Memories of the Heart (20 page)

“Nay,” Blanche promptly denied, annoyed by this man's ability to resist wiles few others ever had, wiles that he had once found enthralling. “Though the child seems an inadequate mate for you, I have not come to warn you against a union with her.”

“Then why have you come?” Tal made the demand with no further hint of emotion.

“There is another in your castle infinitely more dangerous.” Vexed by Tal's lack of response, Blanche paused. In retribution for his cold treatment, she sought to force him into asking for an explanation. When he shrugged and made to leave without further conversation, she irritably continued.

“The young Welsh witch has already cast her spell over you.”

“And how, pray tell, could you possibly know that?” Tal scoffed at a claim he wanted to believe impossible, certainly impossible for Blanche to know.

“I heard the words from her own mouth.” With this cryptic announcement, Blanche brushed past Tal to stomp from the dark stable. She rather than he would leave first. Blanche marched back to a shared bedchamber, sparing no attention to possible onlookers. If Taliesan wanted to know more, then he could jolly well come to her. And she truly believed he would. Then she could console him for trust betrayed and …

*   *   *

Having learned the secret of Westbourne's postern gate through bailey walls, very late on a moonless night Lloyd slipped unseen back into the guarded courtyard within. Again dressed in the black, hooded cape he silently climbed the castle's outer steps and, while its inhabitants slumbered, entered the inner stone stairwell.

Lloyd had come with a mission—not by Lord James's command nor on one devised by either of the untrustworthy brothers but on his own behalf.

At the fortress's highest level corridors branched off on either side of the landing from which a hallway led into private chambers. Just inside each of these corridors were alcoves. The one on the right contained the small family chapel with wooden wall and a door to close it off. On the left, lent limited seclusion by drapes, was the sleeping area of both Lloyd's beloved and his daughter.

Lloyd carefully brushed the cloth barrier slightly aside and peeked into the alcove. After establishing the position of both women, he reached out to lightly scratch the sole of Vevina's foot.

Lost in dreams, Vevina initially attempted to kick the annoyance away, and kicked again and again with ever increasing vigor. When the exasperating touch relentlessly continued, the woman rose on one elbow to irritably glare back at its source.

With a forefinger pressed tight to his lips, Lloyd caught the startled woman's attention. He lost no moment in urgently motioning for her to rise and join him outside the alcove.

Vevina reluctantly nodded her cooperation while simultaneously signaling Lloyd to release his hold on the drapes and move a pace away. As was the habit for all blessed with personal spaces for a night's rest, she slept nude and now insisted on privacy to don clothing of some kind before joining him.

As the beauty stepped into the corridor and stood at his side, Lloyd was hard-pressed to restrain a grin of delight. Garbed only in a pale rose undergown with masses of lustrous dark hair unbound and the frown of a grumpy child, she looked to be decades younger than her actual years. And his lifelong love was just as lovely as she'd always been and would surely always be.

Lloyd claimed Vevina's dainty fingers and led her soundlessly across the landing and into the opposite corridor. Lifting a latch to release the chapel's door, he motioned the woman into the seclusion of its dark interior.

Poorly lit by the extremely limited light falling from an arrowslit cut through the thinnest part of the alcove wall, by the odd sight of piled tools Lloyd realized for the first time this small chamber was being restored. Laborers had plainly halted for a few hours' sleep, leaving implements to await their return on the following day.

Carefully closing the door at his back, Lloyd gazed down into Vevina's frown but before he could speak she hissed a question at him.

“What misbegot notion brought you back to the place where you were nearly executed?” Vevina's eyes flashed with fires that rekindled the nearly cold ashes of Lloyd's hopes. “You know that they will kill you if you're found.”

Unable to prevent the likely unwelcome action, Lloyd gently threaded his large fingers through the black silk of her abundant hair while intently asking, “Would you care?”

Too aware of a lost dream dangerously near, Vevina's lips clamped tightly together. She refused to respond to the uncomfortable question whose answer had already been made clear merely by the asking.

“As I care what happens to you.” Lloyd lovingly confirmed his recognition of her unspoken reply. “'Tis why I've returned.”

“Why?” Vevina still looked at Lloyd with suspicion to hide the startling truth that his words had begun to thaw the heart she'd sworn long since frozen by his past misdeeds.

“Lord James of Farleith intends to attack and conquer Westbourne for his king,” Lloyd regretfully stated an unpleasant and perilous fact.

“How can you know?” Vevina demanded, horrified by the certainty that her lost love could only possess such information were he a part of the scheme.

Lloyd shrugged as if in an attempt to dislodge the uncomfortable weight of her unspoken accusation. “I've heard more than enough to know.”

“When?” Vevina's normally tender lips pursed in distaste. “And where?”

Ignoring the second query to answer the first, Lloyd said, “The baron refuses to share that detail until the hour arrives—doubtless wise considering how faithless are his allies.”

“Faithless allies—like you?” Vevina asked with a sad smile.

Lloyd shook his head in self-mockery. “I am not Lord James's ally though he thinks elsewise. Nay, 'tis Sir Ulrich and his brother Simeon, who dishonor the foster father we three shared by plotting against Earl William's son.”

“Sir Ulrich?” Vevina's attention instantly focused on this fact most unexpected and yet most believable. “He is an ally of Lord Tal's enemy?”

“Oh, aye. Like wine gone to vinegar the man's bitterness has turned to poisonous spite. It was Ulrich who shot an arrow at the earl while he rode patrol.”

“How can that be?” Vevina asked, not in doubt but in a desire to understand. “They were both members of the same party.”

“'Struth.” Lloyd gently smiled and went on to tell how Ulrich had boasted to the baron of Farleith Keep about having first split the patrol in half and then slipped away unnoticed from those he commanded to launch the assault.

“So you see,” Lloyd concluded, “he wants nothing so much as to see Taliesan fall. And if Ceri bears the brunt of his pain, he'll deem that better still.”

“Ceri?” Vevina gasped, shaken by the prospect of imminent danger for the gentle damsel she'd come to love more as daughter than niece.

Lloyd nodded. “By Ceri's rejections, Sir Ulrich has been shamed before the men under his command—and lessened in his lord's esteem.”

Vevina had known how vicious an enemy Ulrich could be but she'd never thought him so utterly lacking in honor as to foreswear himself by betraying Lord Taliesan and posing a threat to all of Westbourne.

“Lloyd—” With his inclusion of Ceri in their conversation, Vevina gathered courage to probe into a painful area long puzzling to her. “Why was Ceridwen never told that you are her father?”

Lloyd was knocked slightly off-kilter by this sudden shift in focus. “That was your mother's decision,” he quietly replied. “She accepted the duty of raising Ceri, which would've been near impossible for a father alone. In exchange I gave Mabyn my oath to be the girl's lifelong guardian … but to never tell her that she was my daughter.”

“And you agreed, at least as much to avoid the need to explain the wrong of her conception, of how she was begot by you and your betrothed's sister.” Anguish infused these words of a misdeed long past but never forgotten.

Lloyd nodded, anguished by the admission of a guilty secret suppressed for too many years. “I wished that the innocent girl never need know how she was created not of love but by my wretched mistake. I couldn't bear to see Ceridwen's sweet nature soured by learning the truth of my wicked sin in her begetting.”

Vevina brushed tender fingers over Lloyd's distress-creased face. “Ceridwen
is
by nature sweet and so long as she is loved I doubt the truth could see that changed. In watching her in the days since her arrival I've come to see not the wrong you committed but the child we should have had, the daughter she has become to me.”

Lloyd took Vevina's fingers into a gentle hold, turned her hand over, and as a token of his continuing love nuzzled a tender, heart-mending kiss into her soft palm.

Chapter 16

With the first faint gleams of predawn on the eastern horizon, muffled voices rose from the great hall as the castle began to awaken. While banked coals in the central hearth were stirred into revived flames Ceri moved through a portal into the hallway dividing the level above. Plainly waiting for the sound of Ceri's footsteps, Edith promptly stepped from her bedchamber leaving a yet sleeping Blanche behind. Together the two, one with hair as dark as the other's was light, approached the door to Lord Taliesan's bedchamber.

With Ceri's soft but persistent rapping on that sturdy oak barrier, Edith would've fallen back but for Ceri's steadying arm about her waist.

“Enter.” Tal's order was brief and held more than a touch of annoyance for an untimely interruption. He had sent for no one and short of a major calamity, no one should dare bother him before prime had even been tolled from the village church.

Bolstering her courage the better to support Edith, Ceri pushed the door open. Her mouth dropped while Edith instantly clenched her eyes shut and began mumbling the prayers of her rosary.

Though a sight with which Ceri had become intimately familiar, still the view of Taliesan's bare chest was stunning. And as he motioned them into his chamber, Ceri's breath was caught by the magnificent display of strength in muscles that rippled under the wedge of dark hair running down to where chausses were already tied at narrow hips.

Crooked smile appearing, Tal watched the helpless fascination in mist-green eyes gone dark. The very different effects his near nudeness had on these two young damsels was almost enough to stifle his annoyance over their unexpected arrival.

While Tal jerked a tunic over his dark head and down to cover a broad chest, Ceri was irritated with herself for being so easily flustered by his too powerful attraction.

“You have a purpose for intruding so early in my day?” Tal briskly asked, running an impatient hand over black hair, sleep tousled and further mussed in the donning of his shirt. The action did nothing to smooth its surface.

“A very important purpose.” Ceri forced calm words to her lips.

“And that is?” Tal persisted, anxious to soon begin and quickly have done with the chores of a day he feared boded unpleasant tidings.

Ceri laced her fingers so tightly together that their tips went white as she carefully framed the proper words to earnestly pursue their goal in so early coming to Lord Taliesan.

“Edith has a confession to make.”

“Then wouldn't Edith's time be better spent getting herself to the village church?” Tal wryly asked, restraining irritation for the delay of this seemingly pointless conversation.

“Nay,” Ceri promptly argued. “She has a confession to give
you
—and a plea for your aid in seeing an injustice put right.”

This curious statement earned Tal's complete attention. He turned the firm power of his dark gaze from the compassionate Ceri to the woman-child clearly at its core and issued a simple, single-word demand, “Explain.”

Edith clenched her eyes tightly shut and drew a deep breath for courage before beginning. “My father bartered with me for the gift of my heart's desire.”

Tal's face revealed nothing yet the sense of foreboding with which his day had begun found focus. The mere mention of a bargain struck with Lord James of Farleith was ominous.

Eyes still closed, Edith haltingly continued. “My father promised to see me given into holy orders in the Abbey of St. Anne—if I would agree to do as he commanded.”

“You wish to become a nun?” Tal was surprised. He was certainly aware that many children—both boys and girls—from overlarge families were given to the church as tithe. But he had never known any who'd chosen such a life for themselves.

“It is my calling,” Edith earnestly proclaimed with hands tightly joined, palm to palm, while finally meeting Lord Taliesan's gaze directly.

As Tal nodded, light from an unshuttered window played over disheveled black hair. “What, for the giving of that boon, does your father require of you?”

“Only that I willingly visit Castle Westbourne—” Though Edith's nerves were eased by his calm demeanor, she paused to take another deep breath. “And that I report all I observe of you and your garrison—what patrols you keep and their timing; who visits, and who you go to visit.”

Tal's lips curled in a mirthless half-smile. Lord James must be bored, indeed, to find interest in such mundane matters. But, no, he knew deeper and more sinister currents must flow beneath the seemingly calm surface. What wretched plans was the man laying against him while ostensibly preparing to see him wed an only daughter?

“I beg your forgiveness, Lord Taliesan,” Edith quietly repented. “And I promise no real damage could've been done by what little was reported in my only letter home.”

“You were willing to forgo your own principles for the sake of retreating into the holy life?” Tal slowly asked, amazed by this contrary concept yet not doubting her sincerity. Plainly this girl was already more committed to the religious world than the one he inhabited.