He lay in the dark and remembered the feel of her hair, her throat. In the moment, he’d been so sure that she wanted his touch. He even thought he had felt her lean toward him. The prolonged hunger must have addled his brain. Or it was just her and all her contradictions that addled him. Golden beauty and lowly manners, a dozen blades and a friendly dog, days without speaking and then breaking her silence for a trivial request. It spun his head.

When she came back from her vigil among the trees and settled on the ground a little away from him, she spun his head even more.

“I speak Welsh,” she said, in that language. It struck his ear with a sweetness, the sound of his lost home floating toward him in the dark. “Nor was it my intent to deceive you. If you have said aught you would not wish me to hear, I am full sorry. Be assured I will repeat none of it. Idle talk is not in my nature.”

It stunned him into silence. All of it: that she had spoken at all, that she understood Welsh, that she had heard all his meandering memories, that she was contrite. But the most stunning fact of all was that her Welsh was perfect. She had only the slightest accent, and every word as polished and correct as a Welsh princess.

She was at every turn a mystery and a contradiction.

“How come you to know Welsh?” he asked finally.

There was a long pause. He could hear her draw a slow, deep breath before she spoke. “I am sorry,” she said softly, reverting back to English. “Truly, I am. Good night to you.”

That was all. Explanations, it would seem, were considered idle talk.

He stared up at the branches against the clear night sky, sure he would not sleep. But he did, and when he woke in the morning he found she had left a small gift of food beside him as usual, as though nothing had passed between them at all.

1281

In his years of living in Lancaster’s household, Gryff had convinced himself of many foolish things, but none was as all-encompassing in its stupidity as his belief that Isabel was in love with him too. He was barely seventeen, which was a perfect time to be a fool in love – that’s what Hal’s father said – and she was so beguiling that it was impossible to resist her.

“Tell me again, this word for when a Welshman misses his home.”

They were huddled together in a shadowed corner of the crumbling west tower of the keep. He and Hal had discovered long ago that it was the perfect place to hide and now that they were grown, they employed it frequently for less childish endeavors. Isabel’s soft curves were pressed against him, seeking warmth after the chilled air had cooled the sweat of their lovemaking.