It was plain from Newlin’s steady gaze, however, that he already knew. “She does not trust me. Yet.”
Isolde smiled in relief. “Do you intend to change her mind?” she asked, curious about the old bard’s interest in Tillo.
Newlin took a bite of stew and stared intently at Isolde as he chewed. “We must each of us do what we must do, even if it is outside the bounds of the life we have heretofore lived—or the life we have expected to live.”
A furrow creased Isolde’s brow. The urge to confide in the old man was overwhelming, but this was neither the right time nor place. “Do you speak now of my life, or of yours?” was all she asked.
“Perhaps of both. Perhaps of everyone’s,” he added, gesturing to the crowded hall with his one good arm. “Go along
with you, child. I have no advice for you this evening, save that you too should look outside the boundaries you set yourself.”
Dismayed, Isolde nonetheless obeyed his dismissal and retreated. But her mind could not let loose of his words. The boundaries she set for herself? She’d already broken all the bounds of acceptable behavior. If the world knew of her sin, she would be widely vilified. A ruined woman. Unmarriageable.
Doubly so if she bore a child.
And yet she seemed unable to prevent herself succumbing to that same sin night after night. She shook her head in dismay. So far as she could see, there were no bounds left for her to breach, save to renounce her family, and that she would never do.
Confused and preoccupied, Isolde returned to the hearth. Everyone had been served. She could sit and partake of her own meal now. But for a moment she just stood there, cold despite the roaring heat from the freshly stoked fire. Rhys would expect her to join him at the high table as she did at all the meals now. Once her work was done, she always sat in her mother’s chair beside him. But tonight she hesitated. It would not be much longer. This storm would break; her father would arrive with an army of men; and then this brief idyll would come to a violent end.
A sudden wave of panic overwhelmed her, and Isolde pressed a hand to her belly. What if she did indeed grow Rhys’s child within her? Though it was too soon to know, it was easily possible—and more reason than ever to prevent a confrontation between Rhys and her father and uncle. For if Rhys despised the men who had killed his father, how would a child of hers feel toward the men—family though they might be—who killed its sire? By the same token, she could not bear the idea of Rhys’s demise, even if he’d only bedded her for sport. Oh, God, but she was so confused.
Isolde turned, searching instinctively for an answer and for Rhys. She found him staring at her.
Their gazes met and held, and Isolde was mesmerized. For whatever reason—and she would never know what that reason was—Rhys ap Owain was the man for her. The man meant
to possess her heart. Hiding it was useless. Repressing the words changed nothing. She loved him and she always would. But did he care for her at all, or was he merely using her?
The meal was a torture. Isolde needed to be close to Rhys, yet conversely she could hardly bear his nearness. She needed to speak honestly and openly with him, and yet she was terrified to do so. So she picked at her meal and made small talk as needed. Soon enough they would be alone. Then she must confront him. Then they must determine what they truly were to each other.
For his part Rhys was conscious of a new tension in Isolde. But Glyn sat on his opposite side, and it proved easier to converse about falcons and peregrines than to probe the dangerous territories of Isolde’s mind. He knew what to do with her body; it was her emotions that confounded him, and her motives. Of late she had been exceedingly sweet and unbearably passionate. Did she hope to lull him to some complacency, to change his mind and alter the course he was set upon? If so, she was destined to fail. So he ate and he spoke with Glyn and he waited for her to make the first move.
The meal finally ended, though the drinking did not. While the clearing away began, Gandy and Linus performed a skit, aided by two of the pages and little Cidu. Isolde excused herself from the table to oversee the last of the evening chores. Rhys stayed her with a hand to her wrist. “I will be delayed a while tonight.”
She met his eyes briefly before nodding, then turning away. But Rhys’s eyes followed her. What would he do with her once this bitter fight with her family was done?
It was a question with no good answers. In bedding her, in wreaking that particular revenge upon the FitzHughs, Rhys discovered too late that he’d made a grave error. For he could not avoid being burned now by his own revenge. She would spurn him once he killed her uncle and father. Even if he forced her to stay with him, she would hate him. And though a week ago he would not have cared, in the last few days something between them had altered.
Still, he could not change any part of his revenge. Nor, he vowed, did he wish to.
He stared at the skit, neither hearing nor seeing the antics
below him. Only when the laughter subsided and Glyn nudged him did he rouse from his gloomy thoughts.
“Those blades should be cool by now. Let’s go check their balance.”
With a nod Rhys pushed up from the lord’s chair. There were weapons to amass and defenses to perfect. The pleasures of the flesh could wait—as could these morbid contemplations of his future.
So he flung his mantle over his shoulders and strode from the hall, once again bracing himself for the winter’s frigid assault. He did not feel Gandy’s concerned gaze upon his back, or Tillo’s worried stare.
Nor was he conscious of Dafydd’s resentful glare.
On the next floor up Isolde stood in the doorway of her bedchamber. Not so long ago she’d shared it with her sisters. Now, like her parents chamber one flight above, it had become the scene of so many erotic episodes with Rhys. A frisson of anticipation shivered up her back. Soon enough he would seek her out here.
Was she a fool to await him again?
Was he even now cavorting with another woman?
She shook her head, certain that was not true. She could not allow Dafydd’s ugly lies to ruin what little she and Rhys shared.
But soon enough it would be ruined anyway. Meanwhile, every time she lay with him she betrayed her family and her people.
A sob rose in Isolde’s throat but she brutally stifled it. She would not feel sorry for herself. Anything she’d done, she’d brought on herself. Still, she could not await him here tonight. Nor in his chamber with the disfigured mural looming over them, the dragon and the wolf muddied and ruined.
So she climbed further, past the lord’s chamber to the lonely tower room, dark and cold. Fitting, for her heart felt dark and cold this night. The whole world felt dark and cold, with no hope for dawn’s light or spring’s warmth to sustain her.
Her wool kirtle and heavy shawl were inadequate to the cold, but Isolde nevertheless braved the overlook. The snow had ceased, and the unrelenting wind had whipped the overlook
clean of any gathered drifts. Below her the dark world lay silent and deceptively peaceful. But the snow was simply a cold blanket that disguised a festering wound, one that Rhys sought to expose.
Isolde bowed her head and gripped the ice-cold edge of one corbel. “Please, Lord, find some way out of this horror, some way that we may all survive.” In her desperation she was oblivious to the cold. “Please help me,” she prayed into the night. “Please help us all.”
As if in answer a light flared in the bailey far below. A man strode from the armorer’s shed, and though the night sheltered his identity, Isolde knew at once that it was Rhys. She leaned out, the better to see—then abruptly was spun around. A man thrust her rudely against one of the corbels.
“Milady Isolde.” Dafydd’s awful grin loomed before her face. “Pining for your faithless lover?
Isolde twisted away, but not fast enough. He caught her shoulders in a cruel grip, then slammed her once more against the wall.
Three terrifying thoughts flashed through her head. He was drunk. He meant to rape her. And no one would hear her cries until too late.
As if in confirmation, he did not bother to muffle her mouth, but instead yanked her skirt up. “I’ll make you forget about him.” He ground his hips against hers so that she could feel the stiffened obscenity beneath his braies. “Thinks he’s so high-and-mighty now, fucking a FitzHugh. Well, I can do that, too, better’n him.”
“No!” She fought him, scratching, biting, trying to knee him in the groin. But he was too strong and too soaked with alcohol to feel any pain.
“Rhys!” she screamed. But the biting wind threw his name back in her face.
“He can’t hear you. And he can’t help you, neither.” Dafydd shoved one of his knees between her legs. “You owe me,” he hissed, then bit her neck in a repulsive parody of a caress. “You owe me for that shovel, and for everything you been givin’ him—Ow!”
He jerked to the side when she boxed his ear, but he did not let go. “You owe me and I aim to get it.”
“Rhys will carve your heart out for this!” Isolde sobbed.
“No he won’t. He needs every man here, if he expects to win. Besides, him and me go way back. We’ve hunted together and fought together. We’ve shared many a fire and a meal—and many a woman.”
He yanked her shawl off and his fingers fumbled for the neckline of her kirtle. Isolde twisted and fought, striking at him wherever she could. But he was unfazed. He wrapped one hand around her neck, pinning her against the wall with a suffocating grip. The more she struggled, the harder he squeezed, until she had no strength except to fight for breath.
He chuckled then, and his obscene lips pressed against her ear. “Me and Rhys, we shared plenty of women an’ you’re no different—”
A roar cut him off mid-word. Dafydd’s hand ripped away from her throat. His body flew back from hers.
Isolde sagged to the frozen walkway, sucking in great gasps of air. She could breathe. Dafydd had stopped—
Rhys had come! She looked up dizzily to see him towering over the other man.
“You bastard!”
“What do you care?” Dafydd spat out. “She’s just another whore, one you’re supposed to hate. Or are you turning into one of those cowards from Carreg Du?”
Rhys’s face contorted in rage. “Those cowards don’t rape women!” His nostrils flared with disgust. “It takes a special kind of coward to do that.” He dragged Dafydd to his feet and held him by the tunic, then glanced over at Isolde. “Are you all right?”
At once Dafydd struck. Only lightning-fast reflexes saved Rhys from a disabling knee to the groin. As it was, however, he was thrown off balance, and the other man took swift advantage. He yanked a dagger out of his boot and lunged, only missing Rhys by a hairsbreadth. He swung again wildly as Rhys rolled away.
Isolde gasped and slid along the wall toward the door. She must get help! But Dafydd saw her movement and slashed out at her. She leaped back, but even so felt the tip of his blade catch the cloth of her sleeve.
Before he could strike again Rhys tackled him. They fell
together, a writhing mass, cursing and struggling for possession of the deadly dagger.
Isolde wanted to help Rhys. But she was afraid her interference might make matters worse. Again she darted for the door. But as she swung it open, the two men rammed into her. She fell over them with a cry of alarm, cracking her head against the wall. Before she could right herself, Dafydd tore away, heading for the stairs. Rhys was fast after him, and she followed them down, her heart constricted with fear.
“Leave off, Rhys!” Dafydd’s voice echoed up the stairs. “I didn’t want anything more from her than what you been get-tin’.”
“You bastard. You tried to rape her!”
“An’ you didn’t?”
Isolde halted, hugging the wall as she stared at the scene below her. Dafydd backed slowly down the curving stairs, holding the dagger on Rhys who followed step by step, just beyond the reach of the blade. When Dafydd spied her, his lip curled in disdain.
“Are you forgettin’ how many times I covered your back?” he said. “She’s your enemy, man. Not me.” Then his face hardened when Rhys did not respond. “But you don’t care about any of that, do you? No. That juicy cunt of hers has you forgettin’ just who your friends are—”
Rhys leaped. Isolde screamed. And they went down, a roiling ball of legs and flying fists. The dagger skittered away and Isolde swiftly snatched it up. But the men fought on, tumbling down the stone stairwell, cursing and grunting all the way.
“Be careful, Rhys!” Isolde cried, helpless with fear for him.
Then somehow Rhys got the upper hand. On the landing just outside the master’s chamber he stopped their bone-jarring descent. There was blood on his face and his hands, but whose Isolde did not know.
He straddled Dafydd and punched him, once, again, and a third time. Blood squirted from the man’s nose. Teeth flew.
“
Uffern dan!
” he swore. “You unholy bastard!”
“Rhys, stop. You’ll kill him!”
“I want to kill him.”
“Rhys!” This time it was Linus and Gandy chorusing the alarm as they scrambled up the stairs. “What are you doing?”