Free Daughter of Time: A Time Travel Romance by Sarah Woodbury

that she seeks to betray you? Do you believe she’s
lying?”
    “ No,” I said. “No, I
don’t. But that doesn’t make what she says true either. Yet if I’m
not mistaken, she didn’t believe I was the Prince of Wales when she
awoke last night. She so thoroughly didn’t believe me that she
attacked me with a knife.”
    “ My lord!” Goronwy said.
“You didn’t tell me that!”
    “ No, I didn’t,” I said,
suitably chastened. “In truth, she knew so little of its use that I
was never in danger. What most concerned me was her
fear—particularly her fear of me.”
    “ She rightfully feared
retribution for her audacity,” Goronwy said. “Many a lord who would
have behaved differently, punished her certainly, and wouldn’t have
kept her with him after that.”
    I smiled. “But I am not a
typical lord now, am I?”
    Goronwy nodded. “Might I
say, my lord, if you excuse my impertinence, that you can be
confident to a fault.”
    “ Ha!” I said. “When have I
ever rebuked you for impertinence? I tried once, as I recall, when
you defeated me at wrestling. Nothing ever came of it.”
    Goronwy smiled and I was
glad to see it. He worried too much these days and it had put lines
between his eyes. “There’s much about her that we don’t yet know,”
he said. “I’m most interested in the mystery of her chariot, its
manner of propulsion and material.”
    “ She has more to tell us,”
I said. “Not that we’re going to believe it either.”
    Goronwy snorted a laugh.
Then he checked his saddle bags and mounted his horse. I followed
suit, all the while contemplating the woman in question. Throughout
my conversation with Goronwy, she’d knelt on her cloak, clapping as
Anna ran around the clearing. The little girl would run to one tree
and then another, and then back to her mother, while Marged
counted, seeing how fast the little girl could leave and
return.
    My men had glanced at them
often, every one with an amused expression on his faces. Marged was
obviously genuine, obviously loved her daughter—but I wasn’t sure
about anything else about her. How could I be? She’d hardly sat on
a horse before today, given the unprofessional nature of her seat
and the stiffness in her walk when she dismounted. How had she come
from Radnor? It was a six day ride in full summer for a woman, not
to mention in the dead of winter with snow in the mountains and a
small child to care for.
    Marged gathered Anna to
her and walked back to where her horse was tethered. It was the
walk that got me thinking. Marged walked unlike any woman I’d ever
known. I pictured her as I’d seen her striding across the bailey at
Castell Criccieth. She moved along as if she were a man wearing
breeches (which admittedly she was wearing when I found her) and not used to the
hindrance of a dress around her ankles. That walk of hers was a
signpost that told me there was more to Marged’s differences than
merely a matter of dress or of the strange vehicle in which she
came to me.
    It was also in the way she
spoke, not only to me but to everyone. On one hand, she had yet to
accord me my title, ‘my lord,’ in Welsh, French, or even this
‘American’ that Goronwy informed me was her native tongue. On the
other hand, she tossed around ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to anyone
and everyone in a manner which indicated she was supremely
confident in her own station, unconcerned with the station of
others, or viewed every person, whether low or high, as her
equal. Now that was a daunting
thought.
    She reminded me a bit, in
fact, of my mother—not so much in later life when she was
embittered by years of imprisonment and loss—but when I was a small
child and it was only my brother, Owain, and me in her house. She
was loving, protective, and without fear. She would stand up to
anyone when we, her cubs, were threatened, even my father. When I
was young, I do believe she loved me.
    As I gathered the reins
and led my men out of the clearing, I