Margaret Moore - A Warrior's Passion

Suddenly the toddler slipped on the rocky bank and fell into the stream. The other woman emitted a shriek as the swift current caught his body, carrying him away from her.

Seona, still holding the infant, scrambled to her feet while Griffydd threw off his cloak and charged into the rushing water. When the little boy’s head disappeared beneath the surface, the other woman screamed hysterically.

Concentrating on the child, Griffydd judged where the current would send its victim and hurried there, scanning the cold, rushing water as he had been taught to do when catching fish if he were forced to fend for himself.

There!

The child’s head popped up, and at once Griffydd reached down and scooped the boy out of the frigid stream. The boy choked and sputtered as he clung to Griffydd.

“I’ve got you. You’re safe,” Griffydd muttered in Welsh, too shocked himself by the sudden and unexpected need to rush to the rescue to remember that the little fellow wouldn’t understand a word he said. He walked carefully toward the bank, lest there be more loose stones underfoot.

The boy stared up at Griffydd with wide, terrified eyes, his lips blue as his breathing returned to normal. Griffydd rubbed the child’s arms with his free hand, trying to warm him as best he could.

The other young woman pushed past Seona and ran to them, grabbing the boy from Griffydd’s grasp as a jumble of grateful Gaelic tumbled from her lips.

Trying not to remember the last time he had spoken to Seona, Griffydd gathered up his cloak as she hurried closer.

He coughed and discovered he had no stone in his throat, after all. “Tell her to wrap the child in this.”

Smiling with obvious relief, Seona nodded and spoke to the woman, who took the cloak and did as he ordered.

“Thank you!” Seona said fervently, turning back to him as she gently rocked the whimpering infant in her arms.

“It was nothing.”

The boy stopped shivering and stuck a finger in his quivering mouth before regarding his savior pensively, one damp arm tight about the woman’s neck.

“Fionn and his mother don’t think so,” Seona observed, nodding at them. She spoke a few rapid words of Gaelic, and Griffydd recognized his name. Obviously, introductions were being made.

“These are both her children?” Griffydd inquired.

“Yes. She is Lisid, and they are hers.”

Lisid continued to smile at him, brushing a stray lock of dark hair from her pretty face with a gesture that was surprisingly coy, given that her child had almost drowned only moments ago.

“This is Fionn,” Seona said, nodding at the boy. She smiled down at the infant she held. “And this little angel is his sister, Beitiris.”

Seona glanced up at Griffydd, then away, as a lovely blush crept over her smooth cheeks, like the pink that tinted the clouds he used to watch out the window of his bedchamber when he would waken with the dawn.

He did not know what to make of her bashful demeanor here beside the stream. Changeling, indeed, to be so seemingly modest one moment, a spirited maiden the next and a brazen temptress after that, he thought with a twinge of bitterness.

“I will leave you to your ablutions,” he said abruptly, turning to go.

“No, please, wait a moment!” Seona cried when he had gone a few paces.

He stopped and glanced over his shoulder. He was not the only one taken aback by her sudden outcry, for Lisid’s expression was one of surprise, too.

“I…I wish to speak with you, Sir Griffydd,” Seona stammered. Then she ran her gaze over him and frowned. “Unless you are too cold and wet. Perhaps later…”

His lips twitched in what Seona thought was supposed to be a smile. “I have been trained to endure the cold, and a Welshman doesn’t mind the wet. If you have something you wish to say to me, I would rather hear it now—when I have a witness.”

Blushing at his implication, Seona asked Lisid to excuse her. With a somewhat reluctant look, Lisid set Fionn down on the ground, then took Beitiris, leaving Seona free to follow after Griffydd.

As he waited for her, his visage impassive, standing as motionless as one of the rocks of the hills around her, clad only in an unlaced, short-sleeved tunic belted over breeches yet apparently oblivious to the chill of the morning, Seona hugged herself for warmth, and comfort, too. This was not going to be easy, despite his rescue of Fionn.

“What is it?” he asked when she reached him, as if she were a servant offering something for which he had no need.

She swiftly checked to see that Lisid was in sight yet out of hearing. “I have to speak to you of what happened last night.”

Still his expression did not alter. “What of it?”

“Were you intending to tell my father?”

Griffydd raised one eyebrow quizzically.

“Please don’t.”

She saw a flash of emotion in his gray eyes, but what it was exactly, she could not be sure.

“Then you continue to assert that you stayed of your own accord?” he asked evenly. “Perhaps I should compliment you on your boldness—but I would rather not.” He looked past her to Lisid. “What a pity she is there. If she were not, you could attempt to seduce me again.”

Flushing even more—although whether with shame or at the notion of being in his arms again, she didn’t want to consider—Seona forced herself not to say anything in hasty anger. “Please, Sir Griffydd—”

“Griffydd. After that kiss, I think we have no need of titles.”

Although his words made her burn with shame, she wished he would shout at her or at least appear angry instead of just standing there as calmly as if they were discussing the price of wool.

She drew herself up, deciding she would not demean herself further by seeming to beg. “I would appreciate it if you did not speak of last night to my father. Otherwise, I will rue it greatly.”

Griffydd DeLanyea’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

“It was by his order that you escorted me to my quarters,” he reminded her.

“It was most certainly not by his order that I voiced my unwillingness to be used.”

“Are you telling me that he will punish you for that?” he charged, his voice low, yet firm and commanding. The voice of a lord. A king.

“For trying to warn you, of course.”

“How?”

“Does it matter?”

He. eyed her speculatively, “No doubt if I reveal my own lack of proper behavior, he will be mollified. Indeed, he should be quite pleased to know his plan was so effective.”

“No!” she cried sharply, angry tears welling in her eyes.

Again his expression altered ever so slightly and she thought she saw a glimmer of genuine concern on his handsome face. “I would not allow him to hurt you.”

She gazed at him with undisguised surprise. “You would not allow him?”

“No, I would not,” he said with such conviction she could believe that a stranger she barely knew would protect her from her father’s wrath.

Before she could respond, they heard a commotion in the trees near them along the path leading from the fortress to the stream.

“DeLanyea!”

Her father came charging out of the pine trees like a hunted boar, his men trailing behind him, and a grin split his broad face as his shrewd gaze darted between an apparently impassive Griffydd DeLanyea and a flushed Seona.

“Well met!” he shouted happily, addressing the Welshman.

“When you were not in your quarters, I thought you might be here,” he said as he came to a halt. “And Seona, too.”

He glanced somewhat sternly at Lisid and her children, as if wondering what the devil they were doing there.

Naoghas, Lisid’s husband, seemed far from pleased to note their presence, too.