Dryden's Bride by Margo Maguire Read Free Book Online Page A

heart or his soul, Hugh could not say. He only knew that he was no longer a whole man, and had not been for a long time.
    He doubted he ever would be again.
    Besides, he thought as he heard the door to his chamber slam shut, he was battle-weary. Time enough on the morrow to consider such things as marriage and estates.
    Siân cuddled the precious infant to her breast as she paced the length of the castle parapet. She had trulyplanned to find something more suitable to wear, but when she’d come upon the infant’s grieving young mother in the courtyard, she’d had no choice but to offer help.
    Her heart had reached out to the woman, who was newly widowed and overwhelmed by the infant in her arms and the two older children who held on to her skirts, weeping. Siân could also see that she was with child.
    The babe was irritable, cutting teeth, the mother told Siân dully, her voice empty of all emotion. Siân had expected to hear the pain of loss, but the woman was numb with grief, exhausted by her pregnancy. Without thinking, Siân had offered to take the babe, to walk her and care for her until the mother felt more capable.
    As she paced the high parapet, Siân hummed absently to the child, a repetitive, rhythmical, comforting lullaby. If the babe stirred, Siân bounced her gently, lulling her back to sleep. She wrapped the blanket more securely around the child’s head, protecting her from the brisk wind up high on the parapet. She paced aimlessly, relishing the feel of the babe in her arms, the smell of her perfect skin, the whisper of downy hair on her cheek.
    The sky was laden with thick, low-hanging clouds, so the full moon was visible only intermittently as it appeared from behind the clouds. A guard nodded to her as she strolled by, and Siân was struck by the thought that these Saxons were just like her own people. Striving to make their way in the world. Honoring their parents and loving their children. Eating, drinking, sleeping, laughing.
    Fighting to keep what was their own.
    Isn’t that what they’d done in Pwll? Lived, and laughed, and fought against the Saxon Earl of Wrexton, who was determined to take what was theirs?
    Siân shuddered, thinking of her two young companions who, many years ago, had been victims of Wrexton’s terrible cruelty. Beyond the loss of her childhood friends, the most painful part of the memory was knowing that the entire, horrible episode had been no more than a game to Wrexton, a simple exercise in “cat and mouse.”
    The contemptuous bastard .
    Siân swallowed back the bitter tears that never failed to come when she thought of the two youthful friends, gap-toothed Idwal and freckled Dafydd. Never in her life, if she lived for a century or more, would she forget her pain, or her guilt in the deaths of those two young boys. For she had been the one Wrexton was after, not two innocent Welsh boys. She, Siân Tudor…the daughter of the rebel.
    The babe in Siân’s arms began to cry again, and she was diverted from further thoughts of the two boys as she rocked the child and increased the volume of her song. It was a simple little Welsh song, a lullaby, but it seemed to soothe the child nearly as much as it soothed Siân’s own soul.
    “Huna blentyn yn fy mynwes ,
    Clyd a chynnes ydyw hon…
    Sleep my baby, at my breast,
    ’Tis a mother’s arms round you…”
    If only she were the little one’s mother, Siân thought wistfully, motherhood being one of many simple pleasuresshe was to be denied. Owen had decided that marriage was beyond her. As her closest male relative, Owen would not allow Siân to marry any of the young men of Pwll, all of whom were below the high and mighty—but impoverished—Tudors. Which was just as well, as Siân would never again put another Welsh-man at risk of Saxon vengeance.
    There certainly weren’t any Saxon noblemen of Owen’s acquaintance who would offer for her, even if she would deign to have one. She was too Welsh, too unsophisticated, and