The Fallen Princess by Sarah Woodbury Read Free Book Online Page B

as that Gwen hadn’t sought her out when she’d
visited. At the time, Gwen’s life had revolved around Hywel. Gwen’s
only other excuse was that Tegwen had married Bran at fifteen, and
Gwen had left Gwynedd with her father shortly thereafter, on the
heels of King Owain assuming the throne after the war in
Ceredigion.
    “Mari, when did you last see her?”
    Mari rubbed at her forehead with her fingers
as if she had a headache. Gwen felt one coming on too. “Perhaps … a
few weeks before she disappeared? She confided in me that she
thought she might be pregnant again.”
    “Did she seem happy?” Gwen said.
    Mari looked at Gwen through narrowed eyes.
“Yes, of course. Why are you asking me this?”
    “Mari, Tegwen’s skull was fractured. We
suspect—Hywel, Gareth, and I—that someone hit her very hard and
killed her. Do you have any idea who could have done such a thing?
Or why?”
    Mari rubbed at the back of her neck and
looked down at the table.
    “What is it? What don’t you want to tell
me?” Gwen said.
    Mari let out a sigh. “When I last saw
Tegwen, she told me that she’d learned a terrible secret about her
husband. It was tearing her apart.”
    “What was the secret?” Gwen said.
    Mari shook her head. “I tried to get it out
of her, but she wouldn’t tell me. She didn’t want to cast
aspersions on Bran’s character.”
    Gwen frowned. “If I thought about her at
all, I assumed her marriage was unhappy since she’d run away.
You’re saying it wasn’t?”
    “The truth is, when we were girls, Tegwen
fell in and out of love every week depending upon which man had
talked to her most recently.” Mari shrugged. “I suppose I was like
that at fifteen too, but Tegwen never learned constancy. When she
told me she no longer loved her husband, I didn’t think anything of
it because she’d said as much to me at least once a year and then
changed her mind if he bought her a new dress. Still, she seemed
different, more somber this time.”
    “Is that why you believed, as we all did,
that she ran off with a Dane?” Gwen said.
    “Not exactly,” Mari said. “I thought she’d
run away with the man she’d loved before she married Bran.”
    That coincided with her father’s comment,
but Gwen still felt a little overwhelmed by what Mari was telling
her. She really hadn’t known Tegwen. “Tegwen loved someone before
Bran? I mean, more than just a passing fancy?”
    “Oh yes,” Mari said. “So much so that she
pleaded to King Owain—though he wasn’t king at that time—for him or
his father to intervene and prevent the marriage, but neither saw a
reason to go against the wishes of her family. I don’t know if
anyone else other than a few of her close friends knew about this
other man. I never met him or even knew his name, but if he was a
Dane and not well-born, it would have been an impossible match for
a princess.”
    “It may come out now that he never existed,”
Gwen said.
    “Oh, he was real,” Mari said. “I know that
for certain.”
    “How?” Gwen said.
    “She was all mysterious smiles and knowing
looks whenever anyone talked about a man whom they were interested
in. She referred to him only as ‘B’, and the letter didn’t stand
for Bran.”
    “I don’t see why they didn’t elope in the
first place,” Gwen said. “In seven years, their marriage could have
been as legal as any other.”
    “She was a princess,” Mari said.
    Gwen looked at her friend out of the corner
of her eye. “Was she unfaithful to Bran after the wedding?”
    Mari bit her lip. “I think so, but not right
away. You met him, didn’t you?”
    “I suppose.” Gwen shrugged, casting her mind
back to that long-ago time. “I must have seen him when he came to
Aber or Aberffraw.”
    Mari raised her eyebrows. “You must not have
been paying attention. Bran was incredibly handsome. All the girls
favored him. Tegwen ended up admiring him too. And he treated her
very well initially.”
    “So Bran did love her