Daughter of Time: A Time Travel Romance (19 page)

He knew what I meant, but even in friendly
company, was too cautious to say any more.

Although my—and my grandfather’s—disputes
with the lords of the Marche were legendary, both they and I would
do almost anything to avoid entangling our politics with England’s.
Henry’s power and resources were so much greater, his men so much
more numerous, that England was always favored in any battle. I had
won the right to rule Wales as its Prince, not because King Henry
had lacked the power to defeat me, but because he lacked the
will.

Given my conversations with Marged, I wasn’t
confident I would get the same half-hearted response from Edward
when he succeeded to the throne of England. I studied her as she
leaned back against Humphrey, eyes closed.
She’d called me ‘my
lord’.
Once. It pleased me, far out of proportion to what was
probably reasonable. At last, maybe I was getting somewhere with
her.

Humphrey had wrapped his right arm around
Marged’s waist, held the reins with his left, and was instructing
Glewdra with his knees. At eighteen, he was already a skilled
horseman and would be as skilled a warrior as his grandfather when
he grew into his man’s frame: a fine addition to the Bohun
legacy.

Humphrey looked as if he might become a man
I could respect, possibly even work with. And for that reason, I
would let him return home unhindered, despite the danger in doing
so. In time, he might forget what he owed me. The necessities of
rule—and the tutelage of his grandfather—might well insure that he
would try me for many years to come.

Chapter
Thirteen

“
I
’m so cold,
Llywelyn,” I said. We’d finally made it to the castle hill and
wended our way up and around the long road to the castle gate.

“I know,
cariad
,” he said.

Humphrey stopped the horse and Llywelyn,
dismounting in an instant, plucked me off of her. I’d been
shivering badly for the last fifteen minutes, my limbs numb. I
stuffed my hands between my thighs to warm them but because my legs
were so cold, it didn’t help. With Goronwy carrying Anna and
Llywelyn carrying me, we crossed the crooked and slanted bailey to
a tower.

Upon entering the hall, a wave of warmth
swamped us. I wanted to crawl right into the massive fireplace near
the high table, but Llywelyn whisked me through the great hall and
down the stairs to the kitchen level—a similar arrangement to both
Criccieth and the manor we’d stayed in. I didn’t see much of the
great hall, as I was fighting tears now. My muscles had relaxed in
the warmth and I was losing the tight control I’d kept on my
emotions during the last hours of fear, captivity, and rescue.

A fire blazed in the grate of the chamber to
which Llywelyn brought me. I was stunned to see that it was a
genuine
bath
room. A giant wooden tub, full of water, sat in
the center of the room. The men Llywelyn had sent ahead had done
their job. They’d warned the castellan that we were coming and
explained what we needed.

Llywelyn pulled at the blankets, walked to
the tub, and set me down. Dismissing, the servants, he stripped off
my breeches and jersey before I could protest and dropped me into
the tub. I didn’t have the energy to be horrified and instead
allowed the warmth of the water to seep through me. I leaned my
head back and took in a long, deep breath.

“Where’s Mommy?”

I peeked over the edge of the tub. “Here,
Sweetie. Mommy’s going to have a bath.”

“Don’t forget to wash behind your ears,”
Anna said, and I found myself smiling and fighting tears at the
same time at the seriousness in her voice.

“Excuse me, my lord,” Goronwy said from the
doorway. He bowed and took Anna’s hand. I leaned back in the tub
again with a sigh, and then the latch to the door closed with a
click.

Llywelyn walked back over to me. “Close your
eyes.”

I watched through eyes at half-mast as he
settled himself on a stool and rested his arms across the rail of
the tub, and then closed them completely. “I knew you’d follow. But
I didn’t see how you could reach the shore in time,” I said.

“We didn’t,” Llywelyn said. “I feared that
we wouldn’t, and when I realized that we were too late, when
Dafydd’s men pushed off and started rowing, I felt my own
impotence. I could have strangled my brother with my bare
hands.”

“He’s not a nice man,” I said. I turned my
head to look at Llywelyn, who had his chin on his hands and was
watching me too.

“He’s a dangerous child,” Llywelyn said. “As
a prince of Wales, even a discredited one, men follow him because
of his father, and because I have not noised far and wide how much
I distrust him.”

“And now? What will you do?”

Llywelyn pursed his lips. I waited for his
answer, too tired now to really even care. “I don’t know,” he said,
finally. “I will have to discuss it with my counselors.”

“I’m safe. He’ll argue there’s no harm
done.”

“You are safe,” Llywelyn said, “by your own
efforts and no thanks to him. But good men died at the Gap and that
I cannot forgive.”

“Do you think he really meant you to
die?”

“What do you think?”

I thought back to my encounters with Dafydd,
including his assertion of loyalty at Criccieth. “Dafydd says one
thing and does another. I think he wouldn’t do the deed himself,
but he wouldn’t grieve at your loss and he wouldn’t be above
conspiring with someone else to ensure your death.”

“Do you know a man by his words or by his
actions?” Llywelyn said. “The priests say that a man can’t reach
heaven by good deeds alone, but I would say that even if that’s
true, evil deeds will lead a man to hell.”

“
Cyn wired â'r
pader
,” I said.

“
As true as the Lord’s
prayer,” Llywelyn repeated. He reached out a hand to me and I
brought mine from the water to give it to him. He gazed at me
steadily. “The water is warm, Meg, and I’m tempted.”

He never called me that,
preferring the Welsh
Marged
. I met his eyes, feeling a
little panicked. I’d as good as admitted I was his. He had to know
it. He stood to loom over me and slid his hand behind my neck so he
could kiss me. I could have drowned in him, more than in the
sea.

He released me. “But it wouldn’t be right
today. I’ll send a woman to help you.”

“
Anna,” I said, though
without urgency. Goronwy had her. Within minutes she would have
made herself the castle pet.

“
I’ll see to her. Don’t
you worry.” He kissed the top of my head and strode from the
room.

Thinking that I was warm enough, and a
little restless after that kiss, truth be told, I pushed up to get
out of the tub but my legs wouldn’t hold me. Dizzy, nauseous, and
breathing hard, I sank back into the water and closed my eyes.

We move out from the shore: ten yards,
twenty, thirty. And then my heart catches in my throat. Llywelyn
and his men have crested the hill beyond the dunes. I bounce off my
seat but Dafydd pulls me down and pumps his fist at his brother. In
the same instant that Bevyn enters the sea, one of the horses in
the boat, perhaps not as tightly tethered as the others, shifts.
Dafydd staggers sideways; I throw off his cloak and dive over the
side.

I stay under as long as I can but finally
bob up, twenty yards from the boat. Dafydd shakes his fist at me
and shouts: “You have chosen the wrong brother!”

Dafydd hadn’t understood it at all
.
It wasn’t that I’d chosen Llywelyn. I didn’t think it was possible
to choose Llywelyn. Llywelyn chose whom he liked, and the woman
either went along with it or she didn’t.

What I’d done, rather, was recognize that I
couldn’t passively sit by and allow myself to be carried off by
Dafydd
.
Even if I didn’t have Llywelyn a hundred yards away
on the beach, Dafydd was a man it was easy for me to say no to.
Dafydd was too much like Trev for me not to recognize it.

* * * * *

All I wanted to do was sleep. I woke the
first time to find Llywelyn sitting silently beside my bed, but
another time it was someone else—a woman I didn’t know—and twice
Anna came to me, rubbed her nose gently against mine, and curled up
in my arms. When that happened I wrapped my arms around her and
slept deeply, waking again only when the sun lit the room and a
young woman came to take her away.

I dozed in and out all the next day, feeling
a fever rise and fall within me. People spoke whispers in the
doorway that were too low for me to hear and I could sense their
unhappiness. A woman put a poultice on my forehead and someone
lifted me to tip water into my mouth. Alternating hot and cold, I
lost track of time. Another day passed, and then another.

I opened my eyes, finally, with only the
usual low candle providing a light for the room. The blankets had
come off my shoulder and I tugged on them but they didn’t release.
I turned and found Llywelyn stretched out on his back, fully
dressed, on top of the covers. And on top of him, her head on his
chest, with a loose blanket thrown over both of them, was Anna,
sound asleep. My breath hitched and emotion tickled the base of my
breastbone.

I studied them, sprawled and intertwined,
Anna with her arms wide about him, one hand tucked underneath
Llywelyn’s left arm, the other hidden under the hair on his right
shoulder. He’d braced his elbows on the bed and placed his hands on
either side of her to keep her secure. I lay back down, now facing
them, and slipped my right hand under his right shoulder, just to
touch him as he slept.

As I did so, I realized I hadn’t ever
touched him before, not on purpose—not since I tried to take the
knife from him. He slept on; I closed my eyes. I wasn’t sure if
anyone in this world would know what love was—not on my twentieth
century terms. The tales of romantic love and chivalry were
starting to come out of France about now, but that wasn’t love
either, as far as I was concerned. Did I care that he didn’t love
me? Yes and no. But it wasn’t hard to see that he loved my
daughter
.
Trev hadn’t loved her and he’d never held her this
way.

Llywelyn had an inner core
that was so solid, he gave the impression that he didn’t need
anyone, emotionally least of all. He did need people to do his
bidding, and they all did—out of loyalty, or perhaps
self-preservation, or even love. He was an easy man to love, in
fact, because he was so obviously
there
. He believed in Truth, Justice
and the Welsh Way—in all capital letters. He was slow to anger,
unlike Trev, whose temper always simmered just below the surface,
waiting to lash out.

What he might not be was
an easy man to live with—not for me, and maybe not for anyone. It
wasn’t that he wasn’t honest, because he was. He told everyone
straight out what he wanted from them and what he expected of them,
and then he expected everyone to do exactly that. He was so sure of
his own
rightness
that it didn’t leave a lot of room—or any room, for that
matter—for anyone else’s insecurities. He held himself so tightly,
I wasn’t sure that he had any emotions at all. And yet, he held
Anna now, and I’d seen his eyes when he’d lost Geraint at the Gap,
when he’d picked me out of the surf, and when we were quiet
together. There was more inside than he let on.

Many hours later, I awoke and wondered if
I’d dreamed Llywelyn’s presence. From the light coming through the
window, it was getting on towards evening. I was alone in the room
again. Perhaps they knew, as I suddenly did, that I was well.

I slipped out of bed, shivering as my feet
touched the cold floor, and dipped my hand into the water in the
basin beside my bed. It was lukewarm, which meant that the maid had
brought it recently. She’d also stoked the fire. I looked for a
robe to wear over my nightgown and found a blue one hanging over
the back of a chair. I put it on. It was Llywelyn’s. It made a
grand train behind me as I walked and the sleeves hung nearly to
the floor. I belted it at the waist and my stomach growled. How
many days had I been ill? I didn’t even know.

Hoping for some sustenance, I poked my nose
out the door and looked into the hallway. It was empty. All I
wanted was to sneak into the kitchen for food without anyone making
a fuss over me. Or sending me back to bed. I tiptoed into the hall,
and then continued towards the stairs at the far end. Halfway along
the hall, I flitted past an open door. Just as I crossed the
opening, I realized whose room it was, and that I probably wasn’t
going to get away without being recognized.

“Meg.”

Llywelyn growled at me from inside the room.
Resigned to capture, I peered around the frame of the door into
Llywelyn’s office.

“Hi,” I said.

He stood next to a table near the door,
polishing his sword. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Getting up,” I said. “I don’t need to sleep
anymore.”

“Hmm.” He carefully scraped oil down the
length of the blade and back up the other side. He glanced at me
and then back to his sword. “This was my grandfather’s weapon. My
squire polishes my armor but I allow no one else to touch the
sword.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said. I entered the room
and reached out to touch the crosspiece with one finger. Silver and
gold threads had been worked into the steel, though no gems adorned
it. Perhaps they were used only in ornamental swords.

Llywelyn set the sword in its rest,
carefully laying it crosswise in a padded cradle. He wiped his
hands on a cloth and then reached for me. I allowed him to pull me
in front of him, hands at my sides, a little stiff. He rubbed my
arms up and down, studying me all the while with an enigmatic smile
on his face. Then he nodded, as if he’d just completed a
conversation with himself, and kicked the door to the room
closed.