Daughter of Time: A Time Travel Romance (16 page)

Marged shifted in her
seat. “It seems to me you have multiple issues to address, some
more important than others.” She stumbled a bit over her words but
then became more assured as she realized she had our full
attention. “You know that Humphrey leagued with Owain of Powys to
ambush you at the Gap. You know that one of your family members
isn’t loyal. What you don’t know is one, who told them you were
leaving Criccieth; two, who paid off the villagers; three, where
the messenger was going with the signet ring; and four, who killed
him? It’s that final point that concerns me now, because that man
is still out there, and he’s dangerous.” She’d ticked these points
off on her fingers as she spoke, but now stopped as silence fell on
the room. I studied her. The others, of course, were waiting for me
to say something; waiting for me, perhaps, to put her in her
place.

“
I agree, Marged,” I said.
“The presence of the ring distracted me from the main
point.”

“
And then there’s issue
number five,” Goronwy said. “Given that the mind behind this isn’t
Bohun’s—or Owain’s, is someone else waiting for us on the other
side of the forest of Coed y Brenin?”

Hywel rocked back on his
heels. “We’ve been facing the wrong way. Backwards instead of
forwards. The danger isn’t behind us, it’s ahead.”

“
But it always is, isn’t
it,” Marged said. “You live with that threat every day—every time
you leave your castle, you face that. You have so many enemies it’s
impossible to keep track of them all. It almost doesn’t matter
who’s behind any of this. You can’t trust anyone.”

“
But he has to, don’t you
see?” Tudur said. “His men, his counselors, you . . . he has to
trust because no Prince can govern alone.”

Marged met my eyes. “We
both know who sent that ring, Llywelyn. Don’t we?”

I let out a breath, but
didn’t answer her.
Such was honor. Such were my obligations
to my title and myself.
Instead I turned to
Goronwy. “Have we reached our full complement of men for the
journey south?”

“
We’re at fifty once
again, my lord.”

Tudur and Hywel nodded.
“We’ve enough. Our enemies become bolder, my lord,” Hywel said.
“There appears to be little they will not attempt, and no depths
too low for them to sink.”

“
Then we must think faster
than they, and always remain two steps ahead,” I said.

“
Easier said than done, my
lord,” Tudur said.

“
Then don’t say it; do
it.”

Their faces had a somber
cast as they filed out the door.

Chapter
Eleven

Meg

“
Y
ou didn’t do as I asked, Marged,”
Llywelyn said after everyone else had left the room. He sat behind
his desk, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his ankles
crossed and his hands folded on his belly. It appeared to be one of
his favorite postures, and I could understand since every chair I’d
sat in so far had been nothing if not uncomfortable.

“
I’m not sure what you
mean,” I said. “What didn’t I do?”

“
Keep quiet; hold yourself
still until we were finished.”

“
Oh,” I
said. “I didn’t realize that you meant
quiet
, as in,
don’t talk at all
.”

“
I was very clear when I
spoke to you in the hall,” Llywelyn said.

“
Yes, but . .
.”

“
What part of what I said
didn’t you understand?”

His words brought me out
of my seat. “You’re really mad about this aren’t you?”

“
Mad?” Llywelyn said. “I
don’t know that I’m mad; more confused and disappointed, perhaps
even irritated at how disrespectful you are to me at
times.”

“
I have no idea what you
are talking about.” I folded my arms across my chest, irritated
myself that I sounded just like the sulky child Llywelyn thought
me. “Why does it make sense for me to sit there quiet? If I knew
what you were talking about, I might have an idea which could help.
And I did.”

Llywelyn’s brow furrowed.
“We seem to be having a problem with communication, Marged, so let
me be a bit more clear.” He pulled in his feet, stood, and walked
to me. Putting a hand on each of my shoulders, he bent to look
directly in my eyes. “As long as you are with me, Marged, you do as
I say.”

“
What if I have some
contribution to make, like today? What if I have a thought or idea
that might make a difference?”

“
Then
you tell me afterwards, when my men have left,” he said. “And you
will call me
my
lord
, at least in public, if you can’t
manage it in private.”

“
It would be easier if you
just didn’t give me orders at all. That way I wouldn’t feel I
needed to disobey them.”

“
I can’t believe we’re
having this conversation,” Llywelyn said, a half-laugh in his
voice, though the exasperation was even more evident. “Are we
really arguing about whether or not you’re going to obey me? What
kind of land are you from? Do women there not obey their
men?”

“
Not—” I stopped. “Not
like this. Besides, I don’t see why it’s such a big deal. I helped,
didn’t I?”

Llywelyn flexed his big
hands around my shoulders once and then put his nose only inches
from mine. “When you disobey me in front of others, you undermine
my authority,” he said, articulating each word clearly. “Now, you
may not care much about Wales, or its rule, but I care about both
very much. It matters little to me if you don’t like it, don’t want
to, or think that you shouldn’t have to. But I am the captain of
this ship and as long as you are on it, you will obey
me.”

“
Okay,
okay, I get it,” I said. “I just don’t know if I can do it. I don’t
know that anyone has ever used the word
obey
in my presence before—ever. In
my world, some parents feel that their children should obey them, I
suppose, but we never talked about it that way in my family, and
women—wives, mistresses, whatever—certainly don’t
obey
their men. We’re
equals.”

“
I can’t imagine how that
might actually work, Marged,” Llywelyn said. “But in any case, it
isn’t just women. It’s everyone. Look a little closer and you’ll
see it and maybe start to understand. In the meantime . . .” he put
an arm around my shoulders pulled me into his arms, “I expect you
to try.”

“
Yes.”

Llywelyn laughed as he
steered me to the door. “See. That wasn’t so hard. Now if you can
just tack ‘my lord’ on there at the end, we’ll be all
right.”

* * * * *

I tried to pay attention
to what Llywelyn was talking about, and he did begin, ever so
incrementally, to treat me a little differently—more like a friend
and less like a possession. That, I appreciated, but it didn’t make
me any more certain of him. If anything, it confused me
more.

The thing that irked me
most about this new twist was that I really liked Llywelyn—was
undoubtedly starry-eyed over him. He was such a contrast to Trev
that I was consistently amazed that such a man as Llywelyn could
even exist. It wasn’t just that he was a prince, but that men
appeared to follow him because of
how
he was on the inside, rather
than
who
he was
on the outside. He didn’t have to make up stuff to prove what kind
of man he was. He didn’t have to pretend to be something other than
what he was, because he
was
amazing.

From our conversations,
I’d gotten a glimpse of what it must have been like when he was
younger—the struggles and the uncertainty and the endless striving
for the impossible. He didn’t become the Prince of Wales only
because of who his father was. He became the Prince of Wales
because he got down in the trenches—whether in warfare or
politically—and made himself worthy of it, sometimes through sheer
willpower and against incredible odds.

All the while, he carried
in his heart his grandfather’s dream of a united Wales, and all the
while, every other noble, including his own brothers, were working
to undermine his vision because if he became the Prince of Wales,
they would have less power than they thought they deserved. Hard to
argue with that, actually; hard not to feel sorry for them. In an
age when democracy was unheard of, it was tough to be born in a
time when only the fittest survived and you weren’t one of
them.

Llywelyn’s biggest flaw,
it seemed to me, was that pride of his. If anything, he was
arrogant to a fault and the people he treated least well were those
he deemed to be foolish. I’d seen him publically dress down one of
his men and I was glad that when he’d chastised me, at least we’d
been alone.

At the same time, he’d
saved Humphrey when he didn’t have to. He was playful with Anna,
and had taken to carrying her around on his shoulders or playing
horse between dinner and bedtime. He was courteous to servants,
even, and that was important. I remembered reading somewhere that
it was how a man treated his inferiors that was a true measure of
him.

Well, everyone is inferior
to Llywelyn. Except, perhaps, for me. Even if he doesn’t know
it.

* * * * *

“
Tell me about your
husband,” Llywelyn said. “Was he a good man?”

We were riding at the head
of Llywelyn’s host of men, finally heading towards Castell y Bere,
his primary castle in south Gwynedd, built by his grandfather as
many of his castles had been.

“
No,” I said. “He
wasn’t.”

“
Why did your father
choose him, then? Or is this another matter where you weren’t
required to obey, hmmm?”

I refused to rise to the
bait. “My father died when I was seventeen so he wasn’t there to
help me choose.”

Llywelyn’s expression
turned grave. “I’m sorry. I was sixteen when my father died.” He
paused. “We were not close.”

“
I gathered that,” I said.
“I loved my father. I think I’m only now recovering from his death,
three years on.”

“
But you chose a husband
of whom he wouldn’t have approved.”

I ducked my head. I didn’t
know why he was pushing this line of questioning, and felt the
pressure of a correct response. “I went a little crazy, I think,
when my father died. I made some poor choices.”

“
You had no uncle to step
in? No brother?”

“
Where I grew up, women
choose their own husbands.”

“
Humph. And look where it
got you. Your husband beat you, didn’t he?” Llywelyn asked, sending
the conversation into a new, and even more unwelcome,
direction.

I turned to face him,
though for once he wasn’t looking at me.

“
Yes.”

“
And Anna?”

“
I left him because of
her,” I said.

Llywelyn grunted again at
that and released some of the tension in his shoulders. “The man
was a fool to treat you thus,” he said, finally looking at me. “In
Wales, under the law of Hywel Dda,
a husband
may beat his wife for laying with another man, for mistreating his
possessions, or for maligning him in public.”

“
I didn’t do any of those
things
. What happens to wives like
me?”

“
They can ask for a
d
ivorce,” Llywelyn said.

“Well I was working on that when
he died,” I said.

“
Just how did he die? In
battle?”

“
Battles are few and far
between in Radnor,” I said. “No, he was dying of a disease we
couldn’t cure and was drinking too much alcohol at the pain of it.
He drove his vehicle into a tree.”

“
Madam.”

I started and turned to
find Humphrey moving his horse closer.

“
I couldn’t help
overhearing your last words,” Humphrey said. “My nanny died of such
a disease. It’s a terrible end and I’m sorry for your
loss.”

“
Thank you, Humphrey.” I
glanced at Llywelyn and shared a rueful look with him. We needed to
be more careful about our conversations if there was a chance that
someone else could overhear. We hadn’t said anything too terrible
or obviously out of place, but I was so comfortable talking with
Llywelyn now, I could easily have done so.

It was fewer than twenty
miles from the hunting lodge to Castell y Bere. The road wasn’t as
well maintained in this section as nearer to Criccieth, but even
so, we made good time. By noon, we approached a significant
river and could see Castell y Bere in the distance, standing guard
over its valley. Whether through a trick of the light, or just
because the sun chose that moment to come out from behind a cloud,
it seemed to be shining above us, the sun reflecting off the
whitewashed stones.

“A beacon, isn’t it?” Llywelyn said.
“Guiding us home.”

Clearly, the other men thought so too
because our pace quickened and we came in a rush to the river’s
bank. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much of a ford.