Nicole Locke - In Debt To The Enemy Lord

‘By God or Gwyn, no,’ Teague growled. ‘Never.’

‘Exactly.’

He turned to Rhain. ‘Exactly what? The enemy doesn’t want me afraid?’

‘No, it means it’s something else.’

‘Or it could mean the enemy miscalculated,’ Teague said. ‘We’ll know who is right when the next message comes.’

‘Are we so sure it is but one person?’ Rhain asked. ‘It would seem, given the wide dispersal of the messages, that it could be at least two.’

‘No, it has to be one. I’ll not question Gwalchdu’s defences that much. They’re too tight for two or more people to go unnoticed.’ Teague paused, before his tone turned lethal. ‘But one man or twenty, I will end this ghostly battle.’

‘When you are like this, I do not wonder why you are known as the Devil of Gwalchdu. No wonder the King trusts you so well with such a strategic castle.’

‘Gwalchdu belonged to our family long before Edward’s Welsh Wars or his campaign against Scotland. He would need to be a hundred kings before he could wrest its governing to someone else.’

‘Have you told Edward about the threats?’ Rhain asked. ‘I am sure he would not appreciate games here.’

Teague shook his head. ‘He is spread too thin with the Scots. He barely responds to correspondence regarding our positioning in Wales; I could not bother him with private matters.’

‘Perhaps he’s distracted by his worry of Eleanor, who has been sickly.’

Teague could never understand Edward’s obsession over his wife. The time he spent with her could be used to solve the problems in Scotland, to tighten his reign in Wales. Instead, the King was almost...devoted to her.

He remembered his parents’ relationship. They, too, had seemed devoted to each other. But it had been all a lie. His father had abandoned his family, his pregnant wife, for another woman. And with grief racking her body, his mother had begun an early, bloody and heartbroken labour.

‘The King’s affection for Eleanor seeps the strength from him,’ Teague said. ‘She bore him enough sons for a dozen monarchies. He wastes his time on petty worries.’

Rhain slapped Teague on the back. ‘It’s love, Teague, not simply affection, and some would disagree with you and say their love strengthens Edward for all his trials.’

Teague knew better. Love had sapped the strength from his mother just when she needed it most to bring Rhain into this world and it had killed her.

‘Love? What use is love?’

Chapter Five

‘I trust you are well today?’ Ffion entered Anwen’s room without knocking.

Anwen didn’t turn from her seat in the window. The courtyard was full of market wagons, kitchen maids with arms of laundry and soldiers training.

‘Your situation will not end simply because you ignore it,’ Ffion continued.

‘I did not know prisoners were allowed any benefits.’

‘You are hardly a prisoner,’ Ffion admonished as she went to the table to make her poultice.

‘I have been well for three days. Well enough to return to my home, yet a guard is at my door and he will not let me leave this room.’ Anwen unwound the bandages from her head. Ffion had taken the stitches out a few days before, but the poultice and the wrapping of her head continued.

‘As you know, the guards have explicit instructions you are to remain here for a sennight. Need I remind you that if it were not for me and the hospitality of Gwalchdu, you would be dead?’

Ffion never failed to remind Anwen who tended her.

Anwen tilted her head so the older woman could apply the paste. ‘If you’d let me have a mirror, which must exist here, I could put this on myself.’

‘Of course we have a mirror, we have several, but I believe you need these visits.’ Ffion pressed her hand to secure the bandages so she could wrap them. ‘There is much sin in this keep and many lecherous thoughts. We need God and prayer to purge us. Have you been practising your lessons of chastity, obedience, poverty?’

‘I am a Christian, Sister,’ Anwen said, ‘and do my prayers as often as time will allow.’

‘At Gwalchdu I expect prayers to be six times per day. Now you are better, perhaps it will be time for you to join us.’ Ffion raised her finger in the air. ‘Remember: community—’

‘Prayer, study and service,’ she interrupted. ‘But I am not staying at Gwalchdu and you cannot keep me here.’

Ffion opened the door, and stepped across the threshold. ‘It seems we will both have to await God’s answer to your fate. In the meantime, I will expect you to pray with us. The bells will tell you when.’

Anwen turned her attention to outside her window. She had no intention of following Ffion’s directives and she had no intention of staying here.

From what she could see, she was in an inner tower that was surrounded by a low wall. Directly underneath her, there were no gardens with flowers and benches. Without any ornamentation, the grey stone walls jutted out forcefully from the hard-packed ground. It was as if the castle stood in defiance of nature. Very much like the lord who governed it.

She had not spoken to Teague since the day he had asked for her name. Then she had still been so weak and sick, she could only feel the darkness and tightly coiled anger surrounding him.

But at night, Teague had been almost reluctantly kind. There was such a difference between the man at night and the man at day, she wondered whether she had dreamed the night. It had probably been Greta or Edith. There could be no kindness in the Traitor of Gwalchdu.

The cold reality of daytime should prove that to her. She was kept a prisoner here no matter what Ffion said. She doubted the lord kept her here because Brynmor was her home. If he knew she was from Brynmor, all he had to do was inform Sir Robert and ask for a boon. Teague was Marcher Lord and consequently had power over Brynmor. He also had power over her.

She rested her head upon her knees and stared out the window. If she was counting the days correctly, she had been here over a sennight. It was long enough for either someone to rescue her, or to think her dead.

She could endure whatever the Traitor expected of her, but there were people who needed her at Brynmor. Melun, who had raised her like a father, was losing his sight and depended upon her to care for the birds. The falconer had probably already been punished for losing a goshawk. And fragile, gentle Alinore needed protection from her father, Lord Urien of Brynmor, and his spitting rages.

Feeling trapped and restless, Anwen fisted the rich green gown they’d given her. She was as unused to this inactivity as she was to long gowns, but it was easy to spot the man responsible for her imprisonment. For days she’d been watching Teague. His tall frame, dark hair and movements were now as familiar to her as a hawk’s flight.

He was training his men in hand-to-hand in the lists. A circle of men surrounded both Teague and a red-haired man. Both of them were crouched, their arms stretched and angled in front of them. Even in the cold heavy mist, they were similarly garbed—bare, except for loose braies that bunched at the waist and fell above the knee.

But it was Teague she watched. On him, the braies didn’t look so much like they were worn as much as they hugged a tight waist that supported a wide defined chest, broad shoulders and arms and legs rigid with muscle.

He was often hardly clothed, yet each time she saw it, it was as if his body presented some new facet for her to watch. He held a savage beauty, like a peregrine’s wings arching back only to pound the air in a fluid rhythm.

His eyes never left his opponent and his arms remained steady, but she saw the almost imperceptive movement of his great thigh muscles when he launched. With one arm sweeping around his opponent’s neck, he forced him to the ground.