"Cass," he said sleepily when daylight was already showing its face at the window and a single early bird was already practicing its choral skills from somewhere nearby, "I wish there were a thousand ways to say /I love you/. Or a million."

"Why?" she asked him. "Would you now proceed to say them all? I would be asleep long before you had finished."

He chuckled softly.

"Besides," she said, "I cannot imagine ever growing tired of hearing just those three words."

"I love you," he said, rubbing his nose across hers after propping himself on one elbow.

"I know," she told him before he rolled onto her and showed her again without words.

"I love you," she said afterward.

But he only grunted sleepily and was asleep.

Another bird, or perhaps the same one, was singing to someone else too, someone who was already up in that early dawn. He had not spent the night at Warren Hall. Nor had he gone to Finchley Park with the rest of the family. How could he when he and Elliott had scarcely spoken to each other for many years?

Elliott had accused him of stealing from Jonathan, who was easy prey.

And Elliott had accused him of debauchery, of having fathered the bastard children of a number of women in the neighborhood.

Elliott, who had once been his closest friend and partner in crime.

Constantine had never denied the accusations.

He never would.

He had spent the night at the home of Phillip Grainger, an old friend of his in the neighborhood.

He stood now in the churchyard outside the little chapel where Stephen had married Lady Paget the day before. There were still rose petals dotted about on the path and grass, hurled at the bride and groom by the children.

He stood at the foot of one of the graves, looking down broodingly at it. His long black cloak and tall hat, worn against the chill of the early morning, gave him an almost sinister appearance.

"Jon," he said softly, "it seems that the family will go on into another generation. Nobody has admitted anything yet, but I would wager a bundle that Lady Merton is already with child. I think she is decent after all.

I know /he/ is, though I used to wish he weren't. You would like them both."

A few rose petals, browning around the edges, littered the grave. Con stooped down to remove them, and he brushed one petal off the headstone.

"No," he said, "you would /love/ them, Jon. You always did love extravagantly and indiscriminately. You even loved me."

He did not come often to Warren Hall these days. It was a little painful, if the truth were known. But sometimes he yearned for Jon. Even for this, all that was left of his brother – the slight mound of a grave and a headstone that had already darkened and mossed slightly with age.

Jon would have been twenty-four now.

"I'll be on my way," Con said. "Until next time, then, Jon. Rest in peace."

And he turned and strode away without looking back.

THE world had been reduced to a cocoon of pain and a few blessed moments of respite in which her breath might be caught but no real rest could be grabbed.

It had been a long and hard labor, but Margaret had not stopped assuring her for hours on end that this was the very reason the birthing of a baby was called /labor/.

"Men know /nothing/," she had said after Stephen had come for one of his frequent visits but had put up no great resistance to being shooed out again. "They cannot even bear to /watch/ pain."

Perhaps, Cassandra had thought from deep within her cocoon, pain was difficult to watch when one had caused it but could do nothing either to stop it or to share it. But she did not spare many thoughts to such sympathies. She spared more to the conviction that she would not allow Stephen near her /ever again/. /Please, please, please, please, please/, she thought as she drew breath against another onslaught of pain that tightened her abdomen unbearably and ripped through her womb.

Please /what/?

Stop the pain?

Let this baby be born?

Let it be born alive?

And healthy? /Please, please/.

The seven months of her marriage had been almost unbelievably happy ones.

They had also been filled with terror.

Her terror.

And Stephen's, always masked with a brisk cheerfulness.

"She is doing well." The calm voice of the physician, who was a man and knew /nothing/.

"She is at the point of exhaustion." Margaret's voice.

"She is almost there." The physician.

And then a deep breath and a – /Please, please/.

An unbearable urge to push. And a pushing and a pushing until a voice urged her to stop, to conserve her energy until there was another contraction. And then – /Oh, please, please/.

A frantic, unending pushing until all the breath was gone from her body and the world was pain and pushing – And a gushing that suddenly released all the unbearable pressure and gave her a moment to breathe and – A baby's cry.

Oh.

"Oh," she said. "Oh."

"You have a son, my lady," the physician said. "And he appears to have ten toes and ten fingers and a nose and two eyes and a mouth that is going to give you notice for some time to come whenever he is hungry."

And Margaret was dashing from the room to tell Stephen, who nevertheless was not allowed inside the room until she had returned to wash the baby and bundle him inside a warm blanket and set him in his mother's arms while she cleaned both Cassandra and the bed and then stood back to smile at mother and child with flushed satisfaction.

Margaret and the physician left the room while Cassandra gazed in wonder at the red, ugly, beautiful face of her son.

Her /son/. /Where was Stephen/?

And then he was there, white-faced, with dark circles beneath his eyes as if /he/ had been in hard labor for many hours. As in a way he probably had, poor thing. He was approaching the bed as though he was afraid to come closer, his eyes on hers. As though he was also afraid to look at the blanket-bound bundle.

"Cass," he said. "Are you all right?"

"I am tired enough to sleep for a month." She smiled at him. "Meet our son."

And he leaned closer, his eyes wide with wonder, and gazed downward.

"Could anyone be more beautiful?" he asked after a few awed moments.

He was looking with a father's eyes – as she was with a mother's. Both Margaret and the physician had assured her before they left that the slight distortion of the baby's head would right itself within a few hours, a day or two at most.

"No," she said. "No one could."

"He is crying," he said. "Ought you to do something, Cass?"

"I think," she said, "he wants his papa to hold him."

Or his mother to offer a breast.

"Dare I?" He looked terrified.

But she lifted the bundle, which seemed to weigh nothing at all, and Stephen took their son from her, and he stopped crying immediately.

"Well," she said, "so much for what he owes his mama."

But Stephen was laughing softly, and Cassandra, relaxed and exhausted against her pillows, gazed up at him. At them.

Her two men.

Her two loves.

And perhaps, after a good long rest – a good /long/ rest – she would allow Stephen to touch her again after all.

Perhaps she would.

Well, /of course/ she would.

He was looking down at her, his eyes so full of love that they almost glowed.

"Thank you," he said. "Thank you, my love."

She had a /child/, she thought as she gazed back at him, too exhausted to do anything more than allow her lips to curve upward at the corners.

She had a living child.

And a life filled with love.

And hope.

She had Stephen.

What more could she possibly ask for?

She had her own private angel, after all.