Tempt Me With Kisses (7 page)

Dafydd surveyed the group of men sitting in the barracks of Llanstephan Fawr.

At this time of day, when the sun was nearly set, the chamber was dim and would have been empty except for the rows of cots, the long table at one end holding basins and ewers of cold water for washing, and the pegs near the door where cloaks and various bits and pieces of armor hung. Each man had a wooden chest beside his bed for his personal belongings. In the evening, light was provided by torches in sconces on the walls, as well as by a fire lit in the small open hearth in the center of the room.

The loopholes, windows only wide enough for an archer to take aim, provided little ventilation, so the scent of smoke, pitch, horse, and sweaty soldiers lingered.

Jon-Bron and his two brothers sat glumly on one of the cots, looking like three statues of mournfully martyred saints. Eifion, called the Eel for his tall, slender build, leaned against the wall, thoughtfully picking at a small hole in the nearest stone with his long, narrow fingers. Dafydd paced down the room and back again.

“There’s nothing we can do, then?” Jon-Bron repeated for what must have been the twentieth time since they had gathered there.

“No, nothing. He’s decided and there’s an end to it,” Dafydd replied as he halted. “He went to the priest like his britches were on fire. We should be glad he didn’t marry her then and there, I suppose. Maybe the gathering and washing will give him time to cool his ardor and reconsider.”

Bran-Bron thoughtfully rubbed his chin. “How long has it been since he’s had a woman? He should have called for Bronwyn.”

The brothers exchanged sage looks. It was well known that their sister Bronwyn was very talented in some regards, and they were justly proud.

“You know why not. He won’t go with a girl from here,” Dafydd said. “It would only cause trouble, he says. Jealousy and accusations of playing favorites. Who knows? Maybe he’s right.”

“Then you should have told him to go to Shrewsbury,” Eifion declared as a small avalanche of dust fell from the hole he had picked in the stone. “It’s too hasty, this marriage.” He lowered his voice to a suitably somber tone. “I foresee trouble.”

Dafydd gave him a look of disgruntled disgust. “Quit picking at that wall as if you’re trying to break from prison. And considering the usual way of your predictions, I feel a lot better. You said there was going to be a great snowstorm last winter and we had the most mild weather in years. You said we’d only have two hundred lambs and we had nearly three times that. You said two years ago your mother-in-law was going to be in her grave in a week and here she is still hale and hearty at eighty, although nobody blames you for being hopeful. You said Richard was going to take Jerusalem and our Connor come home covered in glory and … well, he didn’t. You should give over making predictions, Eifion, before you’re the laughingstock of Llanstephan.”

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” the reeve stubbornly insisted.

“You don’t need to be a seer to have that about this,” Jon-Bron noted, shaking his head. “A Scot. A merchant’s daughter. God save me, I never thought Caradoc would stoop so low. It’s a disgrace, that’s what, and we’ve got to stop him.”

“He’s been that worried, I was afraid he would do something drastic, but never anything so terrible as this,” Dafydd admitted as the others nodded in agreement. “We’ve got to save him. The question is, how?”

“Kidnap Father Rhodri?” Emlyn-Bron suggested.

Dafydd frowned. “You know he doesn’t
need
a priest. He could just announce it and there you are.”

“We could kidnap
her
.”

Dafydd grinned at Emlyn-Bron. “Now there’s a thought. Get her out of the tower somehow and onto a horse and take her to somebody’s farm until Caradoc has had time—”

“To do what?” their lord asked as he strode into the barracks.

The men jumped as if he had thrown a bucket of freezing water at them, and Caradoc could tell from their guilty faces that whatever they had been discussing, they didn’t think he would be pleased.

His impending marriage, no doubt.

There was an empty cot near the door, the last ever taken because it was colder there from the draft and farthest from the hearth. He put his clothes on it and sat, facing them with his hand clasped and his elbows on his knees.

“Look you,” he said, ready to explain because these men were his friends, and they led his people, too, “she’s brought a dowry of three thousand marks.”

He thought Dafydd was going to faint as he wobbled to the nearest chest and sat down. The three men already seated stared at him with their mouths open, looking like fish in a stall at a market. Eifion leaned back against the wall as if he was holding it up, not the other way around.

“Th-three thousand marks you said?” Dafydd finally managed to stammer. “Three
thousand
?”

“Aye, three thousand in wine and cloth and gold and silver and jewels. That’s what the men unloaded from those wagons.”

Jon-Bron slowly came back to life and cleared his throat. “That’s, um, that’s quite a sum, Caradoc.”

“Isn’t it?” he genially agreed. “So how could I say no? None of the Welsh nobility have gone out of their way to help us, or make a marriage offer I could accept, so it’s marry Fiona or give up Llanstephan to the crown.” He spread his hands. “It’s as simple as that.”

Dafydd studied the toe of Caradoc’s left boot. “Well, understanding I am about the money, Caradoc.” He raised his eyes to his friend’s face. “But what about
her
? She’s a Scot.”

“I know.”

“Not Welsh.”

“Yes, I understand that.”

Jon-Bron looked at him with eyes full of sympathy. “Money or not, it’s a terrible sacrifice you’re making, Caradoc. Are you that sure it’s necessary?”

“Yes, I am.”

“A
merchant’s
daughter,” Eifion mumbled.

“Since she isn’t noble, neither Rhys nor Richard will be able to say I’m making potentially dangerous political alliances, will they?”

“Aye, there is that,” Bran-Bron noted in a more hopeful tone.

Dafydd delicately cleared his throat. “Well, Caradoc, even if she’s got money and no political entanglements, it’s not as if you’re going to be bedding a pile of coins, is it? I mean, she’s not very… You could do better, that’s all.”

Like Cordelia, they didn’t think Fiona was pretty. Maybe she wasn’t in the way they meant, yet he found her attractive. Her bold spirit, her shining eyes, her kiss, her way of making him feel that he was the most desirable man in the world—these were things not to be taken lightly.

Yet he wasn’t about to reveal his innermost feelings to anybody, not even Dafydd. “I like her well enough.”

“And Cordelia? What about her? How did she take the news?” Jon-Bron asked.

Caradoc’s good humor diminished. “Ah, yes, Cordelia. She doesn’t approve, but that doesn’t matter. I must marry or risk losing Llanstephan, so marriage it will be.”

“What does Father Rhodri say?” Dafydd asked.

Caradoc fidgeted. He really didn’t want to talk about his discussion with Father Rhodri, either. The priest had immediately denounced the marriage as hasty and wrongheaded, a bad decision Caradoc would come to regret. Caradoc had stooped to reminding the priest that while Father Rhodri served God,
he
served the king and his people as well as God, and to do that, he needed a castle. To keep his castle he needed Fiona.

Unfortunately, Father Rhodri had stood stubbornly firm and refused to sanctify the marriage on the holy ground of his chapel. Only reluctantly had he agreed to bless the joining of hands in the hall.

The men exchanged knowing looks.

“What?” Caradoc demanded.

“He tried to talk you out of it, didn’t he?” Dafydd said.

“He thought I should pray on it and ask for God’s guidance.”

“Wise man, Father Rhodri,” Eifion remarked to no one in particular.

Caradoc fixed his steely gaze on the reeve. “I told him Fiona must have been sent by God in answer to my prayers to keep me from losing Llanstephan.”

Which he had. The rest had come after, when Father Rhodri had looked at him as if Caradoc had declared his intention to turn heathen. “Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to wash and change for the evening meal.”

There was no need for them to stare at him as if he had never washed before and wasn’t expected to. “Nothing wrong with wanting to be clean, is there?”

“No, no,” Jon-Bron and his brothers muttered as they got to their feet. “We’ll be seeing you in the hall, then, Caradoc.”

“Aye.”

The men filed out, all but Dafydd, who toyed with a thread from the blanket covering the cot beside him.

“You’re going to make a hole,” Caradoc remarked as the brothers exited and closed the door.

Dafydd stopped fiddling and clasped his hands.

Caradoc decided to ignore him. Nothing Dafydd could say was going to make him change his mind.

After removing his old tunic, he went to one of the jugs beside the basins and poured out some water. He rinsed his face in the frigid water, then threw back his head and ran his fingers through his hair. Maybe one of the men had a comb he could use. And a dagger to scrape the whiskers from his face. He wouldn’t put himself at risk of Dafydd’s teasing by cutting his hair, but he would shave off his beard and try to look more like a lord and less like an unshorn sheep.

“Caradoc?”

He tensed at the serious tone of Dafydd’s voice. “Yes?”

“How can you marry her? You just met her today.”

“I knew her years ago, and so did you. Her father was Angus MacDougal, the wool merchant.”

“I don’t remember him, or her, either.”

“I do.”

“You could have had your pick of half the unmarried noblewomen in Wales, and they’ve got dowries big enough to pay off the worst of the debt.”

Caradoc faced his friend. “Half the unmarried noblewomen in Wales have hardly been beating a path to my door, have they? Besides, even if they did, I’d have to pay their families the
amobr
. Fiona doesn’t know about that, or I think she would have mentioned it. Even if she did, she has no family to pay. So I get all her considerable dowry, and have nothing to pay myself.

“As for her being pretty or not, she’s pretty enough for me.” He slid his friend a glance and decided he could say a little more about her. “And she’s, um, not shy.”

Dafydd’s eyes widened and he let out a low whistle. “Aye, I should have guessed that from her arrival. Brazen in many things, is she?”

Caradoc saw no need to confirm Dafydd’s opinion with examples as he went to the nearest chest and lifted the lid. There was a comb made from bone right on the top. If he were like Eifion, he would take this as a sign, and a good one. “Whose is this? Do you know?”

“No. Jon-Bron will. Are you going to try to comb that tangled mess on your head?”

“Is there something wrong with that?”

“Not at all, provided you don’t break the comb. Will you have me fetch the shears?” he finished with mock gravity.

Caradoc was glad to hear his friend’s jesting query. It made his marriage seem a much less serious undertaking. “No, I don’t want the shears. Nobody would recognize me if I cut my hair. It’ll be enough if I comb it and get rid of my beard.”

“You’re cutting off your beard?” Dafydd cried, genuinely shocked.

Caradoc frowned. “And you it was telling me I looked like a sheep in serious need of shearing.”

“Well, yes, I did.”

Caradoc raised his brows questioningly.

“All right, all right, off it goes. And here’s just the thing to do it with.” He pulled his dagger from his belt and held it out. “Sharp as can be, that is. Be careful.”

With a scowl that wasn’t completely bogus, Caradoc accepted it. “I am not so clumsy as I was.”

“I know that.” Dafydd went back to toying with the thread and slid Caradoc a look out of the corner of his eye. “So, tell me. How did you discover she wasn’t
shy
?”

“That’s for me to know, and you to puzzle over.”

“You’re not going to tell me, your best and oldest friend? The one who taught you how to shear? The fellow who took you to the Bull and Crown in Shrewsbury and introduced you to that fine girl who giggled all the time, even when you were—”

“I’m
not
going to tell you,” Caradoc sternly interrupted before Dafydd went any further with his reminiscences.

Despite the merriment in his eyes, Dafydd managed to look mightily affronted. “Varlet.”

“Cur.”

“Blackguard.”

“Nit.”

Dafydd got up and came closer to examine Caradoc’s progress. “Watch what you’re doing there, Caradoc, or you’re going to slit your own throat.”

“Then be quiet and let me get on with it,” the lord of Llanstephan growled as he continued to scrape the heavy black whiskers from his face.

Chapter 4

L
ater that night, Fiona followed Rhonwen down the steps to the great hall. The petite young woman had been quiet and efficient, and was so delicate in her movements that, coupled with her light brown hair and brown gown, she reminded Fiona of a sparrow or wren, a tiny creature that flitted about its business unnoticed and unremarked.