Rexanne Becnel (40 page)

“I do love you, Wynne. Don’t leave me.”

The simplicity of his words and the stark intensity in his eyes cut through all the logical babble she had surrounded herself with. Like a knife they were, a razor-edged dagger, slicing into her heart and striking a mortal blow.

Unable to bear the pain, unable to respond at all, Wynne flinched as if from a physical blow, then turned and forced herself to walk away. One foot, then the other.
Don’t look back. Don’t look forward. Just keep moving until you can’t go any farther.
All the way to Wales and her familiar woodlands. To the Giant’s Trail and Crow’s Moor. But she knew in her heart that was not far enough to break the pull he had on her heart. Not nearly so.

Arthur stood against the supporting column of the stable shed. He’d long ago lost interest in his brother’s mock battle and had watched Wynne’s conversation with Cleve instead. It hadn’t lasted long. Nor had it ended well, if Cleve’s furious expression and her stiff posture as she left were any indication. Though Arthur was too far away to have heard what was said, he feared he knew. They were still going to leave today. And Cleve was going to marry the Lady Edeline.

“Damn,” he swore.

Isolde looked up at his unusual vehemence. She and Bronwen were playing with a pair of half-grown kittens from the stable, but at his frown she abandoned that sport.

She followed his gaze to the retreating Wynne, and her face clouded as well.

“They’re not going to get married, are they?”

Arthur rounded on her, his fists knotted. “They are too!”

Had it been either of the twins who’d shouted so belligerently at her, she would have shouted back even louder. But this was gentle Arthur, and she knew he was just upset.

“We can’t make them get married,” she said patiently.

“Only they can do that,” Bronwen added.

“Grown-ups are stupid!” he shouted back.

Even Rhys and Madoc drew up at Arthur’s uncharacteristic behavior. “What’s the matter—”

“—with you?”

“Oh, shut up!” Arthur yelled. “Just everybody leave me alone.”

“Don’t you tell me to shut up.” Rhys stuck out his chin challengingly.

“Me neither.” Madoc advanced on the smaller Arthur. “I’ll knock your block off if you say that again.”

Isolde threw her hands up in the air. “Boys must be the stupidest things in the whole wide world! Fighting doesn’t do any good.” She planted her fists on her hips and glared at the twins. “Don’t you even care why Arthur’s so sad?”

“I’m not sad!” Arthur yelled. “I’m … I’m mad.”

“You are not,” Isolde answered with equal vigor. “You’re sad because Cleve’s gonna marry Lady Edeline instead of Wynne. Why don’t you just admit it?”

There was a brief silence. Then Arthur slumped back against the column and slowly slid down to a sitting position on the straw-littered ground. “They should get married to each other,” he muttered, all the anger gone from his voice. “They should.”

As one, the other four children gathered around him, dropping to their knees or sitting cross-legged. “Why doesn’t he just marry her, then? I don’t understand,” Bronwen whispered.

Madoc scratched his head. “It all has to do with castles and land, I think.”

Arthur nodded disconsolately. “Wynne explained it last night.”

“She did?” Rhys asked.

Arthur sighed. “Not about her and Cleve exactly. But it’s the same thing as what she said about you and Madoc.”

“
I’m
not gettin’ married,” Madoc interjected.

“You’ll change your mind when you grow up,” Bronwen stated confidently.

“No, I won’t.”

“Oh, just be quiet,” Isolde scolded. She took Arthur’s hand. “What did Wynne say?”

He stared at the ground. “She said Lord William had promised her that Rhys and Madoc would never have to marry anybody they didn’t want to marry.” He looked over at his brothers. “Remember? She said you could marry just ’cause you loved somebody. Your father can’t make you get married to some girl just to get her castle or something.”

“So?” Rhys said. “Wynne doesn’t have a castle or anything, and—”

“—neither does Cleve.”

Arthur sent the other two boys a quelling stare. “That’s the problem, don’t you see? Cleve wants a castle, and Lady Edeline has one. Plus, your father wants to give Cleve a reward for finding you two.”

They were quiet again until Bronwen spoke. “I don’t think Lady Edeline
wants
to marry Cleve. She likes Druce best. I saw her crying on his shoulder in the garden just a little while ago.”

“Lord William is wrong to make her marry Cleve. It’s all his fault,” Isolde said.

“But he’s lord here,” Madoc defended his new father. “He gets to make all the rules.”

“Well, that’s a stupid rule. And anyway why can’t he make a different rule? He could make Cleve marry Wynne and Lady Edeline marry Druce.”

“But he doesn’t want to change the rules,” Arthur explained.

“I bet he’d do it if Madoc and Rhys asked him to.”

Everyone turned to look at Bronwen.

“Well, I mean, he gives them everything they want.”

Rhys shrugged. “We could ask him, I guess.”

“I bet Lord William wishes he had married your mother,” Bronwen added with a wise nod.

Silence descended once more as they each thought of the unknown women who’d given them life. Then Rhys spoke. “He asked me if I remembered her.”

“Me too,” Madoc quietly added. “I don’t, though. But I wish I did.”

“He said she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Beautiful on the inside and on the outside.”

“I wonder who my mother was,” Bronwen murmured, a sad note in her voice.

“Wynne is our mother,” Arthur stated. Though the other children had grown quiet with their own somber thoughts, he had brightened considerably. “She’s a good mother, and Cleve would be a good father to us.” He fixed his hazel-green stare on Madoc and Rhys. “Just because we might have to leave today to go home doesn’t mean we have to give up. You two will still be here.”

Suddenly he laughed and clapped his hands. “I know! Rhys and Madoc can be the spies.”

“What do you mean?” Madoc asked.

“Like a war or something?”

“Sort of,” Arthur replied. “But you know, war is not just the fighting and stuff. It’s strategy too. That’s what Cleve said. He said strategy was very important. And he told me I was very good at understanding strategy.”

They left when the sun was at its zenith. Though Lord William had encouraged her to delay till morn, Wynne would not hear of it. Barris’s logical arguments fell on deaf ears with her as well. As for Druce, he was so angry, she feared he might not even accompany them back to Wales.

But Wynne could not deal with their troubled reactions. Her own emotions were in too much turmoil for her to think beyond one minute to the next. Gather her belongings. Have the cook pack sufficient supplies. Don’t forget the tent.

Her head ached and her stomach clenched in nauseated waves, yet she forced herself to hurry, and to hurry everyone else as well. Finally there was nothing left but to don her traveling mantle and to say her good-byes.

She found the five children in the garden gathered around Lord William. When six sets of eyes turned on her, she felt a renewed spasm of pain. She’d dwelt so much on her own sorrow—she was losing both the man she loved and two of her beloved children this day. But the children were parting from one another as well. Bronwen’s face already showed a pink nose and puffy eyes from crying. Like Isolde, she sat on Lord William’s knee, while the boys sat at his feet.

Wynne fought down a lump in her throat, promising to have a good cry sometime later when no one would be around to hear. Only just let it not be now.

“I … I would speak with the children a moment,” she said in a strained voice.

Lord William stared at her from beneath his lowering gray brows, as if he saw her now for the very first time. He patted the girls, and after they slid from his lap he stood up and shook out his richly embroidered tunic. Then he cleared his throat. “If I did not adequately say so before, well, let me say now that you are to be commended. These children—all of them—are fine and strong. And intelligent also. You have been a good mother to them, and I thank you for it. From the bottom of my heart I thank you.”

His fervent words so took her by surprise that Wynne was forced to brush an escaping tear from her cheek.

“I will keep my vow,” he added. “About the twins’ education and about their marriage prospects. They’ve just been reminding me that they are to wed by their own choice—for love, as Rhys says. I promise you that I shall not forget. And you, of course, shall be well informed of every aspect of their lives.”

He smiled, then shifted awkwardly on his bad leg. Arthur was quick to hand him his cane, and Lord William tousled the boy’s head fondly. “You are, every one of you, always welcome at Kirkston Castle or any other of my houses and demesnes. Should you ever need help, I hope you will count me as your ally. Your friend.”

Wynne watched through misty eyes as he moved ponderously away. She was doing the right thing to leave Rhys and Madoc with their father. She knew that now. So why did it hurt so terribly?

She fell to her knees with arms outstretched, and at once five small bodies hurtled into her embrace.

“Why can’t you stay?” Rhys cried, all bravado gone in the face of their impending separation.

“Don’t go, Wynne. Don’t,” Madoc sobbed against her neck.

Rhys and Madoc so seldom wept, Wynne thought as misery washed over her. They never wept, nor did she used to either. But as she clung to them, she cried, weeping as if her heart had broken, never to be mended again. She held to them and they held to her, a small, fragile family formed against all odds, then broken apart when it had seemed they’d already gotten past the worst life could throw at them.

But nothing was as bad as this. Nothing.

“Now, boys. Listen to me, sweetlings,” she managed to say in a choked voice. “We part today, I know. But not forever. For we shall visit. You to Radnor Manor, and we …” She paused, fearful to promise to return to this place. What if Cleve should be here too?

“You will come back to visit us—”

“—won’t you, Wynne?” the two boys pleaded.

She nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course I will. I love you both too much not to visit you. Now.” She took a shaky breath and forced a smile. “Let’s dry our faces, shall we? Here, use the lining of my mantle.”

Once they were all dried and standing upright again, Wynne looked over her little brood. Such a varied lot: fair and dark; delicate and brawny. “We must leave you now. But in our hearts we’ll still be together. We’re still a family and … and I love you so much.”

She pulled Rhys and Madoc into a smothering embrace. “I love you so much,” she whispered against their dark curls, breathing in the familiar scent of them, sweet and sweaty. Earthy. It would be so long before she could again do this. “Never forget how much I love you.”

It was a solemn group that made its way from the garden to the castle yard. The horses stood ready. Lord William’s men who were to accompany them relaxed as they waited, saying their casual farewells to family and friends. Though Barris stood among them, Wynne saw at once that Druce was not there. Nor was Edeline.

But Cleve was.

When Arthur saw Cleve, he broke into a run. Though Wynne would rather have looked anywhere but at their emotional farewell, her eyes would not be forced away. As if they anticipated the long days of their impending fast, her eyes feasted upon Cleve, seeing all the good things—his strength, his vitality. His gentleness.
He would make a wonderful father
, the unbidden thought came once more. A wonderful father and a good husband—that is, if he did not take a mistress, as he’d meant to take her.

That thought sobered her, and she was able at last to tear her eyes away. Though she heard him take his leave of the girls, and Barris as well, she concentrated on her placid mare, settling herself comfortably upon it. Then Barris put the children into the wagon Lord William had provided for their journey, and they were ready to go.

Still the call to depart did not come, and Wynne knew with a sinking certainty why. Cleve crossed the yard, before Lord William and his various daughters and sons-in-law and everyone else, and halted beside her left knee.

“Safe journey, Wynne.”

She didn’t want to meet his gaze, though courtesy demanded it. Still, it was not courtesy that turned her eyes toward him. It was her insatiable need to look into his eyes one last time. Despite all that lay between them—his need for lands and a title; her need to have him want only her, for herself and nothing else—at that moment she could not see him as anything but the man she loved.

She opened her mouth to speak, then consciously had to force the words to come. “
Ffarwel
,” she whispered as her eyes drank in this last sight of him. “I … I wish you well, Cleve FitzWarin. You and … and Edeline.”

Then she jerked her horse about and, because tears blinded her, trusted the animal to find its way through the crowded courtyard. She heard the wagon start forward, and the restless shuffling of the other eager animals. But they were simply background sounds. In her ears she heard only Cleve’s low and rumbling voice. He’d said once that he loved her. But today he’d just said good-bye.

R
HYS AND MADOC STOOD
in the narrow stairhall, pressed against the rough stone wall with stick-swords clutched in their fists. “It’s that door,” Rhys pointed at a solid, closed portal.

“What if it isn’t?” Madoc asked. “What if she’s not there?”

“Then we’ll keep on lookin’ till we find her. We’re spies, remember? We have a war to win.”

“A war to win,” Madoc repeated, his face brightening. “All right, then. Let’s go.”

They crept toward the door then, and when it seemed safe—no one was about at all this hot afternoon—they pressed their ears to the cracks around the door.

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Maybe she’s asleep.”

As one they pushed the door, then jumped when the old hinges creaked in protest.

“Go away,” the muffled words came, thick and petulant. “Go away, I said!”