But only eight days after she had sent the first messenger, she stood in the new gown while Suzanna affixed the barbette around her head and pinned the veil over her hair. Eight mornings of waking and wishing it were a dream. Eight days of whispering courtiers and wedding preparations, of drifting through gardens and feeling everything her life had been slipping through her grasp. Eight nights of irrationally feeling abandoned by her mother, now when she needed her most. Yet she knew that even riding hard through the rain-soaked countryside, eight days was barely enough to reach her mother.

As Suzanna set the coronet – a simple gold and silver circlet studded with rubies and pearls – atop the white veil, she wondered aloud why Gwenllian’s hair was only long enough to fall barely past her shoulders. “I had never intended it would be seen,” she said quietly. She wondered how many other unwomanly things there were about her that she had not yet considered.

She told herself that even her mother could not have prevented this wedding. There was no solution that did not jeopardize her brother’s future as heir, or place all her family under suspicion. In the last week, she had begun to think of it as an inevitable conclusion to all the years of bickering between their estates. Indeed it was a very good match, except that she would as soon face Morency in bloody battle as she would call him husband.

“The king himself will give your hand to the devil, but if it please you I will bring you to the church.”

It was Madog, standing in the doorway with a look more suited to war than to a wedding. She stood paralyzed, wanting nothing more than to rush in and embrace him but knowing that such a weakness would shame them both. The distance between them, he the battle-hardened comrade and she clad in the silks of a lady, was so unfathomable that tears pricked her eyes. Davydd was there too, looking at her uncertainly. No doubt he was awaiting some command from her. The thought of it caused her to stiffen her spine and regain her composure enough to say, “Is well that you did find suitable dress. My horse is made ready to leave for the journey to Morency on the morrow?”

“Aye, Pennaeth Du,” nodded Davydd.

“Consult you then with my husband, when I have one, to know the hour of our departure. There has been no word from Ruardean?”

Madog shook his head. She wanted to ask so much more – if they had concealed her armor, if they had found a blacksmith to repair the broken tip of Madog’s long dagger – but she could not. She may never be able to speak of such things again.