Loving Lucianna

Epilogue

EPILOGUE

Four months later

            Lucianna smiled at the tiny fingers that wound around thumb. She could not seem to calm the fluttering of her heart. It had been a very long time since she had held a babe—twenty-three(?) years, in fact, when she had cradled Siri in her arms. It thrilled her that she had not forgotten how to rock an infant to still her cries, or kiss the rosy cheeks to win a tiny chortle, or hum a tune that made the wee eyes softly close in sleep.

            “She is your image, carissima,” Lucianna murmured.

            Siri yawned and stretched, arching her back from where she sat in her tall chair in her workshop. Perrin had begged her to resume his painting lessons, whining that it had been a whole month since his sister had been born. But Siri had spent so much time yawning and struggling to hold her eyes open, that Perrin had finally wandered away from the desk to study his new sibling.

            “She is very loud,” he pronounced. “I can hear her crying at night all the way in my bedchamber.”

            “Then imagine how Lady Siri must feel with the babe’s cradle right beside her bed. It is no wonder she is half asleep. I should not have let you plague her into taking up her paints when I allowed you to cajole me into letting you to eat your breakfast with her. Go away,” Lucianna said, “and let me put her and your sister back to bed.”

            There was a time when Lucianna’s curt rebukes had intimidated the boy, but he had grown regrettably impervious to them as his precociousness had coaxed a maternal affection in her and softened the force, if not the frequency, of her chastisements.

            “Can’t you leave the baby?” he said. “I can watch her while you take Siri away to sleep. I need to study her to understand why you keep saying she looks like Siri. Because I don’t see it. She just looks fat and pink to me, and Siri isn’t either anymore.”

            Siri trilled with laughter from her chair. “Thank you, Perrin. I am not as slender as I was when I married your Papa, but I am trying very hard to restrain my craving for sweets.” She slid from the chair and came to stand beside Lucianna and the babe. “You think she looks like me?”

            “She will be your image,” Lucianna repeated. “Well, nearly so. I am certain eyes as blue as hers will remain unchanged. She has your little nose and your round, rosy cheeks, and I am sure her hair will come in fair.”

            She permitted Perrin to run a light finger over the baby’s head.

            “There’s hardly any there,” he said. “You can’t even see it, you can only feel a little fuzz.”

            “Si, and that fuzz would be dark, not white, if she was meant to have your papa’s black curls.” Lucianna was certain of it. She tilted her head in consideration. “But she will have Triston’s firm/stubborn chin, I think.” The baby gave a little gurgling sigh and snuggled deeper into Lucianna’s arms. Another quiver wove through her. She wondered if Siri saw it.

            “What shall I call her when she grows up?” Perrin asked. “Elisabetta or Isabelle?”

            “Elisabetta,” Lucianna said firmly, but a strong voice from the doorway contradicted her.

            “Isabelle. Here in Poitou, at least.”

            Lucianna sent a challenging glower at Triston as he entered the room with her husband. Then she caught Sir Balduin’s glance at the babe before his gaze lifted to hers.