The Heart of a Queen (A Historical Romance)

Chapter 1

Built into one of the many dark green hills that undulated across Wales, the castle of the kingdom of Gwynedd perched on the jagged teeth of black cliffs, facing a sheer drop to the sea. Mist from the crashing waves below roiled up and looked like it was crawling over the fortress walls. Behind the castle, mountains rose in a high perimeter that forbade invasion, but also, Brienna thought, escape. Her eyes traced their steep ascent until they disappeared into the clouds, which rested heavily on their peaks. Brienna was still chilled from her passage over that sea from Ireland, and she shivered under her wool cloak. She felt like that mist was in her bones.

Swallowing hard at her first impression of the dwelling she was meant to call home for the next year, Brienna steadied herself, determined not show fear. Beneath her, her horse shifted nervously, as if eager to heed her rider's unspoken command to turn back and leave this cold, morose place forever.

"Tick-tick."

The horseman, an old Viking named Ulf who had been in her family's employ since before she was born, urged their horses forward. In the small party was also Lasair, her lady's maid, who gave her a fleeting but encouraging smile whenever Brienna glanced her way. The ocean mist had adorned their faces and hair with crystalline dew.

They entered the main gate of the castle on horseback. The inner square was not the hive of bustling activity that Brienna expected from the most powerful kingdom in Wales. She thought of her own home, where bands of warriors frequently stayed to drink and sing and stir up trouble among the ladies of the house. Here, in a square large enough to fit sixty wagons, there were but a few servants sawing wood for fires and fixing the broken spoke of a wheel, and a young boy who came for their horses.

"Why have we not been greeted by the Laird?" Brienna demanded of him as she dismounted. The boy's dirty face quailed. One small hand groped for the reigns of her horse, but Ulf got there first.

"I'll be seeing to these myself," he growled at the boy, who turned and ran in the direction of the entrance to the stables. Ulf followed him, grinning as he went. Scaring children was one of his favorite pastimes.

Brienna adjusted the heavy sheepskin around her shoulders. Beneath that her dark wool cloak reached her feet, the hood pulled forward over her head so that it almost concealed her face. Lasair reached out and threw it back, arranging Brienna's thick braid so it coiled down the front of her cloak to her waist.

"Stop that," Brienna chided her, "I'm not going to meet my husband."

"You're representing the clan of Connaught," Lasair chided right back. "We can't have you looking like a milkmaid."

Brienna eyed up the formidable stone walls of the castle.

"Well, if no one's coming out to meet us," she said, and strode up to the immense wood and iron door that led into the building.

She heaved on the ring handle until the door opened just enough to allow her to pass through, and went in. Her eyes blinked in the sudden darkness. The interior was smoky and dim, and she could smell hay and the remnants of a peat fire that had long gone out. She could also smell the sour stench of mead-soaked wood from the long dining tables that were starting to coalesce as her vision grew used to the lack of light.

It was a great hall, common to many of the English-style castles that the Welsh now favored. Brienna had heard them described, and was pleased to see that the traveling bards that occasionally visited her family's hearth had been telling the truth. The room was impressively vast, but drafty and cold, with only one fireplace at the very end of the hall. As she'd suspected, it was no match in comfort to her own home, where buildings followed a traditional style, with earthen walls, pitched roofs, and everything within arranged around a central fire.