was that Owain would keep me close, and even four-and-ten-year-old me had the sense to know what kind of close would serve me best.
Nest pulls me into a tight embrace. A comforting embrace. A mother’s embrace.
I will not think of my mother. I don’t pull away, though.
“Owain ap Cadwgan abducting my children and me to humiliate and taunt my husband is a horrible act of war,” Nest whispers into my hair, “but holding a girl like you at his mercy is nothing but cruel for cruel’s sake.”
I saw it in his face as his color returned, as he got stronger, as the wound below his arm puckered and darkened. He had no more need of me. I’d brought him back from purgatory’s doorstep, and now he’d turn me loose with a pat on the head and perhaps a coin in my hand, but without half a clue where I was or a house to go back to or any decent way to keep myself.
“I’m not here against my will.” I edge gently out of her hug. “I’m Owain’s protector. Saint Elen keeps him safe if he does the same for me.”
Nest holds me at arm’s length. “That’s all? Oh, child. I’m sorry.”
I bristle. “What for?”
“He didn’t bring you here to be his wife or gain your parents’ blessing to keep you at his hearth.” She smiles sadly. “You may as well be a pet.”
I will not remember my father, how he’d bind tiny dolls for us out of heather and slip them in our apron straps. I will not remember my mother or how she’d hum while she stirred the pottage or banked the fire. I will not remember how they kissed us each on the head and said they’d be back by nightfall, to keep the fire burning and add turnips to the pottage around midday so it would be ready upon their return.
“Owain keeps me close.” I make a show of spinning Nest’s bracelet around my wrist. “I am not a pet.”
Nest slowly lifts a hand to cover her mouth. “Please don’t tell me you think he loves you. I know you’re young, but I don’t think I can bear to hear that.”
Owain loves his hunting dogs. He loves his warband. He most certainly loves the short sword he plundered off a dead Norman lord. Those are the things Owain ap Cadwgan loves.
But for three years now, Owain has put a roof over my head. I’m never hungry when he’s not. He’s bullied and beaten more than one man who’s spoken roughly to me or out of turn. He has yet to raise a hand to me in anger.
“Or . . . saints, you’re not going to tell me you love him, are you?”
There’ll be no brothers two summers apart in steadings across a valley. Rhael will never be in my kitchen. No ballads at sundown, no giggling boy and girl swinging a leather bucket between them as they come up the path. Owain ap Cadwgan is the sole reason it’ll never happen.
I snort quietly. Shake my head.
William has gotten David to return the ball to him by aiming it at his brother’s forehead. The littler boy bats it back to keep from getting hit. William chortles, and David is almost smiling.
Then William tosses the ball to Nest and sings, “Now throw it to Elen, Mama, and she can throw it to David! David, sit on your backside and catch the ball, all right?”
David doesn’t sit up, but he does pass his cloth square to his other hand and stretch out a palm.
Nest lets out a long breath and rubs her thumb over the tiny curve of sinew wrapped around the ball’s opening. Then she unravels it with a flick of her fingernail and shows the flabby bladder to William. “In a moment, dear. Let’s have Elen fix the ball first.”
William nods and kneels to whisper to David.
As Nest hands me the bladder and sinew, she turns away from the boys and leans close. “This is probably a fool’s errand, but you’re out here with us instead of in there with him. So . . .” She takes a deep breath. “You must help me convince Owain ap Cadwgan to send my children back to their father. I cannot bear it, wondering what he might do to them on a whim. Not after what happened to my younger brother.”
I turn all my attention to working the tiny piece of sinew into a loop around the pucker in the