After long period of courtship, young lord Anselm and lady Leandra were finally getting married. The church was full of their family and friends, but the groom and bride only had eyes for each other. Maybe it was a good thing, though, as they could ignore all the talk about the size of Leandra's dowry or the price of engagement gifts Anselm had given her.
If he had heard, Anselm would reply he couldn't care less about any of that. What mattered to him was that he had found a kindred soul and a companion. He was only sorry he had to bring Leandra to the same house his aunt was still proudly proclaiming hers. But maybe now that he had a family, life at the manor could change somehow?

And then all the vows were said, the newlyweds walked out of the church and the family and friends, turning to follow them, couldn't ignore each other any longer.
"You don't belong here!" Ellara glared at Damien, the bastard son of Watcher knew who, and especially at his red-headed wife.
"We were invited." Anna snapped back. "By lord Anselm himself." She thought to mention Ellara's own husband, but stopped herself just in time. She was sure Ellara had no idea about Tristan, if only by the fact she had not heard any screaming, but it still might be better to be careful.
"That does not mean you are welcome here. This is a ceremony and while lord Anselm may have gotten carried away in his joy, we do not want peasants here to ruin the mood." Ellara's tone was icy cold, pouring all her bad mood onto the one safe target.
Anna opened her mouth to reply, but she noticed Adrian behind his wife's back shaking his head. In the end she just turned, her head as high as she could hold it, and walked out of the church, trailed with Damien, who tried to appease everyone with uncertain smiles.

Even at home, Ellara was becoming harder to live with every day. With the new lady Lorimer moved in, everyone expected lady Ellara and her husband to finally establish her own household. Even Adrian supported the idea, but Ellara wouldn't hear about it.
"What do you mean, our own home? This is my home and always has been. I have ruled over the village when Anselm was still a child and if that woman thinks she can push me out like I was beneath her..."
"I only said you might be more comfortable if..." Adrian tried, but completely in vain.
"Enough. It will never happen and that's my final word on this matter. She thinks she's so beautiful, but..."

With his wife on the warpath, Adrian was feeling even more trapped in the mansion than usual. And his son, who should have been his pride and joy or at the very least a companion in his misery, was turning out to be a bitter disappointment. Pampered by his mother since early childhood, Desmond was spoilt and vain, often acting younger than his real age. Adrian wasn't sure if the boy even had a genuine interest in anything else than rolling his eyes.

He escaped this atmosphere to the same place as he always did, the woods outside the village. He had taken to spending whole days there and eventually stopped caring about much else than getting outside of his wife's reach.
He came to regret his carelessness when he came across a wild bear. Adrian reached for his sword and prepared to fight, wishing Damien was there to assist him.

The fight was short, but vicious and bloody. In the end the bear was lying dead on the ground, but Adrian was badly wounded.

He managed to get to the manor, where the servants got a physician for him. His lady wife refused to even speak with him, which seemed to be the only good thing to come out of this mess. She made it clear she had always disapproved of his hunting and expected him to crawl to her and admit she had been right all along.
Adrian supposed this at least made his recuperation bearable, but he still wasn't sure if the blood loss and forced rest were wort it.

Even after Adrian was finally allowed out of his bed, just before he could gnaw his leg off like an animal caught in a trap, the physician stressed that more hunting might mean reopening the wound.
Luckily for him, there were other places to go when he desperately needed to escape the manor and his unbearable family. Damien's home was as free and pleasant as always and a game of darts made for a nice substitute for more dangerous or demanding activities. Anna's little boy, already showing more promise than Desmond, was playing in a corner while the adults enjoyed themselves.

Damien said being free to crawl around the house encouraged little Tristan to explore and helped make him into a strong independent man, while heavily pregnant Anna just didn't have the energy to spend much time with the child.
But Damien made sure the boy was never hungry and he couldn't imagine what else he might need. Certainly not the strict rules of the convent he had been subjected to growing up.

When the time came for Tristan's birthday, Adrian made sure to be present. Anna baked a cake on the occasion and Damien noted she spent more time on it than on any other meal in months. He wondered if was really meant for the boy or for his supposed father.
When Anna helped Tristan blow out the candles, the two men looked at each other, once again wondering who would be the better father for the boy.

Tristan himself, at least, was excited by the idea he was a noble by birth.
"Have you ever fought in a war? With huge war machines? Has your castle ever been under siege?"
"No, not really... there haven't been wars in this part of continent for decades."
"So what do you do?"
Adrian was overwhelmed for a moment, but he could almost see himself in the boy's enthusiasm, energy and easy charm.

If only it was Tristan who had been born as his rightful son instead of the one he had. While Desmond never cared for any sort of physical activity, only planning to be a great lord one day and judge people from a comfy chair, Tristan was excited about the idea of fighting and determined to become a knight. And while Desmond seemed to have learned from his mother to look down at Adrian, Tristan was eager to impress him with his agility and strength.
Adrian had never fancied himself the fatherly type, but he was almost sorry he could never acknowledge boy as his.

Not everyone shared Adrian's liking for Tristan, though.
When he invited Celestine for a visit, he thought she would be overjoyed. After all, everything had to be an improvement over the convent, which his father made out to sound as the most boring place in the world. He did his best to make it up to her and be fun, but the girl didn't seem to appreciate jokes about nuns or about her mother.

"I thought you would be happy to be friends..." Tristan was growing desperate, especially as he didn't understand how come the girl didn't seem to like him. He was almost a knight, his father had the best company ever and she was... nobody, and still she only rolled her eyes at him.
After some time he just gave up trying. If Celestine was as boring as the convent, it was her own loss. He was the son of a noble and a real knight, he should have no shortage of much better friends.

He had much greater success with his cousin Devin and soon the two boys were best friends, playing together whenever they had free time.
They would pretend they were knights, soldiers or even robbers, Tristan always leading the way and making all the decisions. Devin was more than happy to play along, even when Tristan decided he would be a powerful king and his friend a defeated rebel. Devin was eager to please and grateful for the company and Tristan loved the sense of power he got from ordering the other boy around.

Anna kept expecting to go into labour for some time, unsure if she was afraid of it or hoped it would come soon and she would be able to move once again. But when it really came in the middle of a night her strongest thought was that it wasn't a good time. Actually, it never would be a good time, not for the labour and not for a pregnancy.
She screamed for Damien to bring a midwife or someone, but she mostly wanted him and Tristan, both useless men, out of the house.

And then, when everything was over and she was holding her newborn daughter, she wasn't even sure what her strongest emotions were then. The baby girl was healthy and fully hers, but somehow it didn't feel completely real to Anna. The fact that the girl showed promise to have golden hair, just like her older brother, just added to the strangeness of it.

It wasn't long before life got back on the usual track. Even a newborn in the house couldn't stop Damien and Anna from inviting their friends over, and their highborn friends were glad to come.
Tristan spent as much time as he could glued to Adrian, talking loudly about anything and everything, basking in his importance. "Do you sentence criminals? Have you ever sentenced anyone to death?"
Delia flinched at that question. She couldn't help but remember her and Finn's recent close escape and her father's brush with lady Ellara before that. The memories would feel all to real even without the presence of the guard who had escorted her back that night.
"Don't worry. There won't be any hangings as long as I can prevent them."
Delia turned after the voice and saw Anselm, the lord himself, smiling awkwardly at her. She smiled back and did a little curtsy, not knowing how else to respond.

She needn't have worried, though. Damien and Anna's gatherings were always informal and always fun, sometimes even too much for some of the guests.
Alysanne came when invited, but usually kept mostly to herself, ill at ease in a company that was supposed to be respectable and lost amidst all the noise. Damien did his best to draw her in a few times, but most of his jokes just startled her even more.

Still, it was Alysanne during her visits who helped take care of baby Elena, making sure she had enough of everything.
Unlike Damien's jokes and pranks or Adrian's talk of hunting and adventures, the baby was something Alysanne did understand, and something that made her feel useful. After a while she wasn't sure if Elena wasn't actually the main reason she kept coming.

And as even days turned to months and eventually to years, nothing really changed. Little Elena kept growing and she soon learned to turn to Alysanne every time her aunt was around.
Alysanne often wondered whether she should say something to Damien or Anna, but the other woman's radiant self-confidence always made her hesitate at the last moment. She never felt she had much in common with Anna and saw no reason why she would listen to anything she had to say. And it wasn't like she didn't enjoy helping with Elena...