The Unchaste

Moonkissed

Things, they say, can change in a day. A few moments can destroy the deductions of lifetimes. And then, while antiquity applauds and the imminent sniggers, history carves a cruel cut. And triumphs at the turn of fates, at the shattered today collecting its pieces, bewildered that it wouldn't fit in anymore.

The cold stare of cloud-coated moon maddened Delilah tonight, made her edgy because something was incorrect. The horizons, whichever way she looked, seemed shady. Inside the Walker's place, fire burned away into cinders, oozing light from the misty windows of the house. Flames bickering away into ashes.

Delilah gazed down the trellis of green; the backyard was scant and overcast with shadows. The infrequency of attention, perhaps, had turned it now into a commotion of wild heath and bilberry. Wild bushes of nettles brimmed through lattices.

The corral plot gave her a cemetery like sense which Delilah didn't like at all.

So she, not breathing inside nor breathing out, returned into the house as quietly as she could_ upstairs and to her room. And his.

When she had left room, he had been still asleep_ having woken up only momentarily, to change his blood stained shirt for one borrowed by the landlord and to grumble at the ache of his shoulder, half awake, drunk on restlessness. All the exertions had led to the injury in his back yawn open its mouth. He was unconscious and bleeding generously, when Harris had helped him upstairs.

Now, when Delilah slithered back into the room carelessly_ she nearly screamed from shock to see a shadow sitting in the dark corner, on a settee, unilluminated by fire-light.

He turned his head at her thorough inhale and Delilah saw Richard, struggling with a bandage in his hand.

He acknowledged her with n easy nod. "I was only wondering if they had stationed you into another room. That would have been very prudish."

They hadn't, of course. Richard and Delilah had both been prearranged into the same room by the midwife, under an unassuming understanding that they both were, somehow, simply_ clearly, attached.

"You are not sleeping." Delilah observed instead. "Your Grace."

He sighed, leaning onto the backrest of the settee, as if surfacing from his restiveness, then he relaxed once more and fell into pensiveness, as if he hadn't heard her. He had.

"Your Grace?" He frowned at her words, as if in askance. "Dare I assume you still despise me?"

Delilah didn't try to rectify the mistaken belief. She returned to the bed where he had been sleeping. Her feet ached from the charge she had performed all day. And the baby...

"The infant is fighting fit." She informed him dutifully. "The mother is well too. They are both asleep. The nurse did provide Anne Walker some sedatives though; she was restless in the evening. Is that fine?"

He nodded his approval.

Delilah opened her mouth again, paused_ then said, "They have named the little one 'Richard'."

Redness stole at his cheeks and he refused to look at her. Delilah smiled, though it was only a half-smile. All this was, without a doubt, sanctioned by the reason that to the Walkers, Richard Winter came as a God.

"That's unfair." He criticized, somewhat indignant. "Not to mention, entirely unnecessary. There are better names in the world."

"Fair enough to me," Delilah disputed weakly. "...after his Godfather, Richard Winter."

He narrowed his eyes. "Miss Eves_"

"Delilah." She corrected. Delilah. Not Miss Eves_ and not for intimacy, but because she simply did not deserve that degree of respect. She was not worth it.