Page 17 of A Knight for Gwenllian

“I’d say so. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

He turned to his brother, who had barely said a word the whole morning.

“Colin. I doubt you’ll still be here when I come back. Lady Isabeau should be sufficiently rested by then.”

“Indeed.”

She might well have bedded all the men she could find by then. Well, good luck to them, he didn’t need, or want, to know. He nodded at Gwenllian, who nodded back, seeing his eagerness to leave, and then deftly climbed into the saddle.

“Let’s ride.”

The following morning, as she stood on a hill watching Sheridan Manor’s familiar shape from a distance, Gwenllian reflected that she had never ventured so far north before. Usually, her rides took her to the rolling hills on the south side of her family lands.

But here she was today, on the road to Scotland. Though, in truth, she was convinced she had already found the adventure she’d been looking for. Her meeting with Sir Alexander Rathbone had offered her all the excitement she had hoped to find on the way to Nead an Diabhail. The only downfall had been losing her beloved Gwlithyn. But she hoped the animal would be recovered by the time she came back to Sheridan Manor in the summer.

This ride to Scotland would not be in vain anyway, as she would get to see Bethan again and meet her son. And, of course, it meant that she would spend a couple of weeks by Alexander’s side.

She gave the mare a pat. Buttercup. How ironic that the animal should share the name Alexander had chosen for her when he didn’t know who she was. It seemed like a sign, almost like something Old Myfanwy would say.

“Do you feel more at home here or in Wales?” Alexander asked, nodding to the castle.

“In Wales. I was not born in England, unlike Jane, whose real mother was English, like our father. And out of my two other sisters, I’ve always been the ‘Welsh one.’ Siân has a home here with her English husband, even if they rarely visit it, and Seren has been saying from the moment she could talk that she would go to live in England when she grew up.”

Unlike her, who would end up in Wales.

“You speak English without any trace of accent though, which is why I never suspected you might be related to the people at Sheridan Manor.”

She tilted her head because he’d made it sound as if he regretted the fact that she didn’t speak with an accent. This surprised her. English people usually avoided any mention of her Welshness, finding it odd at best, uncouth at worst.

But she had always felt truly Welsh at heart. Was that why Old Myfanwy had told her the prediction? Because she was so irremediably, deeply Welsh, that she would never feel at home anywhere other than where she was born? Castell Esgyrn? Although, if fate was going to be so particular, she should remember that, strictly speaking, Gwenllian had been born in the cottage where her aunt, Branwen, had been living at the time, not at the castle.

“I speak English without any accent because I’ve been speaking it from the moment I was born,” she told Alexander.

“Which do you prefer?”

Once again, the question shocked her. No one had ever asked her that. The English naturally assumed that she preferred to speak a “civilized” language, and the Welsh didn’t imagine anyone could prefer another language to the one they were so proud of.

“I don’t prefer one over the other. It depends what I’m doing, rather, or who I’m speaking to. But I feel somehow that for anything close to my heart, I think of it in Welsh.”

“Mm. It must be good to have a choice.”

“It is.”

She had always felt privileged to have two cultures, two languages, two homes.

“Ready, then?” Alexander asked gently.

“Yes.”

“No second thoughts?”

“No. Worry not. I will not send you back to the wicked Lady Isabeau, Monseigneur.”

He barked a laugh, just as she’d hoped. “You cannot know how relieved I am to hear that.”

They set off, going down the hill at a sedate pace. Gwenllian lifted her head to the sun and smiled. How wonderful to be riding on such a fine day in the company of a man like Alexander. It could all too easily not have happened.