Certainly he dressed nothing like the vain men of the king’s court, or her late, conceited husband.
Lord Madoc’s broad shoulders relaxed. “Then I’ll forgive him.”
She suspected Lord Madoc had forgiven his uncle many things and many times. That would be a promising sign for a happy marriage—if she were staying.
Then he smiled, a warm, open smile that heated her even more than the sight of his naked body—although the memory of his body was more than enough to warm her, too.
“Shall we return to the hall?” he inquired, holding out his arm and nodding toward the castle walls.
“Yes,” she agreed, lightly laying her fingertips on his strong forearm.
She could feel his muscle and realized the Bear of Brecon was a robust man, indeed.
“Unfortunately, my uncle’s taken a notion into his head that I’m never going to be happy again until I take another wife,” Lord Madoc said, his voice both apologetic and frustrated as they walked side by side. “Yet I think you, of all women, can appreciate that I would rather live as I do now than be miserably wed.”
“I agree that it is better to be alone than to be bound to a person you can neither like nor respect.”
“Aye. That’s a whole different kind of loneliness.”
He spoke as if he had intimate knowledge of that state, and she began to suspect his first marriage hadn’t been a happy one.
If so, how much easier it would be for her to win his affections…if she were staying. If she could even consider marrying again, and a man like him.
They continued in silence until they neared the village. Sliding Lord Madoc a glance, she wondered what the villagers would think when they saw them thus, then decided it didn’t matter. They were simply walking together. What worse scandal could come of that than that which she had already endured?
“My uncle said he told you a bit about my trouble with my brother.”
“A little,” she replied.
“Trefor thinks I did him a great wrong and so seeks to punish me in return.”
Even if she wasn’t staying, she wanted to know what had brought brothers to such a pass. “Did you?”
Madoc stopped beside a low stone fence bordering a farmyard. Within its confines lay a small cottage, with a lazy trail of smoke rising from an opening in the slate roof. Close to an outbuilding, chickens scratched in the dirt. A dog tied to the door rose, growling, then seemed to think better of it and returned to its slumber.
Meanwhile, Lord Madoc rested his hips against the enclosure and looked off into the distance. “My elder brother was in the wrong, without doubt, but he doesn’t see it that way. All Trefor sees is that I wed the woman he was to marry, and became the heir of Llanpowell instead of him.”
He had married a bride intended for another? Willingly? Or for some other reason that would have made for an unhappy union?
And how did he become the heir, if his older brother still lived?
However it happened, those were causes for enmity indeed.
“It was his fault,” Lord Madoc said. “Trefor came to his wedding so drunk he could hardly stand. That would have been bad enough, but he started bragging about what else he’d been up to the night before, with a harlot. I tried to get him out of the hall, but I wasn’t quick enough. They all heard him—the bride, her parents, my parents, our families, the guests, the servants.
“Gwendolyn’s parents were all for calling off the wedding, ending an alliance that had lasted for three generations, and she swore she’d hate Trefor till the day she died. To save the alliance, to prevent Gwendolyn’s humiliation, and my parents’, too, I offered to marry Gwendolyn instead.”
So, in a way, he had been forced, much as John had forced her to come here, because the alternative seemed so much worse.
Lord Madoc looked at Roslynn, his expression as open and honest as Wimarc’s had never been. “I won’t lie and say that was a hardship. I’d been in love with Gwendolyn for years, but thinking she was Trefor’s and so out of reach.”
Again, she fought unnecessary disappointment. What did it matter to her if he’d been happily or unhappily wed? She wasn’t going to try to take another woman’s place in his heart.
As for how he’d come to understand loneliness so well, it could be that he’d learned of those feelings through a friend’s experience. She need have no compassion for him.
“We wed that same day,” he went on. “I thought that was the end of our troubles, bad as it was, until my father decreed that Trefor was no longer his heir and must never come back to Llanpowell. He could have Pontyrmwr, a small estate on the northern border of Llanpowell. I was now my father’s heir.
“That wasn’t my doing, yet Trefor thinks I stole his birthright, as well as his bride. He won’t acknowledge that he disgraced the family with his conduct and could have broken an important alliance—that he alone is to blame for his misfortune.”
“However the breach between you came about, it’s most unfortunate,” Roslynn said quietly. “Your family should be your best, strongest ally, not your enemy.”
“I’m not his enemy, but we can be neither friends nor allies as long as he keeps stealing my sheep.”
“Perhaps he’ll stop soon,” she replied. “Maybe one day he’ll realize that he was in the wrong and cease to resent you. I shall pray for it.”
“If prayers could help…” Madoc muttered, shaking his head.
He didn’t finish that thought, but he had told her something nonetheless: even if he felt himself in the right and his brother wrong, he wanted an end to the feud.
With a sigh, he pushed himself off the fence and held out his arm to escort her to the castle once again. She was reluctant to ask more about his brother or his first wife, although she was full of questions, especially about Gwendolyn and how she had felt about their marriage.
“Lloyd tells me you were taking good care of Lord Alfred,” Madoc observed as they drew near the village green.
Not wanting to appear cowardly or upset by the gossip of strangers, Roslynn didn’t suggest going around it. Instead, she steeled herself for stares and whispers, and prepared to ignore them. “It was an easy task. It was only that Welsh mead. He should be feeling better when he wakes up.”
“It’s the sweetness of it,” Madoc explained. “Makes for a mighty ache in the head the next day if you have too much of it, even if you’re used to it.”
“It doesn’t seem to affect your uncle.”
Madoc laughed, a low rumble of delight that could have been how Zeus sounded when amused by mortal antics. “Don’t ever tell him, but Bron waters his down.”
Roslynn stared at him with amused shock. “My lord, I believe you may be as devious as he is!”
The merriment in his eyes diminished. “He drinks more than he should and I don’t want to lose him. He had a bad fall two years ago, stumbling down some steps when he was in his cups. I’ve had his wine and braggot diluted ever since.”
It was a deception, and she hated deceit, yet she had to admit this solution allowed Lloyd to keep his pride, unlike forbidding him to drink at all or taking the cup from his hand as if he were a child.
They reached the main market street, which mercifully wasn’t as crowded as it would have been in the morning. Most of the village women would have already made their purchases for the day; only the poorest were still haggling over the remainders. A few children ran among the stone or wooden buildings and a couple of dogs fought over a muddy bone. She could hear the ring of the smith’s hammer in the forge across