long have I slept?” Averil wondered aloud.
“Why, all of last night, and into this morning,” the servant said. “The first mass has already been said, and they are breaking their fast in the prince’s great hall.”
“I must get up!” Averil exclaimed. “We are leaving today.”
“You should rest, lady,” the woman responded. “You are very pale.”
“I am always pale,” Averil replied, and she drank the potion down.
“Are you of the Fair Folk, then?” the woman asked.
“They say I have an ancestress who was one of them,” Averil told her.
The servant nodded. “Aye. Every few generations it is said the strain reappears in a son or a daughter, lady. Very well, I will help you.”
Averil asked for a basin of water, and while she waited for it to be brought to her she removed her good gown and tunic, packing them away with her chaplet and shoes, changing into a tan gown and brown tunic, and a sturdier pair of leather shoes for riding.
She bathed quickly, scrubbing her teeth with a rough cloth, and wove her long golden hair into a thick, single plait. She set a sheer cream-colored veil over her head, fastening it down with a chaplet braided with brown silk and gold threads.
“I will bring your pack and your cloak to the hall, lady,” the serving woman said.
Averil looked distressed. “I have no coin to reward you,” she said regretfully.
“Your man did that last night, lady. He was generous,” the serving woman said, smiling. “Go along, now. When you need them, your possessions will be brought to you.”
“Thank you,” Averil replied, and she hurried off to the hall to find her father and the others. The others. Her husband. She was a married woman now. And he had been kind last night. She wondered if he would continue to be kind.
Her father found her first. “Hurry and eat, daughter,” he said. “We want to be off Anglesey and onto the mainland before midday. Where is your husband?”
“I don’t know,” Averil said. “He brought me to the solar and left me last night.”
Averil sat down at one of the tables below the high board. A servant slapped a hollowed-out trencher before her, and filled it with oat stirabout. Another servant gave her a piece of buttered bread, and set a cup before her.
“Wine, ale, or cider?” he said.
“Wine,” Averil told him. The hair of the dog to calm her belly, and her nerves. She ate slowly. Her father had disappeared again, probably seeking the others.
“You slept well?” Rhys FitzHugh had seated himself by her side. “Wine,” he told the attendant serving man.
“Yes, my lord, thank you,” Averil replied.
“Good! When you have finished your meal we will ride.”
“Did you have a good night, my lord?” Averil asked him.
He grinned. “Roger and I got very drunk,” he began. “What happened after that I do not know, but I woke up on a hillock in a meadow outside the castle.”
Averil reached out and drew a piece of grass from his dark brown hair. “I think, my lord, that my bed was more comfortable.”
“As would mine have been if you were in it,” he said softly.
“You promised!” she cried, flushing.
“And I will keep that promise, Averil,” he assured her. “I have merely remarked that a man sleeps better with a woman by his side.”
“I have never even kissed a man,” she told him.
“Good!” he told her. “Then mine shall be the only lips you ever know.”
“Do you want to kiss me?” she demanded to know. “You but touched my forehead with your lips after we had been wed yesterday.”
“If you want to be kissed, Averil, I will kiss you,” he said.
“If I must ask you then it is not worth it,” she told him quickly. “I am finished with my meal.” She stood up. “We had best be going, my lord.”
“You will ride by my side today, lady, so we may learn to know one another,” he told her. “Come along now.” And he took her hand in his, leading her off and out of the hall to where their party awaited them.
Chapter 4
It seemed that they rode for days although their return was actually no longer than their journey to Aberffraw had been. Each night they made camp, and Averil’s bedding was set next to her husband’s. Yet not once did he touch her, or even kiss her. And each day they rode side by side learning bit by bit about each other. Rhys spoke of his father with admiration, and how he loved Everleigh. He told Averil of how when he was eighteen his father had, to everyone’s surprise, fallen in love with the daughter of a distant relation who had been orphaned and placed in his custody. They had wed, and nine months later Mary had been born. Her mother, however, a delicate creature, had not survived the childbirth.
“Was your stepmother good to you?” Averil asked him, curious.
“Always,” Rhys answered. “When Rosellen was first brought to Everleigh it was thought that my father would match her with me, for we were close in age. She was sixteen. But Da loved her from the first sight he had of her, and she him. Their marriage was the right thing. And because she loved my father she was good to me even when she was carrying her own child. That child might have been a son and heir for my father. Still, Rosellen treated me with great kindness.”
“Is that why you love Mary so much?” Averil said.
“Aye,” he agreed, “but you will come to love Mary, too, for she is sweet by nature,” Rhys responded.
“My sister Junia is sweet, but Maia is more determined than even I am. I suppose it comes from the pride she has in being our father’s legitimate daughter although no one in our house has ever made a distinction between us. We are simply the Dragon Lord’s daughters,” Averil explained.
“And your mothers all get on with one another?” he queried her.
“My mother, Gorawen, and the lady Argel, are great friends. Da’s second concubine, Ysbail, is a good woman, but inclined to be a bit prickly. She is very concerned that her daughter Junia not be slighted. But of course, Junia never is.”
“You love your sisters,” he remarked.
“Aye, and our little brother Brynn,” Averil told him. “He is almost nine. He looks so much like Da that we sometimes have to laugh when we see them together. He is very proud that he descends from King Arthur. He knows every bit of our family’s history, and will tell you all about it whether you will or no.”
“You will miss your family,” he said quietly. It was a statement more than
