“He’s asleep,” she whispered. Moving as cautiously as one holding a vial of nitroglycerine, she scooted to the edge of the bed and stood up.
She might have meant to lay the child in its cradle, but Roger lifted his hands instinctively. She hesitated for no more than a second, then bent to lay the child in his arms. Her breasts hung full and heavy in the shadow of her open gown, and he smelled the deep musk of her body as she brushed him.
The baby was surprisingly heavy; dense, for the size of the bundle. He was amazingly warm, too; warmer even than his mother’s body.
Roger boosted the tiny body cautiously, cuddling it against him; the small, curved buttocks fit in the palm of his hand. It—he—wasn’t quite bald, after all. There was a soft red-blond fuzz all over the head. Tiny ears. Almost transparent; the one he could see was red and crumpled from being pressed against his mother’s arm.
“You can’t tell by looking.” Brianna’s voice jerked him out of his contemplation. “I’ve tried.” She was standing across the room, one drawer of the sideboard open. He thought it might be regret on her face, but the shadows were too deep to tell.
“That wasn’t what I was looking for.” He lowered the baby carefully to his lap. “It’s only—this is the first time I’ve had a proper look at my son.” The words sounded peculiar, stiff to his tongue. She relaxed a little, though.
“Oh. Well, he’s all there.” There was a small note of pride in her voice that caught at his heart, and made him look closer. The little fists were curled up tight as snail shells; he picked one up and gently stroked it with his thumb. Slowly as an octopus moving, the hand opened, enough for him to insert the tip of his index finger. The fist closed again in reflex, astonishing in the strength of its grip.
He could hear a rhythmic whish across the room, and realized that she was brushing her hair. He would have liked to watch her, but was too fascinated to look up.
The body had feet like a frog’s; wide at the toes, narrow at the heel. Roger stroked one with a fingertip, and smiled as
the tiny toes sprang wide apart. Not webbed, at least.
My son, he thought, and wasn’t sure what he felt at the thought. It would take time to get used to.
But he could be, came the next thought. Not just Brianna’s child, to be loved for her sake—but his own flesh and blood.
That thought was even more foreign. He tried to push it from his mind, but it kept coming back. That coupling in the dark, that bittersweet mix of pain and joy—had he started this, in the midst of that?
He hadn’t meant to—but he hoped like hell he had.
The child was wearing some long thing made of white gauzy stuff; he lifted it, looking at the sagging diaper and the perfect oval of the tiny navel just above. Moved by a curiosity he didn’t think to question, he hooked a finger in the edge of the clout and pulled it down.
“I told you he was all there.” Brianna was standing at his elbow.
“Well, it’s there,” Roger said dubiously. “But isn’t it a bit...small?”
“It’ll grow,” she assured him. “It’s not like he needs it for much yet.”
His own penis, gone flaccid between his thighs, gave a small twitch at that reminder.
“Shall I take him?” She reached for the baby, but he shook his head and picked up the child again.
“Not just yet.” It—he—smelled of milk and something sweetly putrid. Something else, his own indefinable smell, like
nothing else Roger had ever encountered.
“Eau de baby, Mama calls it.” She sat on the bed, a faint smile on her face. “She says it’s a natural protective device;
one of the things babies use to keep their parents from killing them.”
“Killing him? But he’s a sweet wee lad,” Roger protested.
One eyebrow quirked up in derision.
“You haven’t been living with the little fiend for the last month. This is the first night he hasn’t had colic in three weeks.
I would have exposed him on a hillside if he wasn’t mine.”
If he wasn’t mine. That certainty was a mother’s reward, he supposed. She’d always know—had always known. For a
brief, surprising moment, he envied her.
The baby stirred and made a small, faint yawp! noise against his neck. Before he could move, she was up and had the
child back in her arms, patting the rounded little back. There was a soft belch, and he subsided into limpness once more. Brianna set him on his stomach in the cradle, carefully, as if he were wired to a stick of dynamite. He could see the
faint outline of her body through the gauze, highlighted by the fire behind her. When she turned around, he was ready. “You could have gone back, once you knew. There would have been time.” He held her eyes, not letting her look away.
“So it’s my turn to ask, then, isn’t it? What made you wait for me? Love—or obligation?” “Both,” she said, her eyes nearly black. “Neither. I—just couldn’t go without you.”
He breathed deeply, feeling the last small doubt in the pit of his stomach melt away. “Then you do know.”
“Yes.” She lifted her shoulders and let them fall, and the loose gown fell too, leaving her as naked as he was. It was red, by God. More than red; she was gold and amber, ivory and cinnabar, and he wanted her with a longing that went beyond flesh.
“You said that you loved me, by all you hold holy,” she whispered. “What is it that’s holy to you, Roger?”
He stood and reached for her, gently, carefully. Held her against his heart, and remembered the stinking hold of the Gloriana and a thin, ragged woman who smelled of milk and ordure. Of fire and drums and blood, and an orphan baptized with the name of the father who had sacrificed himself for fear of the power of love.
“You,” he said, against her hair. “Him. Us. There isn’t anything else, is there?”
