December, 1770

The time came when Lydia was due, and I was frantically trying not to seem frantic.

Every day I would rush about the house in a cloud of concern, doing everything at once, and this day Lydia had eventually grown tired of it and snapped at me, so I took myself to Thomas's house to escape.

Thomas himself had briefly gone upstairs to retrieve blankets, so I was left sitting by the fire with his brother. Rowan was three years older than I and, as far as I knew, was engaged to some girl from the town. Still, I had always found it comfortable to talk with Rowan: he was easygoing and friendly, much like his brother (though lately he had become more distant).

When we heard Thomas's footsteps, like the patter of rain on the stairs, Rowan slapped his knees and stood like an old man; firelight gave his blond hair the illusion of spun gold. "Please give my best wishes to Lydia," he said, ruffling my hair.

I batted his hand away and aimed a lighthearted punch at his leg. "You should really invest in a cane, old man," I said. "I don't want you stooped and withered when you come to my wedding."

"Oh, now you're getting married?" He raised an eyebrow. "And whom, may I ask, is the unlucky man?"

"The king," I said.

Rowan laughed. "I think he's a bit old for you, darling, not to mention he's already married."

"I'll have you know that in some cultures it is considered good luck to have more than one wife." I grinned. "Fine, since you're so against it, I'll marry his son. Little George."

Once Thomas appeared in the doorway, Rowan said, "I'd best be gone. Have fun with Little George." He winked playfully and bumped Thomas's shoulder with his own before disappearing upstairs, fiddling with his hand like he mourned the absence of a ring.

Thomas dumped one of the blankets on my head. "Little George," he muttered. "Bloody weirdos, the pair of you."

"Rowan is good company." I pulled the blanket down so it covered the rest of my body and pulled it up to my chin. The cold today was the kind that would seep into one's bones and inhabit one's body like a parasite, a ghost.

"You don't live with him," grumbled Thomas, settling himself by the fire. "Up at all hours to meet these new–" he made quotations with his fingers– "friends; one day he'll be all happy and smiley, but the next he'll hardly speak a word to us. What's up with that, eh?"

"I think the medical term is adolescence," I said.

"Well, I want my money back." Thomas burrowed under his blanket for a moment, but then he peeked back out, reminding me abruptly of a mouse. "I did discover the name of one of his friends, though."

"Ooh, tea," I said drily, leaning closer to the fire.

"Mmmhm," he hummed with smug satisfaction. "Tobias."

"Fancy name," I said. "How'd you find out?"

Thomas shrugged. "There was a half-written letter on his desk. I couldn't not look. What if it were to be a saucy love letter to Evelyn?"

I laughed. "Then you shouldn't look, nosy bugger."

"Oh, come on!" he pleaded. "Don't tell me that you wouldn't be even a little bit curious. What if it was me?"

"I like to tell myself that I wouldn't read it," I said.

"What if it was Connor?"

I thought for a moment. "I'd have to read his for him, because he is still learning to read."

Thomas perked up at that. "I have some old books that I have no need for. If he wants them, he can have them."

"Thank you." I smiled. "You're very kind. Why don't you drop them up some day? You'd be very welcome."

He stretched his arms. "I'm an angel. Oh bother, what's the time?" He shuffled under his blanket for a few moments before producing, with a flourish, his pocket watch. "Dear me, we had better get you home, missy moo, or your mother will actually skin me and wear me as a shawl in this ghastly winter." He shrugged his blanket off (with great difficulty, for it was comfortably warm) and took my hand, hauling me to my feet.

"Do I have to go?" I whined.

"Yes." He lay my coat over my shoulders, and I pushed my arms through the sleeves. "I don't want to die prematurely, thank you very much. I'll drive you home."

The wagon ride back to my house did not take too long. The sun reflected off the snow - everything was white, white, white - and my eyes ached from looking at it. When we pulled up outside the house, on the track that I had cleared of snow just a few days ago (and the snow was falling again, meaning I would have to clear the space again) all was quiet. Silence should be a good thing, indicative of peace - but this silence was dead and hollow; like something should have been breathing but wasn't; like the warm breath of a person just gone.

Thomas glanced at me as he tugged the reins to stop the pulling of the horse. "All set?"

I swallowed and looked over the house again. Aside from the silence, nothing was abnormal. "Yes," I said. "Thank you for bringing me home."

He kissed my knuckles. "My pleasure."

I had hardly opened the front door before Nadia was there, eyes wild. "Cassandra, thank goodness," she said.

My heart began to pound. "What is it?" I said. "What happened?"

Before Nadia could respond I saw, over her shoulder, the stooped figure of my mother making her way up the stairs, one hand gripping the rail and the other curled around her belly. A stream of curses were flowing from her mouth like water.

When Lydia heard us at the door she looked over her shoulder. "Oh, good. Fetch a doctor, will you? This baby is getting evicted."

I nodded, now beyond all levels of anxious, and called to Thomas, who had not left the wagon, "Tom, would you find a doctor? As fast as you can."

"Is everything all right?" he shouted.

"It's my mother, she's going to have her baby-" Nadia ushered me inside and shut the door, cutting me off.

She gripped my shoulders. "Tell me, have you any idea what to do in a situation like this?"

"Regrettably not," I said. "Lydia and her eldest brother were the only children of my grandparents to survive childhood, and Sophia never had any other children when I came along. I'm clueless."

With a heavy sigh, Nadia ran a hand down her face. "Me too," she said. "Absolutely no idea."

"Ah," Lydia drawled from her spot halfway up the stairs. "My area of expertise. One of you, up here with me. The other, get some water boiled."

"I'll go with you." Nadia looked back at me, already stepping on to the stairs. "Keep an eye on Merry, will you?"

I was already on my way outside, nodding along as I went. My feet sank in the deep snow like quicksand, so my trip to the well was painfully slow. By the time I had hauled up a bucket of freezing water, my hands and feet were numb, but the racing of my heart drowned it out as I hurried back to the house, sloshing water down my skirt.

I had just put the water over the fire to boil when Meredith tugged my skirt. "Is mother going to be okay?"

"Yes, darling," I said. "She's just having her baby."

When my sister smiled, it almost made the worry go away. "What will they name it?"

I grinned in spite of myself. "Meredith the Second."

She gaped. "But there can only be one Meredith, and it's me."

By the time Thomas arrived with the doctor, the water had boiled, and I lugged it up the stairs after the doctor (a smallish, ratty man with thin hair and sharp eyes). I did not enter the bedroom; Gabriel was already there with Nadia, and the doctor took the water from me with a gentle, encouraging smile, and shut the door with a soft click.

I gave a long sigh and slowly went downstairs again, only to flop on to the couch like some leech. All fight had fled my body.

After a few moments Thomas joined me, moving my feet aside so he could sit.

For a while we sat in silence, and Meredith, reading the mood of the room, was sombre as she climbed between us and sat across my outstretched legs. After shifting so my legs wouldn't lose feeling, I stared across the room at the pale shadows on the hearth: light, almost ghostly reflections from the bare trees outside. The snow still glared in the harsh, cold sun.

All at once I knew that, though I would love Lydia's baby, it would not fill the emptiness; it would not piece together the cracks; it would not replace what was lost. Nothing would.

My heart seized. What if the birth did not go well? What if I lost Lydia too?

Grave questions indeed, the latter of which made me almost tremble - but I couldn't reveal these thoughts; not in front of my sister. Not when she looked up to me so.

Thomas cleared his throat. "Well, I say we do something to keep ourselves occupied. We may be here for a while."

"Thomas," I said quietly, "you can go home. You don't have to stay here."

"And miss out on the birth?" He reached across Meredith to whack me. "You know me but slenderly. I'll stay with you; I already told my parents where I am while I was fetching the doctor."

If I moved Meredith would fall from my legs, so I satisfied myself with glaring at his hand. "Thank you," I said. "Though I fear you shall be fiercely bored."

"Then let's all be fiercely bored together." Thomas settled into the chair and closed his eyes.

Another few minutes passed thus; I could hear muffled sounds from upstairs which I did not concentrate too hard on. After a while Meredith said, "I'm bored."

Thomas stretched his arms. "What do you propose we do?"

She shrugged. "I don't know." A few moments later she looked at me and said, "You can go upstairs and just pull the baby out."

I let out a burst of shocked laughter. "First of all ew. Bold of you to assume I'm strong enough to pull a baby, anyway."

"But you are strong." She lifted one of my hands and shook it around like a dog with a bone. "See? Strong hands. How did you get man hands?"

Thomas gave me a knowing smile(for he was the one person I told everything to) and I said, "I ate all of my vegetables when I was young, and now look at me. I'm big and strong." I flexed my arms at her, which made her laugh.

The hours passed slowly until, at last, the final dregs of sunlight had disappeared beneath the lines of the mountains. We had occupied ourselves as best we could: pilfering handfuls of nuts or berries or whatever we could find from the pantry (Lydia was going to kill us); telling jokes; waiting for the hours to pass rather painfully.

When we heard footsteps pattering down the stairs we all jumped to our feet. A moment later the doctor appeared at the foot of the stairs, and when he saw us he smiled. "You can go on up, now. It's a boy."

As soon as he left the house it was an excited race for the stairs; Meredith beat us by only a moment due to her smaller size (though she was tall for her age, her height reaching up to my ribs) and she ran upstairs like the very devil was on her tail. Thomas stepped back to let me go first, and suddenly the stairs loomed before me, growing longer and longer until I couldn't see the top; but Meredith was calling to me, so I took a deep breath and began to climb the stairs.

This was it. This was the beginning of a new life.

Their bedroom was silent when Meredith pushed the door open, but both parents looked up at the movement. Lydia was sitting in bed, propped up by pillows, and she was cradling the baby wrapped in a blanket. Nadia stepped past us and went downstairs with a basket of washing, and she gave us a tired smile.

"Don't be shy," Gabriel said. "Say hi to Alfred."

I snorted. "Alfred."

Lydia grinned. "We knew you'd never stand for that. Here." She held out the baby to me. "Hold him."

He was heavier than I had expected, and so still that I thought him to be asleep, but his great dark eyes were wide when he stared up at me. Meredith tugged my arm and stood on her tiptoes so she could see him; I could feel Thomas peering over my shoulder.

I touched the baby's little chubby cheeks with one finger. "He's adorable," I said. "You're not seriously naming him Alfred, are you?"

Gabriel chuckled. "No. We wanted you to name him. But if you want to keep Alfred. . ."

"He looks like an Alfred," Thomas mumbled, and I resisted the urge to elbow him in the ribs. "You're telling me that you don't want to name him after King Alfred the Great?"

"Over my dead body," I murmured, tickling his little face again. As he began to wiggle in my arms, some of my worry slipped away. It would be okay; it would all be okay. There had only been one person who made me feel that way.

I cleared my throat, blinking the tears from my eyes, and said, "His name will be Ryan."

*

I was, quite honestly, surprised by how well Connor reacted when I handed him baby Ryan a few days later.

The snow had not let up, but I had written him to ask if he would like to see my brother, and he had replied with earnest (and small spelling errors). Poor Lydia was already exhausted and had retired to bed for a few hours ("Unless the house is on fire or Ryan needs feeding, don't wake me up," she had said), leaving us to babysit - quite literally.

Connor was subtle in his ways, but he loved children. He had been greeted at the door with a big hug from Meredith, and the pair had hit it off since. I left for hardly a minute to hang his coat up and when I returned I found them dancing together; Meredith was standing on his feet and he was shuffling around. When he caught my eye, his smile was unlike any I had seen before.

By the time Thomas arrived Connor was sitting on the floor, comfortably cross-legged, and Meredith was copying him. When I handed him the baby, just to see what he would do, his initial surprise turned to amusement as the first thing that Ryan did was grab Connor's hair.

Thomas peeked in to the drawing room and grinned. "Ah, hello Connor! I wasn't expecting to see you here."

Connor glanced up. "Hello, Thomas."

"I'd've brought my books if I knew you'd be here." Thomas sat in one of the chairs and crossed an ankle over his knee.

"You are very kind." Connor's small smile only grew as Meredith copied him, trying to mimick his accent. "I like your accent," he told her.

"I don't have an accent!" she gasped. "You do."

His brows furrowed in mock confusion. "I do?"

"Yes." My sister pointed at all of us. "We don't have accents, but you do. It's different."

"I apologise for being different."

Thomas leaned over to me and whispered loudly, "He's just apologising because he knows real men conform to the moulds of society and don't think for themselves."

Now Connor's dark, thoughtful eyes were on Thomas, and a playful gleam entered his stare. "Meredith," he said, "hold my baby. I will show Thomas who the real man is."

And thus began a series of humourous arm wrestling matches, and both of the boys were laughing harder with each failed attempt. Thomas's twigs for arms were no match for Connor, the born hunter and trained Assassin. They sat opposite each other, a small mahogany table separating them, in the light of the tall bay window.

After several playful arguments ("Connor was cheating!" complained Thomas, to which Connor replied, "You are a stick insect, of course I was cheating."), I stepped up to prove my worth.

"Step aside, ladies," I said. "The real man of the house is here."

Connor scoffed. "Bite me. No, not literally-"

It was too late. I had bitten his arm.

After he whacked me away, he lay his elbow on the table again, angling his hand towards me in challenge. "How about it, Glade?"

Thomas rose from his seat across from Connor and offered it to me. As I slid in to the chair (Meredith cheered me from the side) Connor said, "Right or left?"

"Right," I said. I had seen during our days at the manor that he had a tendency to use both of his hands, having little dominance between them.

We clasped hands firmly and the battle began. Thomas and Meredith were narrating the match like a newspaper. I noticed that, try as I might, Connor did not budge; he held eye contact with me and a slow smile crept across his face. When I laughed helplessly, he held up his other hand and counted down from three.

As soon as he got to one he slammed my hand into the table.