Welshman's Bride

by Bancroft, Blair

  Merciful heavens, did they actually think I’d . . .

  Oh no, surely they could not believe . . . Not when I was a bride of only two months.

  My euphoria over acquiring a possible entry into village life faded to nothing. I feared I had a long way to go before I earned the respect of the people of the valley of Glyn Eirian.

  On Tuesday afternoon when Matty and I were making plans for a drive into the village the next day, a tap on the door was followed by Tegan’s cheerful voice announcing a caller. I should have been forewarned by the odd note of excitement in her tone. Instead, I gasped in shock when she added, “’Tis Lord Dawnay, ma’am. My lady says you’re to come straight down.”

  Lady Aurelia approved of Dawnay’s visit? Surely not. When I continued to gape at Tegan, she added on a whisper, though there was none but the three of us present, “My lady said I was to tell you, you must come down, Mrs. Jocelyn. It’s important.”

  “How odd,” Matty murmured. Thoroughly confounded, I frowned as I attempted to understand the why of this visit.

  “If you’ll pardon me, ma’am,” Tegan offered, “I think he comes to scotch the rumors. If they were true, Mr. Rhys would have the viscount turned away at the door. Something our Gruffydd would be only too happy to do.”

  Of course. Children—like Jocelyn Hawley Maddox—saw things in black and white. Those older and wiser understood the machinations necessary to maneuver one’s way out of difficulties. Greeting Hugh, Viscount Dawnay, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened was all part of the broad scheme he and Rhys had devised for the rehabilitation of my reputation.

  “Please tell Lady Aurelia that Miss Matilda and I will be down directly.” Tegan, always pleased to be of service, flashed a broad smile, bobbed a curtsy, and took herself off.

  Matty clapped her hands in delight. “I am to meet the wicked viscount. How marvelous!”

  “I warn you, he will charm you, as he has every other female. Except Gwendolyn, that is.”

  Matty, in the process of checking her appearance in the cheval glass, dropped the hand that was tucking a sandy brown curl back into place, and stared at me. “But of course,” she crowed, “he is English. How extraordinary that she carries her notions to such extreme.”

  Indeed. Following Matty’s example, I peered in the glass, pinched my pale cheeks, rubbed by lips together in hope of enhancing their color, tweaked my skirts, and at the last minute, tugged at my neckline which I suddenly found too low.

  Stand proud, Jocelyn. It is you who are lady of the manor.

  Yes, I was. Head high, I led Matty out of the room and down the stairs. This was my home, and I was about to introduce my dearest friend and relative to a gentleman of the ton.

  To my surprise, the visit went smoothly, with all the usual females gathered to admire the English lord in our midst. Lady Aurelia and Emily Farnsworth, Liliwen and Dilys Trewent, Matty and myself. I could almost hear my brothers terming the visit “great flutterings in the dovecote.” I did my best to play the gracious hostess—cool, composed, and mature, at all times. I’m not sure I succeeded, but all in all, I felt the visit served its purpose. Particularly when Rhys walked in, as if accidentally returning to the house several hours earlier than his customary time. He greeted our guest warmly in full view of not only the family but a considerable number of servants who just happened to be lingering near the doorways.

  Rhys and Hugh had arranged this visit, I knew it. But why had Rhys not warned me? Thoughtlessness? Or did he wish to see how I would react? Miserable man. Truly, the workings of the male mind were quite beyond my comprehension.

  Perhaps Matty and I should put off our journey into the village until news of Hugh’s visit made its way down the mountain. A thought which lasted all of ten seconds. News of Hugh’s visit was probably already swirling through every shop in town and well on its way to the men working in the heat of the blast furnaces. As for the miners, they would likely have the news minutes after the lift brought them above ground. I sighed. News traveled fast in Handsworth Wood, but here I swear it traveled through the air with all the speed of an arrow shot from a Welsh longbow.

  Nonetheless, I was alert to every nuance as Matty and I were driven into town on Wednesday morning in the landaulette. We were accompanied by one of the household guards, his legs extending nearly to the ground as he rode a sturdy Welsh pony at the head of our small cavalcade. Once in the village, we took our time, stopping in several different shops to acquire items requested by everyone from Lady Aurelia to Mrs. Blevins. Even Gwendolyn had deigned to add a few items to our list. And everywhere we were met with smiles, a few merely respectful but most warm and open. Thank you, Lord!

  Our guard, we discovered, also served as footman, readily accepting our purchases and tucking them into leather bags draped over the pony’s sides. By the time we reached the end of the high street, the bags were bulging. I caught a twinkle in the guard’s dark eyes as he helped us back into the carriage, responding, no doubt, to Matty’s appreciative smile as he handed her up. Her outright flirtatious smile. Frankly, I had forgotten Matty had such a keen eye for the men. She seemed to examine each one with the assessing gaze of a connoisseur, as if measuring him for a possible flirtation.

  How lovely to be Matty, who seemed to sail through life, serene and smiling, finding nothing but good. Staring into the future with the optimism of one to whom the fates had been kind.

  As I once did.

  Well, partially. I had always been more serious than Matty, more able to see the bad, the unkind. I simply had not associated any of the vicissitudes of life with me, personally. Now I did. I had learned I was not above it all, floating happily on a rosy cloud of money, untouched by misfortune.

  At that point the carriage slowed to a stop. “This be the Pugh’s cottage, Mrs. Jocelyn,” our driver said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Mr. Pryce had been right. The names of villagers in need tumbled from Rhian Pugh’s mouth faster than I could write them down, particularly when so many were spelled even more oddly than they sounded to my English ears. But somehow I recorded it all, including a scribbled note that Afan Cnaith beat his wife, and Meic Probyn drank up his wages well before each week was out. And then there was Lowri Gwynett, the butcher’s wife, who was sneaking off to meet Berwyn Sayce, and only God knew what would happen when her husband found out!

  Matty and I made suitably horrified murmurs as Mrs. Pugh, who seemed to have developed a full head of steam, rolled on. “Not that the castle isn’t a hotbed of intrigue, ma’am. What with Dilys Trewent casting eyes at that Englishman in front of the whole village, and him a good ten years younger. And Miss Liliwen too, though she’s fool enough to cast sheep’s eyes at the bard as well, when all know what he is. And poor Daffyd, gazing at Eilys as if she’s a Sunday sweet when everyone knows she has eyes only for—”

  Mrs. Pugh broke off with a gasp, her round face suddenly resembling a beet. “Beg pardon, missus,” she muttered. And then, in a seeming attempt to cover her faux pas, she added, “But who is without sin? Even the great have feet of clay, do they not? The high and mighty Maddoxes cleaving together and thinking no one knows.” She cut off her confidences with a mysterious, all-too-smug smile, leaving me totally bewildered.

  “Thank you so much, Mrs. Pugh,” I said, standing and taking my leave. “I shall call upon those in need as soon as I can put together some provisions. You have been most helpful.”

  “Now that was interesting,” Matty declared the moment we were settled in the carriage. “That woman puts all other gossips into the shade.” Matty paused, wrinkling her brow. “Though she turned coy at the end. What did she mean by ‘Maddoxes cleaving together’?”

  “I have no idea.” Naturally my first thought had been of Rhys, but there were no Maddox females besides his mother and sister. At least none I knew of. And as for Liliwen, the only other male Maddox was Rhys.

  “Who, besides your husband, is a Maddox?” Matty asked.

  �
�Gwendolyn, Liliwen . . . Myself,” I added, with a rather smug smile tugging at my lips as I claimed my husband’s name. “Some of the guards are likely cousins. Certainly I’ve seen Liliwen looking the younger ones over on more than one occasion, but I had the distinct feeling Rhian Pugh was implying something more than flirtation.

  “What is Gruffydd’s surname?” Matty asked.

  “Gruffydd?” I repeated, startled by her question.

  “Yes. Is he a Maddox?”

  Frowning, I thought back to the day I met him. My cousin, Gruffydd Maddox. Called by his first name for the same reason I was Mrs. Jocelyn—to avoid the confusion of being a second Mr. Maddox at Glyn Eirian. So yes, he was indeed a Maddox, but Mrs. Pugh could not have been talking about our ever proper seneschal, the man who stood at Rhys’s right hand in running every aspect of the household and the activities on the land around it. And even if she was, who could the woman be?”

  “Gruffydd and Mrs. Trewent?” Matty asked. “Was she born a Maddox?”

  “I don’t think so,” I muttered, suddenly annoyed at Rhian Pugh for offering so much then drawing back before the final revelation.

  “Well, I doubt Lady Aurelia would stoop to a such behavior, and, besides, to her Gruffydd must seem a mere infant.”

  “She could give him a quarter century,” I concurred, though my mind was roaming along an entirely different path. What if . . .? No, quite impossible. No, really. I would not stoop low enough to believe such an absolutely tantalizing thought . . .

  But of course my efforts toward maturity had not yet progressed that far. I could feel my eyes light with what could only be called an unholy gleam. For shame, Jocelyn, for shame!

  Matty was there before me—or before I was willing to voice my thought out loud. “Gruffydd and Gwendolyn?” she crowed.

  I made a final, admittedly weak, effort toward taking the high road. “Quite impossible. I cannot believe it.”

  “But they’re both Maddoxes, and of an age,” Matty insisted.

  Shaking my head, I put my hands over my ears. No no no, and no!

  “Don’t be foolish. That fearsome gossip wasn’t just spewing the village’s secrets. She was giving you the weapon you need to claim Glyn Eirian.”

  My hands still over my ears, I stared at my cousin. Blackmail? My ever-practical cousin was advocating blackmail?

  At that critical point in my thinking, the carriage swerved, throwing both Matty and me hard against the side of the carriage. “Sorry, missus,” the driver called. “Came round the bend and there was a rock in the road. Big ’un.” Matty and I untangled ourselves, straightened our bonnets, and assured the driver we were perfectly all right. To check on our well-bring, he had pulled up the horses. We were in a narrow pass with rocky cliffs on both sides, the tallest—perhaps forty feet high—towering above us on the left. The cliff to our right was barely half that height. Our guard had dismounted and was rolling the stone to the side of the road. When he was once again in the saddle, our driver clicked his tongue at the horses and flicked the reins. Once again we rolled forward.

  We had gone only a few feet when there was a great rending crash, followed by a sudden dizzying descent that wrenched screams from both Matty and me. We found ourselves sprawled in the dirt, breathless and aching, while the carriage continued on without us in a storm of dust. The panicked horses were dragging what remained of the landaulette, the rear wheels destroyed, a portion of the right wheel still recognizable while the left was little more than splinters scattered over the hard-packed earth.

  “Matty, Matty, are you all right?”

  Slowly, my cousin raised her head. Wide-eyed, she looked at me then examined a rip in her sleeve where blood was beginning to flow from a serious scrape. “I think so,” she returned faintly. “What happened?”

  With some difficulty I managed to coax my battered body to turn toward the lower rocky outcropping on our right. And there was the culprit. A boulder almost as big as the rear wheels it had managed to shatter. “The cliff appears to raining rocks,” I said, pleased that I was managing to keep a cool head in dire circumstances.

  “Mrs. Jocelyn! Miss? Are you all right?” Our guard came dashing up, the coachman on his heels, evidently having managed to halt the horses at last. Matty and I, still sitting on the ground, looked at each other then back to the carriage where only the two front wheels remained.

  “We seem to have had a miraculous escape,” I murmured.

  “’Twere another boulder-stone, missus, this one even bigger,” the guard said. I sensed the words on the tip of his tongue, the words he visibly forced back, no doubt saving them for Rhys. But I knew. This was no accident. The first rock had been intended to stop the carriage, making it an easy target. If we had not moved forward when we did, the second boulder-stone would have struck the lightweight landaulette exactly where Matty and I were sitting.

  Someone had tried to kill us.

  Miraculously, neither Matty nor I seemed to have any worse injuries than scrapes and bruises. The two men, clearly wary of further flying rocks, helped us walk about thirty feet down the road to a point where the side of the cliff dwindled into a gentle slope before they settled us on a patch of grass. There we sat, our heads in our hands, while the guard rode for help and the coachman hovered between his horses and us, continually apologizing, as if anything he could have done would have kept the rock from crashing into the carriage.

  Not an accident. Not an accident. The words repeated themselves over and over in my mind. Each time I attempted to convince myself those rocks rolled off the cliff by themselves, I failed. I had seen landslides twice before—England might not be as wild as Wales, but it was far from flat. Here there was no sign of smaller stones, uprooted vegetation, or clumps of dirt. Just two rocks large enough to be called boulders. Therefore I was unable to shake the conviction that the boulder-stone had not rolled itself over the cliff.

  And since Matty, who had just come among us, could not possibly be the target, that left me. Dear Lord, I had not thought it would come to this. Surely those who wanted to oust all English from Wales merely wished to drive me away, not scatter bloody pieces of me to fertilize Welsh soil.

  Perhaps not. A shiver swept through me. This was insanity.

  Gwendolyn. It had to be Gwendolyn. Could anyone looking at the current situation assure me she was sane?

  Who will rid me of this troublesome priest? Perhaps Gwendolyn, like Henry II, was the victim of her intractable attitude, and others had rushed to do what they thought she wanted . . .?

  Gruffydd? Whose devotion to Gwendolyn might be stronger than his loyalty to Rhys and Glyn Eirian?

  Eilys and Trystan? An odd pairing, but they might well wish me gone. Daffyd? I suspected he would wish me ill only if Eilys begged his help in getting rid of me. Or at Gwendolyn’s direct order. And in the shadows, as I’d noted before, lurked all the others who might wish to please Gwendolyn by getting rid of me.

  But not Rhys. I would not believe it. A thought soon reenforced by the sight of him galloping down the road, sliding off his lathered horse, falling to his knees, and pulling me into his arms. “Tell me you’re not hurt,” he demanded, his voice husky with emotion.

  “Just bruised and frightened,” I told him through a watery smile. “Truly, we are both all right, though it’s close to a miracle.”

  “Miss Dobbs, forgive me,” Rhys said. “Are you certain you are not hurt, nothing broken?”

  “Scrapes and bruises, Mr. Maddox. I have had far worse from falling off a horse. Though I admit a hard landing on the road was not what I expected when we left the village.”

  “My abject apologies, Miss Dobbs. I fear Wales is a wilder, more untamed country than England.”

  “We are not without dangers in England, Mr. Maddox,” Matty returned coolly. “Though I must admit they seem to be more frequent here.”

  To the pounding of multiple hoofbeats, snorting horses, and the jingle of harnesses, the Maddox coach pulled up. Matty and I w
ere soon settled inside, with Liliwen fussing over us, offering pillows and blankets as if she actually cared. Unkind, I chided myself. To the best of my knowledge, she was guilty of no more than childish pranks. I refused to believe her intentions were truly evil.

  When the coach did not move, I dragged my sadly weakened self to the window. The guard was talking with Rhys, gesturing toward the boulder that had ended up against the opposite cliff. I had never seen Rhys look so grim. Well, good. Now, at last, perhaps he would take the hostility surrounding me more seriously.

  Unless the men were trying to explain why his scheme hadn’t worked.

  A thousand times no! Rhys chose me. As I chose him. As his grandfather had chosen Lady Aurelia. For a boost of fresh blood. For our dowries, our intelligence. Possibly augmented by some modicum of attraction . . . I heaved a bitter sigh. What fairy tale was I spinning? When Rhys’s grandfather married Lady Aurelia, daughter of an earl, he allied the Maddoxes to a long line of England’s bluest blood. While Rhys . . .

  I had to face it. In spite of our wealth, some considered the Hawleys little more than jumped-up peasants. Despite all that lovely blue blood Mama had brought into the family.

  “Do things like this happen very often?” Matty asked, her usual confidence reduced to little more than a plaintive whisper.

  “Too frequently of late.” And short of turning tail and running back to Handsworth Wood, I found myself quite literally, as well as figuratively, between the proverbial rock and a hard place. I could continue to cultivate the villagers, attend both church and chapel, stifle rumors where I could, but I seemed to be losing a foot of ground for every inch I gained. There were too many of possibilities for disaster. Too many enemies.

  Yet surely the Welsh God and the English God were the same, a God of love, not vengeance. Or was the love and compassion of the New Testament only given lip service by the waterfall of glorious song in chapel, while some harbored thoughts of the old Welsh gods, gods of wrath, gods of destruction, gods with nothing but hatred for the English?