In the Shadow of Midnight - By Marsha Canham Page 0,175

and deliberately turned her back on the first nagging uncertainties she had experienced since leaving the cavern under the waterfall five days ago.

Sparrow had not, in fact, died. He had roused from his faint as soon as he was carried into the presence of a larger, more appreciative audience, whereupon he had recounted his meeting with the king’s men—near a hundred, he had estimated, with a goodly half of them gone to meet their maker, thanks to his keen eye and steady nerve. The quarrel in his shoulder had been the only thing hampering him from ridding the world of the lot.

“A pity, that,” Brevant snorted, clearly cynical of Sparrow’s tallies. “For their livers will be boiling now and they will be twice as thirsty for blood.”

Sparrow had brushed off the captain’s concerns with a lofty wave of his hand. “A pox on their stewed livers. By the time they strengthen their backbones and tip a toe onto the road again, we will be well on our way to Nottingham.”

Dafydd ap Iorwerth scratched a hand through the black waves of his hair and looked askance. “Nottingham? But my brother awaits us in Gloucester.”

Henry and Eduard exchanged a glance, with the latter pausing to scowl over Sparrow’s loose tongue before he addressed the Welshman. “We will not be going to Gloucester, Dafydd.”

“Not going?” The dark brown eyes lingered on Eduard’s face a moment before seeking Ariel’s in the glow of the firelight. “But … those were the arrangements, were they not?”

Ariel moistened her lips to speak, but it was Henry who drew the young man’s startled gaze.

“Aye, and a fine way to repay a man’s diligence and perseverance, by any measure. And we’ve no excuses to offer, my lord, save for a woman’s complete lack of sensibilities, for it seems my sister has decided to follow her heart, not her head, and return to Normandy with Lord FitzRandwulf.”

Over the sudden stillness that gripped the close circle of men, Ariel heard Sparrow mutter another curse to all the saints who had conspired to put him in service with madmen. Robin, conversely, seemed to come to life, his eyes widening and growing bright with dawning comprehension, his every romantic belief in chivalry, knighthood, and honour justified. Sedrick was giving his head a little shake, as if a faery had planted feathers in his ear, and Iorwerth …

Dafydd ap Iorwerth had stopped staring at Henry and was instead staring intently at the floor, his hand studiously massaging his heavily bandaged forearm.

Ariel reached out and laid her pale, cool fingers over his.

“I am sorry, Dafydd. Truly I am. For you to have come all this way, to have acted in good faith and friendship as you have, only to be betrayed by a woman’s fickle nature …” She hesitated and bit down hard on her lip. “You have every right to be furious with me. To hate me, even.”

Dafydd’s brow pleated in a frown. “My brother is the one who will be furious. The insult to his pride he might be able to swallow, but do not think, for all the heartfelt apologies or appeals to his human nature, he will so easily walk away from a promised alliance to the House of Pembroke. The fact that he has a contract, signed by the earl marshal—”

“My signature was never affixed to those documents,” she interrupted quietly. “A small thing, I know, but—”

“Your consent was implied,” he countered.

“Nonetheless, I swore no formal oath before witnesses, my lord, and in Norman England, if not in Wales, such an agreement is not binding without my written consent. Moreover”—she felt her cheeks warming to the challenge to defend her actions—“if your brother was so determined to wed himself to Pembroke, why did he not accompany us himself? Why did he not plead his case before my uncle in person? Why did he send you in his stead when he could have witnessed the contracts and taken me to wife then and there?”

Dafydd’s head was still bowed and his expression was difficult to read aside from the muscles that flexed in his jaw.

“He sent me, my lady—” he lifted his handsome young face to the light, startling all present with the sight of a wide grin “—because he had the problem of his other wife to tend to before he could marry with you.”

“His other wife?” Henry and Ariel echoed.

“Aye. A puling sop of a thing foisted on him by Llywellyn some ten years ago. Ugly as a dray horse