Rexanne Becnel Read Free Page A

relentless, just like the land.
    With a sharp curse he hauled Ceta around and followed the trail his men had left. They would sleep and regroup. Tomorrow they would find this place called Radnor, and one by one he would investigate each and every household there. They would trade their good English coin for information if necessary. And they would purchase the rare herbs and potions several of Sir William’s daughters had demanded he search out for them. But above all else they would find the child that Sir William so desperately sought.
    Though Cleve did not truly wish to steal the child from its mother, he was nevertheless prepared to do just that if it proved necessary. He would not forgo his prize for one woman’s stubbornness. And after all, Sir William’s bastard would become heir to all the Somerville name had to offer. Sir William was adamant about that. No doubt his sons-in-law were disappointments to him, Cleve speculated. But whatever Sir William’s reasons for wanting his bastard son, one thing was certain: the child would never suffer the lack of family, name, or property as other bastards did.
    As Cleve did.
    No, any pain the child and mother might feel on parting would swiftly heal in the light of all the boy would gain.
    And in the process he, too, would gain, Cleve reminded himself. He would win the hand of Sir William’s youngest daughter—Edeline was her name, he remembered. More important, however, he would win the dowry lands that came with the girl. He would be lord of his own lands and people, and his children would be born to those same lands. There would be no bastards from him, he vowed, only sons and daughters, raised in the security of their rightful home.
    He dismounted and turned back to stare up at the mists that hid the mountain peaks from view. Somewhere in these vast, forbidding hills lay the key to all he wanted in life. Nothing and no one was going to prevent him from gaining it.

2
    W YNNE AWOKE WITH A start. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she gasped for breath as she lay there on her straw truckle bed. Had she been dreaming? Yet she could not recall any dreams, certainly not anything that could have caused this sudden, fearful thudding in her chest, nor the dampness of her palms and brow.
    She sat up, trying to focus in the dark room. Was it one of the children? She rose at once and padded on bare feet from her small chamber to the fireplace, where she quickly lit a candle. Then up the steep stairs she went on sure feet, to the nursery she’d fashioned beneath the broad eaves in a loft above the hall.
    Once she was in the low-ceilinged room, she moved slowly from bed to bed, letting the light fall briefly on each of the children’s faces. Bronwen and Isolde slept side by side in a shared bed, the one sprawled sideways, wrapped in the wool coverlet, the other curled in a ball, shivering from the cold. With a small smile Wynne tugged the cover from Isolde and tucked Bronwen into its warmth.
    How different the two girls were, she thought fondly.
    Her niece, Isolde, with her dark hair and flashing eyes, was a little tyrant at times. She was Welsh through and through, just like her mother, Wynne’s sister, had been. Bronwen meanwhile had the coloring of her father. So far that had not been a problem, but Wynne feared the girl’s strikingly fair hair would forever mark her an English bastard.
    With a sigh she turned to the boys on the other side of the room. As she expected, Madoc and Rhys faced each other on the truckle pallet they shared. It was as if they plotted mischief even in their sleep, yet Wynne could not deny that they looked more like angels right now than the little devils she knew they could be. With their dark, curling hair and equally dark eyes, they would no doubt cause many a heartache in the years to come.
    Then there was Arthur. What was she to do with Arthur? He was already so wise that it was frightening, and yet there was a sensitive side to his nature that