The Welshman's Bride

by Margaret Moore

  Regarding her sympathetically, he said, “Only one piece of advice will I offer you, my lady. Wait a little before you write any letters. Dylan is a hottempered man, and you are a proud woman. Give yourselves some time before you act.”

  “As we did not do before we married?”

  “Since you put it in those words, yes.”

  She nodded, thinking they had had time, and time had only enlarged the breach between them.

  “May I stay here in your solar a little, my lord?” she asked. “Things are in such a bustle with your son’s return, I would enjoy the quiet.”

  “Certainly, my dear. Stay as long as you like, since I am done my business for today.”

  He went to the door, then turned back once more. “Do not think every marriage but yours goes smoothly, Genevieve. They all have their trials.”

  She watched him leave, then let her mind rove to the first time she had seen Dylan, here in the courtyard. How bold and handsome he had looked! How wonderful his smile. How flattering his interest.

  How young and foolish and full of dreams she had been.

  “My lady?”

  She started and jumped to her feet as Trystan entered the solar.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I was thinking,” she answered honestly. “Now if you will pardon me—”

  He closed the door.

  “What are you doing?”

  He turned toward her, a look of desperation on his face. “I must tell you.”

  “I think there is nothing you can tell me that I should like to hear,” she said sternly, guessing his intent.

  “I love you.”

  “I do not want to hear this.”

  “But you must!” he cried, throwing himself onto his knees in front of her. “You must know how I feel about you! I have loved you since the first time I saw you!”

  “You should not. I am a married woman.”

  “Married to a man who doesn’t deserve you!”

  “This is ridiculous, Trystan. I am leaving.” She started to walk past him.

  “No!”

  He grabbed her around the legs, almost knocking her over.

  “Trystan, stop this!” she commanded.

  He scrambled to his feet and held her arms, staring at her intently. “Genevieve, I went away loving you, and I stayed away, thinking time and distance would cure me of loving you. Nay, hoping it would.

  “Yet the moment you appeared in the wood, I knew nothing would ever cure me of this sweet madness. I love you with all my heart!”

  “I am Dylan’s wife.”

  “He is a lascivious rogue who dares to accuse you of infidelity.”

  “And if he saw you here, he would have good cause to accuse me. Let me go.”

  “I only want you to listen, to understand. I love you, and I heard what you intend. Write to your uncle. Annul the marriage—and let me marry you. I will be a better husband than Dylan could ever be!”

  “How do you know what I intend?”

  He flushed and looked away.

  “It is hardly honorable conduct becoming a knight to listen at doors.”

  “A desperate man does desperate things.”

  “Then if you listened at the door, you will know why I cannot be Dylan’s wife.”

  “I don’t care if you are barren.”

  “But I do!” she cried, all the tension of the past weeks breaking forth as she rebuked him. “If I will not stay with the man I love because I cannot give him children, do you think I would ever marry another?”

  “You love him?” Trystan asked incredulously.

  “Yes,” she replied softly, only now, when Dy-lan was gone, realizing just how much. “I do.”

  “He must not love you, if he would leave you here.”

  “You may be right.”

  “He will have another in his bed in a week.”

  “I pray it may be so,” she lied. “I want him to be happy.”

  “And I want you to be.”

  Trystan reached out and clasped her hands in his in unconscious imitation of a gesture Dylan had made so often, and that served only to remind Genevieve of the man who had gone. “Dylan could never make any woman happy for long.”

  She thought of the days they had shared when they were first married, before the shadow of her barrenness crept over them. Not make a woman happy for long? She would never have tired of him, of his laughter and vitality, of his humor and his tenderness. And his passion.

  “Please, Genevieve, do not refuse what I offer! I love you!”

  She gently pulled her hands free. “I do not love you.”

  “You may, in time,” he pleaded

  “No, Trystan,” she said firmly, feeling as if she were at least twenty years older than he. “I will never love you, or any other man but him.”

  Trystan’s brow furrowed as his lips curled with scorn, for it seemed he understood at last the finality of her words. “He does not deserve your loyalty.”

  “Perhaps not, but he has my love. He will always have it.”

  “Then I have misjudged you,” Trystan said bitterly. “You are no different from other women swayed by his looks and shallow charm.”

  At his harsh, embittered words, she realized this was not a love-struck youth standing before her, flushed with a feeling he thought was eternal devotion. This was a man, with a man’s heart, a man’s desire, a man’s love. And a man’s anger.

  “Trystan,” she said softly and sincerely, “would you have me be untrue to my heart? Would you want me to encourage you when I am certain that I can never love you? Do you not see how cruel that would be, or vanity of the worst kind?

  “I like you too much, I respect you too much, to do that to you. Someday, you will find another, more worthy woman you will love, and who will return that precious gift.”

  “Like Mair?” he replied disdainfully.

  Genevieve reached out to take his hand, hoping to offer him some kind of comfort, but he jumped back as if her touch were poison to him now.

  He strode from the room. She heard his mother call after him more than once, until the door to the hall slammed shut with a dull thud.

  Genevieve rubbed her temples and cursed her uncle for ever bringing her to Craig Fawr.

  Then she cursed herself, because she had become a blight to these good people.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A month later, an exhausted Dylan strode into the hall of Beaufort. His hands were bloody, his body sweaty and his boots thick with mud. Behind him came a dispirited group of soldiers and shepherds headed by a subdued Thomas. The men glanced at one another uneasily the few times they took their gaze from their irate lord.

  “We go again tomorrow, until we’ve killed every fox we can find,” Dylan growled.

  He halted, his hands on his hips, and surveyed his unkempt hall.

  The tables were as they had been when they had left that morning, and looked as if they had not even been wiped off since then. A loosened cobweb floated in the air before him, and despite his less than pristine state, he could smell the stink of the rank rushes beneath his feet.

  “I beg your pardon, my lord?” Thomas said uncertainly behind him.

  Dylan turned on his heel to face the men. “I said, we go again tomorrow, first light, until we’ve slaughtered every fox we can find.”

  “But the lambing—”

  “It is for that reason we go!” Dylan snarled, the image of the mangled, headless bodies of the three newborn sheep fresh in his mind.

  A fox had done the bloody deed, then left the dismembered corpses lying in the bracken like a conqueror’s savage prize. “I will not have my flock destroyed by foxes.”

  “As you wish, my lord.”

  Dylan saw his steward’s displeasure and heard the weary mutterings of the men, but didn’t care.

  “Cait!” he bellowed. “Where is my food?”

  The young serving woman appeared, twisting her apron nervously.

  He strod
e up to her, glaring. “Why isn’t food on the table? Is it too much to ask to be fed after a full day in the hills?”

  He gestured broadly. “And this place is a disgrace! Just because my wife is not here is no excuse! I am the lord here, and by God, I expect to be treated like it!”

  He spun around and upended the closest table with a crash that made Cait and all the others jump.

  “I am going to wash, and by the time I get back, these tables had better be wiped off and food set out, or you’ll all rue the day you were born. And tomorrow, I want these rushes cleared out and replaced. Do you hear me, wench?”

  His harsh appellation made Cait redden, but he didn’t care about that, either. He was the lord and master here, and he would have his hall as it had been, in the days when Genevieve was here.

  Bringing order and organization, and presiding over his table with her watchful and lovely eyes.

  “Well, move!” he ordered when he realized Cait still stood watching him.

  He marched toward the stairs and upward to his chamber.

  This room was in an even worse state than the hall, he noted angrily. What the devil did the maidservants do all day while he was off tending to his estate?

  It didn’t used to be this way, even before he married Genevieve.

  Did it?

  He peeled off his tunic and tossed it on the unmade bed, then went to the washstand. The basin had not been emptied of cold, dirty water. He picked up the pitcher and turned it upside down over the basin.

  Empty.

  He went to the door and threw it open. “Cait!”

  Swift steps sounded on the stairs as he strode to the basin, rinsing off the worst of the blood in the frigid, filthy water. He heard the young woman’s softly panting breaths at the door.

  Whirling around, he glared at her. “There should be clean water here! And hot!”

  “My lord, I’m...I’m sorry,” she stammered, flushing and looking away. “I...you gave no orders about that before you left this morning.”

  He stalked toward her. “Must I give you orders for every thing? It is not as if I expected a tub of scented water, is it?”

  With her eyelids lowered and her face flushed, she shook her head. Her breasts rose and fell with every frightened breath.

  It had been a long month, a month in which he had lived like a monk.

  He reached out and tugged Cait into his arms.

  She put her hands on his chest to hold him away from her.

  “My lord!” she cried as his arms tightened about her.

  “You want this,” he crooned, telling himself he spoke the truth and it was only surprise in her eyes. “You want me.”

  When he bent down to kiss her, she twisted her head away, struggling in his arms, and there could be no doubt that if he took her now, it would be against her will.

  Even then, he might have ignored that truth. He might have overcome her struggles and the look of fear in her eyes to take what he wanted.

  Like his father and grandfather.

  With a savage growl, he shoved the terrified Cait away. “Get out!” he muttered.

  Sobbing, she ran from the room.

  What had just happened here? What had been happening to him ever since Genevieve had stayed behind in Craig Fawr?

  He had become an ogre, a leader whose men looked at him not with affection, or even respect, but fear and dismay.

  God’s wounds, he was becoming a monster, a bitter, angry creature thinking only of himself and his own desires. He splayed his hands on the washstand and hung his head. God help him, he was becoming his predecessors, because he had lost Genevieve.

  And had become lost himself. Hopelessly, helplessly, viciously lost and alone, as he had never been before.

  As he would forever be, unless he could win her back.

  Maybe it was already too late. No doubt she had written to her uncle the bishop with the same efficiency with which she had managed his household. Perhaps the annulment was already in progress.

  And her rejection of him complete.

  What was he going to do? What could he do?

  He strode to the window and looked out at the darkening sky. Storm clouds piled on the tops of the hills, and he could see flashes of lightning in the black mass.

  Only a fool would venture out into weather like this, and at night Only a man with no pride would humble himself before a woman and beg her forgiveness.

  Or perhaps only a man desperate to regain the love he had so stupidly, selfishly thrown away.

  Genevieve sat alone in the baron’s solar and listened to the drips falling upon the windowsill. A terrible storm had come up in the night, with thunder and lightning and lashing rain. It had lasted through the morning, then stopped with unexpected swiftness, as it had blown itself out all of a sudden.

  Now, sitting at the baron’s table, with the parchment and ink before her, she tried to find the words for the letter she was about to compose.

  For it had been a month, and the time had finally come to write to her ecclesiastical uncle.

  She had heeded the baron’s kind advice and taken advantage of his hospitality, yet she could not do so for much longer, in all good conscience, for it was obvious by this time that Dylan was not coming back for her.

  Why would he? she reasoned. He knew she was right to call an end to their marriage.

  Just as she was right to have spoken to Trystan as she had. Since that horrible day, the young man had avoided her whenever they happened to be in the same room, and she likewise avoided him. If his parents suspected anything amiss, they mercifully kept silent and continued to treat her with warmth and kindness. Still, she could not stay here forever; therefore, she decided, she would write to both her uncles, one to fetch her away and the other to destroy her legal bond with Dylan DeLanyea.

  She reached for the quill. Latin, or not? Latin had never been her strong suit, and Lady Katherine had considered that the only terms women really needed to know in that language were legal ones, especially having to do with property, inheritance and marriage settlements. Not, unfortunately, annulments.

  Therefore, the vernacular it would have to be.

  She dipped her quill into the little clay vessel holding ink.

  A voice shouted from the wall walk, and then another took up a cry of alarm.

  She rose swiftly and went to the window. Surely it could not be an attack.

  She anxiously scanned the upper wall, trying to see where the soldiers had massed.

  Then she realized the disruption was in the courtyard below, centered upon a cart full of barrels that must have just come through the gates, for the huge wooden structures still stood open.

  Genevieve leaned out of the window, trying to get a better look. A crowd had gathered around the cart and the familiar-looking woman near it, who was gesturing wildly.

  It was Mair! Perhaps she had been attacked and robbed on the road.

  The crowd parted as the baron and Griffydd arrived. A few brief orders were issued, then Griffydd and his father lifted something—no, someone—from the back of the vehicle.

  “Dylan!” she gasped as if a fatal arrow had pierced her heart when she saw his limp body. “Oh, dear God, no!”

  Grabbing up her skirts, she tore out of the solar and raced to the hall, reaching it as they brought her husband inside. The baron and his son were surrounded by a small crowd of servants and workmen as they laid him on a bench.

  Genevieve pushed past Mair, then stood staring in horrified disbelief at Dylan’s pale face, sodden hair, muddy clothing.

  And his left leg wrapped in crude and bloody bandages.

  “Is he dead?” she asked, her voice strained as if her own throat refused to say the terrible words. “Tell me he is not dead!”

  Before anyone else answered, Dylan opened his eyes, looking at her with both anguish and happiness.

  “Genevieve!” he whispered. “Did you send it?”

  She knelt beside him and took his cold hand in hers,
scarcely believing the joyful evidence of her own eyes and ears.

  “The letter to your uncle—did you send it?” he asked in a voice that was more a croak than his wonderful deep tones. “Has he replied?”

  “No! No!” she whispered, choking with relief, unmindful of the people around them. “I have not. I..I could not.”

  “Thank God! Thank God I am not too late. Don’t,” he said, a shadow of his former smile on his face. “I beg you to take me back.”

  The baron cleared his throat loudly, but Genevieve ignored him.

  “Oh, my love!” she cried as she pressed his hand to her cheek. “You? I am the one—”

  “Yes, you are the one wife for me, Genevieve, and I will have no other. I was a stupid, stubborn fool not to come sooner. Promise me you will not write to that uncle of yours.”

  “But—”

  His grip tightened as he looked deep into her eyes. “It is you I want, Genevieve, more than any unknown, unborn offspring. You will be more than enough to make me happy. Please believe that and come home. I cannot live without you.”

  She did believe him, and her heart sang with joy at his fervent, sincere words.

  “Yes, my lord,” she replied, happiness in every word. “As I respect and honor you and—” her voice dropped to a soft whisper “—have been utterly miserable without you, I will gladly come.”

  “Thank God!”

  For a moment, all they did was smile at each other.

  Until, with a grimace, Dylan raised himself on his elbows and looked about him, his wry gaze coming to rest on Mair. “And thank God I’m not dead, nor dying, either, though I should be after the rough treatment I’ve had. Mair nearly broke my other leg getting me into that cart.”

  Mair’s answer was an inelegant snort.

  Dylan slumped back down, and Genevieve gently caressed his damp brow. “What happened? Were you attacked?”

  “I wish it was something as grand as that, but I only fell off my horse.”

  “Because like a gwirionyn he insisted upon riding out last night, even though the storm was breaking,” Mair declared, apparently annoyed, and yet there was admiration in her tones, too. “Should have left him on the road, me, if he’s going to insult me.”