A Dishonorable Knight - By Morrison, Michelle Page 0,39
was a little ashamed that it never occurred to him to ask.
“As true as I’m sitting here. Of course by that time, I was head over heels for her. And it wasn’t just because she wouldn’t have me. She was a fine young woman. Beautiful, of course, but smart as a whip, too. She could manage people sweet as you please. She had the skills of a healer from her grandmother, and the cunning of a general. Why this one time—ah, but that’s a story for another time.”
Gareth was about to protest that he wanted to hear it, but curiosity at how his father turned his mother from enemy to ally was all consuming.
“So how did you sway her?”
“Humbled myself. Took a sack of grain and half a dozen sheep over the hill to her house. Told her they were an early wedding present. She thanked me but I could see suspicion in her eyes. So then I told her how I’d been a right stupid ass for most of my life and that she was no doubt smart to marry another man, but that I’d loved her for nigh on two years and suspected I would for another two hundred. I didn’t expect her to do anything about it. Well, perhaps I did, but I pretended I was noble, at least. I finished by telling her I wished only for her complete happiness in life and that if she ever had need of me, she only need send word and I would cross a continent to aid her.”
Gareth whistled low between his teeth. “And then what happened?”
Morgan’s smile turned wily and he drained his mug of mead before answering. “I heard the next week that she had ended her betrothal. When I ran into her a few months later at the Michaelmas feast, we talked as if we’d been best friends from the cradle. We were wed by St. Catherine’s Day.”
Gareth frowned. “So a sack of grain and some livestock changed her mind?”
Morgan slapped him on the back of his head. “A son of mine should be better able to hold his liquor. No, a few gifts did not buy your mother’s affection, ye fool. But hatred and passion are both strong emotions, you see. Two sides of the same coin, if you will. In fact, sometimes they can be confused for one another. And if that’s the case, it may only take one person to flip that coin, even just the once, for the passion to take over.”
Gareth shook his head when his father made to refill his mug. He wanted what wits he had left to mull over his father’s words.
Morgan, evidently unaffected by the potent wine, eyed his son closely. “So, be there a lass whose hatred need be flipped to passion?”
“What? No! Why would you even ask that?”
“Twenty-five years you’ve been my son and this is the first time you think to ask how your mother and I fell in love. Surely something has prompted such a question.”
“No!” Gareth repeated defensively. “I—that is, I’ve thought about it before, but I haven’t been home in a few years and before that…”
“Mmmmm,” Morgan said, and promptly buried his nose in his mug. “Well, if you convince yourself of that long enough, you may find yourself years down the road wondering if you passed a grand passion by for fear that it was just hostility.” With that, Gareth’s father stood and walked a perfectly straight line to the stairs.
Gareth rested his wobbly head in his hands and told himself that his situation was nothing like his father’s had been. He and Elena were from two different worlds; had completely different wants out of life. Why she—Gareth paused in mid-thought. An image of Elena, gazing at the mountains earlier today, a look of utter contentment on her face as she described how being in Wales made her feel filled his vision. He shook his head, reminding himself for the hundredth time of all the insults she had cast at him, the way she had care for only her own comfort, the plans she had for advancing herself at court.
A young serving woman walked by and smiled at him coyly. No, Gareth decided. There was a simple explanation for his malaise. And he was going to remedy the problem tonight. Setting down his mug of ale, he followed the swishing skirts of the serving woman.
Chapter 10
As Elena entered the bailey from the dim hall she squinted. This could have been