The Heart of a Queen (A Historical Romance)

Chapter 32

Once the rest of hunting party had ridden ahead, Llewellyn took her dagger and cleaned it with a rag which he'd pulled from his saddle, then tossed his head in the direction Lob had run off in.

"I'm afraid you've just inducted a soldier into the English army," he joked. "If he lives."

"You don't think Brecon will catch up to him?" she asked, surprised. The Earl was on horseback, and Lob was only on foot. Llewellyn handed her back the knife, clean, and she tucked it back in her sleeve, feeling closer to it, somehow, now that she had used it.

"We spent all day hunting together. He couldn't catch a sleeping rabbit," Llewellyn told her.

"I don't imagine he'll do the English much good if he can be overcome by the likes of me," Brienna replied.

"Nonsense. Any war band would be lucky to have you," Llewellyn grinned at her, and she took the compliment, shaking her head. "Why were you wandering in the dark of the woods in the first place? Planning another escape?"

She could tell he was trying to distract her, lighten her mood after what had just happened, but Brienna was truly shaken. She felt like a raw nerve, and like all of her emotions were threatening to burst up from under a surface that was already stretched thin.

"No. My desire to leave Gwynedd has completely abandoned me," Brienna confessed, then pulled herself back from the brink of making another, more passionate confession. She suddenly remembered the original reason she had been searching for Llewellyn. "I came to tell you that my brother has remembered that he is promised to Danu, a daughter of Ulster, and therefore shall not be able to marry Isobel, with his regrets."

"Thank god," Llewellyn said. "I was starting to fear that Isobel was about to poison my food, so angry was she with the whole ruse."

Brienna stopped. "Then you never planned to go through with it?"

"No," Llewellyn was visibly relieved. "I've been humoring your brother as best I can, and not just in this," he said, glancing at her.

"What you said at dinner," she said, the intent behind the comment she'd overheard finally revealed.

"Yes," Llewellyn confirmed. "I've wanted to keep your brother's goodwill until we confirmed our continued alliance, but I would have had to perform a last minute reversal of some form or another as far as the marriage was concerned. I'd been wracking my brain to come up with a way that wouldn't offend Ruarc terribly. As much as I'd hate to have Connaught as my enemy, I fear the wrath of Isobel more."

"She will be glad to hear it," Brienna affirmed.

They were nearly across the meadow and Brienna started to regret that their private talk would be over so soon.

"So you aren't so eager for me to leave, after all," she said, coming back to what he'd said about looking forward to her being married off.

Llewellyn cleared his throat. "Isobel will be sad to see you go," he said. "Looking back, I can't believe I didn't recognize how lonely she was before your arrival. It will be hard, after you leave." His voice had grown soft but when Brienna glanced at him he was staring forward, at the hard walls of the castle. He cleared his throat. "For Isobel," he clarified.

"I suppose that, even surrounded by people, it can be very lonely when you have to hide who you really are."

Llewellyn nodded, thinking she was speaking of Isobel.

"That's one thing you didn't teach me about managing the affairs of a kingdom. How often you have to pretend to feel one thing when you feel something else." She stopped, and bent down to pick a lily-of-the-valley that was growing by her feet. When she straightened, Llewellyn was studying her, and she hoped that he'd gotten her true meaning.

"You understand, being from a royal family yourself, that one must be led by duty," he said.

"I do," Brienna said. She wound the flower into the mane of Llewellyn's horse, who thought they'd stopped so that she could graze and ha bent her head to nibble the grass.

"My duty is to put my kingdom above whatever my own..." Llewellyn, hesitating, reached out and drew his hand lightly down Brienna's cheek. She leaned her face into his palm.

"Whatever your own what?" she asked.

"Whatever my own heart may desire," he said. He dropped his hand and stepped back from her, his grip tightening on his horse's reigns as he set off across the meadow again.

Brienna watched him go, trailing the sweet smell of lily-of-the-valley, until his back disappeared into the castle gates, the scent faded, and all she could hear or smell or see was the brutal wind cutting over the cliffs, as if the sea wanted to punish the land for existing separately from its tossing, churning depths.