The Warlord’s Bride Page 6

  “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 Al
fred,” 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.

  “If you’d rather not go to a convent,” Lord Madoc said, “I’ll provide you with an escort to anywhere else, so you may travel in safety.”

  His offer was very tempting, or so it should have been. “If I leave here, the safest, best place for me, my family and my friends would be Haverholme. Otherwise John might blame them for my disobedience, as well as try to marry me off again.”

  As he stood before her, Madoc’s dark, searching eyes locked on to hers. “You would sacrifice your future for them?”

  She felt compelled to answer honestly. “I wish I did have other choices, my lord, for I’d rather not be a nun. I want to be married, to have a family and children.”

  “So do I. I want a wife, Roslynn, and children at my knee. I want a woman who isn’t afraid to tell me what she thinks, who is bold, as well as beautiful. I want a woman like you, Roslynn.”

  “Are you…” She took a deep breath and tried to calm her tumultuous emotions, to quiet her inquisitive mind, for there was only one question of importance to ask. “Do you want to marry me, my lord?”

  “Yes.”

  A single, simple word, yet in his deep brown eyes she saw all the emotions that were rushing through her, too—doubt and hope, dread and excitement. And desire.

  Oh, yes, she could see the desire there, felt it between them like a current, even as she struggled against it like a shipwrecked sailor caught in a raging sea.

  For lust must not color her decision. She had let it guide her before and it had led to disaster.

  What did she really know of the lord of Llanpowell? That he was handsome, hot-tempered and stirred her blood. That he seemed kind and sympathetic and generous. That he was good to his uncle and that his people respected him. That his brother stole from him and yet he reacted not with malice and spite, but forbearance.

  Was that enough? Could she possibly trust her judgment that had been so flawed when it came to another handsome man?

  And what of his fiery temper? He claimed he never hit women, but what proof did she have? What certainty that he wouldn’t turn into another Wimarc once the vows were spoken?

  Yet in spite of all her fears and doubts and the terrible experience of her first marriage, her heart urged her to accept him, while her body fairly shouted that she become his wife and share his bed.

  She must not be swayed by her fallible emotions, not even when he stood before her close enough to kiss, and even though she desperately wanted to feel those strong arms about her and taste his lips with her own.

  But even as she fought against her inclination and desire, she pictured a group of healthy, happy children clustered about her, the boys with dark, waving hair and brown eyes that glowed with happiness, and little girls with hair like hers, blue eyes and smiling faces.

  In the end, it was this image that was too appealing to disregard, and too hard to dismiss.

  “I would consider it,” she allowed, her voice surprisingly steady.

  And then she thought of something else. She mustn’t capitulate without conditions. She must tell him what she required from a husband. If he objected, she must refuse, even if that meant never being in his arms and angering the king. “If we marry, you must give me your word that you’ll treat me with respect, and that you will never strike me or berate me before the household.”

  He nodded. “Understandable requests and easily granted. As it happens, I have a condition, too.”

  He drew her farther into the shadows of the buildings and inched closer, as if she were a nervous horse he was trying to saddle. “As you don’t want a brutish husband, I don’t want a reluctant wife. If you cannot come to my bed eagerly, if the thought of being in my arms is repulsive to you, we will speak no more of marriage.”

  He was in earnest. This handsome, incredibly attractive man was actually willing to admit that a woman might be reluctant to make love with him.

  Now he was no arrogant warlord. He was as modest, as humble and uncertain, as a boy seeking his first kiss.

  How she wished she could assure him she would gladly fulfill her wifely duties. Unfortunately, she could not be certain. Wimarc had hurt, frightened and humiliated her so often, she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t balk when Madoc started to make love to her, even if her body seemed anxious to find out.

  “I can only promise to try,” she answered truthfully. “But I think—I hope—that if you’re patient and gentle with me, if you accept that I may not be as eager as you might wish at first, I am willing to share your bed and do all a wife should.”

  “I can be gentle,” he whispered, gently taking hold of her shoulders and drawing her closer. “Patient, too. You have my word on that.”

  He lightly slid his hands down her slender arms and took hold of her hands, even though his eyes smoldered with yearning. “You see? Gentle.”

  Encouraged by his self-control, she didn’t pull away. She could believe Madoc of Llanpowell would not hurt her as Wimarc had, that he would treat her with kindness and respect.

  Yet despite her fervent hope and passionate longing, when Madoc’s lips brushed over hers, the old fear rose up within her. She stiffened, fighting the panic, assuring herself she was safe, commanding her body to relax, her mind to forget. But it was not to be.

  Madoc moved back, his brow furrowed with query, his eyes full of disappointment
and dismay.

  Not rage.

  He was not Wimarc, a ravening wolf in the guise of a man. He was not John, the lecherous king who used his power to force women to do his bidding. He was not a courtier who thought the widow of a traitor should welcome his lascivious attention.

  Madoc ap Gruffydd wasn’t sly and calculating; his thoughts and feelings were plain to read in his face and voice. He spoke to her not as a thing to be captured and used, but as a person and his equal in some ways, if not all.

  Marriage to him could be her last, best chance for happiness and contentment, and she would be a fool to lose it because of what had happened in her past.

  So she took his face between her palms, raised herself on her toes and kissed him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  WILLINGLY, DESPERATELY, Roslynn captured his mouth with hers, needing to show him that she would truly accept this marriage, and him.

  His strong arms enveloped her, making her feel warm and safe, as well as desired. A low moan of acquiescence broke from her throat when he parted her lips with his tongue and gently pushed his own inside the moist warmth of her mouth.

  Still kissing her, he moved her back against the wooden wall of the bakery. Her breath caught as his hand slid up her ribs to her breast and lightly kneaded it, the sensation astonishingly pleasurable.

  This was no rough grabbing, as if she were made of wood or stone. He caressed her gently, tenderly, as if she were precious.

  In that moment, she realized she wanted Madoc as she had never wanted Wimarc, not even when she’d believed herself head over heels in love with him.

  “Tell me to stop and I will,” Madoc promised as his mouth glided along the curve of her cheek.

  “Don’t stop,” she whispered, while her hands began an urgent journey of their own…until he broke the kiss and put his hand over hers.

  “Do you really want to marry me, Roslynn?” he asked in an urgent whisper.