Rhiannon Read Free Page B

stared unwinking at Simon, then shuddered slightly. “You are
a very dangerous man, very. It would behoove me to have no more to say to you.”
    “Are you afraid?” Simon’s eyes sparkled with challenge.
    “Yes.”
    Simon laughed. “Your father has just told me that I should
not reach for you lest my fingers be burnt. In response to that, I asked for
your hand in marriage.”
    “No!” Gruffydd spat. He had been listening to them with a
steadily blackening scowl, and now he exploded. “My sister will not be sold to
a Saeson. I will bestow her on a suitable man in Wales when I—”
    “I will be sold to no one,” Rhiannon interrupted sharply. “I
will marry where I choose, when I choose, and not at all if I choose. You have
no right to bestow me any more than does Lord Llewelyn. Do not be a worse fool
than you can help, Gruffydd. You are allowing this Norman-English-Welsh matter
to unsettle your thinking. Not all Cymry are paragons of virtue and not all
Saeson are evil.”
    “Perhaps not all Welshmen are perfect,” Gruffydd snarled,
“but I still prefer to live and breed within my own kind. I say my sister will
not go to a stranger—”
    “What a fool you are!” Rhiannon repeated in an exasperated
voice and, in defiance, placed her fingers on Simon’s wrist. “Let us go,” she
urged.
    “I am sorry,” Simon said as he led her away. “I did not mean
to make a quarrel with your brother. Nor, I hope, will you misunderstand me.
Your father neither sold nor bestowed you. What he said was that I might try
for you with his blessing, but that you were a law unto yourself and he had no
power over you.”
    A faint blush of pleasure tinted Rhiannon’s translucent
skin, but it receded at once. The green eyes lifted to Simon’s. “Oh, you are
clever,” she exclaimed. “You are a very devil for seeing into my heart.”
    “I have seen nothing,” Simon denied, but that was not really
true. Unlike most other men, Simon was intimately acquainted with passionately
independent women, and he understood a great deal. “I have only repeated to you
your father’s words to me,” he went on. “He also said you would bring me only
grief. But I am not afraid. It is not possible to know joy without daring
sorrow—and I see in you a hope of joy such as I have never known.”
    “No doubt you see that same hope in each woman you pursue,”
Rhiannon remarked, the laughter coming back into her eyes. “To say that you
hope would be no lie. Each time you would only need to confess that your hope had
not been fulfilled.”
    “I see someone has been warning you against me,” Simon
sighed. “The half of it is not true at all, the other half much exaggerated.
Were I what is said of me, I would need seven of everything a man uses to make
love and the ability to send each to a different place at one time.”
    Rhiannon burst out laughing at the mock plaintiveness in
Simon’s voice and the spurious, outraged innocence of his expression. “You are
wrong,” she told him. “I have read what you are in your face. I do not even
know your name.”
    “I beg your pardon, Lady Rhiannon. My name is Simon de
Vipont, and I am son to Lord Ian and Lady Alinor of Roselynde. I was knighted
by King Henry last Christmas and did fealty to your father for the keep at Llyn
Helfyg, Crogen Keep, Caerhun, and Dinas Emrys at the May Day festival. How is
it that you were not there, my lady?”
    She did not answer him at once, but stood staring. “You hold
Dinas Emrys that looks over the Vale of Waters?”
    “Yes. It is the most beautiful place in the world, is it
not? From the keep I can look down Nant Gwynant until I feel the soul drawn out
of me into the blue distance.”
    “You love it,” Rhiannon said. It was a statement, not a
question.
    “The best of all my holds,” Simon confirmed. “Although each
is dear to me in a special way.”
    “Do you hear nothing in the winds that play around Emrys
rock?” Rhiannon asked, her eyes