Читать книгу A Warrior's Passion - Margaret Moore, Paul Hammerness - Страница 10

As the light of early morning struggled through the low clouds, Griffydd groggily trudged through the spruce trees toward the stream near his quarters. Clad in breeches, plain tunic and boots, his cloak slung over his shoulder, he could hear the water babbling like the sly laughter of sprites making sport of him.

He frowned darkly. He had lain awake for a long time last night deciding how best to proceed with the negotiations, even as he had tried not to contemplate Seona. Or the kiss they had shared. Or the softness in her eyes as she had looked at him, and the way that tender, yearning expression had seemed to touch his soul.

Diarmad MacMurdoch was a despicable old villain, setting his daughter as a trap and, Griffydd knew, only a fool would continue to be a victim of her allure.

He paused a moment and drew in a breath of the piney air. The clouds looked to be moving off and the air was bracingly cool for spring. In the near distance, the stream gurgled on.

He sighed deeply and rotated his aching neck. Almost groaning aloud, he hoped a wash in the cold water would help clear his befuddled head.

He came out of the trees and immediately halted at the sight that met his eyes.

There, beside the stream a short distance away, a shaft of sunlight illuminated Diarmad’s daughter as she cradled an infant in her arms.

In a plain gown as green as the trees around him, Seona regarded the babe she held with downcast eyes. Her thick, magnificent hair was drawn away from her face to fall in two twisted coils down her back, glowing in the early morning sunlight like a halo. He had never seen anything quite so breathtaking, except perhaps his first glimpse of Seona MacMurdoch’s half eager, half questioning eyes.

She looked like a Madonna with child, and the sight brought such a longing to Griffydd that it seemed a lump the size of the Stone of Scone had suddenly lodged in his throat.

It took him another moment to realize she and the baby were not alone. Another young woman squatted a short distance away, washing a garment in the fast-moving and no doubt chilly stream. She was, he saw at once, what other men would call beautiful, with a fine profile and long slender neck emphasized by her dark hair braided about her head. As she worked briskly, it was evident her body was shapely, too.

A little boy played beside her with a stick in the water, and the woman paused to admonish him, a petulant frown on her face. Beautiful, perhaps, but it was the patient smile on Seona’s visage as she called the lad to her side that appealed to him more.

Suddenly the toddler slipped on the rocky bank and fell into the stream. The other woman emitted a shriek as the swift current caught his body, carrying him away from her.

Seona, still holding the infant, scrambled to her feet while Griffydd threw off his cloak and charged into the rushing water. When the little boy’s head disappeared beneath the surface, the other woman screamed hysterically.

Concentrating on the child, Griffydd judged where the current would send its victim and hurried there, scanning the cold, rushing water as he had been taught to do when catching fish if he were forced to fend for himself.

There!

The child’s head popped up, and at once Griffydd reached down and scooped the boy out of the frigid stream. The boy choked and sputtered as he clung to Griffydd.

“I’ve got you. You’re safe,” Griffydd muttered in Welsh, too shocked himself by the sudden and unexpected need to rush to the rescue to remember that the little fellow wouldn’t understand a word he said. He walked carefully toward the bank, lest there be more loose stones underfoot.

The boy stared up at Griffydd with wide, terrified eyes, his lips blue as his breathing returned to normal. Griffydd rubbed the child’s arms with his free hand, trying to warm him as best he could.

The other young woman pushed past Seona and ran to them, grabbing the boy from Griffydd’s grasp as a jumble of grateful Gaelic tumbled from her lips.

Trying not to remember the last time he had spoken to Seona, Griffydd gathered up his cloak as she hurried closer.

He coughed and discovered he had no stone in his throat, after all. “Tell her to wrap the child in this.”

Smiling with obvious relief, Seona nodded and spoke to the woman, who took the cloak and did as he ordered.

“Thank you!” Seona said fervently, turning back to him as she gently rocked the whimpering infant in her arms.

“It was nothing.”

The boy stopped shivering and stuck a finger in his quivering mouth before regarding his savior pensively, one damp arm tight about the woman’s neck.

“Fionn and his mother don’t think so,” Seona observed, nodding at them. She spoke a few rapid words of Gaelic, and Griffydd recognized his name. Obviously, introductions were being made.

“These are both her children?” Griffydd inquired.

“Yes. She is Lisid, and they are hers.”

Lisid continued to smile at him, brushing a stray lock of dark hair from her pretty face with a gesture that was surprisingly coy, given that her child had almost drowned only moments ago.

“This is Fionn,” Seona said, nodding at the boy. She smiled down at the infant she held. “And this little angel is his sister, Beitiris.”

Seona glanced up at Griffydd, then away, as a lovely blush crept over her smooth cheeks, like the pink that tinted the clouds he used to watch out the window of his bedchamber when he would waken with the dawn.

He did not know what to make of her bashful demeanor here beside the stream. Changeling, indeed, to be so seemingly modest one moment, a spirited maiden the next and a brazen temptress after that, he thought with a twinge of bitterness.

“I will leave you to your ablutions,” he said abruptly, turning to go.

“No, please, wait a moment!” Seona cried when he had gone a few paces.

He stopped and glanced over his shoulder. He was not the only one taken aback by her sudden outcry, for Lisid’s expression was one of surprise, too.

“I…I wish to speak with you, Sir Griffydd,” Seona stammered. Then she ran her gaze over him and frowned. “Unless you are too cold and wet. Perhaps later…”

His lips twitched in what Seona thought was supposed to be a smile. “I have been trained to endure the cold, and a Welshman doesn’t mind the wet. If you have something you wish to say to me, I would rather hear it now—when I have a witness.”

Blushing at his implication, Seona asked Lisid to excuse her. With a somewhat reluctant look, Lisid set Fionn down on the ground, then took Beitiris, leaving Seona free to follow after Griffydd.

As he waited for her, his visage impassive, standing as motionless as one of the rocks of the hills around her, clad only in an unlaced, short-sleeved tunic belted over breeches yet apparently oblivious to the chill of the morning, Seona hugged herself for warmth, and comfort, too. This was not going to be easy, despite his rescue of Fionn.

“What is it?” he asked when she reached him, as if she were a servant offering something for which he had no need.

She swiftly checked to see that Lisid was in sight yet out of hearing. “I have to speak to you of what happened last night.”

Still his expression did not alter. “What of it?”

“Were you intending to tell my father?”

Griffydd raised one eyebrow quizzically.

“Please don’t.”

She saw a flash of emotion in his gray eyes, but what it was exactly, she could not be sure.

“Then you continue to assert that you stayed of your own accord?” he asked evenly. “Perhaps I should compliment you on your boldness—but I would rather not.” He looked past her to Lisid. “What a pity she is there. If she were not, you could attempt to seduce me again.”

Flushing even more—although whether with shame or at the notion of being in his arms again, she didn’t want to consider—Seona forced herself not to say anything in hasty anger. “Please, Sir Griffydd—”

“Griffydd. After that kiss, I think we have no need of titles.”

Although his words made her burn with shame, she wished he would shout at her or at least appear angry instead of just standing there as calmly as if they were discussing the price of wool.

She drew herself up, deciding she would not demean herself further by seeming to beg. “I would appreciate it if you did not speak of last night to my father. Otherwise, I will rue it greatly.”

Griffydd DeLanyea’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

“It was by his order that you escorted me to my quarters,” he reminded her.

“It was most certainly not by his order that I voiced my unwillingness to be used.”

“Are you telling me that he will punish you for that?” he charged, his voice low, yet firm and commanding. The voice of a lord. A king.

“For trying to warn you, of course.”

“How?”

“Does it matter?”

He. eyed her speculatively, “No doubt if I reveal my own lack of proper behavior, he will be mollified. Indeed, he should be quite pleased to know his plan was so effective.”

“No!” she cried sharply, angry tears welling in her eyes.

Again his expression altered ever so slightly and she thought she saw a glimmer of genuine concern on his handsome face. “I would not allow him to hurt you.”

She gazed at him with undisguised surprise. “You would not allow him?”

“No, I would not,” he said with such conviction she could believe that a stranger she barely knew would protect her from her father’s wrath.

Before she could respond, they heard a commotion in the trees near them along the path leading from the fortress to the stream.

“DeLanyea!”

Her father came charging out of the pine trees like a hunted boar, his men trailing behind him, and a grin split his broad face as his shrewd gaze darted between an apparently impassive Griffydd DeLanyea and a flushed Seona.

“Well met!” he shouted happily, addressing the Welshman.

“When you were not in your quarters, I thought you might be here,” he said as he came to a halt. “And Seona, too.”

He glanced somewhat sternly at Lisid and her children, as if wondering what the devil they were doing there.

Naoghas, Lisid’s husband, seemed far from pleased to note their presence, too.

Even at this distance, Seona could see Lisid’s petulant frown as she tossed her lovely head before hurrying away, leading a reluctant Fionn by the hand.

“I was helping Lisid with her children,” Seona explained, “and Sir Griffydd came to wash.

“It was a good thing,” she went on, looking at Naoghas as much as her father, “for Fionn fell in the stream and might have drowned if Sir Griffydd had not rescued him.”

“Is this so?” Diarmad cried. “Then it is well you were here. You have my thanks, DeLanyea.”

“And mine,” Naoghas said, albeit with less than good grace. “I am Lisid’s husband,” he added with a slightly belligerent tone, for Naoghas was a fiercely jealous man.

Seona wondered what Sir Griffydd made of him. Unfortunately, she could get no clue at all to that, or anything else the man might be thinking as he bowed his head in greeting.

“Our guest still has not yet had a chance to perform his ablutions,” Seona said, anxious to get away from her slyly grinning father and his men, as well as the confusing, infuriating, compelling Griffydd DeLanyea.

“Oh?” Diarmad responded, as if it were inconceivable that a man would want to wash.

“Perhaps we should leave him to do so in peace.”

“I would appreciate that,” the Welshman said evenly.

“I was thinking we should hunt this morning, while the weather is so fine,” her father remarked. “Plenty of time to talk of trade later.”

“If you wish,” DeLanyea replied.

“Good, good!”

“Unfortunately, I had not thought to bring my hunting weapons.”

“We will give you spears and one of our finest horses,” Diarmad offered.

Griffydd DeLanyea laid a hand on his breast and bowed. “I am honored by your generosity.”

Diarmad cleared his throat loudly. “I, um, am pleased to let you have the loan of them.”

Seona started to walk away, vaguely attempting to think of ways to occupy her time while the men were hunting. She hoped Griffydd DeLanyea would say nothing to her father about last night. She prayed she could trust him to keep silent.

Thankfully, the fleeting expression of concern she had seen on his face before her father had arrived made her think her hopes were not unfounded.

In the meantime, she could help Lisid with the dying of cloth, or Maeve with baking bread, or assist in the drying of the day’s catch—

“Seona!” her father barked.

She halted abruptly and turned to face her suddenly irate parent. “I have not given you permission to go.”

Blushing again, she wondered what he was doing, beyond humiliating her by treating her like a child.

“If you will excuse me, Father, Sir Griffydd,” she said, trying to be as inscrutable as the Welshman as she dipped her head in a bow, “I have many things to do.”

“Go to my hall and wait for me,” her father ordered, waving her away as if she were one of his dogs.

Or perhaps not even as important as that.

Griffydd didn’t watch Seona leave. Instead, he kept his attention on his host and Lisid’s husband.

He had to keep his wits about him. He had to remember that he was here to conclude a trade agreement between his father and MacMurdoch, not to interfere in the man’s family.

It should not matter a whit to him how Diarmad treated Seona. He should not have implied he would come between her and her father, even if the man did speak to her as if she were his servant, or a slave.

Perhaps this was all part of the plan. Maybe they were trying to make him feel sympathy for her. Despite her protestations, it might even be that the only reason she had spoken to him this morning was because she had failed in her objective to seduce him in order to force a marriage, and she didn’t want her father to know that.

Clearly, he dare not let down his guard against her, despite the proud, pleading look on her face when she asked him to keep silent, or the equally proud resentment that flashed in her eyes when her father sent her away so rudely.

“Well, a fine day for stag hunting it is, and no mistake,” Diarmad declared. “I’ll leave you now to wash, and we shall meet in my hall to break the fast.”

Griffydd bowed in acknowledgment while Diarmad strode away, followed by his silent warriors, including Naoghas, who gave Griffydd a hostile glance before he disappeared through the trees.

Although Griffydd had saved the man’s son, he was a foreigner, a Welshman with Norman blood in this land of Gall-Gaidheal and Scot. That could be cause for animosity.

No warrior of any discernment would doubt that. Griffydd DeLanyea was well-trained and a good fighter, so jealousy was always a possibility.

Or perhaps it was another type of jealousy that raised Naoghas’s animosity.

The vision of Seona in a passionate embrace with the dark-haired, stocky, morose Naoghas sent a cascade of emotions pouring through Griffydd, none of them good. Jealousy, anger, hatred—things he had not felt so strongly in his life.

Then he remembered the beauteous Lisid, and her grateful smiles.

He rubbed his forehead with frustrated dismay. Of course, the man was jealous of his wife—yet he had thought of Seona first. He must be going mad!

Griffydd turned on his heel and in one long stride reached the stream. He yanked off his tunic and threw it to the ground, then knelt on the bank and splashed his face with the frigid water.

It did nothing to cool the fires burning within him.

He sat back on his haunches and stared unseeing across the stream at the rocky hill on the other side, willing himself to regain his self-control. To put Seona MacMurdoch out of his mind.

It was a good thing Dylan wasn’t here, he reflected sourly. His foster brother always claimed Griffydd had a stone where his heart ought to be, and surely the only reason women went with him was because they surmised he was rock hard elsewhere, too.

Griffydd, of course, never rose to the bait of Dylan’s teasing, nor did he reveal how much his foster brother’s words disturbed him. He had a heart, he knew—did he not love his parents, who were the finest people in England? Did he not love his home, his country, his siblings—aye, and Dylan, too? It was just not his way to proclaim his feelings to any and all who would listen.

Nor did he get his women pregnant.

Dylan thought that odd, until one of Griffydd’s lovers confided that Griffydd always withdrew. He found it incredulous that Griffydd would rob himself of that great delight. After all, what did it matter if the woman got with child? No shame to a Welshwoman or the child, and none to him, if he did his duty and provided for them.

Dylan would never understand. Love was not a game or sport to Griffydd. A woman’s heart was not some kind of toy, and a child simply another possession. A woman’s love and the birth of a child brought with them duty and responsibility, as well as happiness.

Griffydd shook his damp hair like a dog, as if he could rid his mind of his troubles like droplets of water.

Vowing to keep his mind only on matters of business, and not on confusing, disturbing women, or their families and their friends, Griffydd drew on his tunic and marched grimly back to his quarters.