Читать книгу The Hidden Heart - Sharon Schulze - Страница 10

Prologue

The Welsh Marches, spring 1213

Gillian de I’Eau Clair leaned over the curtain wall of I’Eau Clair Keep and stared down at the new grass covering her father’s grave. Nigh two months gone, yet the pain of his loss had scarce eased. And now to find this among her father’s papers! She crushed the unsigned betrothal contract clasped in her hand with all the strength of her aching heart and cursed the man who’d scrawled his stark refusal where his acceptance should have been.

Rannulf FitzClifford—once the friend of the child she’d been, later her heart’s desire. As she had been his, so he’d led her to believe. The date on the agreement remained etched upon her brain—her seventeenth birthday, more than two years past—not long after his visits to I’Eau Clair had suddenly ceased, as if he’d vanished from her world forever.

It seemed her father hadn’t allowed that fact to prevent him from trying to further his plan to see her and Rannulf wed.

She raised her arm to toss the useless document away, then paused and let it fall to her feet. She dropped to her knees and pressed her cheek against the uneven stones as she fought the despair threatening to overwhelm her.

She’d sent word of her father’s death to her godfather, the earl of Pembroke; her kinsman, Prince Llywelyn of Wales; everyone she thought might help her fight off the unknown foe who had harried her people and her lands since her father’s passing. She stifled a bitter laugh. By the Virgin, she’d even sent a messenger to her overlord, King John, though she hadn’t a bit of hope he’d bother to fulfill his duty.

Though it had been two months, none had bothered to reply.

In her desperation, she’d thought to put aside her wounded pride and contact Rannulf. She had searched through the documents stored away in her father’s chamber for some hint of how to reach him.

What she’d found destroyed that plan, for ’twas clear by his words he wanted naught to do with her.

The icy wind beat against her, whipped her unbound hair about her face and sent the crumpled missive skittering toward the edge of the wooden walkway. “Nay,” she cried, and lunged to grab it. The parchment grasped tight in one hand, the edge of the crenel in the other, she rose to her feet and let the cold, powerful gusts blow away the fear and cowardice she’d allowed to beset her.

She smoothed out the contract and forced herself to read the hurtful message once more. She’d keep it as a reminder, lest she forget yet again that the only person she could depend upon was herself.