Tempt Me With Kisses (25 page)

“It will come to that eventually,” Dafydd persisted as he, too, rose and watched Caradoc pace restlessly, like a caged bear. “There will come a point when whatever pleasure Fiona finds in your arms won’t be enough to overcome the torment of her days. If you wait too long, it may be too late and she will leave you. You do care about that, don’t you, Caradoc?”

Caradoc halted and rubbed his chin. What if Dafydd was right, and he ran out of time before he could regain what he had lost with Fiona? “I know she’s not had an easy time of it,” he admitted, “but I thought I could make up for it when we’re alone. That’s what I’ve been trying to do, anyway.”

“Is it working?”

That was the question, wasn’t it
? “I think so. I hope so.”

Dafydd sighed with undisguised exasperation. “But you don’t
know
and I daresay you haven’t asked.”

Caradoc looked at his worn boots and shook his head like a chastised boy.

“Why the devil not?”

Caradoc shrugged.

“Afraid to talk to her, are you? Afraid to let her know how you feel, is that it? Thinking that makes you look like a besotted boy and not a man? Pricks your pride, maybe?”

“I never said that.”

“You don’t have to. I’ve known you since birth, and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn you would rather be tortured than tell a woman how you feel, even if she’s your wife.”

He didn’t need Dafydd to point out his failings when it came to women, especially talking to one. He knew them well enough already.

“Look you, Caradoc,” Dafydd said, ignoring Caradoc’s annoyed expression, “you must choose between your sister’s happiness, or your wife’s. And one day, Cordelia may marry and leave here. If she has forced Fiona out, what will be left for you? Come, man, think of that. You have a chance for real happiness with your wife, Caradoc. I saw it in the first days of your marriage. If you think that there’ll come another chance like this, think again, or look at me. You don’t want to wind up as I am, my friend—loved by many, but beloved by none.”

Caradoc saw the pain in Dafydd’s usually merry eyes, and heard the ring of sincerity in every word he said. To think he had known Dafydd all his life and never suspected he felt like this.

His annoyance fell away like the mist from the fleece. “You’re right. I’ve got to choose.”

And then and there, he did.

Ganore was going to have to leave. Dafydd’s heartfelt words seemed almost like the permission he had been seeking and removed the impediment of his doubts.

It was as if the weight of Llanstephan’s walls had been lifted from him, and he clapped a hand on Dafydd’s shoulder. “Since you are so keen to speak of matters of the heart, my friend, I overheard Rhonwen talking to Fiona about you the other day. While I myself don’t understand it, since she seems an intelligent young woman, I think Rhonwen likes you.”

Dafydd gave him a genuinely startled—and shyly pleased—look such as Caradoc had never seen on his face before, and for once, Dafydd didn’t declare a woman’s attraction inevitable. “Really?”

His delighted expression altered to a wary one. “You’re not teasing me?”

“If I were, it would be a just return for all the times
you’ve
teased
me
. But no, she really does,” Caradoc said as he started toward the hall.

Dafydd hurried after him. “Wait for me, you varlet. What exactly did she say?”

“I can’t remember
exactly
, but I think she called you a cur.”

“Blackguard!”

“Or maybe it was nit.”

Chapter 12

C
aradoc awaited Ganore in his solar. He had sent Lowri to fetch her and knew Ganore was taking her time. The woman had no notion she was really only making him more sure of his purpose.

He also contemplated Father Rhodri, who was still demonstrating a distinct lack of Christian charity where Fiona was concerned. He had let that go on too long, too, hoping it would resolve itself, having faith in Fiona’s ability to overcome the poor opinion of others—or, as he now realized, using that excuse to avoid another conflict in his household. Well, he would not put that burden on Fiona any longer, either.

At last there came a single sharp rap at the door and Ganore marched into the solar before he answered. She came to a halt and looked at him expectantly, and with all the respect she would accord a six-year-old boy.

Another mistake, Ganore
.

He lifted up the purse of silver coins he had taken from Fiona’s dowry and set it on the table with a dull clink. “Ganore, because you have served this household well, this is yours.”

Her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned, as they had done for years every time she was about to criticize him.

“This is your reward for your service here,” he said, “which is now at an end.”

Her mouth opened and she paled, but only for an instant before her eyes got the fierce look he knew so well.

“It’s her, isn’t it?” she charged. “Casting me out of my home like I was a leper when she’s the one who ought to be going! Look you, Caradoc, she’s a no-good, lying, cheating Scot. She bought her way into this household and into your bed. She’s cheated you there, too, if you think she was a virgin. That old whore’s trick of blood on the sheets wouldn’t fool anybody with half a bit of sense and—”

Caradoc’s anger rose, bringing with it the bitter taste of bile. Ganore had not been there on his wedding night. She knew
nothing
about Fiona, and her speculations were all based on ancient prejudices and superstitions.

He was around the table in an instant to confront her. “Anybody with half a bit of sense would not spread false rumors of witchcraft just because a woman has red hair. Anybody with half a bit of sense would see Fiona for the woman she is, and not the creature you make her out to be. Look
you
, Ganore, she is my wife, and anybody with half a bit of sense would beware what they say to a man about his wife, especially when the man is a lord.

“But you cannot understand, can you?” he demanded, his rage finally breaking free of the restraints he had placed upon it for years upon years. “I am the lord of Llanstephan Fawr, not the child you terrorized while exalting my brother and sister before me.”

A plea rose unbidden from the depths of his heart. “Why was that, Ganore? Why have you always hated me?”

Ganore’s whole body trembled with emotion, and her eyes were wild with fury. “Me? It wasn’t only me. Did you never wonder why your father was so hard on you, and your mother did not come to the aid of her firstborn?”

“My mother didn’t know there was anything to save me from,” he retorted, his hands curving into fists of tension.

“Of course she did! My lady knew everything that went on here.”

“She didn’t. She couldn’t have.”
Or she would have told you to be kinder to me. She would have stopped Connor and Cordelia from teasing me. She would have got me out of the solar, and told my father to praise me
.

Ganore went behind the chair, her skeletal fingers, knuckles white, gripping the back of it as if she would break it if she could. “Where do those blue eyes of yours come from, eh? Connor’s are brown like his father’s. Cordelia’s are gray, like your mother. No one in your family has ever had blue eyes.”

A sudden terrible fear grabbed Caradoc’s heart, as strong as her grip upon the chair. “What does that matter?”

“A Norman
raped
my sweet lady,” she cried, bending forward, the spittle flying from her thin lips, “and you are
that
man’s son.”

Everything except shock drained from him as he stared at her.

Then pride and denial, tough and strong as the mountains beyond the walls of his castle, formed a bandage over the gaping wound she made.

He would not believe this tale he had never heard before. She must be lying, trying to hurt him one last time before she went away.

“There was a feast at her uncle’s manor. A Norman squire named DeFrouchette caught her in the garden, alone and unprotected,” Ganore continued, a mad gleam of triumph in her dark and beady eyes. “He took his pleasure of her and left her insensible. By the time she was found, he had fled to France.”

Holding the arms of his chair, Caradoc lowered himself to sit. “If that is true, why have I never heard it?” he asked, his voice cold as ice, hard as iron.

“Because her parents had great plans for her, an important match with a Norman lord, and the Normans are particular about virgin brides. She had put them off for as long as she could, wanting a Welshman for her husband, but when she realized she was with child, she finally gave in. She said she might as well make her parents happy, if not herself. Because of you, she was forced to marry your Norman father, who had been after her for months to no avail, until she was attacked.”

Ganore raised a bony finger and pointed at him as if she was the judgment of God. “You’re a Norman’s bastard, Caradoc, and if it weren’t for you, my sweet lady would have married a proper Welshman!”

“Still your lying tongue, old woman!” he cried, and with some triumph himself, for he had found the flaw in her story, the element that gave him hope that this was just a lie. “If it was a Welshman she wanted, he wouldn’t care if she was a virgin.”

Her black eyes gleamed with twisted pleasure. “No Welshman with any pride would want her once she bore a Norman’s brat.”

Sweet heaven. That had the ring of truth
.

“Believe it or not as you will, it is what happened. I was her most trusted maidservant. She had no secrets from me.”

Yes, Ganore had been his mother’s nurse, and that was why he thought his mother kept her close, despite the woman’s harsh, judgmental nature.

If Ganore knew her secret, perhaps his mother did not dare to tell her to go lest she speak of it. Perhaps that was why she would not cross Ganore, or come to the aid of her son.

But to think that was to admit that Ganore was telling him the truth, and that he would not accept. He couldn’t.

As his mind desperately grappled with what she said, he found another flaw in her story.

He steepled his fingers and regarded her steadily, his lip sneering. “If I am a bastard, how am I the heir of Llanstephan? Or will you tell me my father never knew?”

“Of course he knew,” she replied, and her triumph and pleasure did not lessen. “But what Norman would admit he was so besotted over a woman he would marry one bearing another man’s brat?”

She came around the chair, moving toward the table like a snake slithering through the grass in the meadow. “They learned to care for one another, but not you. How could they? You were the reminder of another man who had taken her first. You were the proof that they had not come together in love. Most of all, you have Rennick DeFrouchette’s eyes.”

Smiling cruelly, she splayed her hands on the table and leaned closer, her dragon’s breath full of bile. “In your heart, you know I speak the truth, Caradoc. Why else were you never your father’s pride?”

Repulsed by her, full of hatred and anguish, he stood up so swiftly, his chair toppled over backward.

“Even if this lie has one grain of truth in it, is not Connor a Norman’s son?” he cried, despair creeping into his voice and wrapping itself around his heart. “Is not Cordelia a Norman’s daughter?”

Ganore rocked back, still smiling her thin, cruel smile. “But they are like my lady, merry and charming, with the voices of angels when they sing. You are a Norman through and through—proud, arrogant, no voice to sing, no words for poetry! You are half Welsh by blood, but you are pure Norman in your soul.”

She stabbed her skinny finger at him. “You know it. You feel it. That is why you don’t belong here any more than your wife. That is why you ached to leave Wales, to get back among your own kind where you
do
belong!”

He stumbled back as if she had struck him, for how often in his heart had he felt alone and outside, as if he did not belong there? Yet his aloofness was no secret, and this woman had lived here all her life to see it. Indeed, she had often been the cause of his keeping apart from others. This lie absolved her of any blame for that.

Strengthened by that thought, he straightened. “Who else has heard this little tale? Have you told Cordelia why her mother married a Norman? She is so adamantly Welsh, I am sure she would like to know it was done out of necessity rather than love, as she believes.”

The woman blanched, and with horrified, remorseful eyes she stared at him for one long moment before she threw herself on her knees and, humbled and pleading, grabbed his hand. “No, she doesn’t know and you must never tell her. I swore to my lady that I would take the secret to my grave, because she wanted it to be so. She was too proud to have her children know that she had been forced into marriage. Oh, why did you make me so angry I spoke of it?”

His world had blown apart and he was hollow inside. Nothing Ganore had said convinced him that she spoke the truth more than this.

No wonder he could never please the man he thought was his father. No wonder his mother never came to his aid, or championed him.