Chapter Ten
“You married him!”
Melusine was hissing at her. Elle didn’t need her cousin spinning out of control or making her feel any worse than she already did. Quite honestly, she wasn’t sure why she wasn’t running about and screaming her head off.
It had been a day for the ages.
Elle had been trying so very hard to accept that which she could not change.
To accept the defeat against the English, to accept that Brython was no longer hers, and to accept that, little more than an hour ago, she had married the Earl of Leominster, Curtis de Lohr.
She had been trying very hard to accept all of these things, but the more the day passed and the more she watched Curtis with his father and brothers, and the other knights who were congratulating him, the more she felt her composure slipping away.
Dissolving.
Crumbling.
She had lost everything.
And now, Melusine was hounding her about a marriage she had no control over.
Everyone seemed to be hounding her, pressuring her, and scolding her.
She wasn’t used to such condemnation and harassment.
At least, she viewed it as harassment when it wasn’t exactly that bad.
Men telling her the course her life would take wasn’t harassment as much as it was simply the way of things.
But the more she listened to Melusine hiss, the more her control slipped.
Until it just wasn’t there any longer.
She was in Christopher’s grand tent with the flap tied open.
Men were coming and going and the wine was flowing freely.
Soldiers were also gathering, at least those who weren’t working with the wounded or the captive Welsh, and imbibing the liquid in the barrels that the quartermasters had brought with them to battle.
It wasn’t fine stuff, but it did the job. It could get a man drunk.
That was all Elle could see.
Careless drunks.
Unable to stomach the display of revelry any longer, she stood up. Melusine grabbed at her, wanting to know where she was going, and all Elle could do was tell the woman to leave her alone.
Just leave me alone!
With that, she fled de Lohr’s tent, out into the evening, which was becoming cold. It was a clear night, with the moon bright and cold overhead, illuminating Brython. Shadowed and broken against the backdrop of the moody Welsh hills, it looked dead, as dead as Elle felt.
All of it dead.
She had an aversion to it. She couldn’t look at it and see her broken dreams. Turning away from the hulk, she found herself facing England and the darkened fields in the distance.
Behind her was Wales. Looking forward was England and all of the things she had to face now that she was married to an English earl.
Brython was on a rise, and she ended up wandering downhill, still looking at England, feeling more desolation than she could have ever imagined.
Behind her, men were celebrating. Celebrating the death of everything that was important to her.
Her death.
Oh, God… She was dead.
There was a big, flat rock in front of her, one of many all over these hills.
When she plopped down on the rock, grief overwhelmed her and the tears came.
Tears for the loss, tears for the future.
In little time, she was weeping hysterically, agonizing pain consuming her.
She ended up lying on the rock, her tears mingling with the old, moss-riddled surface.
Her rock, her Wales. She felt as if she was grieving not only the loss of her castle, but her very country.
The crying never ceased. The more she wept, the more she felt like weeping. It was a vicious circle. There was so much pain and regret bottled up that it had to come out somehow. It was coming out now, in buckets.
And then she saw it.
Boots.
Startled, she sat up and found herself looking at Curtis as he stood several feet away. The moment he saw that she had seen him, he put up his hands in a soothing gesture.
“I am sorry,” he said softly but quickly. “You ran out of the tent, and I followed you to make sure you did not come to harm. I did not mean to disturb you.”
Elle was prepared to blast him. She was quite certain he hadn’t followed her for her safety, but more to make sure she wouldn’t run away. But the moment she opened her mouth, more tears came. Angry, frightened, sorrowful tears.
“I could not stay in there any longer,” she sobbed. “They are drinking and celebrating my loss. The loss of everything I knew. They are not celebrating a marriage, but my defeat!”
He hung his head slightly, feeling some sorrow that she was so upset on a day that would have most young women ecstatic. “They are not celebrating your defeat,” he said, his voice quiet and calm. “They are celebrating a marriage and an alliance and nothing more.”
That wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear.
“They are reveling in my downfall,” she wept.
“Do you not understand? This is not a celebration for me. This is not a joyful moment. This is something I am forced to do because you have more weapons and more men than I do. I am your prisoner, and you have forced me to marry you.”
“You are not my prisoner,” he said. “You are my wife.”
“Wife?” she nearly shouted, bolting off the rock. “I do not even know you! You are a man who tried to kill me yesterday. In the days before that, you and your army were trying to defeat me. All I know is that you are Hereford’s son, and now you are my husband. A husband I never wanted!”
She was off on a crying jag, and she plopped on the rock again. Curtis blew out a long, heavy sigh before making his way, slowly, over to her rock. He sat down a few feet away from her as she sobbed. He watched her for a moment before gazing up into the sky, to the moon and the lovely night above.
He’d tried so hard with her, harder than he’d wanted to, harder than he should have.
She was right—she was a prisoner. She had been forced into this marriage, much as he had been.
He truly thought he could make this a pleasant situation for the both of them, but he could see now that he’d been wrong.
She didn’t want it to be pleasant. She didn’t want anything to do with it.
Or him.
Perhaps he was going to have to finally accept that.
“If you think, for one minute, this marriage makes me happy, then you would be wrong,” he said after a moment.
“I do not want you any more than you want me. All I’ve seen from you is a woman who has no idea how to behave and hates me simply because I was born in one country and she was born in another.
Someone has poisoned you, and they have poisoned you badly, my lady.
You have hatred flowing through your veins instead of blood.
And you think I wanted to marry someone like you? Think again.”
Her sobbing had lessened dramatically as she looked at him in outrage. “You came to take my home away,” she said. “I am allowed to defend myself!”
He looked at her. “You violated a treaty between your father and the King of England,” he said pointedly. “You started this. You had no authority to break the treaty, but you did. Arrogant and imperious, you made that decision, so you brought this down on yourself.”
She leapt up from the rock again, enraged. “Is that so?”
“Of course it is,” he said, standing up and facing her.
“This is all your fault. The death, the destruction, is all because you felt you were important enough and strong enough to break a longstanding treaty, so don’t blame me for your troubles.
If there is death here, as you put it, it’s because you caused it.
Weep all you want, but everything is your fault.
And you think I want to marry someone like you?
Someone without honor? A foolish woman who cannot see beyond her own arrogance?
You do not deserve me, Enid Arielle ferch Gwenwynwyn. Did you ever stop to think about that?”
She was taken aback by his harsh words. Not because they were brutal, but because they were so truthful. He was spelling out the truth of her actions and the truth of the hatred running through her veins.
Someone has poisoned you.
Perhaps that was true, but that someone had ingrained it into her long ago.
Every bit of it.
“Mayhap I do not deserve you, but I do not want you, either,” she said, her voice trembling.
“Mayhap this is all my doing, but this marriage is your father’s doing.
He could have simply told Henry that there was no woman for you to marry, but he seems to think my royal bloodlines make me a suitable wife.
All he talks about are my royal bloodlines, as if they are the only thing that matter.
If you must be angry, be angry at him. I did not ask for this. ”
Curtis sighed sharply, scratching at his forehead.
“Then what do you want to do?” he said. “Do you want to return to your people? Just leave? Then go. I will not hold you here any longer. We have come to an end, my lady, and I surrender. I’ve tried to be kind.
I have tried to be understanding. But you do not want that.
You simply want to hate and point the blame at others, so do it with people who will tell you that your hatred is warranted and that you’ve done nothing wrong in this situation. I’ll not stop you.”
She eyed him in the moonlight. “Go where?” she said. She gestured to Brython. “This is my home, but now it is yours.”
He shook his head. “I do not care where you go,” he said.
“Go find Llywelyn and tell him of the defeat of Brython and see if he’ll take you into his household.
Your grandmother was from his family, wasn’t she?
Go back to him and hate all you want. Let it eat you alive, because I do not care. You’ve never given me a reason to.”
She looked at him with some surprise, but that surprise quickly cooled. “You’ve been speaking to Gruffydd.”