Rexanne Becnel Read Free

home a beaten man with a crushed army. And here Cleve was, venturing into the very heart of Wales with but seven men behind him. God, but he must be a complete fool.
    No, not a complete fool. Just one determined finally to win lands of his own.
    Behind him he sensed his men growing more and more anxious. He pulled his tall charcoal-gray destrier to a halt and leaned forward in the stirrups. The men clattered to a halt around him.
    “What now?”
    “By Saint Osyth’s soul—”
    A sharp wind whistled around a craggy granite boulder, sounding for all the world like a woman’s high-pitched keening, and all the muttering ceased. Wales was surely a cursed land, Cleve decided, not for the first time that day. All the tales of ghosts and dragons, of heathen folk as wild as any animals, which he’d dismissed as the talk of fools, seemed suddenly believable. And yet, ghosts or no, dragons and heathens notwithstanding, he’d come here for a purpose, and he’d not leave until he’d succeeded. He pushed his woolen hood back and shook his head in irritation.
    “We’ll camp there,” he called to his huddled men above the sound of the wind. “There looks to be a stream past those elms where it’s low and wet. John, Marcus, see to a fire and food. Henry and Roland, see to the horses. Richard, you, Derrick, and Ned scout the area.”
    The men scattered to their tasks, but Cleve remained on his mount, leaning forward, squinting toward the mist-shrouded mountain ahead of them. His horse stamped once, then twice, on the rutted cart track, but still Cleve stared, looking and listening for something he could not name. He’d been troubled these last two hours and more. He was troubled still.
    Sir William had been vague. He’d spoken of a place southwest of Stokesley Castle, a forest called Radnor. But he’d not remembered the specific village name, and Cleve had found that there were several within the forest. Nor had Sir William even known the woman’s Welsh name. Yet now, maudlin fool that he was, he had sent Cleve to find the child of their union. Angel was the name he’d called her. But so far Cleve had found no one who remembered a woman going by that name. And so he yet searched.
    Cleve grimaced to himself, disgusted once more by the history of the English in Wales. He’d been more than glad seven years ago not to have been a part of King Henry’s luckless campaign against the Welsh. His own mother had been Welsh, and though he and she had always lived on English soil, she had kept both the language and the culture of Wales alive in her only child. At her death the English father he’d seen but twice had grudgingly arranged a minor position for his bastard son, Cleve, in a decent household. Through the grace of God—and the intervention of Lady Rosalynde and both her husband and father—Cleve had risen above his lowly beginnings. Yet he’d avoided the war against Wales, even though it had offered a chance for him to win recognition and reward. Something in him simply had not wanted to make war on his mother’s people.
    Now it appeared that his Welsh heritage, which had always been considered shameful, would be his good fortune, for it was Cleve’s knowledge of the Welsh tongue—rusty though it was—that had given him this opportunity.
    Were it not for the promise of reward, Cleve would have dismissed Sir William Somerville’s odd mission as foolish beyond belief. To find a child, sired in wartime to some Welshwoman, and if it was a boy bring it back, was a fool’s quest by anyone’s standards. And yet, for the promise of lands—a castle and demesne of his own—Cleve would have searched out the devil himself and wrested him back to England.
    As if to underscore his black thoughts, the wind whipped more viciously than ever, lifting the ends of his heavy wool mantle and causing his destrier to start in alarm.
    “Be still, Ceta. ’Tis naught but the wind.” But it was a formidable wind, Cleve thought, cold and