RHYS SLEPT AND HE DREAMED, AND IN EVERY DREAM HE WAS content. He was not hungry or cold, or lonely. He did not have to fight for survival or for any other purpose. He was content. He was happy.
He felt the woman at his side. She snuggled against him, soft and warm, damp and fragrant with their lovemaking. He sighed, more satisfied than he had ever been, and he slept more soundly than was his wont.
Once he shivered, but he was quickly warm again, and it was easy to let down his guard for once, easier than it had ever been after a lifetime of wariness. “Isolde,” he mumbled, reaching out to her, wanting to hold her close. “Isolde?”
When he awoke it was abruptly. The room was cold, the fire dead, the candle spent. “Isolde?” he called once more. Then in a rush his dreams dissipated into bitter reality. The bed was empty.
She was gone.
“Bitch!” he swore as he tore from the bed. He yanked on his braies and grabbed his dagger. Then like a maddened bull, he was after her.
Ignoring the icy air on his bare torso, Rhys charged barefoot up to the tower room. Empty. Down to the hall he rushed where the silence was broken only by the occasional snores of the several servants rolled in rugs near the hearth. He pressed on, out into the freezing cold of the bailey.
Where was she?
He halted and forced himself to slow his raging, blind pursuit
of her. In the dark, oppressive night, his breath showed in cold, pale puffs. He thrust one hand through his hair. She could not have gone far. He would have to collect his wits, however, if he expected to find her.
But he found it nearly impossible to be sensible. She had betrayed him. She had given herself so sweetly to him. So completely. She’d curled into his arms like a lover and lulled him to complacency. But he should have known better than to trust her. She was a FitzHugh, after all, and in the end she had reverted to her true nature. She was his enemy, born and bred to oppose him
—
as he must oppose her. He should not be surprised at what she’d done.
But he was.
He stared around him, up at the sheer walls, across to the stables and laundry shed and kitchen, and he gripped his dagger so hard his hand shook. Though half-hidden by clouds, the moon was full. He wanted to howl his rage into the sky. To howl his pain. Somewhere in the distance a dog or wolf did howl, a cold, lonely sound.
But Rhys had no time to pander to his emotions. She thought she’d escaped him. She thought she could use her body and his raging desire to dupe him. But she was sorely mistaken. He would hunt her down. He would bring her back.
And she would regret forever the day she’d thought to deceive Rhys ap Owain.
Isolde flattened herself against the base of the outer wall. Someone else was there!
Someone else stood outside the castle walls, motionless, silhouetted against the sea, blocking the cliff path down to the beach. A guard? Pray God it was not that wretch Dafydd!
The wind blasted against Isolde, damp and bitterly cold from its long journey across the northern sea. She shivered. Her skin was still damp and the mantle she’d taken was not adequate. She had snatched it up as she’d fled the tower, driven by fear and shame, and confused loyalties. Now she hugged it close around her and tried to think. Perhaps if she sidled away from the postern gate and hid in the shadows. Perhaps the man would not detect her there and she could wait
until he eventually left. Please, God, let it be so, she pleaded as she inched silently to the left.
As if in answer to her fragmented prayer, the guard silently turned and slowly limped toward the gate. It was too dark to see his face, and too dark for him to see her, Isolde hoped. But as the fellow gingerly moved nearer, Isolde squinted into the darkness. He was small and old, and not a guard at all.
And not a man, either.
“Tillo?” Isolde spoke without meaning to, she was that relieved.
The figure halted. “’Tis I, child,” the old woman said, as if Isolde’s presence was no real surprise. “I have been worried about you.”
“You needn’t have worried. I am … I am all right,” Isolde said, hunching down into her mantle.
“I am told you have not been down to the hall.” Tillo drew nearer. “Not in three days.”
“No.”
“Not of your own choice, I’d wager.”
Isolde did not respond to that. If she had not ruined the dragon and wolf mural Rhys so admired, he would not have held her hostage in the tower so long.
Tillo let out a grim chuckle. “Not allowed down to the hall. Kept locked up in the tower. Yet now you roam outside the castle walls. ’Tis a curious thing, indeed. Do you flee him?”
Again Isolde did not reply. She could not. Yes, she was fleeing Rhys. But not for any reasons Tillo could understand. No one could possibly understand, for she herself could not explain her feelings. “I do not want there to be a battle here,” she finally muttered in explanation. “You said you’d help me escape.”
“Ah, child. Where once I thought you might be able to prevent it, now I am not so certain. ’Tis fated, I fear.” Tillo sighed then lowered her frail frame onto a rough limestone block beside the gate. “Men will fight. That is the long and short of it. They are bred for it. Men will fight and women will weep for them.”
Isolde began to pace, wringing her hands together. “But women can fight, too. Not in the same way as men. Not with swords. But sometimes we can force men to our will.”
The old woman laughed, a thin, high crackle in the gusty night. “So. You think you can force Rhys to abandon his lifelong goal by fleeing from him?”
“No. No.” Isolde shook her head miserably. “’Tis my father I seek. If I can just find him, I can convince him …” She trailed off, recognizing the flaws in that plan, too. She gestured hopelessly with her hands. “What else can I do?”
“I wonder,” Tillo mused. “I wonder what is the right thing to do. Oftentimes, when the decision is hard, we overlook the simplest of solutions. You must do what is right, Isolde. But then you must be willing to suffer the consequences.”
“But what is right? Who is right?”
Tillo was silent a long time. When she stood, she faltered and Isolde reached out to steady her. Up close the old woman’s face looked weary, and sad. “I have no answers for you, Isolde. I have not always been right in my own choices, so I am perhaps not the best person to guide you in your journey. But hear this one thing, child. Search your heart. Search it, and do not fear the pain you dredge up. To live in this world is to feel pain. That much I know is true.”
Tillo moved toward the gate in the wall, and Isolde let her hand fall away from the old woman. Search her heart? What was she to make of that? If anything it confused her even more.
She turned her head and stared out into the darkness, to where the sea beat its steady rhythm against the land. She had fled Rhys and the bed they had shared, for she’d been so afraid of the emotions he’d forced her to reveal. He had found her out, all her secret passions and desires, and she was afraid to face him in the light of day. So she had taken a chance on escape, and she had succeeded. She had only to get herself down the cliff to the beach, then make her way past the castle, toward Carreg Du and the road her father must take.
But then, what would that accomplish? Her father would never relinquish Rosecliffe Castle without a fight, no matter what she said to him. And he had right on his side.
But Rhys felt he was right as well, and a small part of Isolde understood why. These had always been Welsh lands. For a hundred years. For a thousand. The hills, the valleys, the cliffs, and the rocky shoreline. To Rhys her family was
the usurper. But she was half Welsh, as were her brother and sister. One day Gavin would sit as lord of Rosecliffe. If only Rhys could be patient. If only he could understand that the FitzHughs wanted good things for the Welsh marches, the same good things he wanted. If only she could convince him.
She turned to face the castle again and let her eyes roam up the massive stone wall, up from the base and the sturdy postern gate to the stones set too evenly for anyone ever to climb very far. She tilted her head to see all the way up to the battlements at the crest. This was her home. But the rose cliffs were part of Rhys’s home, too. He remembered the cliffs before the castle was here. While her earliest memories were of ongoing construction and walls rising ever taller, he remembered a bare promontory, a long rocky hill covered with wild roses, then a rugged fall down to the sea. And yet he admired the castle and its mighty fortifications. She had watched from the tower as he explored it, trying to learn all its secrets.
Her father and Rhys both loved Rosecliffe. Was there truly no possibility of compromise, or of peace?
She pushed her wind-whipped hair back from her brow. If she left here now, she would never have the answer to the question.
Isolde turned abruptly on her heel. It was becoming clear what she must do, and it would be painful, just as Tillo had warned. She walked to the edge of the cliff and stared down toward the beach, straining against the dark to see the path she had meant to take, but now would not. She would never convince her father to abandon Rosecliffe to Rhys. But maybe she could convince Rhys that her family loved this part of Wales as much as he did. In his own way Rhys was as honorable and brave as her father. Perhaps she could search out enough common ground between them to forge a compromise.
An unlikely occurrence, she knew. But as she turned back to the castle, Isolde knew she must try. There were no true villains in this tragedy. She was beginning to see that now. Even Rhys was not so dreadful a person as she had imagined all these years. He was not dreadful at all. At times he seemed to actually care for her. Perhaps she could become the connection between him and her father—
“What do you think you are doing?”
Isolde gasped and froze in mid-stride. “Rhys?” But of course it was Rhys.
For one insane moment Isolde’s heart thumped in glad recognition. He had come after her because there was some strange sort of bond connecting them, a bond that could be the beginning of a real and lasting peace between them.
Then he crossed the narrow ledge and caught her arm in an unforgiving grasp, and her gladness withered to doubt, and then to fear.
“You deceitful bitch.”
She flinched at the coldness in his tone. “No. Wait.” She tried to hold him off with her hands. His chest was bare where her palms rested, however. He wore only his braies, she realized, further disconcerted.
“Wait for what?” he growled. “For you to summon your countrymen? To lead them inside Rosecliffe so they can murder us in our sleep?”
“No! Listen to me, Rhys—”
“No!” He shook her hard. “No, I’ll not listen. I’ll not listen to any further lies from you!”
“But I’m not lying—”
“All women lie,” he coldly bit out. “That is how they get along in the world.”
Isolde gasped and recoiled at the pure contempt in his voice. Better that he had struck her full in the face than to have said that to her. The fact that he was so wrong spurred her from desolation to fury.
“Yes. You’re so right, Rhys ap Owain. So knowledgeable. So wise. You know everything about everything—especially women.”
Again he shook her, then shoved her up against the wooden gate. “I know what I see. And what I see is a woman who will lie beneath a man, who will spread her legs for him and take her pleasure with him, then ruthlessly stab him in the back.”
His face was but inches from hers and though the darkness hid his expression, she nonetheless felt the full blast of his disgust. He was so wrong! What she sought was peace, not revenge. Yet she had no voice to tell him—none that he would hear, anyway.
A sob caught in her throat, a cold lump of bitter emotions. Why must it be this way between them? Why? She shook her head and fought to control her breathing, and to prevent bursting into tears. Her fingers splayed against his solidly muscled chest. The surface was rigid and prickled with the cold. Beneath the surface, however, was warmth. If only she could reach beyond his unyielding surface to the good and passionate man at his core.
“Rhys—”
He slammed his fist against the gate just beside her head, and she shrieked.
“If you value your pretty little neck, you will push me no further, Isolde.” Then he yanked her to the side, jerked the gate open, and shoved her into the narrow passageway. “Get to the tower. Now.”
Isolde did not wait for a second order. She fled blindly through the passage, guiding herself through the black tunnel with her fingers along one wall. Back to the tower. Back to her prison. Back to an even more hopeless situation than before.
Rhys waited until she was gone, praying all the while that she’d done as he had ordered. If she wasn’t in the tower and he had to seek her out again, he did not think he could control himself.
He locked the postern gate, then leaned stiff-armed against it, breathing hard. He had wanted to hurt her. He hadn’t done it. He’d restrained himself. But he’d wanted to.