WolfeStrike (De Wolfe Pack Generations #2) - Kathryn Le Veque Page 0,1
wondering when you were going to ask,” he said. “You have not said a word about it nearly this entire campaign. I was coming to wonder if you even remembered that your wife was with child.”
Tor shrugged. “Battle is no place to speak of a pregnant woman,” he said. “I needed to keep my mind on the fight and not on my wife.”
“You did not even receive a missive from home, did you?”
“Nay,” Tor said, shaking his head. “It would have been too much of a distraction, so I asked that nothing be sent. If I had received word, I would have wanted to go home right away, and that would not have been good for my focus. It was my intention to make it back to her whole and alive.”
Curt laughed softly. “And so you have,” he said. Then he gestured towards the castle in the distance. “Ride on. And congratulations, Papa.”
With a thankful smile, Tor spurred Enbarr and the horse took off. Those powerful legs could run for days and the horse thundered over the muddy road, only slowing down twice to avoid swampy sections. The section of the road that he was on bypassed the village that was nestled to the northeast of Lioncross, so it was an unimpeded ride the entire way.
All Tor could think about was his family.
This was an important moment to him.
Tor and Jane de Merrett, a former lady-in-waiting for the Countess of Hereford and Worcester, had married a little over a year ago. He had been young to be a groom, barely twenty years of age, but Jane had been pregnant and he had quickly married her so as not to cause a scandal.
The de Merretts were a big family in Manchester and even though the House of de Wolfe was larger and more powerful, Tor hadn’t wanted any issues with de Merrett. Nothing would have been more embarrassing than Lord de Merrett riding to Castle Questing and demanding satisfaction for a randy son of de Wolfe.
Tor knew his father would have killed him.
Therefore, he and Jane had married in secret and her parents could not have been more delighted, fortunately. Marrying one of the heirs of the House of de Wolfe had soothed any outrage they might have felt, and Tor had dodged what could have been a bad situation purely with his familial connection. But he and Jane paid a hefty price for their youthful, lustful behavior when she miscarried the child early on.
Only a scant two months later, she was pregnant again.
It was that child that Tor was so eager to see. His older brother, William “Will” de Wolfe, already had a child and Tor, as always, was eager to follow in his brother’s footsteps. Will was far to the north now, in command of one of their father’s mighty bastions along the Scots border, but Tor had remained behind at Lioncross Abbey Castle where they had both fostered. It had been his home for a few years and he loved life on the Marches even though he knew it was only temporary. At some point, he’d be expected to return to the north and take his rightful place beside his brother, as the second son of the Earl of Warenton, Scott de Wolfe.
There was the heir and then there was the spare – and that was Tor.
But until then, he enjoyed the experience of life on the Welsh Marches. They were as volatile as the Scottish Marches. Maybe more so. But he loved the scenery, the greenery, the icy rivers and the flowers in the spring. He enjoyed all of those things probably more than the next man simply because, beneath that warring exterior and quiet demeanor, Tor had a gentle nature.
Considering how big he was, and he was taller than most men, with fists the size of a man’s head, his inherent gentleness seemed strangely out of place. On the field of battle, he’d been trained to rip a man’s head clean from his shoulders, but those same hands could hold his wife with a good deal of tenderness. The gentle nature also belied a fierce intelligence, for in a room of a hundred men, Tor was always the smartest. He knew a great deal about almost everything and tactically speaking, he was a master. That was why Curt wouldn’t make a move without him. Even at Tor’s young age, he was becoming quite a legend like his famous grandfather.