Simeon refused to retreat and in a fine show of indifference gave narrow shoulders a slight shrug. At the same time his already thin lips flattened into the single fierce line that exposed a lifelong and lingering contempt for this constant and always resented arbiter of too many family disagreements.
“’Tis one you’ve no choice but to accept,” Ulrich continued with the same patronizing air ever guaranteed to irritate Simeon. “Accept it as unalterable and be grateful that I have not whispered of your treachery in the ears of those who might demand from you a deadly price.”
“The conflict that divides us is no nearer a resolution today than it was a decade past. Stephen rules while Gloucester relentlessly fights to see his sister Matilda claim the throne their father promised, so—” Simeon sneered this scornful response to the hollow threat he knew Ulrich would never risk taking for fear of stalling his own grand ambitions. “Beware, brother, elsewise you, not I, may be the one who pays that deadly price.”
Ulrich disdainfully grunted as his fraternal protagonist’s gaunt form turned and slipped into the waiting anonymity of a moonless night.
Chapter 2
“Shhh—” Ceri leaned forward to again gently brush a swathe of black hair from her patient’s broad brow. She then laid across that bared surface the cool solace of a neatly folded cloth cooled in icy stream water.
Lord Tal had been caught in the throes of a clearly disagreeable dream … again. But that should be no surprise after he’d been so foully attacked deep within the presumed safety of his own lands.
The majority of Ceri’s concern was for her patient’s fever which unaccountably continued despite the faithful administration of Gran Mab’s potent brews. But she ruefully admitted herself prey to both growing regret and a twinge of shame earned by the selfishness of that emotion.
Tal’s injury and its treatment had already stolen precious hours from the gift of time in his company, a gift severely limited at the outset by circumstances beyond control.
More than an entire day had passed since Gran Mab posted Ceri to tend the injuries of their lord and his knight. She was satisfied by the older woman’s assurance that Sir Alan would not awaken from a healing sleep induced by herbal potions until he rested within the bailey walls of Castle Westbourne. But Ceri was thoroughly disheartened by the fact that Tal, too, had remained lost to right senses save for the few brief moments when she’d stood by his side and he gazed into her eyes.
A small suspicion nibbled ever more insistently at the edges of Ceri’s composure. Although the mere fact that she allowed the question to form struck her with guilty fear of disloyalty, she couldn’t help but wonder—was this Gran Mab’s clever ploy to both grant and deny an earnest plea? Aye, as promised, Ceri was here and alone with her hero … but he was unconscious.
When dispatching Ceri to undertake this task, Gran Mab had given the girl two tiny pottery crocks filled with healing elixirs—one meant for Tal and the other for Sir Alan. Glancing toward these items, Ceri silently reviewed her grandmother’s simple instructions.
Into every mug of water that either of her two patients drank, she was to put a single drop of healing potion from their respective crocks. Although the potions were of different consistencies and hues, were the effects of both the same? Was the thin, pale green liquid in Tal’s intended to induce the same peaceful sleep as the thick, brown syrup in Sir Alan’s?
Perhaps Tal’s continuing sleep was the penance she must pay for the vivid imagination which too often lured her into escaping a mundane life by dwelling in sweet fantasies. After all, her grandmother affectionately called her a moonling, claimed she was fated to be one by the fact that her mother had spent the night before her birth sleeping in a meadow beneath the light of a full moon.
“Are you an angel?” There was a gentle amusement in the dark velvet voice to match the speaker’s wry half-smile. He looked straight into the gentle concern of a gaze the same silvery green as the wind-turned leaves of birch tree.
“Nay,” Ceri gasped, startled by words naming her something far different from the image in her own thoughts. But after an instant’s reflection his question faintly curled soft lips upward and sent a warm tint of pleasure to brighten her ivory cheeks with a wild rose hue.
“Alas—” While tumbling as a bemused captive of his devastating smile, this breathless response tripped off Ceri’s tongue with amazing ease. “I am all too human.”
Fearing he would think her no more than a simpering fool unable to put any sensible thought into words, Ceri briskly turned her attention to the mundane chore of restoring a soothing chill to the cloth between her hands and his brow.
As she again dipped the small square into her basin of cool springwater a most uncomfortable possibility threatened to steal her delight in Tal’s company. In the deepest recesses of a too tender heart, Ceri feared his compliments were merely the product of her grandmother’s spell. Aye, it was more than a possibility. It was a strong likelihood, one that promptly soured her sweet dreams. What honest joy could there be in tricking false emotions from him?
Tal rescued his lovely attendant’s fingers from the imminent danger of frostbite amid a basin of plainly frigid water and firmly clasped them in the warmth of his much larger hands.
“Leastways,” he implored with all the considerable charm at his command, “tell me your name so that I’ll know who to credit for my recovery?”
Still thunderstruck by the wrong she’d set into motion by forcing this incredible man to play a pivotal role in her fraudulent pageant of love, Ceri fought to squeak out an answer.
“My name is Ceridwen but my grandmother, the wise woman of Llechu whose home I share, most often calls me Ceri. And—” Abruptly realizing what she’d failed to make clear, she instantly added, “’Tis my Gran Mab you must thank for the potions which will see your health restored.”
“Ceridwen?” Tal ignored the latter half of this statement while gazing into the damsel’s bewitching face. “Then we have more in common than homes amidst Westbourne lands.”
Curious, Ceri’s delicate brows arched in silent question.
“Surely you realize that we are both named after figures of Welsh legend?” Amber eyes glowed with gentle amusement. “I for the courageous and ever victorious warrior, Taliesan; while you were blessed with the name of the goddess of poetry.”
“’Tis true.” Ceri nodded and by her action firelight was trapped in a wreath of dusky curls that had escaped from thick black plaits to frame the creamy oval of her face. “But it is an inappropriate choice as I have no talent for verse.”
“You’ve no need to rhyme words.” The golden sparks in his dark gaze merged into a potent glow. “Your grace and beauty are poetry in themselves.”
Ceri blushed in earnest. As the granddaughter of someone held in fearful awe, she had received too much of extravagant flattery to believe that these honeyed words were sincere. And, though she had longed to earn such praise from Lord Taliesan, in now hearing and knowing them a lie, there was far more pain for what would never really be than joy for a sham dream come true.
“I’ve embarrassed you and for that I apologize.” Tal quietly spoke, honestly regretting that he was the cause of this sensitive beauty’s distress. Though he had spoken with the ease of one well accustomed to the royal court’s facile blandishments, he was sorry she hadn’t believed compliments which, to his own surprise, were utterly sincere.
Anxious to smooth over the ensuing awkward pause which plainly left Ceri even more uncomfortable, Tal turned their focus to a different subject. “By the fact that you live with Mabyn it is clear that you are not wed. But how can that be? Are all the males on my fiefdom so blind?”
A tiny bubble of laughter escaped Ceri’s throat before she could stifle it.
“The Welshmen hereabouts are afraid to approach or even stand too near the granddaughter of their wise woman.”
Tal nodded. He could understand the matter from their view. While Ceri referred to her
grandmother as a wise woman, to her Welsh suitors Mab was doubtless seen as precisely what his fellow Normans had surreptitiously named her—witch.
* * *
“Where have you been?” Mabyn demanded of the stocky figure ducking beneath a low doorframe to enter her simple daub and wattle abode.
“Hunting.” Lloyd’s gruff answer was accompanied by the defiant tilt of a head of black curls liberally streaked with silver while, bolstered by years of experience, he met the wise woman’s stern gaze unflinching.
“Tch!” Mab scoffed at this too simple response from the man uncomfortably tied to her by bonds of a secret shame. Despite flesh creased with age, now as always her piercing stare dared him or anyone else to be foolish enough to think her infirm. “But hunting what … a beast of four legs or two?”
Lloyd stood with arms crossed over his barrel chest and feet firmly planted as if prepared for a physical assault. Well acquainted with Mab’s long practiced habit of disparaging his every action, he remained impassive against the taunt. No reason for greater anxiety simply because this wild stab was better founded than any of her many previous jabs.
“Hah! While you idly roamed the countryside—” Mab closely studied her bearded visitor, watching for the slightest crack in his implacable mask. “Events here in Llechu were unaccountably swept into an maelstrom of trouble.”
“What happened?” Not so much as the tiniest gleam of curiosity lightened the flat slate-grey of Lloyd’s eyes. He knew better than to reveal even a hint of an honest response.
“A fire in the woodlands?” he asked. “Some violent dispute between neighbors in the village or outlying farms?”
Despite her pointed attention, Mab found nothing to rouse suspicion in Lloyd’s expression. She slowly shook her head and motioned him to take a seat at the trestle table permanently set up against one wall. While joining him she shared the tale of a dastardly assault which had delivered two wounded Normans to be tended by Ceri in the next cottage.
“But who?” Mab sharply demanded, slapping her hands palm down on the table’s use-smoothed planks. “Who struck from the shield of forest shadows? And why?”
Lloyd steadily met the silver glitter of his companion’s gaze but knew she neither expected nor likely would appreciate his interpretation of the situation … leastways not yet.
“Even in the hinterlands of Llechu—” The querulous tone of Mabyn’s already formidable voice dipped further into an annoyed grumble. “We know that the English king leads his army on purposeless forays much, much further to the southwest.”
Lloyd struggled to restrain a wry smile. Oh, his amusement wasn’t for the seemingly endless war of succession but rather his hostess’s irritable demand for answers she couldn’t possibly expect him to have—although he did.
“For the sake of his foster father, Robert of Gloucester, Lord Tal supports Empress Matilda’s claim to the throne. Thus none in her camp would prosper by way of Tal’s death.” Mab muttered these facts more to herself than to Lloyd who assuredly knew well the history of the earl of Gloucester’s championship of his sister Matilda’s cause.
“A personal assault on Lord Taliesan, rather than his castle, would be of little gain for Stephen.” Slowly turning, Mab stared blindly into low-burning flames while musing further.
“And even this far from the castle, I have heard echos of gossip suggesting that his mother, our Princess Angwen, has negotiated an alliance with Farleith. It’s an alliance which should safeguard her son against any threats from their southeast.” Mab aimlessly motioned in that direction.
“Thus Lord Tal is left to contend only with Bendale, the baron at his northeast border—the unreliable one whose loyalties constantly waver in his relentless quest for greatest self-advantage.” Mab scowled. “I wonder only why Angwen chose not to look toward Bendale for an alliance such as the one she seeks with Farleith? I believe Bendale’s arrogant sister is recently widowed and left homeless.”
So focused on these facts was Mab that she neither noticed nor cared when Lloyd silently departed for his own cottage located some little distance within the forest’s borders.
Chapter 3
On the third evening after Tal first awoke in a Welsh cottage next to the wise woman’s abode the fading glow of twilight fell through an unshuttered window above his simple oak-frame bed to find Ceri perched atop a stool drawn near.
Ceri was alone with Lord Taliesan as she had been for the past three days, save for the knight lost in healing sleep on a pallet placed close to the carefully fitted rocks of the central hearth—and Gran Mab’s twice daily visits. Only when the older woman came each dawn and sunset to replace their patients’ bandages with fresh cloth strips soaked in an astringent solution and care for the men’s most intimate needs was Ceri free to retreat. It was then that Ceri could claim a brief private time to bathe, change garb, and deal with her own personal needs.
During their past days together Ceri and Tal had spent all the hours of daylight and stolen many from the nights to talk, to laugh, and to share memories both happy and sad. It was through this open contact that they had settled into a rare relationship of effortless compatibility … despite Ceridwen’s constant battle to hide how deeply Taliesan fascinated her, how his nearness roused overwhelming curiosity and deep, unfamiliar longings.
It was Lord Tal’s considerate response to her unspoken discomfort that had further earned Ceri’s admiration—and appreciation. Though Tal remained unclothed to ease her grandmother’s ministrations, whether laying flat or sitting upright as now, he spared her embarrassment by keeping the bedfur carefully pulled up over his legs with upper edge folded neatly above his waist.
Ceri felt closer to Tal than to any human she had ever known. A closeness that seemed only to intensify a dangerous compulsion to helplessly stare while flickering light from the hearth behind played across his powerful chest.
Tal felt the shy caress of her green mist gaze and sensed the admiration behind it. Ceridwen was far from the first female to react to him this way, and he’d long ago learned how to control both his response and theirs. But in this instance he was forced to reluctantly acknowledge the fact that this lovely innocent was best left to the males among her own people. Their positions in life were too vastly different. Asides, whether for good or ill, commitments had already been made on his behalf.
Forcing her errant gaze to drop, Ceri peered through a grey haze of smoke drifting up from the hearthfire to blindly study pale fingers twined into the forest green gown covering her lap. In this way she was better able to keep attention wholly focused on Tal’s words while he quietly spoke of the sad day his older brother had suddenly died.
“Will was strong and rarely idle but—” The hand Tal had absently waved now abruptly closed into a tight fist and thumped hard against his uninjured thigh. “In the space of a single day, nay, a single hour he was … gone.”
In Taliesan’s voice Ceri heard both the anguish of loss and an underlying thread of—was it guilt? Though wisely remaining silent, she radiated unspoken comfort for the devastating hero long admired from afar but now found even more praiseworthy after having come to know the truth of the honorable man so much better.
“I was nearly thirteen and hadn’t seen my brother and only playmate for what seemed eons but had actually been a mere three months.”
Never before had Tal spoken of this most painful event from his past, not even to his grieving parents. To him it was clear that Ceri understood him as no one ever had. Tal gazed with wonder at the woman of such incredible loveliness she appeared almost luminescent despite the drab green of her homespun garb. And somehow the gentle solace in her misty gaze drew a long inheld poison out from the depths of the aching soul he’d learned to successfully hide beneath a tight fitting facade of wry jests and laughter.
“Will was home at Westbourne for a first visit after beginning his fostering with Earl Robert in Cardiff Keep.” An echo of Tal’s childhood adoration for an older brother linger
ed in his voice. “We were playing on the castle’s parapet walkway as we had many, many times before. He was anxious to show off all the new skills he had learned and promptly insisted on demonstrating the right way to dodge a down-slashing broadsword.”
Tal grinned with the memory and Ceridwen’s soft mouth tilted upward in a reflected smile of such sweetness it instantly reaffirmed his belief that, if not an angel, still this dainty damsel truly was the most enchanting woman he had ever seen.
Intently studying a heart-shaped face overwhelmed by masses of ebony silk, Tal’s attention inevitably settled on enticing lips silently issuing promises which he much doubted the innocent she plainly was could possibly understand.
Beneath the breath-stealing power igniting golden flashes in the depths of Tal’s steady dark gaze, Ceri’s heart pounded erratically and a foolish question slipped through her lips.
“Did some vile ailment befall Will in the midst of your play?” Ceri repented the moment these words left her tongue. They instantly replaced the warmth on Tal’s stunningly handsome face with a mask of frost-covered granite.
“Nay,” Tal immediately denied. “To properly display this new tactic, Will urged me to wield my wooden sword and feign a mortal blow. I recognized the danger but still I obeyed.” Dark eyes hardened to black ice. “Then to evade my stroke Will, as taught, stepped sideways with great agility.
“Will failed to consider the consequences of his hasty action—consequences I saw but failed to insist that he heed. He fell from Westbourne’s parapet down into a season-dry moat to lay smashed on the jagged surface of its exposed rocks.”
“How awful for you!” Ceri softly gasped in artless sympathy, horrified by the emotional pain Tal must have endured.
Knocked completely off balance by Ceri’s reaction, a faint furrow marred Tal’s brow. He knew the exclamation of this beauty nearly a stranger only days past was sincere. Her honest concern emphasized the lack of the many who knew him infinitely better yet hadn’t been troubled by so much as a single moment’s distress on his behalf.
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