Spindle and Dagger - J. Anderson Coats Page 0,68
is what proper wives can expect, Margred doesn’t need toys. She needs holy orders.
The house of Bleddyn might never be ordinary. Mayhap it can’t be. What Margred needs is somewhere she’ll always be welcome. Someone to throw the door open and hug her hard, even when everyone else looks through her and past her. She’s always done that much for me. Soon enough I can return that favor.
Tomorrow. First light. I am leaving Worthen even if it’s with nothing but the clothes on my back. This time, I will get myself clear.
AT BREAKFAST, I EAT EVERYTHING IN SIGHT. NEST will lay out a feast in my honor when I reach Dyfed, but I must get there first. Across the table, Isabel tucks into porridge and natters on about Henry and doesn’t notice me sneaking oatcakes into my lap and wrapping them in a stolen washrag. After breakfast, Isabel will corner the steward to discuss the day. It’ll take her a while to find him, though, since he’s usually passed out drunk in some odd place like the hayloft. After the business with the linens and the wine, I can hardly blame him for spending his days not quite sober and well out of her way.
That’s when I’ll go.
I’ll slip my breakfast scavengings into my apron and tell the gateman I’m meeting Isabel for a ramble in the greenwood. He’ll let me pass. I’ll wander down the deer path, and when I’m out of sight, I’ll run till I can’t and then walk till it’s dark. I know to go south and west. I’m rested, and I have small things to eat and a spare gown I can sell or trade.
I can do this.
Isabel rises from the table. “Well, I’m off to find that layabout steward. Would you join me?”
“Try the storeroom. I think I saw him head that way.” Calmly. Smile. “I’m going to sit outside a while. I want to embroider that gown you gave me. I’ll bring out a bench.”
“Good idea. I’ll meet you there lat —” Isabel abruptly falls silent. Her face goes granite.
There in the doorway is Cadwgan ap Bleddyn, leaning on the frame.
I freeze like a sighted hare, but Isabel makes a graceful, ice-cold curtsy as she says, “My lord.” Then she pulls me up from the bench, and I come staggering. Cadwgan’s hangman gaze passes over me slow and heavy.
“May I?” he asks, gesturing to the threshold he has yet to step over.
Isabel narrows her eyes before finally nodding. Cadwgan crosses the hall toward her, but when she moves a pace away in a polite yet deliberate sidestep, he stops at the head of the table.
I should have left days ago. He’ll wait till she’s not looking. Then there’ll be a “mischance.”
Cadwgan clears his throat. He’s not looking at me, though. Only Isabel. “Please tell me you know sending Henry as a hostage was the last thing I wanted to do.”
Isabel folds her arms.
“Well, I hope at least you’ve had a chance to calm yourself. We’re heading to Ceredigion on the morrow, so have your belongings together.”
“There are things I must attend to first,” she tells him coolly. “You could have given me some sort of warning. But I forgot who I stand before. You don’t believe in giving warning, do you?”
Cadwgan sighs. “Sweeting, you are going to have to let this go.”
Rhys appears in the doorway and shuffles. Cadwgan makes the hold gesture, two raised fingers, and he nods.
No. Rhys can’t be back already. Something’s not right.
Isabel turns to me. “You wanted to leave. You shall leave. I’ll have my best swordsman take you wherever you want to go. Are you ready?”
“Oh saints, I most certainly —”
“No,” Cadwgan cuts in. “This girl is not going anywhere.”
Isabel looks ready to blacken his eye. “She’ll go wherever she wants, and you won’t stop her.”
“She can go to hell for all I care,” Cadwgan replies through his teeth, “but the one place she is not going is back to my son.”
I swivel to face him. “I’m not going to Owain, my lord.”
Cadwgan looks at me square for the first time since he walked in. “You — what?”
“I’m not going back to Owain.” I repeat it clear and sure, even as Rhys behind him looks half raging and half bellysick.
“Where are you going, then?”
“She’s going to Dyfed,” Isabel puts in before I can spin out a convincing lie. “To be nurse to Gerald of Windsor’s children.”
Cadwgan was clearly expecting a different answer, for he draws back with