Earning the Love of a Princess-Chapter 179: Filling the Blanks

A gentle tapping on the door interrupted their peaceful reverie. William sat up and growled permission for whoever was knocking to enter.

If it’s another maid with a bowl of that porridge, I swear I’ll make her eat it herself until she chokes, William silently vowed.

Instead, a plump, pleasant faced woman entered and bowed to them both. "Pardon my interruption, Your Highnesses." she drawled in a thick country accent. "I’m here to feed the little one."

William frowned uneasily and looked over at Camilla, who had fallen asleep against the bedhead. She probably wouldn’t want to be separated from Malcolm. Then again, he reasoned, she needed the rest. She was hardly going to recuperate and grow strong quickly if she was having to feed a hungry baby around the clock.

Especially if she’s been fed nothing but gruel for the last few weeks. He felt his blood surge with rage again.

After a moment, William reluctantly nodded at the wet nurse. He pulled a gold coin from his pocket and handed it to her. "I’ll double your payment if you ensure both my wife and child are well looked after. If you see any mistreatment or anything amiss, you let me know right away. Understood?"

The wet nurse’s eyes widened as she palmed and pocketed the coin. "Of course, my lord." She carefully picked up the sleeping baby. As she was quietly leaving the bedchamber, William gave her a final order.

"My wife isn’t fond of being separated from our son. Please bring him back here as often as possible when she’s awake."

The nurse smiled and nodded, then quietly left.

William sat himself carefully next to Camilla, who was sleeping with her head tilted over. He gently shook her awake.

Her eyes opened immediately. "Is it Malcolm?"

"Shhh. No, he’s fine. The wet nurse has him." he whispered to soothe her. "You’ll wake up with a sore neck if you continue sleeping while sitting up. Lie back, my love."

William gently helped her back onto the pillows, noticing how gingerly she moved. He tucked a blanket around her shoulders. "Good night, then."

"Wait. Where will you go?" she rasped.

"Well..." He was lost for words. As much as he hated the thought of spending another night alone in the eastern wing, William didn’t want to just assume he could just push his way back to her side. "I should probably leave you here to rest. I don’t want to disturb your recovery."

"But you’re not disturbing it. And I’ve missed you. Haven’t we been apart long enough?"

William smiled at her words and at the relief that thrummed through his veins at hearing them. "You’re right, we have. If you’ll let me, I’ll stay by your side as much as possible."

William pulled off his wrinkled shirt and stretched himself out alongside Camilla. They both looked at each other quietly for a moment. Then she gave him a rueful smile.

"You can stop watching me as if you expect me to die at any moment."

William chuckled. "I can’t help it. Seeing you give birth was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever witnessed, somehow even worse than the battlefield."

"Speaking of the battlefield...I was sorry to hear about Richard. I won’t pretend to have grieved him myself but I knew you would’ve, whether you wished to or not." Camilla squeezed his hand in hers.

"Thank you." William sighed as he rolled onto his back and looked up at the velvet canopy overhead. "I remember Tession once telling me something that I didn’t understand at the time. He said that in life not only is there often no happy ending to a story, sometimes there isn’t even a proper ending. Things just...are. And they can never be fixed. It was the first thing I thought of when I was looking down at Richard’s corpse."

"A couple of years ago, Tession’s words wouldn’t have made sense to me. Now they do." she whispered hoarsely. "Damn the old man for knowing everything about everything."

William laughed despite his melancholy and turned on his side to face her again. "I should go see him again tomorrow. I have even missed his spouting of eternal wisdom to me."

"You haven’t seen him since your return?" Camilla’s eyes went wide.

William felt his cheeks turning warm. "Only once. He berated me for my immaturity towards fatherhood so harshly that I pretty much bolted from his rooms. I haven’t been back since."

Camilla bit her lip and he could see she was trying very hard to keep a straight face.

"Oh, go on then! Laugh." William grumbled.

Instead, she rubbed the frown on his brow with a fingertip. "You look exactly like your son when he doesn’t get his way either."

William started to smile, then remembered something. "I’m...well, I want to apologise for what I said the said the day I returned to the palace. When I suggested Malcolm might not be mine. That was a fucking cruel thing to say. And I didn’t believe it for a moment. Not at all. I was just...not thinking straight."

Camilla nodded. "Thank you for apologising. It was an awful thing to hear from you but I tried to remind myself how shocked you must have felt when you saw me. It was the worst of luck that none of my letters reached you, save the only one where I didn’t write about being with child."

"Perhaps I’m not as lucky as I thought on the battlefield, then." he said wryly.

"What happened to your shoulder?" she asked, lightly tracing the scar.

William exhaled slowly as he cast his mind back to that day of bloodshed and defeat. "A long story."

- - -

In a hesitant voice, William told her about the day the Moraigthian army had driven through the Islian forces. Camilla listened as his words tumbled out telling her about the wild barbarian soldiers paid to fight by her uncle, finding out Richard was among the dead and having his body taken to a nearby monastery for a proper burial.

By some odd coincidence, it had been the very same monastery where William’s father had died some years ago.

She could’ve wept when William told her about how he gave the monks all the gold ducats he’d had in his tent, so that prayers for Richard’s soul could be said in perpetuity. Despite their bitter falling out, William had still cared enough to not want Richard’s soul to be forever damned.

There have been so many times when he has been the sweetest, kindest man alive, Camilla said to herself. Other times, he has been stunningly cold. He’s a complicated, conflicted man.

William seemed reluctant to to tell her more, warning that most of it was unpleasant, but she was determined to hear all of what he’d endured. She listened as he talked haltingly about other events - collapsing with a fever that had left him delirious for three days. Trying to shelter a hungry peasant girl named Joan, only to discover her committing treason and her ending up dead at the hands of Prince Thomas. Watching countless of his men die either from battle injuries or fever. The Islians pinning all their hopes on a final battle before they succumbed to starvation.

Camilla listened to it all, amazed and disturbed in equal measures. She knew that if he didn’t speak of it now though, he’d simply bottle up the terrible memories and bury them in the darkest corner of his mind.

"I rejoiced when I heard Kenneth’s son had died. We all did. Isn’t that appalling, to celebrate a child’s death, especially when I now have one of my own?" William said softly. "But there’s no room for goodness or mercy in war. It just turns men into beasts over time." 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

Camilla cupped his jaw between her hands, his scruffy beard tickling her palms. "You’re not a beast. You were simply in a situation where there were no easy decisions to make. In every outcome, someone would’ve suffered terribly."

"My greatest fear was that if our forces fell and your uncle’s army continued to invade, he’d eventually reach Westerhaven and find you."

Camilla didn’t even want to imagine that outcome. She simply kissed William briefly on the mouth and pressed her forehead against his, feeling his fingers running slowly through her hair.

"Every night I lay in my tent, I’d close my eyes and imagine myself at home like this, with you." William’s tired expression and unsteady voice made him seem far younger than his twenty summers. Camilla wondered what other horrors he’d seen during his life that he’d just been forced to swallow down in silence.

Eventually, his eyes closed and his breathing turned slow and even. Camilla tucked a lock of long, sun bleached hair behind his ear and just watched him sleep. She wanted to memorise every last detail of him, the man she loved so much it hurt.

It was as William had said earlier. All they could do was rise tomorrow and try again, try and be the best they could to each other. And with time, this season of separation filled with grief and bitterness would hopefully fade into a distant memory.