Memories of the Heart (3 page)

Ceri blushed in earnest. As the granddaughter of someone held in fearful awe, she had received too much of extravagant flattery to believe that these honeyed words were sincere. And, though she had longed to earn such praise from Lord Taliesan, in now hearing and knowing them a lie, there was far more pain for what would never really be than joy for a sham dream come true.

“I've embarrassed you and for that I apologize.” Tal quietly spoke, honestly regretting that he was the cause of this sensitive beauty's distress. Though he had spoken with the ease of one well accustomed to the royal court's facile blandishments, he was sorry she hadn't believed compliments which, to his own surprise, were utterly sincere.

Anxious to smooth over the ensuing awkward pause which plainly left Ceri even more uncomfortable, Tal turned their focus to a different subject. “By the fact that you live with Mabyn it is clear that you are not wed. But how can that be? Are all the males on my fiefdom so blind?”

A tiny bubble of laughter escaped Ceri's throat before she could stifle it.

“The Welshmen hereabouts are afraid to approach or even stand too near the granddaughter of their wise woman.”

Tal nodded. He could understand the matter from their view. While Ceri referred to her grandmother as a
wise woman,
to her Welsh suitors Mab was doubtless seen as precisely what his fellow Normans had surreptitiously named her—witch.

*   *   *

“Where have you been?” Mabyn demanded of the stocky figure ducking beneath a low doorframe to enter her simple daub and wattle abode.

“Hunting.” Lloyd's gruff answer was accompanied by the defiant tilt of a head of black curls liberally streaked with silver while, bolstered by years of experience, he met the wise woman's stern gaze unflinching.

“Tch!” Mab scoffed at this too simple response from the man uncomfortably tied to her by bonds of a secret shame. Despite flesh creased with age, now as always her piercing stare dared him or anyone else to be foolish enough to think her infirm. “But hunting what … a beast of four legs or two?”

Lloyd stood with arms crossed over his barrel chest and feet firmly planted as if prepared for a physical assault. Well acquainted with Mab's long practiced habit of disparaging his every action, he remained impassive against the taunt. No reason for greater anxiety simply because this wild stab was better founded than any of her many previous jabs.

“Hah! While you idly roamed the countryside—” Mab closely studied her bearded visitor, watching for the slightest crack in his implacable mask. “Events here in Llechu were unaccountably swept into an maelstrom of trouble.”

“What happened?” Not so much as the tiniest gleam of curiosity lightened the flat slate-grey of Lloyd's eyes. He knew better than to reveal even a hint of an honest response.

“A fire in the woodlands?” he asked. “Some violent dispute between neighbors in the village or outlying farms?”

Despite her pointed attention, Mab found nothing to rouse suspicion in Lloyd's expression. She slowly shook her head and motioned him to take a seat at the trestle table permanently set up against one wall. While joining him she shared the tale of a dastardly assault which had delivered two wounded Normans to be tended by Ceri in the next cottage.

“But who?” Mab sharply demanded, slapping her hands palm down on the table's use-smoothed planks. “
Who
struck from the shield of forest shadows? And why?”

Lloyd steadily met the silver glitter of his companion's gaze but knew she neither expected nor likely would appreciate his interpretation of the situation … leastways not yet.

“Even in the hinterlands of Llechu—” The querulous tone of Mabyn's already formidable voice dipped further into an annoyed grumble. “We know that the English king leads his army on purposeless forays much, much further to the southwest.”

Lloyd struggled to restrain a wry smile. Oh, his amusement wasn't for the seemingly endless war of succession but rather his hostess's irritable demand for answers she couldn't possibly expect him to have—although he did.

“For the sake of his foster father, Robert of Gloucester, Lord Tal supports Empress Matilda's claim to the throne. Thus none in her camp would prosper by way of Tal's death.” Mab muttered these facts more to herself than to Lloyd who assuredly knew well the history of the earl of Gloucester's championship of his sister Matilda's cause.

“A personal assault on Lord Taliesan, rather than his castle, would be of little gain for Stephen.” Slowly turning, Mab stared blindly into low-burning flames while musing further.

“And even this far from the castle, I have heard echos of gossip suggesting that his mother, our Princess Angwen, has negotiated an alliance with Farleith. It's an alliance which should safeguard her son against any threats from their southeast.” Mab aimlessly motioned in that direction.

“Thus Lord Tal is left to contend only with Bendale, the baron at his northeast border—the unreliable one whose loyalties constantly waver in his relentless quest for greatest self-advantage.” Mab scowled. “I wonder only why Angwen chose not to look toward Bendale for an alliance such as the one she seeks with Farleith? I believe Bendale's arrogant sister is recently widowed and left homeless.”

So focused on these facts was Mab that she neither noticed nor cared when Lloyd silently departed for his own cottage located some little distance within the forest's borders.

Chapter 3

On the third evening after Tal first awoke in a Welsh cottage next to the wise woman's abode the fading glow of twilight fell through an unshuttered window above his simple oak-frame bed to find Ceri perched atop a stool drawn near.

Ceri was alone with Lord Taliesan as she had been for the past three days, save for the knight lost in healing sleep on a pallet placed close to the carefully fitted rocks of the central hearth—and Gran Mab's twice daily visits. Only when the older woman came each dawn and sunset to replace their patients' bandages with fresh cloth strips soaked in an astringent solution and care for the men's most intimate needs was Ceri free to retreat. It was then that Ceri could claim a brief private time to bathe, change garb, and deal with her own personal needs.

During their past days together Ceri and Tal had spent all the hours of daylight and stolen many from the nights to talk, to laugh, and to share memories both happy and sad. It was through this open contact that they had settled into a rare relationship of effortless compatibility … despite Ceridwen's constant battle to hide how deeply Taliesan fascinated her, how his nearness roused overwhelming curiosity and deep, unfamiliar longings.

It was Lord Tal's considerate response to her unspoken discomfort that had further earned Ceri's admiration—and appreciation. Though Tal remained unclothed to ease her grandmother's ministrations, whether laying flat or sitting upright as now, he spared her embarrassment by keeping the bedfur carefully pulled up over his legs with upper edge folded neatly above his waist.

Ceri felt closer to Tal than to any human she had ever known. A closeness that seemed only to intensify a dangerous compulsion to helplessly stare while flickering light from the hearth behind played across his powerful chest.

Tal felt the shy caress of her green mist gaze and sensed the admiration behind it. Ceridwen was far from the first female to react to him this way, and he'd long ago learned how to control both his response and theirs. But in this instance he was forced to reluctantly acknowledge the fact that this lovely innocent was best left to the males among her own people. Their positions in life were too vastly different. Asides, whether for good or ill, commitments had already been made on his behalf.

Forcing her errant gaze to drop, Ceri peered through a grey haze of smoke drifting up from the hearthfire to blindly study pale fingers twined into the forest green gown covering her lap. In this way she was better able to keep attention wholly focused on Tal's words while he quietly spoke of the sad day his older brother had suddenly died.

“Will was strong and rarely idle but—” The hand Tal had absently waved now abruptly closed into a tight fist and thumped hard against his uninjured thigh. “In the space of a single day, nay, a single hour he was … gone.”

In Taliesan's voice Ceri heard both the anguish of loss and an underlying thread of—was it guilt? Though wisely remaining silent, she radiated unspoken comfort for the devastating hero long admired from afar but now found even more praiseworthy after having come to know the truth of the honorable man so much better.

“I was nearly thirteen and hadn't seen my brother and only playmate for what seemed eons but had actually been a mere three months.”

Never before had Tal spoken of this most painful event from his past, not even to his grieving parents. To him it was clear that Ceri understood him as no one ever had. Tal gazed with wonder at the woman of such incredible loveliness she appeared almost luminescent despite the drab green of her homespun garb. And somehow the gentle solace in her misty gaze drew a long inheld poison out from the depths of the aching soul he'd learned to successfully hide beneath a tight fitting facade of wry jests and laughter.

“Will was home at Westbourne for a first visit after beginning his fostering with Earl Robert in Cardiff Keep.” An echo of Tal's childhood adoration for an older brother lingered in his voice. “We were playing on the castle's parapet walkway as we had many, many times before. He was anxious to show off all the new skills he had learned and promptly insisted on demonstrating the
right
way to dodge a down-slashing broadsword.”

Tal grinned with the memory and Ceridwen's soft mouth tilted upward in a reflected smile of such sweetness it instantly reaffirmed his belief that, if not an angel, still this dainty damsel truly was the most enchanting woman he had ever seen.

Intently studying a heart-shaped face overwhelmed by masses of ebony silk, Tal's attention inevitably settled on enticing lips silently issuing promises which he much doubted the innocent she plainly was could possibly understand.

Beneath the breath-stealing power igniting golden flashes in the depths of Tal's steady dark gaze, Ceri's heart pounded erratically and a foolish question slipped through her lips.

“Did some vile ailment befall Will in the midst of your play?” Ceri repented the moment these words left her tongue. They instantly replaced the warmth on Tal's stunningly handsome face with a mask of frost-covered granite.

“Nay,” Tal immediately denied. “To properly display this new tactic, Will urged me to wield my wooden sword and feign a mortal blow. I recognized the danger but still I obeyed.” Dark eyes hardened to black ice. “Then to evade my stroke Will, as taught, stepped sideways with great agility.

“Will failed to consider the consequences of his hasty action—consequences I saw but failed to insist that he heed. He fell from Westbourne's parapet down into a season-dry moat to lay smashed on the jagged surface of its exposed rocks.”

“How awful for you!” Ceri softly gasped in artless sympathy, horrified by the emotional pain Tal must have endured.

Knocked completely off balance by Ceri's reaction, a faint furrow marred Tal's brow. He knew the exclamation of this beauty nearly a stranger only days past was sincere. Her honest concern emphasized the lack of the many who knew him infinitely better yet hadn't been troubled by so much as a single moment's distress on his behalf.

“It was Will's death two decades ago that buried all of Westbourne beneath a heavy, relentless cloud of gloom that yet lingers.”

Ceri instinctively reached out to soothe away tension revealed by the large hand still clenched on one knee. Her action earned a disarmingly potent smile from Tal who also opened his hand to gently clasp her delicate fingers.

“Having been termed the ‘family jester' since near the day I took my first steps—” As Tal spoke his smile slid awry. “I earnestly tried to relieve my sire's sorrow for the loss of the heir he adored. I failed miserably … and continued to fail until the day he, too, left the woe of this world behind.”

“Of what did your father die?” Ceri quietly asked, tamping down a likely unsavory curiosity roused by the years of unnatural silence surrounding this never answered question.

At the time of the old earl's passing no one had publicly provided a reason for it. Indeed, whatever had precipitated Earl William's death remained to this day shrouded in the gloom of an unwholesome mystery. Over the years since his loss Ceri had heard many causes suggested—some were wildly implausible, most were furtively whispered, and all were near certain to be untrue. She watched Tal with close attention to gauge the frankness of his answer.

“What caused it?” As Tal rephrased the question disgust tinged his tone. “My mother claims that the deaths of both my brother and father were the result of some nonsense about an end to her supply of magical seeds.”

Dark eyes, carefully shuttered, directly met Ceri's gentle gaze. “But I know too well my own part in the first. And it is equally clear that my father's ever-deepening anguish was to blame for him choosing to abandon my mother and me.”

Although Ceri suspected Tal would heatedly deny it, she heard an echo of anguish at least as deep in his voice. It was certain that Tal truly believed he had played a crucial role in the unhappiness of his family's past, and she sorrowed for his pain.

Gazing deep into the mysterious mists of her unusual silver-green eyes, Tal felt enveloped by waves of compassion. Without forethought he reached out to lift and lay Ceri across his lap, gently cradling her alluring curves near.

On suddenly finding herself close against Tal's powerful body, shocked delight swept through Ceri and robbed her of sensible thought. Here, just inches above, was the source of her myriad fantasies, and she refused to count the cost in guilt for wicked pleasures claimed only as the gift of her grandmother's arts. Melting into his strong embrace, she was thrilled that the heart beneath her hand had accelerated to the same quick, pounding beat as her own.