The Conqueror

His hands fell away from her waist. Something sharp-edged clicked its teeth together inside his heart. A little gnashing. “I know about Ipsile-upon-Tyne,” he said tightly. “On the Welsh Marches.”

“How do you know about Ipsile?” she asked, smiling faintly. “Or that it borders Wales? Did William mention it?”

And like that, full-blown and dangerous, anger snapped back into the forefront, thick and undeniable. How could it ride up on him so swiftly, without warning or wishing it to be?

How did he know? How did he know about Ipsile or Wales, an entire borderland along the frontiers of his birthright?

He bent close to her ear, his breath a caress, his words a threat.

“Now, Guinevere, listen close, for this is the last time I will say it.” He pitched his voice low, and he could feel her body edge closer to listen. “I rode o’er this turf before you were born. I know these lands from York to the Welsh Marches, their every hummock and hillside. I have dreamt of them for eighteen years, a dream which has grown in my soul like a bracken weed, which was once a fair bloom. I could walk them in the dark, map them in my sleep, and I swear by God I know them better than I know how to breathe.

“Do not ever ask me again how I know something about my home.”

Their eyes locked, green on grey. One breath, two, and her pretty face was a study in shifting emotions, confusion and fear and sadness and…hate, for all he knew.

She drew herself up, straight as she could. “Then, my lord, I hope you think I have done well by them.”

Griffyn’s fingers tightened into the fisted rage that had been his only expression of thwarted desire for eighteen years. Done well? Done well? She had lived on his lands, ridden her horses o’er his hills, sniffed the breezes of his moors, while he’d been cast adrift in the world of politics and bloodshed, aching for home, and she had this placid, polite nothing to offer in return?

Rage poured through him so hot and rabid he suddenly couldn’t see in front of his eyes.

Done well by them?

Gwyn stared in horrified fascination. From forehead to jaw, Griffyn’s face was taut, whiplashed with pain. All colour was washed away save for that in his hooded eyes, where a fever burned and blackened the smokey grey to opaque soot. A muscle thudded by his jaw, strained by teeth set so solidly against themselves Gwen thought she could hear enamel chip.

And they were to make a marriage work?

St. Jude, what had she said? That she hoped she had done well by his lands? She’d spoken in the hope of placating him, but all she’d done was send him tripping into a fit of rage. She could do nothing right in his eyes. They were doomed.

Like a petrified rabbit, she held her ground, too scared to flee, too terrified to stay.

He lifted his head—God in Heaven, why make such a comely thing so tortured?—and passed a frigid glance over her face, freezing her blood to ice.

“How old were you when you came to the Nest, Gwyn?” he asked in a low voice. He ran the tip of his finger across the bare skin of her collarbone.

He could have swung a battle-axe at her head and Gwyn would have been less terrified. The dangerous, controlled pitch of his words was blood-chilling. There was nothing more unnerving than this denied restraint. That he could rein in such a fury and bring it to heel bespoke a will so disciplined it sent another shiver down her spine. But most of her focus was on the thick forefinger he was now sliding up the back of her neck.

“I was two, Griffyn,” she said in a choked voice.

His hand finished its journey and cupped the back of her head, holding her in a gentle, inescapable capture. “I was eight when I left, Guinevere. And I have ne’er forgotten a thing about it. Or you.” His fingers slipped away. “Leave.”

“What?”

“Go. Go to your room.”

“I have no roo—”

“The solar. Go.”

“What in perdi—”

“Don’t say it,” he warned, his eyes glittering danger. He pointed to the door. “Go. Now. While it’s safe.”

She backed up in tripping steps. Her hands felt behind her for the cool iron of the door handle and wrenched it open. The door swung out so swiftly she tumbled a few steps before righting herself. What had happened? What was happening, to him, to her, to both of them together?

Before she turned and ran, she caught one last glimpse of Griffyn. He was standing with his head down, dark hair plastered to his neck, staring at the ground while his hands curled into fists that opened and closed in silent, unknowable depths of anguish.

Chapter Twelve