Gareth blinked in rapid succession. He didn’t know what to say when it was presented in all its painful truth. “Yes,” he confided, easier because it was to Madoc, and it was dark. “I didn’t tell you when we returned from Winchester last month because I’d hoped that not speaking of her would drive her from my thoughts. But I can’t stop thinking about her and her toothless smile.”
“How did she lose a tooth?” Madoc asked.
Gareth remembered how she’d told him about her tooth, breaking through their language barrier using hand motions and sighs when he didn’t understand right away. “Roger deCourtenay threw a rock at her and knocked her out of a tree.”
The darkness was silent for a moment or two, save for the sound of Madoc’s slowed, even breath. “Has he paid for this offense?”
“Yes, but Cedric is worse and she’ll wed him when she comes of age.”
Gareth couldn’t hide the torment in his voice. “He doesn’t want peace with the Normans. I heard him say my uncle was as dangerous as our enemies. Mayhap there’s a way to convince my uncle that Cedric will bring war and not peace, even at the cost of my uncle Rhys’ life. I’ll find a way to keep whatever land I rule at peace before I bring her to it.”
Madoc didn’t laugh at him or call him a fool for vowing all this for a Norman girl, but pledged his aid and his loyalty.
Gareth closed his eyes and she was there, chasing her pig in the pigpen, covered in mud, or spending hours meticulously cleaning tree sap from Chloe the cat’s paws. Her smiles, radiating light that brightened his days, her laughter that filled the vale and echoed throughout the chambers of his heart. He wanted to protect her from the Roger deCourtenays in the world.
“I’ll become the most dangerous man in the kingdoms and then I’ll take her and no one will stop me.”
Chapter One
Thirteen years later…
He arrived atWinchester Castle with the beginning of a storm. Tanon should have known when he entered the great castle doors that he had come to Winchester to change someone’s life. When his men entered behind him, a gust of wind blew into the long corridor, swirling his long silken mane around his face. Garbed in a sleeveless doeskin tunic embroidered with a border of indigo, he looked like some fierce Celtic hero who had just stepped out of a bard’s tale. Golden armbands wreathed the sleek sinew in his arms, and a matching golden torc ringed his neck. Something feral sparked his eyes, making them gleam like polished sapphires.
He swept those breathtaking eyes over Tanon as she descended the long staircase. His gaze softened and touched her like a curious caress. Then his lips slanted upward into a slow, decadently sensual smile.
Tanon stumbled on the last two stairs. He moved instantly to catch her, his broad, sure fingers closing around her waist.
“I have you.”
His voice was deep, smoky velvet with an edge of steel. He captured her brief, mortified glance with his and held it just long enough to set her heart to pounding.
“You’re most kind,” Tanon offered. She swept a nonexistent wrinkle out of her burgundy gown and hurried away.
She stopped at the entrance of the great hall and pushed the stranger from her mind. Ladies didn’t gush like mewling kittens over men—especially men who were clearly pagan. She drew out a quick breath and forged a pleasant smile before stepping inside.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like being here. King William’s lavish castle was as familiar as her own dear home at Avarloch. But her father’s high place at the king’s table demanded courtly etiquette. She smiled at stuffy nobles and was polite to lords and ladies, even those of whom she wasn’t fond. She would never bring shame to her family or give William cause for disappointment by behaving oddly. She was no longer a child.
She looked around, letting her gaze absorb the vast expanse of tapestry-lined walls gilded in firelight. Laughter permeated the air as knights lifted their goblets in salute to one another. Ladies giggled coyly or scolded children running around the tables like buzzing flies. A troubadour sat beside one of the great hearths singing a forlorn love song while calculating the tinkle of coin as it was deposited into the wide-brimmed hat at his feet.
Tanon swept a lone midnight curl off her shoulders before straightening them. She would need all the fortitude she possessed to face this night. Among the guests who had traveled to Winchester for the summer tourney was Lord Roger deCourtenay, Earl of Blackburn, the man she was promised to wed.
The union was not made through any choice of her own, of course. She was a noble’s daughter, and if that wasn’t enough to ensure her a proper marriage to a noble of no lesser title, then being treasured by the king of England was.
Roger was no longer the hellion who bullied her when she was six. He’d been sent to Normandy shortly after the summer he made her fall out of a tree. It was whispered that his time spent under the tutelage of the king’s son Robert was punishment for his treatment of her, but Tanon had never told William of it, so she doubted the whispers were true.
He’d returned a changed man, or so the court believed. His time in Normandy had fashioned him into a man of great skill and had earned him the respect of the other nobles. But Tanon still didn’t like him. She’d marry him if she must, but she resented having to endure endless hours of her handmaidens tugging on her unruly curls, just to pin them up, and being fitted into layers of her finest wool to look pleasing for a man who preferred the more voluptuous, more scantily clad ladies of the court. She didn’t care if Roger never looked at her again, but she hated enduring such tedium for naught.
Still, she was more fortunate than most earls’ daughters, who were doomed to marry men three times their age, or worse—Prince Cedric of Wales. She had tried not to look too relieved when her father informed her that Cedric had been exiled from his land after making an attempt on his uncle’s life and their betrothal was cancelled. She remembered from her childhood the quiet warning in Cedric’s eyes. She hadn’t known it then, but the Welsh held little affection for the Normans who kept them out of England.
She never saw her brave champion Gareth again after that summer in Winchester, but she had thought of him often, every winter, anticipating each coming spring. Then, as the years wore on and he never returned, she put away her childish daydreams. When she had heard that Gareth was killed in the northern regions of Wales last year, she said a prayer for his soul.
Tanon spotted her mother sitting with her uncle Dante at the far end of the hall. Lady Brynna Risande inclined her head, moving her ear closer to Dante’s lips to hear him over the cheers coming from the table beside them. Standing a few feet away, Tanon’s father, Lord Brand the Passionate, lifted two of his fingers to his lips and then held them aloft to her mother. As if he couldn’t bear to be away from her for more than a few moments, he went to her. After exchanging a quiet word with his brother, Brand put his arm around his wife and drew her into his close embrace.
Tanon watched her parents, her heart clenching at the love that exuded from every glance they shared, every touch, every smile. Her mother never had to sit through hours of combing and dressing for Tanon’s father to lose his breath at the sight of her. She could have dressed in sackcloth and he would have had the same reaction. Here was what she had hoped for as a child, what she’d always envisioned for herself when she took a husband: love, friendship, passion, tenderness. She let go of that hope when she learned of her betrothal to Roger. She could survive a loveless marriage. Her gaze drifted to her nursemaid, Rebecca, sitting at her father’s table. It was far better than one of the alternatives.
She looked to the dais where King William sat. She offered the king her brightest smile. Oh, how she loved him, as much as she had when she was a child. She knew William had only her best interests in mind when he’d promised her to Roger. Lord Blackburn’s family was wealthy, with lands in England and Normandy. Her king wanted to secure her comfort and safety. She couldn’t fault him for that.
Poor William. He looked weary, but that was to be expected, what with the Danes always threatening invasion, not to mention the unrest with the border Welsh. She’d been taught a little about the politics of Wales, as it had been believed she would live there.