town to a feast.

      ‘Tad, find Father DeMonte and tell him that he has a wedding to perform at sundown.’

      ‘Today?’ asked Marie.

      ‘Why wait?’ asked Caleb. ‘I love you and want to know that no matter what happens in the future, you and the boys will be cared for. I want to know you are waiting for me.’

      With a wry smile she said, ‘I’m always waiting for you, Caleb. You know that.’

      ‘As my wife?’ he said. ‘That’s what I want.’

      She buried her face in his shoulder and hugged him tightly. Then she said, ‘Yes, I’ll marry you.’

      The boys whooped and ran off on their errands. After a moment, Marie said, ‘Are you certain?’

      ‘Never been so certain about anything in my life.’ He kissed her. ‘I nearly died out there, and the thought of never seeing you again …’ His eyes shone with moisture and emotion as his voice wavered. ‘Then those boys, those two wonderful boys that you raised, Marie—’ He stopped, then said, ‘I didn’t know whether to throttle them for disobeying me … but had they not, they would now be somewhere in northern Kesh, seeking a man

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