Читать книгу The Warlord's Bride - Margaret Moore, Paul Hammerness - Страница 12

BLUSHING WITH embarrassment, hot with indignation, Roslynn stumbled backward, almost tripping on her skirts. She immediately gathered them in her hands and walked swiftly away, the need to maintain some dignity the only thing preventing her from breaking into a run.

Did Madoc ap Gruffydd think that she would be so overwhelmed by lust at the sight of his magnificent body that she would fall into his arms, begging to be his bride? Or had seduction been his aim, whether or not they wed? Had all his previous talk of honor been a lie after all?

Had she been deceived again?

“My lady!”

She paid no heed to Lord Madoc’s uncle, nor did she slacken her pace. He must have been in on this…this disgusting exhibition, and here she’d been thinking him a kindly old man, who was perhaps a little too keen on his nephew remarrying and overly fond of drink.

“My lady, please! Stop and let me explain!” Lloyd called, panting.

He sounded as if he could scarcely draw breath, and while she didn’t think any explanation could ever excuse what had just happened, she would not have him fall ill, no matter what he’d done.

As she waited, arms crossed, foot tapping impatiently, Lloyd came to a stop, breathing hard, his hand on his chest. “No need to rush off so, my lady! An accident, is all.”

So he said, but the laughter in his eyes betrayed him.

“Hear this,” she said. “This is the second time you’ve played me for a fool, and it will be the last. And if you and your nephew think seeing him naked is going to make me more keen to marry him, you’re wrong. Wimarc de Werre was as handsome as any maiden’s dream and he was the most evil, cruel, corrupt man in England. I will never again be swayed by such considerations.”

“Madoc had no hand in this, I promise you!” Lloyd protested, apparently aghast. “It was all my doing.”

She imperiously raised a brow. “He didn’t send you to bring me to the river so that I could see his exposed magnificence, such as it is?”

“No. It was all my own idea, my lady. He came home hot and sweaty and needed a wash, so I suggested the river and I thought you…” He paused and took a deep breath. “Look you, my lady, he’s been alone too long. He needs a wife, my lady, and he likes you.”

“No doubt my dowry won’t come amiss, either.”

“I’d be lying if I said it wouldn’t be welcome, but money or not, I’ve never seen him look at a woman the way he looks at you. And a woman could do a lot worse than my nephew. You’ve got to admit, he’s a fine figure of a man.”

“He could be another Apollo and that would matter less to me than how he treats the lowliest servant in his castle.”

Lloyd’s eyes lit up like a torch. “Ah! Well, then, my lady—”

“Uncle!”

Madoc came striding toward them over the uneven ground. His wet hair dampened the shoulders of his leather tunic. The shirt beneath was open at the neck, and his swordbelt was slung low about his narrow hips, as if he’d dressed in a hurry. “What is Lady Roslynn doing here?”

Regardless of the ire in his eyes, she faced him squarely. “I was asked to come to the river by your uncle—to talk to you, he said. Apparently he was under the mistaken impression that I would be anxious to marry you if I saw you naked. Let me assure you, my lord, lest you harbor any similar notions, that how my prospective husband looks—dressed or otherwise—is among the least of my concerns.”

“And I assure you, my lady,” the lord of Llanpowell growled, his face reddening, “that had I known what my uncle intended, I would never have gone in the river.”

Lord Madoc’s glance darted to his uncle, who had started to sidle backward toward the castle. “Where are you going, Uncle?”

Lloyd stopped and spread his hands placatingly. “Why, back to the hall, of course, so you two can have a little time alone without that gloomy Norman watching over you like a crow in a treetop. You’re an honorable man and she’s an honorable lady, so why not use this opportunity to have a little chat? It’s not as if you’ll be slipping away for a romantic rendezvous, although—”

“Uncle,” Lord Madoc warned.

“Until later, then,” Lloyd said, and in spite of their anger, he gave them a grin and a shrug before he hurried away with absolutely no hint that he was short of breath.

The sly trickster! Roslynn thought. He’d only pretended to be winded so that she would stop and listen to him.

Fortunately, Lord Madoc seemed as annoyed by her arrival as she was at discovering him naked, so perhaps it had been Lloyd’s idea alone to bring her to the riverbank.

As she reached that conclusion, her anger began to diminish. It lessened even more when Lord Madoc gravely said, “He’s my uncle and I love him, but he can be aggravation in the flesh when he gets an idea. He likes you, my lady, and wants us to wed and no doubt thought this a good way to encourage us. But believe me, that was his idea alone, not mine. If I’d had any inkling, I wouldn’t have been…”

He flushed. “I wouldn’t have been in the river,” he finished almost defiantly, as if daring her to contradict him. “I’m no peacock to be preening as God made me, my lady.”

He was so annoyed and flustered, her heart went out to him. She could well imagine how she would feel if the situations had been reversed and Lord Madoc had come upon her bathing in the river, naked, water streaming down her…

“I believe you, my lord,” she said after inwardly giving her head a shake. “I can tell you’re no jack-a-dandy.”

Certainly he dressed nothing like the vain men of the king’s court, or her late, conceited husband.

Lord Madoc’s broad shoulders relaxed. “Then I’ll forgive him.”

She suspected Lord Madoc had forgiven his uncle many things and many times. That would be a promising sign for a happy marriage—if she were staying.

Then he smiled, a warm, open smile that heated her even more than the sight of his naked body—although the memory of his body was more than enough to warm her, too.

“Shall we return to the hall?” he inquired, holding out his arm and nodding toward the castle walls.

“Yes,” she agreed, lightly laying her fingertips on his strong forearm.

She could feel his muscle and realized the Bear of Brecon was a robust man, indeed.

“Unfortunately, my uncle’s taken a notion into his head that I’m never going to be happy again until I take another wife,” Lord Madoc said, his voice both apologetic and frustrated as they walked side by side. “Yet I think you, of all women, can appreciate that I would rather live as I do now than be miserably wed.”

“I agree that it is better to be alone than to be bound to a person you can neither like nor respect.”

“Aye. That’s a whole different kind of loneliness.”

He spoke as if he had intimate knowledge of that state, and she began to suspect his first marriage hadn’t been a happy one.

If so, how much easier it would be for her to win his affections…if she were staying. If she could even consider marrying again, and a man like him.

They continued in silence until they neared the village. Sliding Lord Madoc a glance, she wondered what the villagers would think when they saw them thus, then decided it didn’t matter. They were simply walking together. What worse scandal could come of that than that which she had already endured?

“My uncle said he told you a bit about my trouble with my brother.”

“A little,” she replied.

“Trefor thinks I did him a great wrong and so seeks to punish me in return.”

Even if she wasn’t staying, she wanted to know what had brought brothers to such a pass. “Did you?”

Madoc stopped beside a low stone fence bordering a farmyard. Within its confines lay a small cottage, with a lazy trail of smoke rising from an opening in the slate roof. Close to an outbuilding, chickens scratched in the dirt. A dog tied to the door rose, growling, then seemed to think better of it and returned to its slumber.

Meanwhile, Lord Madoc rested his hips against the enclosure and looked off into the distance. “My elder brother was in the wrong, without doubt, but he doesn’t see it that way. All Trefor sees is that I wed the woman he was to marry, and became the heir of Llanpowell instead of him.”

He had married a bride intended for another? Willingly? Or for some other reason that would have made for an unhappy union?

And how did he become the heir, if his older brother still lived?

However it happened, those were causes for enmity indeed.

“It was his fault,” Lord Madoc said. “Trefor came to his wedding so drunk he could hardly stand. That would have been bad enough, but he started bragging about what else he’d been up to the night before, with a harlot. I tried to get him out of the hall, but I wasn’t quick enough. They all heard him—the bride, her parents, my parents, our families, the guests, the servants.

“Gwendolyn’s parents were all for calling off the wedding, ending an alliance that had lasted for three generations, and she swore she’d hate Trefor till the day she died. To save the alliance, to prevent Gwendolyn’s humiliation, and my parents’, too, I offered to marry Gwendolyn instead.”

So, in a way, he had been forced, much as John had forced her to come here, because the alternative seemed so much worse.

Lord Madoc looked at Roslynn, his expression as open and honest as Wimarc’s had never been. “I won’t lie and say that was a hardship. I’d been in love with Gwendolyn for years, but thinking she was Trefor’s and so out of reach.”

Again, she fought unnecessary disappointment. What did it matter to her if he’d been happily or unhappily wed? She wasn’t going to try to take another woman’s place in his heart.

As for how he’d come to understand loneliness so well, it could be that he’d learned of those feelings through a friend’s experience. She need have no compassion for him.

“We wed that same day,” he went on. “I thought that was the end of our troubles, bad as it was, until my father decreed that Trefor was no longer his heir and must never come back to Llanpowell. He could have Pontyrmwr, a small estate on the northern border of Llanpowell. I was now my father’s heir.

“That wasn’t my doing, yet Trefor thinks I stole his birthright, as well as his bride. He won’t acknowledge that he disgraced the family with his conduct and could have broken an important alliance—that he alone is to blame for his misfortune.”

“However the breach between you came about, it’s most unfortunate,” Roslynn said quietly. “Your family should be your best, strongest ally, not your enemy.”

“I’m not his enemy, but we can be neither friends nor allies as long as he keeps stealing my sheep.”

“Perhaps he’ll stop soon,” she replied. “Maybe one day he’ll realize that he was in the wrong and cease to resent you. I shall pray for it.”

“If prayers could help…” Madoc muttered, shaking his head.

He didn’t finish that thought, but he had told her something nonetheless: even if he felt himself in the right and his brother wrong, he wanted an end to the feud.

With a sigh, he pushed himself off the fence and held out his arm to escort her to the castle once again. She was reluctant to ask more about his brother or his first wife, although she was full of questions, especially about Gwendolyn and how she had felt about their marriage.

“Lloyd tells me you were taking good care of Lord Alfred,” Madoc observed as they drew near the village green.

Not wanting to appear cowardly or upset by the gossip of strangers, Roslynn didn’t suggest going around it. Instead, she steeled herself for stares and whispers, and prepared to ignore them. “It was an easy task. It was only that Welsh mead. He should be feeling better when he wakes up.”

“It’s the sweetness of it,” Madoc explained. “Makes for a mighty ache in the head the next day if you have too much of it, even if you’re used to it.”

“It doesn’t seem to affect your uncle.”

Madoc laughed, a low rumble of delight that could have been how Zeus sounded when amused by mortal antics. “Don’t ever tell him, but Bron waters his down.”

Roslynn stared at him with amused shock. “My lord, I believe you may be as devious as he is!”

The merriment in his eyes diminished. “He drinks more than he should and I don’t want to lose him. He had a bad fall two years ago, stumbling down some steps when he was in his cups. I’ve had his wine and braggot diluted ever since.”

It was a deception, and she hated deceit, yet she had to admit this solution allowed Lloyd to keep his pride, unlike forbidding him to drink at all or taking the cup from his hand as if he were a child.

They reached the main market street, which mercifully wasn’t as crowded as it would have been in the morning. Most of the village women would have already made their purchases for the day; only the poorest were still haggling over the remainders. A few children ran among the stone or wooden buildings and a couple of dogs fought over a muddy bone. She could hear the ring of the smith’s hammer in the forge across the green.

“I suppose Lord Alfred will leave tomorrow as he vowed, with or without you?” Madoc asked.

“Yes,” she confirmed, “and since he’s returning to court, he’ll leave without me.”

“Then it’s to the nearest convent for you? That would be Llanllyr, of the Cistercians. Or have you another one in mind?”

“I do. Haverholme, of the Gilbertines, is in Lincolnshire, not far from my parents’ estate.”

So she had planned, yet as she walked beside this tall, handsome man who loved his frustrating uncle and who had tried to save his family’s honor only to be at war with his brother, the prospect of life as a nun held even less appeal than it had before. But if it was the church or return to the king’s court, what other choice did she have?

After they had passed the green, Madoc stopped in the shadow of the baker’s, a two-storied half-timbered edifice with a stall for selling fresh bread and pastries on the lower level and ovens in the yard. The scent of his goods wafted around them, homey and wholesome.