"Indeed she is," Enid said quickly. "Wynne is skilled in all manner of household arts including the making of medicines, poultices, and potions. Caitlin makes fine fragrances and soaps. The best I have ever known."

"And the lady Dilys?" he asked.

"Her nature is sweet, my lord, but we have yet to find a skill at which she excels," Enid admitted honestly.

When the last course, a cake soaked in sweet wine, covered with clotted cream and dotted with small wild strawberries, was served and eaten, Rhys of St. Bride's sat back, a smile of contentment upon his face. "Lady," he said, looking at Wynne. "I will enjoy your simple meals when you reign at St. Bride's as my wife."

"My lord," she reproved him gently. "I have not yet said that I would accept your suit."

"You are a woman who understands the meaning of the word duty, lady. You will do your duty to Gwernach and to your brother; to your sisters, Caitlin and Dilys. To your little sister, Mair," Rhys said, "whom I suppose I can find a suitable husband for one day."

"We are to be promised to the lords of Coed and Llyn," Caitlin told Wynne. "They are young and rich!"

Rhys's laughter rumbled through the hall. "Surely, lady, you will not disappoint this greedy wench who is your sister," he teased her gently.

Wynne fixed him with her green gaze. "You do not play fair, my lord of St. Bride's," she said disapprovingly.

He grinned at her mockingly. "Love, lady, is as much a battle to be won as is war."

"I was not aware, sir, that love would have anything to do with a marriage between us," Wynne said sharply.

"It can," he said, suddenly serious, "if you will but allow it, lady."

"Love, my lord, is an illusion, I fear, ofttimes confused with passion or lust. Once they have fled a marriage, love goes as well," Wynne told him.

"My sister does not believe in love," Dewi told Rhys of St. Bride's.

"But I do," he answered quietly.

"You surprise me, my lord, for I would not have thought so fierce a man capable of such foolishness," and Wynne arose from the high board. "My grandmother will show you to your sleeping place, my lord. You must excuse me, however, for I am weary. I will be up in time to bid you farewell come the morrow." Curtsying to him, Wynne walked from the hall.

"She is far wiser than a maiden should be," Rhys of St. Bride's noted suspiciously, suddenly wondering what man had soured the girl's outlook on love; wondering if she were indeed a virgin. His wife must be a virgin. He wanted no man to have traveled the path before him. He wanted no doubts about his son's paternity.

Before Enid might defend Wynne's good name, however, the heretofore silent Dilys spoke up brightly. "Wynne has always been like that, my lord. When we were children and our mother would tell us fairy stories, Wynne would not believe. She said our father and mother were unique in their love for one another."

"Did she?" Dilys was obviously so innocent that Rhys could not help but believe her.

"Aye," Dilys answered him simply.

"And what of you, my lady Caitlin?" Rhys asked. "Do you believe in love, or like your elder sister, do you think it an illusion?"

"Will your cousin, the lord of Coed, be good to me?" Caitlin countered his query with her own.

Rhys looked at the pretty girl before him with her silky, dark brown hair and her bright blue eyes. "Aye," he told her. "He'll no doubt make a fool of himself over you, lady."

"Then I, shall love him well and long," she answered.

Rhys laughed again. "You are honest, lady, though I have not a doubt it surprises you as much as it surprises me." He stood and said to Enid, "Show me where I may rest, my lady Enid. I must leave for St. Bride's at first light."

She led him to a large, deep bed space set within the stone walls of the hall that was nearest to the largest fire pit. A straw mattress covered by a featherbed, which was in its turn piled with furs, was offered him.

"You should be quite comfortable here, my lord," Enid said politely. "Shall I send a woman to you?"

"My thanks, lady, but nay. Methinks I will forgo my own pleasure tonight that I not offend your granddaughter," he told her.

"As you will, my lord," Enid said. "I will bid you a good night then. Einion will help you with your lorica." She hurried away, and Rhys noticed the giant of a man he had previously seen with Wynne and young Dewi standing by his side.

"You wear no slave collar," Rhys said. "Are you a serf, or are you a freed man?"

"I am a slave, my lord, but Owain ap Llywelyn removed my collar from me the day I came to Gwernach. My chief duty over the years has been to guard the children. It is a task yet unfinished, but allow me, my lord, to help you." Einion's supple fingers moved to undo the straps holding Rhys's lorica, a cuirasslike garment of leather and gilded scales of bronze, together. "There, my lord,'' Einion said, removing the lorica. He then pulled Rhys's boots from his feet, placing them with the lorica by the bed space. "Good night, my lord," he said, and departed.

Rhys watched the large slave go, and then shrugging, removed his full-skirted outer tunic. He would be warm enough in his under tunic and sherte beneath the furs of the bed space. Climbing into it, he found himself most comfortable. There seemed to be no lice or fleas in the bed space. Wynne was obviously a good housekeeper.

The hall had grown quiet. He dozed, coming alert as he heard a footfall within the hall. Turning his head, he saw Wynne. He smiled to himself. Like the good chatelaine she was, she was checking to be certain that everything was as it should be for the night; that fires were banked. He watched through slitted eyes as Einion joined her. They spoke in voices too low to hear. Then the big slave bowed, and both he and Wynne departed the hall.

Rhys of St. Bride's felt his body beginning to relax, a state he rarely allowed himself to enter. There was peace and comfort to be had here at Gwernach. These things were Wynne's doing. He looked forward to the day when she would bring the same peace and comfort to his great castle at St. Bride's, and she would. She really had no choice in the matter. A smile of pleasure upon his face, Rhys began to snore most contentedly.

Chapter 2

Wynne of Gwernach watched with palpable relief as Rhys of St. Bride's departed her home. Although she did not sense cruelty in the man, he had a personality that could best be described as forceful, and it irritated her. He was determined that she would be his wife, but Wynne, for all her delicate appearance, was equally determined she would not. She did not choose to marry. At least not at this moment in time. Yet how was she to refuse Rhys without offending him? And what if he did go to the king? The great Llywelyn would hardly object to such a match between an unimportant relation and a powerful coastal lord. He would, as Rhys had so bluntly put it, prefer a man to hold Gwernach in trust for Dewi ap Owain than to allow a girl such as herself to carry on those duties.

"A pox on all men!" Wynne muttered as she kicked at a pebble irritably, and then seeing Rhys turn in his saddle to wave a final farewell, she returned his salute unsmiling. Above the lord of St. Bride's the waning moon hung in the dawn skies, reminding Wynne that she had but a few weeks in which to find a solution to her conundrum, if indeed there was another resolution to her problem.

She needed to work. She needed the benefit of hard, physical labor to help clear her brain, and, like her late father, Wynne was no stranger to the kind of work that sent her sisters into fits of hysteria. She followed a wagon into the meadow, and when it stopped, she grasped a pitchfork and began filling a hayrack with hay, for there was not yet enough new grass to satisfy the cows. She worked steadily and rhythmically, trailing in the wake of the wagon as it made its way from hayrack to hayrack across the field. When the wagon was empty, she rode back to the barns with the driver and, climbing into the high loft, began to pitch down a second load of dried grass. The armpits of her tunic dress were now stained damp with the evidence of her effort, and she hiked her skirts up, baring her legs in an attempt to facilitate her labor. Descending from the hayloft, she followed the wagon back out into the fields.

For the next few days Wynne worked from dawn to past dusk in the company of Gwernach's serfs. Still she could find no answer to her problem, and it did not help that her sisters chattered incessantly in the hall each evening about their bright futures as wives to Rhys of St. Bride's cousins. Caitlin and Dilys were so self-involved that they did not notice their elder sibling's distress; but Dewi did, and their grandmother did.

"You do not have to marry him, Wynne, if you do not choose to," the boy told her earnestly one evening. "Have I not said it before, and am I not master here?" But his voice was low, that his other two sisters did not hear him and begin to harp at Wynne again.

"I seem to have no other choice," Wynne admitted reluctantly. "He will go to Llywelyn if I refuse him. I know it. No man of honor wants a bride who must be dragged to the altar. Will he not resent me if I shame him like that? If I must wed him, I would hope to make him like me, brother."

Enid nodded. "You are wise, child. It is not good to antagonize a husband who will have the power of life and death over you. You must reconcile yourself to your fate before Rhys comes again, that you might greet him next time with a smile."

Wynne sighed deeply. "I do not want to marry," she said. "I hold no grudge against Rhys, for all I suspect his motives at wanting me to wife. Though he might dream of possessing Gwernach some day, I think, Grandmother, that you and I are clever enough to outwit him in his desires. I do not sense him to be a wicked man, and yet if the choice were really mine, I should refuse him."