“I am not always clumsy,” she informed him, her brown eyes warm with humor.
Keller regarded her a moment. In truth, he couldn’t seem to stop staring at her. “Beth ydy’ch enw chi?”
Her delicately arched eyebrows lifted with surprise. “Your Welsh is perfect,” she commented. “To answer your question, I am the Lady Chrystobel d’Einen of Nether Castle. May I know your name also, my lord?”
Keller stared at her, the surprise of her identity not lost on him. His first reaction was one of resistance followed just as quickly by one of great interest. The two responses tumbled over in his mind, crashing into one another until all he felt was confusion. But the lady was expecting an answer and he struggled to give her one that didn’t sound too extreme one way or the other.
“I am Sir Keller de Poyer,” he replied after a moment.
He was positive she would know the name, the stranger who was to become her husband, and was somewhat surprised when she did not react. She continued to gaze at him with a politely friendly look on her face.
“How long will you be part of the English contingent posted at Nether Castle?” she asked.
He was puzzled by her response and he was also strangely offended. He cocked his head. “Does my name not mean anything to you?”
The polite smile was fading. “No, my lord, it does not. Should it?”
He scratched beneath his visor. “Aye, it probably should. It is the name of your husband.”
That bit of information received a reaction. Her smile faded completely and her eyes widened. “You… you are my husband?”
He nodded. “Now tell me what you were really doing out here. Were you running away?”
She appeared struck. “Why would I run?”
“I should think that would be fairly obvious.” When she continued to look deeply confused, he elaborated. “From me. From our marriage.”
She shook her head emphatically. “No, my lord. It is as I told you. I was chasing a wounded rabbit and slipped. There is a trail upslope,” she pointed up the mountainside, “that leads from the postern gate of Nether.”
He glanced up the side of the mountain, seeing a small sliver of black as it cut through the green of the slope. His gaze returned to the petite, beautiful woman in front of him. If he could admit one thing to himself at that moment it would be that he was glad she was lovely. It made this honor forced upon him a little easier to bear. He realized he was a little less reluctant than he was just moments earlier. Additionally, he was glad that she had not been attempting to run away. Even if he had been…well, almost.
“Very well,” his gaze moved up and down her muddy body. From what he could see, it was as exquisite as the rest of her. “Let us return you to the castle and get you into some dry clothing before you catch chill. It would not do for the bride to be ill on the event of her wedding.”
Still reeling from the fact that her mystery savior was, in fact, her betrothed, Chrystobel obediently began to move down the muddy path, heading towards the distant road. Keller carefully turned his horse around and began to lead the beast after her.
He watched her lowered head, her slumped shoulders, thinking that perhaps he had been too harsh in accusing her of running away. But it had been the first thing that had popped into his mind and he knew, from past experience, that his manner with women had never been particularly smooth. He was apt to say the wrong thing more than the right. He did not want to start this marriage out on the wrong note.
“My lady,” he said, watching her pause and turn around. He walked up to her, gazing down into her chapped face. “I apologize if I offended you by asking if you were running away. I did not mean to insult your honor.”
She cocked her head slightly, wiping the rain from her brow. “You did not. But I was truthful with you; I was not running.”
“I believe you.”
“I do, however, have a question for you, my lord.”
“What is it?”
“What were you doing here? The castle entrance is not this direction.”
He just looked at her. There was a faint glimmer in the dark eyes as he pondered his reply. “I was chasing a wounded rabbit.”
“For supper?”
“Hopefully you will provide something more substantial than that.”
Her smile was back. She had a very easy, and very lovely, smile. “Indeed I will, my lord.”
It was clear she did not believe his evasive answer but she gave him the courtesy of not questioning him further. It made Keller feel worse about dodging her query. She had been truthful where he had not. To be honest, he wasn’t sure why he had taken the muddy path along the mountainside. It seemed like a good idea at the time to help clear his head to prepare for the inevitable. But now he felt guilty about it.
His guilt, however, did nothing to either ease or reinforce the confusion he felt as he followed Chrystobel’s gently swaying hips all the way back to Nether Pass.
Chapter Three
He is a very big man.
That was Chrystobel’s first thought when she saw de Poyer, without his helm and most of his armor, in the great hall for supper. He had come with a cluster of English knights, haughty men with a haughty manner and big weapons. They were all big and sturdy, war machines for William Marshal’s conquest of Wales. She wasn’t sure she liked them in the halls of Nether yet she had little choice. She had instructed the servants to begin serving food as soon as the knights entered the hall and they did so with flighty efficiency.
De Poyer didn’t sit right away even though his men did. As Chrystobel watched from an alcove, de Poyer moved to the hearth to inspect it, pacing the room slowly as his gaze moved over every facet of the hall as if biting it off, chewing it, and digesting it. He had a very intense gaze. His perusal of his new acquisition gave Chrystobel a chance to inspect him. As she had initially noticed, he was a large man with a big, muscular body. He had enormously wide shoulders and arms. He wasn’t obviously handsome but he had rugged, strong features that she found intriguing. He had dark, dusky eyes and closed-cropped dark hair with flecks of gray near the temples. She wondered how old he was. He wasn’t young but he wasn’t particularly old. It seemed to her that he was a man who had seen much in life because his manner seemed oddly weary.
A servant swept past her through the alcove, coming from the small exterior door that led off towards the kitchens, and nearly dropped a platter of boiled apples as she went. The woman panicked because she thought Gryffyn, who wasn’t even in the hall yet, might have heard the commotion. He did not tolerate clumsiness. Chrystobel caught the platter before it could crash and took it out into the hall herself. No use in hiding herself any longer.