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

glanced toward the sea,
eyeing the clouds that moved closer with every breath. At noon when
we’d left Criccieth, they were still distant. I’d allowed only this
one short rest at mid-afternoon because the clouds were beginning
to crowd the space between the sea and the sky and I didn’t think
we had much longer before the rain hit.
    “ Reminds me of when your
Uncle died,” Geraint said, tipping his head to the western
sky.
    Dark clouds had gathered
in the east that day, which we’d taken as a sign of trouble to
come. Trouble always came from the east, though the weather almost
never did. The storm had broken, with cacophony of hail and
crashing rain, unusual for Wales at any time of year, where the wet
was generally steady and unrelenting, but quiet.
    “ Uncle Dafydd liked to
describe England as a looming storm, biding its time before it
struck, downing us without warning with lightening and thunder,” I
said. Twenty years later, the menace was less evident, yet the only
difference was that I was older, and that the men of Wales had
rallied around my masthead, more prepared to weather any storm
England could inflict upon us.
    “ But we should only have
snow today, praise God.” Geraint’s body swayed with the easy walk
of the horse. “We need to reach the manor before the sun
sets.”
    Watching him clutch his
cloak around himself, I had a pang of regret that I’d brought him
on this journey. I valued his advice and selfishly wanted him with
me, but if I needed extra cushions on the road, he needed a bed.
God willing, we wouldn’t spend any night on the open road. The
mountains between us and Brecon formed a barrier that was only
thirty miles across—forty miles if we took the old Roman road from
Llanio—but in a blizzard, forty miles could be four hundred for all
the difference it would make.
    I looked back to find
Marged. She’d tucked Anna inside her own cloak, so only the little
girl’s head showed from between two of the ties. Marged noticed me
watching and grinned. That was another difference between her and
any other woman . . . how many women would have come on this
journey without complaint, and then had the stamina to grin at
me?
    Of all the women who’d
shared my bed in recent years, I’d always known, even through the
blindness of lust, that they were with me because I was the Prince of Wales. Either they or
their fathers put them in my path because they wanted the prestige
it could give them. But as always, none had born me a child, and
eventually I’d urged each of them to marry someone else.
    Goronwy noted my attention
and trotted up beside me. “We’re approaching Coedwig
Gap ,” he said. “It’s the perfect place for an
ambush if Marged’s memory is correct, whoever this Owain Glendower
might be.”
    Hywel reined in close on
the other side. “Should we prepare, my lord?”
    “ Yes,” I said. “At worst,
the exercise will wake everybody up. It’s easy to become complacent
when the challenges have become fewer or farther
between.”
    Hywel nodded. “If this is
a trap, I have no intention of going in unprepared.” Putting his
weight on his stirrups, he stood in them and raised his sword to
gain the attention of the men.
    “ Find someone to take
charge of Marged, Goronwy,” I said, keeping my voice low underneath
Hywel’s call. “I need you if there’s to be a fight.”
    “ Yes, my lord.”
    We rode on, in better
formation and more watchful. Another quarter of a mile and we
crested a rise that gave us a view of the land around us, though
not the road ahead as it bent and was obscured by trees. Goronwy checked his horse, looking southeast. I followed his gaze,
only to grimace at the sight: smoke rose towards the sky in
billowing clouds. It was too much for daily activity in any
village, not to mention the small one that crouched in the valley
below, separated from us by expansive fields and stands of
trees.
    Hywel had seen it too. “Is that the
trap?”
    “Hard to know