The Warlord's Bride

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“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.