Chapter Eighteen #4
She smiled at him, pulling him close and laying her head against his chest. She closed her eyes tightly.
“I can hear your heart beating,” she murmured.
“It mingles with mine. They are beating together, Kress. As one. They shall always beat as one. When you feel your heart beating, you will feel mine as well.”
He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly. “I shall never overcome this,” he muttered into the top of her head. “This is my last moment of joy and the beginning of a lifetime of sorrow.”
She pulled back, gazing up at him. “I told you that I do not want you to do that,” she said, struggling not to tear up. “I want you to be happy. If you can love again, I hope you do. I could not bear it if you spent the rest of your life miserable because of me.”
He bent down and kissed her, sweetly and tenderly, feeling the heat of their contact flow through his veins.
It would be so easy to succumb to it, to lose himself in her deliciousness, but there was a roomful of people waiting downstairs.
If he thought he could jump through the window with her and get away with it, he might have tried in a moment of weakness.
But he couldn’t do that to her.
Or to himself.
“I love you,” he whispered against her lips. “Until the end of all things, I will love you. Do not forget me in the years to come, Cadie. My dreams will be of you and only you.”
She broke down, then. “And I love you,” she murmured, holding his head between her hands and looking into his eyes.
“We may not be together in this life, but we will in the next. When that moment comes and you pass through the veil between life and death, wait for me. When my time comes, I will be looking for you.”
He nodded, kissing her eyes, wiping her tears away with his thumbs. “I swear it,” he rasped. “I will wait for you.”
With that, he peeled her hands from his face, kissing them both before letting go. Then he held out a hand to her, indicating for her not to follow him, as he headed to the door. Cadelyn didn’t move, but she quickly wiped at her face, quickly composing herself. He stood by the door, watching her.
“Are you ready?” he asked softly.
Cadelyn nodded. “I am.”
He smiled at her, an encouraging smile, and opened the door. Stepping through it first, he held it open for her so that she could pass through and precede him down the steps and into the common room.
It was the most difficult thing he’d ever had to do in his life.
Without Kress in her line of sight, Cadelyn was surprisingly composed, considering the emotional upheaval she’d just gone through.
She didn’t look the worse for wear. She headed down the steps, seeing people she didn’t recognize gathered in the common room, including an older woman wrapped in a heavy, ratty cloak who rushed right to her the moment she hit the bottom of the stairs.
Shocked, Cadelyn found herself looking into a face very much like her own. She wasn’t even able to speak a word before the woman was practically throwing herself at her.
“Cadelyn,” the woman breathed in a heavy Welsh accent, her eyes glimmering with unshed tears as she looked her over. “Cariad, it is me. Do you know me?”
The woman was so close to her that she was crowding her and Cadelyn had to take a step back. The woman was overwhelming her already.
“I do not,” she said. “Are you… Nesta?”
The woman nodded eagerly, reaching out to grab Cadelyn’s hands. “I am your mother,” she said. “Were you told of me, plentyn? Was I remembered to you?”
Plentyn was the Welsh word for “child”. Very quickly, Cadelyn was feeling set upon by the woman.
She knew the woman was eager, and Cadelyn could see the emotion in her eyes.
But the reality was that she was a stranger who spoke strangely and dressed strangely.
She also smelled like a pile of wet leaves.
For every step Cadelyn would take back, the woman would take two forward.
“I… I did not even know of you until a few years ago when William Marshal told me of my true heritage,” she said. “Until that moment, I thought that I was an orphan of English parentage. I did not know that I was Welsh.”
Nesta had her by the hands, lifting them to her cheeks so she could feel her child’s flesh against her.
“My sweet Cadelyn,” she murmured. “You were not an orphan. Your father sent you to William Marshal to protect you from… to protect you. But now that you are returned, you shall be an inspiration to your people. You are their tywysoges.”
Cadelyn had backed up so much that now she was against a table, watching the woman rub her face all over her hands. “What is that?”
Nesta stopped rubbing and looked at her. “It means princess,” she said. “Do you not know your mother’s tongue?”
“I know English because I was raised English. I am English.”
Something flashed in Nesta’s eyes then. It was perhaps anger, perhaps outrage, perhaps even a little fear.
“You are not Saesneg, plentyn,” she said patiently. “You are Welsh.”
Cadelyn didn’t like the way the woman said it.
There was something hard behind those words, as if there was no room for any other consideration.
She was telling Cadelyn what she was when, in fact, Cadelyn was telling her what she was – English.
Cadelyn pulled her hands from the woman’s grip and slipped around her, moving for the knights.
“I appreciate that you have come, Mother, but let me make something clear,” she said.
“I may have been born in Wales to Welsh parents, but I was raised by the English and English, I am. I am sorry if you thought you would find a woman who was eager to assume her Welsh heritage, but I am not. Wales is simply a faraway country with an odd language and big mountains, so I am told. It means nothing to me.”
Nesta looked at Cadelyn in astonishment that was more than likely fed by rage because her pale cheeks flushed. She blinked rapidly as if she could hardly believe what she was hearing.
“What is this you are saying to me?” she asked. “Did The Marshal not tell you of your heritage?”
Cadelyn could sense a confrontation coming but she wasn’t going to back down. She didn’t like the way this woman was trying to push her around when it came to who, and what, she was. Cadelyn knew exactly who she was and who she wanted to be, and assuming her Welsh heritage wasn’t part of that plan.
“He told me,” she said. “He told me that my father is the last of a line of Kings of Rhos and that my mother is the last of a line of the rulers of Pengwern.”
Nesta’s eyebrows lifted. “And this means nothing to you?”
Cadelyn shook her head. “Why should it?” she said. “Those kingdoms no longer exist and they have not for hundreds of years.”
Nesta put a hand to her chest as if Cadelyn’s words had physically injured her. “They are your people!”
“They are your people. They are not mine.”
Nesta’s eyes widened and she turned to Atilius and Fabius, who were standing several feet behind her. “Ai hyn mae’r Saeson wedi ei wneud?”
Atilius was watching her with great concern. He could see Nesta’s overeagerness, and her daughter’s standoffishness, and the two would not mix. He was afraid Nesta might say something in her emotional state that they would all come to regret.
“I cannot understand you,” he said to her. “I do not speak Welsh. My lady, surely you must understand that your daughter has been raised by the English, as she said. She simply does not know the richness of her heritage. That will come with time. Do you hear me? That will come with time.”
He said the last five words deliberately, as if trying to emphasize a point. But Nesta was so far gone with outrage that she wasn’t listening at all.
“I asked you if this is what the English have done to my child,” she said, pointing to Cadelyn, who was now standing between Kress and Susanna. “They have erased her true self from her memory? Does she have no sense of loyalty to those who are depending on her?”
Atilius was trying to regain some measure of control of the situation.
“That is not a matter to discuss here,” he said firmly, hoping she would understand what he was saying and shut her mouth.
“We will take the lady to The Paladin to my brother and then on to Mountain Dark for the wedding. Once she is in Wales, she will understand her heritage. She will understand the importance of it.”
Nesta heard him but her anger had not abated.
She whirled to Cadelyn, pointing a finger at her.
“Your people have waited eighteen years for your return,” she said.
“You were born at Mynydd Tywyll, known as Mountian Dark in the Saesneg language. Mountain Dark is in your blood and in the blood of all men of Rhos. They must look to you for inspiration, for you are living proof that Rhos has not died. Your father lives on in you. Had you been a son, you would have been a great warrior to lead your people to victory!”
“Enough,” Atilius snapped softly. He had to take charge before Nesta said too much.
He looked to the lady, practically hiding behind the knights, including a female warrior clad in protection.
“We shall wait until the morrow for you to pack your things and prepare to leave. Then, we shall take you to my brother at The Paladin. He is eagerly awaiting your arrival.”
Alexander, who had been watching the entire situation with great interest, spoke up. “I told you that the lady has been ill,” he said. “If she feels well enough, then we shall muster the escort and take her to The Paladin to meet her betrothed. We welcome the addition of the de Shera soldiers.”
Atilius looked at Alexander. “There is no need for the escort from this point forward,” he said. “We shall take charge of her.”