Chapter Three #2
By this time, she was listening carefully because he sounded a great deal like his father in the conversation they’d had earlier.
Hereford had left the tent, and she had no reason to believe he hadn’t spoken with this man, his heir.
Of course he had. That was why the man was here now, speaking of peace, when at the time of their first meeting, he’d been ready to throttle her. But now, he wasn’t.
He was speaking of peace.
She knew why.
“Your father has told you about me, hasn’t he?” she asked.
He had found a half loaf of bread on the table and was now pulling it apart. “He has,” he said as if it wasn’t anything to be shocked or astounded over. “You are Gwenwynwyn’s daughter.”
“I am.”
“We did not know he had a daughter.”
“So I am told,” she said. “And that was deliberate.”
He glanced at her. “Why?”
“Because no English warlord will take a warrior woman seriously,” she said. “We thought it better to spread rumors of a second son.”
“This has been going on for years.”
She nodded. “It has,” she said. “I saw my first battle at fourteen years of age.”
“That is very young, even for a man.”
“I was born to it.”
“So was I,” he said as he shoved bread into his mouth. He chewed a few times before continuing. “I suppose my father told you of the marriage plans.”
“He did,” she said, watching him eat. “He must have someone in mind.”
“He does.”
“Who?”
“Me.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “You?” she repeated. “But… surely not you!”
“Why not?”
“Because… because you are old enough to be my father,” she said, her tone quickly rising. “Moreover, you are his heir. He would not marry you to a woman who could not bring wealth or breeding to a marriage. I know how the English do things.”
He swallowed the bite in his mouth, a lazy smile spreading across his lips. “I am old enough to be your father if I was a child when you were born,” he said. “Christ, woman, how old do you think I am?”
Elle was off balance and sinking fast. This handsome knight, who had only grown more handsome during the course of the conversation—though she absolutely refused to admit that to herself—was to be her husband.
The heir to Hereford and Worcester, the largest and perhaps most prestigious earldom on the marches, if not in all of England.
He was an earl already, however, as the Earl of Leominster.
Elle had grown up surrounded by politics and battles, so she fully understood the worth of Hereford and Worcester, and of earldoms and their properties.
The impact was not lost on her.
“I am not a suitable wife,” she said, shaking her head emphatically and turning away. “Your father is mad if he thinks so.”
Curtis had to admit that he was enjoying her resistance.
He also had to admit that beneath that dirt and sweat and filth, he suspected she was a pretty little thing.
She had eyes the color of cornflowers, so bright that it was as if they had their own light source.
They were beautiful. But her face and hair were smeared with dirt and grime, so it was difficult to get a sense of her beauty.
And her voice… There was a sweet quality to it, but it could also be quite loud when she wanted it to be.
He sensed that she had been raised around men and spent her life around men, meaning she behaved like one.
There wasn’t anything ladylike about her.
But if she were to become his wife, he was going to have to change that.
Oddly, he wasn’t all that opposed to it.
He rather enjoyed a challenge.
Even one of this magnitude.
“You’ve not answered my question,” he said. “How old do you think I am?”
She rolled her eyes. “As old as the moon, as young as the hills—what does it matter?” she said. “Do you understand when I say that I am not a suitable wife?”
“I understand.”
“And?”
“And what?” he said. “My father has made his decision. There is nothing either of us can do about it, so I want you to think very carefully about what happens from this point forward. I intend to be polite and respectful of you and your beliefs. You will get no grief from me. But you… you will dictate my actions, lady. You must decide how you want to build this relationship we are forced to assume. Do you want it built on battle? Or do you want it built on mutual understanding?”
Elle was coming to realize that nothing she could say was going to change any of this.
Oddly, he didn’t seem horribly opposed to it, or, at least, he was hiding his reservation better than she was.
He remained calm while she was about to blow the top of her head off.
However, given her brief interaction with both Curtis and his father, she suspected that kind of resistance wouldn’t do any good.
She’d exhaust herself and still be forced to go through with it, either with Curtis or with another man she’d never met.
She might be worse off than she was with the heir.
Not only was she defeated, she was being punished by marrying her enemy.
Demoralized could hardly encompass what she was feeling at the moment.
She felt as if she was facing death—hers.
“You do not sound as if you oppose this,” she said, turning away from him. “Can you honestly tell me that you want a wife like me? Have you taken a good look at me?”
Curtis looked her over. “I’ve taken a good smell of you,” he said, referring to that horrific mildew smell that was coming off her. “Do you always smell like that?”
She flared. “Not usually, but someone tried to drown me today.”
“And someone tried to throw me over the wall today.”
She was glaring at him as he tried desperately not to laugh. There was something about her in a rage that seemed humorous to him, like a wet hen. She was fluffed up and riled up and ready to peck him to death.
That thought had him biting his lip.
“If I had been successful, then we would not be having this conversation,” she said. “Unfortunately, I was not successful.”
He did smile then. “Your misfortune is my gain,” he said. “I do not really think you wanted to kill me, did you?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Give me a dagger and we shall find out.”
That brought soft laughter from him. “Do you ever stop fighting, my lady?”
“I am not your lady. My name is Elle.”
She certainly wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. He merely lifted his eyebrows. “You are a noble-born woman, the daughter of a king,” he said. “You are a lady. In fact, you are a princess, and I will address you accordingly whether or not you like it.”
She scowled at him, preparing to retort but thinking better of it. For any statement she had, he seemed to have a better answer. Now, he was forcing her to rethink everything she wanted to say.
“You didn’t answer me,” he said after a moment. “Do you ever stop fighting?”
She averted her gaze. The cot was behind her, and she sat on it, heavily. “Against the English?” she said, incredulous. “If you must know, I’ve never been given a reason to.”
He suspected that might be the most honest thing she’d ever said to him, and he folded his big arms across his chest. “Are you telling me that you have never known a moment’s peace?”
She looked away, becoming uninterested in the conversation because she was exhausted and defeated, two unusual sensations in her world.
Here he was, asking questions she didn’t want to answer after she’d already bared her soul to his father.
That hadn’t gone particularly in her favor.
She’d hoped to gain the man’s sympathy, but he took advantage of it.
Therefore, Curtis’ questions were beginning to annoy her.
“What more do you want to know about me?” she said, irritation in her tone.
“Do you want to know that I was a daughter born to a man who only wanted sons? To a mother who hated her Welsh husband and her Welsh children? She left after my brother was born, and we’ve not seen her since.
I was raised by a grandmother who died when I was young, and after that, I simply fended for myself and learned how to fight from the Welsh warriors who took pity on me.
My brother, though he was a year younger than I, was trained by the best. My father saw to that.
But me… I was ignored. When my father died, Gruffydd and I took our place with my father’s men who were regent for my brother.
I watched Gruffydd rise to succeed my father as Brenin Powys while I fought in his armies to preserve Welsh rule on Welsh lands. ”
Curtis learned a great deal in that angry diatribe. Brenin Powys. That meant king in her language, and he could hear the bitterness in her voice as she spoke. She was a woman who had fought her way to the top and struggled to stay there, the older sister to her father’s successor.
“But your father was a supporter of the English king,” he said after a moment. “I do not recall Powys being particularly turbulent because of it.”
She smiled, without humor. “Not with the English,” she said. “But, as has been pointed out to me, the Welsh fight each other quite frequently. There is little peace between different Welsh princes, my father included. He supported King John, and that made him an enemy in his own country.”
“And you were put in the position of defending yourself?”
She looked at him, her eyes unnaturally bright within her oval face. “Nay,” she said. “I agreed with my father’s enemies.”
His brow furrowed. “Then you fought against your father?”
She averted her gaze quickly. “I did what I had to do in order to save my people,” she said. “Even if that meant undermining my father and my brother.”
“Then family means nothing to you.”
“Two men who have never done much for me do not have my loyalty,” she said. “If that is what family means, then nay, it means nothing to me.”