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was sure he could have found salvation in the adoration shining in her eyes,
for the old stories said elves lived in hope of gaining a human's love.
He had long since abandoned any such aspirations himself, but he knew he
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engendered lust with ease,
and he saw that, too, in her eyes. Poor, untried virgin. He would do his best
to return her untouched to her Mychael and spare her the more interesting
pastimes available to those with adventurous natures.
"What's thy name,chérie?" he asked in his most mellifluous voice, honey
sweetening his words to draw her out.
"Ceridwen," she whispered. "Ceridwen ab Arawn. And yours?"
He hesitated for only a moment. "Dain."
"Dain." She repeated his name on a soulful sigh, and Dain couldn't help
himself; he grinned. Vivienne could take lessons from this one.
"Where is your Mychael, little one?"
"StrataFlorida ."
His grin faded. Just his luck. He'd been given the keeping of a Welsh maid
with the name of a white monk rather than a rich lord on her lips. Then again,
hadn't a prince of Powys, Rhys ap Gruffudd, granted the Cistercian monks large
tracks of upland grazing all the way to Rhayader? Surely over the years even
the most ascetic of orders had managed to accumulate some profit on such
bounty.
But would they part with it for a woman?
He mulled over an answer to that for more than a minute and couldn't quite
turn it to his liking. Women and holy men didn't mix nearly as well as they
had before Gregory VII had cleansed the church of
"fornicating priests."
"Dain." She spoke his name again in a dreamy voice, infusing it with a good
deal of wonder, and wonder she might. What was he going to do with her?
"Is Mychael your uncle?" he asked, hoping for an abbot.
"Brother," she answered.
Worse and worse. The brother of one as young as she could hardly have had time
to advance in the church and yet there was the chemise. Someone coddled the
girl.
"Wherever did Ragnor find you,chérie?" he asked, absently caressing her from
her cheek to her ear and letting his fingers slide into the softness of her
hair. He didn't really expect an answer to his question, and he certainly
didn't expect the one she gave.
"On the Coit Wroneu." She sighed and turned her face into his hand. "Running
for my veriest life."
His gaze narrowed, and his fingers stopped their aimless, sensual wanderings.
"From whom?"
"Mine own cousin." Her tone became distressed and angry. She lifted her face
to him. "The Thief of
Cardiff, Morgan ab Kynan. May God curse his knave's soul for the hypocrisy of
his sins." Her voice broke with a sob, and she closed her eyes to hold back a
fresh round of tears.
Anyone with a heart or a care would not have bothered her further. Dain had
neither, not when she'd
spoken Morgan's name. Here was a story too rich to miss, of how a Welsh prince
and thief of unsurpassed skill had lost this rare jewel, and even more
intriguing, how much he'd be willing to pay to get her back.
"Aye, Morgan's a sinner." He commiserated with her, knowing his words were far
from the truth. The only sin he could lay at his friend's door was that he'd
never told Dain of his precious cousin, not that their meeting would have been
more opportune under different circumstances. Dain had forsaken good
opportunity with highborn virgins when he'd put down his sword and taken up
more esoteric apparatuses.
"With no heart," she added, the tears running freely down her face.
"Aye, no heart, not a trace," he agreed, then added in an offhand tone, "What
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do you believe to be his most heartless deed?"
Her lips trembled, so sweetly it took an act of will not to lower his own to
still their fluttering. "The deed that would leave me ground to dust between
the Boar of Balor's jaws."
"Carado "
Her eyes flashed open. "Shh," she admonished him, pressing her fingertips to
his lips. "Don't speak his name. 'Tis said the sound alone is enough to call
him forth."
Dain refrained from laughing aloud, even though he remembered many a morn when
yelling at the top of his lungs had not been enough to call Caradoc forth from
a night of drink. If the maid believed such was possible, she had heard rumors
he had missed.
"Sweet Ceridwen, why would the Lord of Balor want to hurt you?" He couldn't
bring himself to call his old friend "Boar."
"No bride of the Boar of Balor will survive her wedding night," she said in a
hushed voice, her eyes growing even larger, if that were possible.
Dain felt his lips twitch with the makings of a grin. "Mayhaps 'tis the
alliteration they cannot abide,chérie."
"Mayhaps," she agreed somberly.
Then it hit him, the significance of what she'd said.
"Morgan takes you to Balor as a bride?"
"Aye."
Ragnor would be dead within the month and Morgan probably soon to follow, Dain
thought, after
Caradoc stripped the flesh from Ragnor's bones and staked him out in the
wilderness to die. One did not abuse the betrothed bride of a powerful lord [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]