“Then your father will deliver him into an early grave.”
“My father will not be there! He is leaving me at the mercy of—”
“Mind your tongue when you speak of your father.” The nurse wagged her finger at Tanon. “You know as well as I that he would be with you if he could.”
Tanon looked away and sighed. Dear Rebecca, she’d been Lady Brynna’s handmaiden before Tanon’s mother even met her father. She’d helped deliver Tanon and her siblings into the world, then doted on them like a mother. Tanon loved her dearly and knew that Rebecca favored her above her brothers and sisters. And she knew the reason for it. Tanon resembled her father. Rebecca, Tanon was quite certain, harbored a secret, forbidden love for Brand Risande. It was obvious to everyone who lived at Avarloch, though Rebecca believed she concealed her feelings well. The woman could hardly look at Tanon’s father without her fair complexion turning bright pink. But despite stories of a much younger Brynna chasing Rebecca from her chambers after finding the handmaiden bathing Avarloch’s new lord, and Brynna’s new husband, Tanon’s mother didn’t seem to mind the way Rebecca grew flustered around him. Tanon didn’t mind either. She knew her father’s heart belonged to no one but his wife. It was what her father’s unreturned affection had cost Rebecca that tore at Tanon’s heart. She had become the children’s nurse and remained with the Risandes for the last score of years. She never married, and it was a pity because she was such a giving, beautiful woman. Her wheaten hair was still untouched by silver, her eyes as blue as Tanon remembered from her childhood. But her gaze had become vacant, her spine stauncher. She would have been better off marrying a man she didn’t love rather than sacrificing her heart to a man who could never love her back.
She breathed out a long sigh while her handmaidens dressed her in a gown of warm amber linen with emerald silk embroidered into the long cuffs and neckline. Rebecca covered Tanon’s head with a cascading wimple of matching fabric and secured the veil with a thin band of gold over her brow.
Tanon clutched her nurse’s hand and held it to her heart. “I don’t want to leave you alone.”
Rebecca smiled tenderly. “I won’t be alone, sweeting. I will—” Her words were caught up in Tanon’s tight embrace.
“Come to Wales with me, Rebecca, I beg you. Oh, I beg you. Leave my father’s service and come with me. Mother has Alysia, and I could not bear the thought of not knowing how you fare.”
Though it wouldnearly shatter Rebecca’s heart to leave the Risandes, she couldn’t refuse Tanon. The girl had never been away from her father’s care. How could they send her off to Wales with no one but Hereward the Wake? What did he know of comforting a woman? He’d never been married, had no daughters. What would that oaf do when her Tanon needed her hair combed, or had need to speak of womanly things?
The nurse withdrew and plucked a napkin from her girdle and wiped her nose. The poor dear was about to be carted off to what Rebecca’s Saxon ancestors called The Wild Territories, and she was worried about her nurse! “Of course I will come with you if your husband allows it,” Rebecca promised. “Though I think you’ve naught to fret about. The prince will fall deeply in love with you once he comes to know your kind heart. You are so much like your father.”
Tanon flung her arms around her and sniffled, then seemed to gather her fortitude. “The earlier we leave, the better.”
*
Gareth swiped thedrying cloth over his belly and reached for a fresh pair of black leather breeches. He was alone. Mayhap, for the last time in his life. He wondered if other husbands were this nervous the night before they were bound in matrimony. Every woman he’d ever been with, might have ever been with in the future, flashed through his thoughts, teasing, pouting, sashaying away from him. Forever. He exhaled and pulled a black woolen shirt over his head. He was certain of two things. One, he was willing to watch all those women leave—if it would bring peace with the Normans. And two, his wife-to-be was lovelier than all the others combined. Her eyes were so vividly green, until the sunlight hit them at a certain angle and sparked tiny flecks of blue in the center. The way she looked when she veiled those eyes beneath her sweep of feathery lashes, the shape of her face, the delicate way she moved her arms, the way she breathed, all worked at usurping his attention, his every waking thought. Exactly the way she had consumed his thoughts until he was ten.
He couldn’t forget her completely, for her name was known throughoutCymru. He’d heard it spoken many times during Celebration in Deheubarth with his uncle. Tanon Risande, the Norman who would unite their countries. That union was to take place between her and Cedric, and hell, Gareth hated his brother for years over it. Until his uncle offered her to him. Gareth had almost refused. He’d wanted peace with her people from the first time he met her. But no matter how much he had wanted to glory in her toothless smiles as a boy, as a man, he wanted nothing to do with her people. Until he saw her again.
Even though she pretended to be someone else, he knew her. He’d left a playful, happy little girl and returned to a pillar of flawless manners. But there was something deeply provocative about her. It made her plump lips part with short, scant breaths when he smiled at her. She possessed a hunger that smoldered beneath that fragile shell of innocence and etiquette. He wanted to peel that shell away and expose the woman beneath.
He wasn’t unfeeling to how difficult it was going to be for her to leave her family. He would do his best to help her adjust. An easy task. It was the time he was going to have to take with her that made him doubt his control. He wanted to touch her and watch her come undone. He wanted to kiss her, taste her breath, take her like a beast in heat. But she was marrying a prince, not an animal. He’d prove it to her if it killed him.
A light smile creased his mouth at the thought of how oblivious she was to her beauty. He’d been with enough women to know when they were aware of their power over men. Tanon hadn’t used her lovely dimple to try to beguile him. All the more reason that it had. He was certain now, after his encounter with her father, that the reason she had never been kissed was not for lack of men wanting to brand that mouth, but because every man in Winchester and Avarloch feared her father. Gareth was glad he would be the first to kiss her. The first to—
There came a knock at his door.
“Come,” he called.
Three men plunged into his room, followed by Madoc, who sauntered in and then kicked the door closed with the back of his boot.
“Why the hell do we have to bathe before we eat?” the first complained, scratching a square jaw blanketed beneath thick chestnut whiskers. “I just bathed a fortnight past.”
“Aye, Alwyn, and you smell like a boar who’s been lying in his own waste for that long.” Madoc snarled. He crossed the room and flung himself on Gareth’s bed. “Tomas, toss me an apple.”
Tomas, a tall, lanky man with light brown waves tied at his nape, looked around the room for the bowl of fruit. “There are no apples here.”
“Try below the stairs.” Madoc closed his eyes and settled deeper into the pillow. “In the kitchens, mayhap.”
Tomas gaped at him. “I’m not going all the way to the kitchen to get you an apple.”
“Very well.” Madoc swung his legs off the mattress and stood up in one swift movement. “I’ll fetch it myself.” He patted his older brother on the shoulder. His grin would have been pleasant if not for the promise of retribution cooling his dark eyes.
“I’ll get the apple, you bastard,” Tomas ground out between clenched teeth, hating the fact that he always surrendered to his brother’s unspoken threats. Madoc had never lifted a finger to him, but he had a way of staring into a man’s eyes that made many an enemy soil their breeches before they fled the way they’d come.
“You’re probably afraid of wandering around the castle alone,” Tomas muttered under his breath, trying to salvage his pride as he strode out of the room.
Madoc turned back to Gareth, unfazed by his brother’s insult. “I found Bleddyn roaming around in the cellars.”
“Aye?” Gareth sat at the edge of the bed and looked up vaguely from tying his boots. “Was he lost?”