Tarass kissed her silent. “No buts, wife. If anything, it will be you who grows tired of my demands.”

Snow giggled. “Would you care to wager on that?”

He laughed along with her. “I don’t think that’s wise, since we may kill each other trying to win the wager.”

“Or we may have a gaggle of bairns,” she said, the thought pleasing her.

Tarass smiled, favoring the thought, though her rumbling stomach had him responding to that. “Time to eat.”

Snow grabbed his arm when he let go of her hand and went to move off the bed. “Tarass.”

He didn’t like the worry he saw on her face that only moments ago was wearing a smile.

“Whatever happens, I want you to know that my love for you grows stronger with every minute and every hour of the day, and no one will ever take my love for you from me.”

His heart swelled with joy hearing how much she loved him, but his stomach clenched with worry that she sounded as if she feared she would be taken from him.

He leaned over and kissed her gently. “I’m glad your love for me grows as rapidly and strong as mine for you. And if I must remind you every day for the rest of our days that I will never let anyone take you from me, then I will. You are mine, wife, now and always.”

Tarass held his wife’s hand as he guided her to the dais in the Great Hall the next morning. He and Snow were looking forward to sending Cleric Norman on his way and was disappointed when they found him absent from the hall.

“He hasn’t been seen yet,” Maude told Tarass when he asked her about the cleric. “He was shown to a cottage, but complained about Ann’s screams. Her first birth wasn’t an easy one. The cottage he occupied was next to hers.”

“Is she and the bairn well?” Snow asked with haste.

Maude smiled. “She and the tiny lad does well, m’lady.”

“And the cleric?” Tarass asked, a pang of worry stabbing at him at the thought of Snow screaming in agony to deliver their bairn. He didn’t know if he’d be able to abide hearing his wife suffer in so much pain.

“He insisted on being moved as far away from the screams as possible, my lord,” Maude said. “He was placed in the only other available cottage.”

“Gilbert’s cottage,” Tarass said, thinking of the seasoned warrior that had passed peacefully in his sleep while he had been away.

Thaw’s bark alerted Snow to his return, Nettle having taken the pup outside after Tarass had forbid Snow from rushing out of bed this morning. She had been glad, since he had teased her body, all of it, senseless with kisses that had her exploding in not one but two climaxes.