Free Brandewyne, Rebecca by Swan Road

enough
problems to fret him as it was. Nodding his approval of her, Pendragon spoke no
more; and realizing the interview was at an end, Rhowenna left him quietly,
taking the small casket away with her to lock it away inside her own larger,
heavier jewel chest in her sleeping chamber, where it would be safe. Then,
after she had closed and secured the lid of her jewel chest and returned her
chatelaine to the fine, gold-mesh girdle about her waist, she tossed her light
wool cloak about her shoulders, and made her way down the winding path that led
to the beach where the Severn Sea merged with the Great Sea beyond.
    Spring
had come to Walas at last, the snow melting from all but the highest peaks
of the land, leaving the gentle hills and the rugged mountains behind her as
green as raw, uncut emeralds scattered against the lapis-lazuli backdrop of the
endless sky, where the sun shone as golden as the necklace Prince Cerdic had
given her and, wings spread wide, the gulls soared and cried their forlorn
song. The wind was a melodious sigh that stirred the flowers and the grass,
setting them a-ripple like the waves of a vast, strange, and wonderful sea that
somehow soothed her aching heart a little. She had hoped to be alone to reflect
on her father's devastating news and what it meant to her, but now as she drew
near to the strand, Rhowenna saw Gwydion there below, his coracle drawn up onto
the sand. Glancing up at her, he smiled and waved, causing her heart to turn
over in her breast as he motioned for her to join him.
    "I'm
going fishing," he called gaily. "Do you want to come along?"
    "Aye.
Aye, I'll come!" Torn between sudden gladness and despair at seeing him,
she gathered up her skirts to hurry on down to the beach. She was a trifle
breathless when she reached him, her cheeks flushed becomingly, a strand of
hair tumbled loose from her single long braid and billowing in the wind as she
gazed up at him from beneath sooty lashes half closed against the bright sun.
"It seems ages since I've been fishing."
    "My
own thought precisely. Here, help me shove off, then, and we'll get under
way."
    Together
with an ease born of skill and long practice, they pushed the coracle into the
water, then climbed into the light, round craft and settled themselves in its
bottom. As Gwydion rowed them forward across the waves, Rhowenna fell silent,
not knowing how to speak to him of her betrothal. She inhaled the cool, briny
wind and watched the sunlight play upon the water, and it occurred to her now,
for the first time, that although Gwydion had in the past told her that he
loved her, he had never done more than kiss her cheek and, once, tenderly, her
mouth. Yet, surely, she had not misread the expression in his eyes whenever he
looked at her. Surely, he would be as dismayed by the arrangement her father
had made with Prince Cerdic as she had been when she had learned of it.
    At
last, when they reached a spot where Gwydion thought that the fish would be
plentiful, he drew in the paddle and laid it aside, letting the coracle gently
drift as it would, while he and Rhowenna between them cast a small net.
    "You
are uncommonly quiet this day, Rhowenna," Gwydion observed finally after they had worked for some
time in companionable silence, although with only a modest catch yet to show
for their efforts, "and pensive. Something troubles you. What has upset
you?"
    For
a moment, Rhowenna's hands stilled on the net she and Gwydion had emptied into
the bottom of the craft. The fish they had caught thus far shimmered silvery in
the sunlight, gasping and twisting and flopping. The fish were helpless out of
their natural milieu— just as she would be in Mercia, Rhowenna thought, far
away from home, a stranger amid strangers in a foreign land.
    "Only
a short while ago," she responded at last to Gwydion's question, turning
away from the dying fish, "I discovered that my father... my father has
arranged a... betrothal for me, Gwydion— with Prince Cerdic of