uerch Llywelyn. Sweeting, my nearest kin, Rafe de Beaulieu.'
Rafe was stunned, but quickly recovering, he bowed to Rhonwyn, and taking up her small hand, kissed it. 'Lady, my cousin's good fortune overwhelms me. All the Welsh I have ever known are dark.' Jesu! She was absolutely magnificent. Poor sweet Kate was but a faint star to this girl's brilliant sun. For a moment he was angry that his sister should have been so cheated, but then the lady Rhonwyn wasn't responsible. She was only a woman and must do the bidding of her menfolk.
'You are welcome to Haven, my lord Rafe,' Rhonwyn told him, thinking that he was arrogant. How dare he enter her home and assume ap Gruffydd's daughter was some tiny dark creature, and she was a woman of loose morals who was Edward's leman?
He could see the anger in her eyes at his assumptions, and he knew he couldn't blame her if she hated him. ' I have come to pay my respects and bring you Katherine's good wishes, cousin,' he said.
'Your sister is well?' Edward asked, and then he suddenly thought that Katherine de Beaulieu must surely be hurt by his apparent rejection of her. Kate had always been such a gentle and soft-spoken girl.
'She is well. She would have come but it is cider season, and Kate's cider is known throughout the region. She will allow no one else to oversee its making,' he chuckled. 'She is a good chatelaine. I shall be hard-pressed to find a wife who can oversee Ardley as our Kate does.'
Rafe de Beaulieu was a tall, slender man with Edward's light brown hair and light blue eyes. He and his sister were Edward's only living relations. They were the children of his father's younger brother. They lived on a small manor near the town of Shrewsbury, two days'ride from Haven.
'You will stay,' Edward said, knowing full well the answer.
'Aye, just for the night. I must leave tomorrow,' Rafe answered.
'Then you came out of curiosity?' Rhonwyn said sharply.
'Aye, lady, I did,' he admitted with a grin, wondering silently how it was his cousin, Edward, was so damned fortunate.
'I shall see a chamber is prepared for you,' Rhonwyn said, and with a smile at her husband and a cursory nod at Rafe, she hurried from the great hall of the castle. Their visitor, she decided, was an irritating fellow, and she was glad he lived two days' ride from Haven. She was not unhappy to see her husband's cousin depart the next morning.
Edward had said nothing to Rafe about the crusade. While he intended to ask him to steward Haven in his absence, he wasn't certain yet whether they would really go. He doubted King Henry would be happy to have his heir gone so far from England, and it was the king who held the purse strings the prince needed loosened to finance this great adventure. Rhonwyn, however, had no doubts that they were going, and no sooner had Rafe gone his way home she began to worry about her brother. 'Oh, Edward! What are we to do with Glynn? ap Gruffydd will never allow us to take him with us, and you cannot leave him alone here at Haven. For some reason that I have never fathomed, Glynn adores the prince of the Welsh. He would not mean to betray us, but he could very well be persuaded by that wily man who sired us both. We cannot send him back to Cythraul. It would be too cruel, although Morgan ap Owen would care for him.' Rhonwyn's face was concerned.
'But what of his identity?' she fretted.
'Glynn of Thorley,' he reminded her. 'He will be thought to be my get. I shall tell the father abbott that he is my relative, that his mother is deceased, and that his pater is not to be discussed. That is enough to give truth to the idea that I sired him. But Glynn must remain silent, Rhonwyn, regarding his true parentage. Can he do it?'
She nodded. 'He can. He will be disappointed not to go with us on crusade, but he will be equally excited about going to the abbey school. Now that he has been exposed to learning, it would seem he has a great capacity for it. I think he might be a priest or a scholar.'
That evening she curled herself in his lap again, and he stroked her silken head in a leisurely fashion. This time she had come to him. 'We shall have little time once we begin the crusade to cohabit as man and wife,' he told her meaningfully.
'We do not go for many months,' she said softly, thinking that she must ask Enit's mother what could be done to prevent conception. If she was to yield herself to her husband's passions once again, she did not intend to conceive a child and thus be prevented from going with him on crusade. 'Oh!'
His hand was gently fondling her breasts. 'They are like the perfect round apples in our orchards,' he told her.
Rhonwyn could feel her breath tight in her chest. His hand was very exciting, teasing tenderly at her bosom. She neither forbade him nor stopped him from his love play.
'I know it is too soon,' he said, 'but I cannot wait for the night when we lie naked, side by side, and I may cover those precious little orbs with kisses, wife.'
'I am less afraid and repelled than I have been in the past,' she admitted shyly.
'We are getting to know one another,' he said. His hand removed itself from her breasts and tilted her face to his. He touched her lips softly at first, and then as her budding passion began to overcome them both, his lips took possession of hers with a deeper fierceness. She didn't resist, indeed her lips moved beneath his with a girlish innocence that enchanted him. Before she might grow fearful, before he might allow his desire for her to gain a mastery over them, he broke off the kiss, and looking down at her, said, 'You are so lovely, Rhonwyn. I am in love with you, and I would have you be in love with me, wife.'
'Give me time, Edward,' she said to him. 'I am only beginning to understand this thing you call passion, and I do thank you for your gentle patience with me.'
'You are a prize very worth having, Rhonwyn uerch Llywelyn. How much sweeter our coming together again will be for the waiting we must endure.' His gray eyes smiled down at her.
Reaching up, she touched his cheek. 'I will try very hard not to keep you waiting too much longer,' she promised him. Her slender fingers caressed his face.
Catching her hand in his, he kissed each of those fingers with fervor. 'It shall be in your time, my love, for I want more than anything else for you to be happy.'
'I am happy now, safe in your strong arms,' she replied.
'On the night you tell me our waiting is over, Rhonwyn, I shall make you happier than you have ever known!' he vowed passionately.
PART II
Chapter 7
Glynn returned from Shrewsbury eager to recount his travels and small adventures. Rhonwyn had never known her brother to be so very talkative. 'I saw ships that came upriver from Cardiff,' he said excitedly. 'And the abbey and the churches, sister! And the markets with all their goods and the shops! Never have I seen their like. I ate a pomegranate, Rhonwyn! It's a fruit from the south. There is so much more to the world than I could have believed possible. I want to travel some more when I am older. I shall earn my way singing my ballads in inns and festivals and noble courts.'
