Tempt Me With Kisses (10 page)

Dismay settled upon Fiona, like a blanket dank and damp, overwhelming the other emotions Caradoc had stirred into life.

For if Rhonwen was not accepted, what chance had she?

Chapter 5

T
he next morning Fiona awoke with a start to find Rhonwen standing silently at the foot of the bed, her expression as unreadable as her lord’s and a tray covered with a linen cloth in her hands.

Yawning, Fiona rubbed her eyes and sat up. Tired from her journey, her thoughts and emotions a jumble, alternately excited by the memory of Caradoc’s kiss and touch, troubled by anger and shame at the past, wary of what the future held, her mind had been active far too long after she had retired.

Even when she finally fell asleep, her dreams had carried on the conflict. Caradoc, Iain, Cordelia, Dafydd, Ganore, Rhonwen … all had paraded through her slumbers like a troop of angels and demons bent on waging war for her heart and happiness.

She glanced at the window and realized the sun was beaming in. It was a fine day, and already further along in the morning than she was used to rising. “What hour is it? How long have you been waiting for me to wake?”

“It’s nearly midmorning, my lady,” Rhonwen answered as she balanced the tray against her stomach and lifted the cloth to reveal sliced bread and cheese and a mug of what smelled like cider.

“So late?” Fiona asked, appalled that she had slept so long, and yet distracted by the food. Her stomach growled loudly, and she smiled sheepishly. “It is much later than I usually wake. And I am not a lady, Rhonwen. At least, not yet.”

The young woman’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Lord Caradoc says I am to be your maid. What am I to call you?”

“Fiona, I suppose.”

“Th-that doesn’t seem right,” Rhonwen stammered, and Fiona felt sorry for making an issue of how she was addressed.

However, if her name sounded lacking in deference, “my lady” was certainly presumptuous, and if
she
thought that, she could easily imagine what Ganore and the rest of the household would make of it.

“For now I think you should call me ‘mistress,’” she replied, using the term the servants at home had called her after her mother had died and she had taken charge of the household for her father.

She thought of something else and her smile died. “What of mass? Have I slept through that?”

Rhonwen nodded again.

The people of Llanstephan would surely think she was lazy and irreligious, too. In his next grace Father Rhodri would probably condemn her for a pagan and suggest she be purified by being burned at the stake. “In the future, wake me at dawn with the rest of the household.”

Rhonwen blushed and stared at the floor, and immediately Fiona regretted her sternly commanding tone. That might be appropriate for Ganore, but not for this quiet, obedient young woman.

“Forgive me, Rhonwen,” she said, hugging her knees. “I am a stranger in a strange place where the people do not know me. Apparently many have already taken a dislike to me. I don’t want to do anything to make that dislike grow.”

She laid her chin on her knees and eyed the girl with sympathy. “I think you, of all in Llanstephan, know what I mean and how I feel.”

Rhonwen raised her head and regarded Fiona steadily with her big brown doe eyes. “They do not hurt me here.”

Despite her brave words, Fiona saw the loneliness lurking within the girl and sat up straighter. “But they are not kind to you here, either.”

The loneliness flickered and died out, replaced by an expression of stoic acceptance as Rhonwen set the tray on the table beside the bed, then plumped up Fiona’s pillows. “Those who raised me hurt and starved me, so it is enough.”

Fiona shifted backward until she was sitting against the headboard. Rhonwen could say it was enough; she might even believe it, but Fiona did not. Nevertheless, she wouldn’t press the girl anymore, lest she embarrass her.

Rhonwen set the tray on Fiona’s lap. As she began to eat, Rhonwen tidied the room.

This morning, it was easier to think of the good things, such as her jest with Dafydd, Caradoc’s sympathetic understanding of her childhood troubles, and Rhonwen’s friendliness. Indeed, if there was anyone here she could be close to besides her husband, she suspected it would be the quiet maid.

Yes, there were reasons to be pleased today. Caradoc was not what she had expected, but there were signs that he was still the same in some ways, and her marriage might be pleasant.

Maybe even
very
pleasant, at least when they were alone.

Blushing, she sipped her cider and glanced at Rhonwen, glad to see that the girl was too occupied with her tasks to notice or wonder what had brought that blush to her mistress’s face.

There was another good thing. Dafydd and Rhonwen seemed willing to accept her. She hoped it was a beginning.

But maybe Dafydd only acted as if he did because Caradoc was his friend. Perhaps Rhonwen was simply better at hiding her animosity than the other servants.

Fiona dearly believed she was wrong as she surreptitiously studied the young woman’s face, trying to gauge Rhonwen’s true opinion of her new mistress. Unfortunately, the girl’s long brown hair curtained her face as effectively as a veil.

“Last night Lord Caradoc spoke of gathering the sheep,” she noted as she nibbled on the excellent cheese and attempted to engage Rhonwen in conversation.

“Aye, they do that today and maybe start the washing if the weather stays fine,” Rhonwen replied as she put the bronze braid casings back in their box.

“We are surrounded by hills and mountains. I assume gathering all the sheep that pasture on the estate isn’t easy.”

“No, it’s not,” Rhonwen agreed as she gathered up Fiona’s comb and mirror and put them in a small wooden chest on the table. “It takes most of the morning and all the men and dogs that can be spared. Lord Caradoc takes the high point most times.”

She paused in her tidying when she saw Fiona’s bafflement. “They make a line, you see, the men and the dogs, stretching up and across the mountain. Then they move toward the pens, sweeping the sheep before them like they are a giant scythe.”

Fiona had assumed noblemen simply sat in their halls and waited to be told what was being done on their estate. She had also assumed Caradoc’s humble clothing was the result of his poverty. Now, she realized they could be the garments of a man who worked as hard as any laborer on his land.

“You could wait at the pens to see them bring the sheep down,” Rhonwen said, her expression shy but eager, too.

“I would like that,” Fiona replied, pleased by Rhonwen’s burst of confident eloquence and delighted by her suggestion. She also welcomed the chance to get out of the castle, which felt very much like enemy territory. “Will you wait with me?”

“If you like, mistress.”

“Excellent.” Fiona set aside the tray, rose and went to the window. Although the sun was shining brightly, mist still crowned the highest reaches of the mountains in the distance.

Rhonwen joined her. “Hard to tell, you see, if the mist will stay mist, or disappear, or turn into rain clouds. Difficult it is to gather the sheep in a fog, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

“Difficult, and dangerous, too,” Fiona surmised, for the Welsh hills could be little more than broken rock and bracken, both equally slippery in the wet.

“Aye. Dafydd broke his leg two years ago at the gathering for the lambing.”

Rhonwen’s expression revealed nothing, but Fiona had harbored a secret yearning for years, and thought she detected something similar in the young woman’s tone.

“It mended well,” Fiona remarked, for the man had had no limp that she could detect.

“Yes.”

“He seems an amusing fellow, and well liked,” Fiona noted, doing a little impromptu investigation.

“Everybody likes him,” Rhonwen murmured as she went to make the bed.

Meaning there was a lot of competition for his attention, and a quiet girl like Rhonwen probably stood little chance of being noticed.

She knew exactly how that felt.

She also suspected that if Rhonwen thought she was too nosy, she would reveal nothing more. Her sympathetic curiosity, however, made her unwilling to abandon the subject of Dafydd entirely.

“He is not married, is he?” she asked as she went to the large chest near the window and opened it. She wondered what she should wear that would be suitable for walking in the hills, yet fine enough to remind the servants that she was no pauper come begging for a husband like scraps at the gate.

Rhonwen raised the silken covering and let it fall, unwrinkled, back into place on the bed. “No.”

The blue wool was too plain. “I suppose his looks make him less than popular with the young women.”

“He has never lacked for female company, my lady.”

Fiona glanced up from her contemplation of the light brown gown with the green ivy embroidered along the square neckline. “Really?”

Rhonwen colored as she tucked the coverlet under the tick. “He’s said to be very … very....”

Fiona laughed as she drew out her light green gown. It laced at the sides, and was wider in the skirt than most, so she could take long strides in it. “So he told me himself last night, but I thought that merely meant he has a high opinion of himself.”

Rhonwen came to help her lift the gown over her head. “He does, but for more than that,” she said. “He knows more about sheep and their illnesses and injuries than most shepherds twice his age, and there’s nothing he won’t do when it comes to work. Him it was taught Lord Caradoc to shear as well as any man—”

“Caradoc can shear a sheep?” Fiona interrupted, pausing in her adjustment of the gown over her shift.

“Aye, mistress, and he’s quick as Dafydd, and rarely nicks.”

Here was more of the unexpected—a lord who could shear sheep.

“Dafydd must be a fine man if he is as good a friend to Lord Caradoc as he seems.”

“Oh, he is!”

Rhonwen smiled, and Fiona realized how pretty the girl really was, with big, soft brown eyes, long lashes and pink cheeks.

She wondered if Dafydd had ever noticed her loveliness, or if he had ever seen her smile. She could believe that Rhonwen was always too shy to do so in his high-spirited presence. Maybe she followed Dafydd around whenever she could, hiding in the shadows and ducking behind corners, as a certain other girl had done years ago following the object of her secret desire, never realizing just how attractive and desirable he was going to become in his maturity.

With that thought warming her, she tied the lacing at the sides of the gown. “What do you think, Rhonwen?” she asked when she was finished. “Is this a good choice for tramping in the hills?”

“The pens are near the river for the washing, so we do not have to go far up.”

“Oh, good,” Fiona said with a relieved sigh as she sat on her stool before her dressing table and began to comb her hair. “I would hate to trip or fall in front of everybody. Then they would surely say I was clumsy as well as homely.”

“You aren’t homely, mistress,” Rhonwen protested.

“Well, I am no great beauty, either.”

Rhonwen did not disagree, but Fiona wasn’t offended by the girl’s silence. She had accepted the truth about her appearance long ago. Only once had she forgotten it, when Iain had lied and told her she was beautiful.

“I think simple braids today, and fastened with those two green ribbons,” she said, gesturing at the finery in an open box on the table.

“Yes, mistress,” Rhonwen said, picking out the green ribbons as Fiona did the first braid.

Fiona tilted her head and looked up at Rhonwen as she held out her hand for one of the ribbons. “I have often been lonely, Rhonwen, as I think you have been,” she said as she tied the ribbon around the end of her braid. “We have something in common there, and since I was not born a lady, I am hoping that we can be friends.”

Rhonwen nodded, then another shy smile stole onto her face. “I would like that very much.”

As the daughter of a wool merchant, Fiona was familiar with fleece and sheep in pens. Rarely had she witnessed a shearing, though, or the washing that went before it to remove the grease and dirt from the fleece.

Now she waited with Rhonwen on the stone wall of a huge pen close to the river. They had trudged up the hill to this place, and although the distance wasn’t far, the angle of the slope had tired her quickly. Rhonwen, however, looked as if she had somehow flown there. She was not winded in the least, and as they walked, she had told Fiona many things about the raising of sheep on Llanstephan.

There was no sign of men or dogs or sheep, but Rhonwen had told her it would be a little while yet before they appeared.

“When they come, the sheep all go to the big
ffridd
here and then they’re sent down that way to the river, one by one,” she said, pointing to a large gate at one end of the stonewalled pen and then to another smaller gate on the opposite side. The small gate opened onto a narrow enclosed path leading to a pier in the slow moving river, which had been dammed to form a deep pool.

“A man stands on the pier, picks them up and throws them into the water,” she continued.