Sylvia looked up from her paperwork at the light knock to the parlor entrance. Ewan stood without his cane framed by the entryway. He looked more alive than he had in weeks with high color of exertion to his cheeks and the sheen of sweat upon his brow caught by the light streaming in from the windows behind her. She motioned for him to sit in one of the wingback chairs that huddled around the clean and empty fireplace.

He, too, wore the colors of mourning, but that was not unusual. All his clothes seemed to be of dark green, brown, or black. But now, he also wore a band of green and gold, no more than a half an inch wide, around his wrists. A man of his profession could not wear a sash or more ostentatious signs of grief, but the symbols he wore held many meanings. Sylvia understood them all.

Her own attire was of the dark green combined in tunic and trews with black calf high boots. A belt alone served to cinch in the waist still thick with slow gained recovery from the recent birth, but her usual bodice would not serve while trying to feed an infant every so often.

?Are you feeling the progress goes well?? She asked Ewan as she sat back, her hand moving to the cradle nearby where Beata slept soundly for now. Still, she started the gentle rocking motion as she watched him.

He gave a nod, his breathing still not regular but the deep inhalations of one regaining loss of breath. ?Aye, that I am.? He looked up over at her. ?The troupe does well to help me regain my strength.?

Sylvia looked over her shoulder to the window. The grounds were a hive of activity. In the practice yard a gathering of fifty men and women sparred and practiced. Pages darted from the buildings on errands or to find a moment of their own time to sit beneath the orchard trees or at the corner of a building for shade. She turned back to look at Ewan and nodded.

Yet over near the entrance to the grounds the guard bowed the Barrister in past the gates and offered direction, ?If you?ve business with the quartermaster he is up on the practice field for now, sir. Business with the Master of Arms or the Baroness, you can find them in the manor house.? He bowed again and waited to see if anything more was required of him before he returned to his charge of keeping an eye on arrivals.

Sylvia looked back down at the missive on her desk, among so many others, and then raised her eyes to Ewan. "Let me know of any other progress made, Ewan, for it seems Rhodri is in a fine royal fit over the latest happenings."

"As well he should be, but of course," he stood and his gaze caught a familiar figure crossing the yards in approach to the house. "It seems you have a caller, my lady."

Sylvia turned to look over her shoulder yet again, and slender, raven black brows rose slightly and then more so in worry. She stood from her desk unceremoniously causing the chair to teeter back on its hind legs before it settled again. She looked to Ewan for some explanation. "Did you forget to tell me something, Ewan?"

"I assure, my lady, nothing new has come my way." Ewan reached for the door just as the knock was heard. He bowed to the Master Barrister and let the man enter before he slipped out the door and maintained a presence just outside.

Sylvia hurried her steps to Lucky, "Lucky it is so good to see you, but are you alright? What's happened?" She searched his face for any signs that might answer her questions. He did look worn, not precisely physically, but something in his eyes. Only some pressing need would call him out to the manor.

"Interrupted? Blazing pyres, don't be ridiculous." She ushered him to a seat in one of the wingback chairs near the fire, not her favored chair though that allowed her to see some of the outside through the open window behind her desk. That seat she took for herself. "If we wait just a moment longer we should have refreshments brought in. My staff is irritatingly on top of such things. Perhaps it is only irritating when I do not need it."

She glanced to the cradle where Beata had managed to sleep through normal voiced conversations without stirring. With a slowly released breath, she let down her guard some and looked to the man she considered as near as a brother to her. "So, I stole your questions away. Then you've come to see if I still stand." The laugh was hollow, "The answer is, during the day I do stand because I have to. At night, is a different thing all together." She closed her eyes a moment, her hands moving up the arms of the wingback chair. "I miss him."

Just as she said, a knock came at the door, and upon her bidding them enter, a kitchen page brought in a small tray with tea things as well as a small bottle of scotch. Sylvia lifted a brow, and then thanked the page who departed with a curtsey. "Ewan must have informed them, but I was unaware you had reached back into days of scotch instead of coffee." She started to pour a cup of tea for herself and a glass of scotch for him. "Perhaps we both need some help."

Sylvia took Lucky?s hand for the comforting presence. Her smile was worn, but not the overly used one given to the many that had visited and spoken their own wishes of assistance during the Remembrance. This was a sincere smile of gratitude for his offer, "I do not think there is anything to be done other than what you are doing: visiting a friend who might abuse your friendship with demands for your logic to supplant her own.? There were slowly taken breaths in the moments of silence, his hand held as if she might find more strength there to bolster her waning reserves. The room seemed to hold the non-kin in close seclusion from the world. The smallest stirring of Beata in her cradle was heard, but it was the burbling murmur of a shifting sleeping baby.

?Sid offered to bring him back.? Her voice in whisper as if to speak the truth of the matter would shatter the firm resolve on her choice. Then she questioned with more conviction to shatter that resolve and feel its true sting. ?What would you have said given that choice?? Her eyes held steady on the Barrister searching for truth in the handsome if more weary face, ?Would you have chosen to bring back a loved one if the possibility existed?? Even she did not know what answer she was seeking, but for once she could ask the question of someone she trusted to reveal that hurt and worry without platitudes being pressed back to her. She needed his reasoning.

His admission brought a crack in her wall of reasoning. Eyes widened to fight back the sting of tears irritating the lower lids. She felt her chest constrict as Lucky continued to say he would have sought it. He would have sought it. The offer was handed to her, brought upon the wing, and she had turned it away. Had she discarded a chance? Was it really so far removed from a healing? She had thought so then even as it pained her to picture Kieran lying on the cold stone of the bier in the cavernous tombs of his ancestors.

The trembling of his hand on hers drew her back to him. The resigned smile as he drew the hand away and spoke of the peace found for those who had moved on from those that loved them so deeply gave her some sense of quiet in that corner of her heart. She knew he understood what she had done, or not done, and why. Sylvia realized the difficulty and pain it must have caused him to answer so honestly. ?Thank you, Lucky.? Her voice eased out some agony she had been sheltering behind a wall of reason.

Another slight movement from the cradle caught her eye. A wandering, aimless tiny hand rose up and circled around before dropping again. Sylvia?s mouth curved in a smile as she recognized the attempt at a waking stretch of her daughter. She stood and went to the cradle as she asked Lucky, ?Would you like to meet the last gift Kieran gave to me??

In gentle, safe arms Sylvia lifted the waking baby girl. A soft squeak and awkward stretch of arms, Beata opened the unfocused baby blue eyes. "Hello, sleepy head." Sylvia crooned. "You have a special guest. If you charm him, he may even let you call him Uncle Lucky." She mustered a smile, and though it lacked some of the natural ease in its formation the affection was sincere.

Sylvia turned so Lucky might get a better look. The little girl had a whisper of dark black hair seen along the edges of her tiny forehead from beneath the white cotton cap. The clothes of yellow peeked out at the neck beneath the Yransea green blanket wrapping. Beata's little hands struggled and won their freedom out of the swaddling to curl up close to her cheek.

With a small motion of her arms accompanied by a lifting shrug of her shoulders, Sylvia silently asked if Lucky wished to hold the baby. It was better, she thought, than asking out loud, for if he felt discomfort he could ignore the motion all together.