Chapter Four

      As the light of early morning struggled through the low clouds, Griffydd groggily trudged through the spruce trees toward the stream near his quarters. Clad in breeches, plain tunic and boots, his cloak slung over his shoulder, he could hear the water babbling like the sly laughter of sprites making sport of him.

      He frowned darkly. He had lain awake for a long time last night deciding how best to proceed with the negotiations, even as he had tried not to contemplate Seona. Or the kiss they had shared. Or the softness in her eyes as she had looked at him, and the way that tender, yearning expression had seemed to touch his soul.

      Diarmad MacMurdoch was a despicable old villain, setting his daughter as a trap and, Griffydd knew, only a fool would continue to be a victim of her allure.

      He paused a moment and drew in a breath of the piney air. The clouds looked to be moving off and the air was bracingly cool for spring. In the near distance, the stream gurgled on.

      He sighed deeply and rotated his aching neck. Almost groaning aloud, he hoped a wash in the cold water would help clear his befuddled head.

      He came out of the trees and immediately halted at the sight that met his eyes.

      There, beside the stream a short distance away, a shaft of sunlight illuminated Diarmad’s daughter as she cradled an infant in her arms.

      In a plain gown as green as the trees around him, Seona regarded the babe she held with downcast eyes. Her thick, magnificent hair was drawn away from her face to fall in two twisted coils down her back, glowing in the early morning sunlight like a halo. He had never seen anything quite so breathtaking, except perhaps his first glimpse of Seona MacMurdoch’s half eager, half questioning eyes.

      She looked like a Madonna with child, and the sight brought such a longing to Griffydd that it seemed a lump the size of the Stone of Scone had suddenly lodged in his throat.

      It took him another moment to realize she and the baby were not alone. Another young woman squatted a short distance away, washing a garment in the fast-moving and no doubt chilly stream. She was, he saw at once, what other men would call beautiful, with a fine profile and long slender neck emphasized by her dark hair braided about her head. As she worked briskly, it was evident her body was shapely, too.

      A little boy played beside her with a stick in the water, and the woman paused to admonish him, a petulant frown on her face. Beautiful, perhaps, but it was the patient smile on Seona’s visage as she called the lad to her side that appealed to him more.

      Suddenly the toddler slipped on the rocky bank and fell into the stream. The other woman emitted a shriek as the swift current caught his body, carrying him away from her.

      Seona, still holding the infant, scrambled to her feet while Griffydd threw off his cloak and charged into the rushing water. When the little boy’s head disappeared beneath the surface, the other woman screamed hysterically.

      Concentrating on the child, Griffydd judged where the current would send its victim and hurried there, scanning the cold, rushing water as he had been taught to do when catching fish if he were forced to fend for himself.

      There!

      The child’s head popped up, and at once Griffydd reached down and scooped the boy out of the frigid stream. The boy choked and sputtered as he clung to Griffydd.

      “I’ve got you. You’re safe,” Griffydd muttered in Welsh, too shocked himself by the sudden and unexpected need to rush to the rescue to remember that the little fellow wouldn’t understand a word he said. He walked carefully toward the bank, lest there be more loose stones underfoot.

      The boy stared up at Griffydd with wide, terrified eyes, his lips blue as his breathing returned to normal. Griffydd rubbed the child’s arms with his free hand, trying to warm him as best he could.

      The other young woman pushed past Seona and ran to them, grabbing the boy from Griffydd’s grasp as a jumble of grateful Gaelic tumbled from her lips.

      Trying not to remember the last time he had spoken to Seona, Griffydd gathered up his cloak as she hurried closer.

      He coughed and discovered he had no stone in his throat, after all. “Tell her to wrap the child in this.”

      Smiling with obvious relief, Seona nodded and spoke to the woman, who took the cloak and did as he ordered.

      “Thank you!” Seona said fervently, turning back to him as she gently rocked the whimpering infant in her arms.

      “It was nothing.”

      The boy stopped shivering and stuck a finger in his quivering mouth before regarding his savior pensively, one damp arm tight about the woman’s neck.

      “Fionn and his mother don’t think so,” Seona observed, nodding at them. She spoke a few rapid words of Gaelic, and Griffydd recognized his name. Obviously, introductions were being made.

      “These are both her children?” Griffydd inquired.

      “Yes. She is Lisid, and they are hers.”

      Lisid continued to smile at him, brushing a stray lock of dark hair from her pretty face with a gesture that was surprisingly coy, given that her child had almost drowned only moments ago.

      “This is Fionn,” Seona said, nodding at the boy. She smiled down at the infant she held. “And this little angel is his sister, Beitiris.”

      Seona glanced up at Griffydd, then away, as a lovely blush crept over her smooth cheeks, like the pink that tinted the clouds he used to watch out the window of his bedchamber when he would waken with the dawn.

      He did not know what to make of her bashful demeanor here beside the stream. Changeling, indeed, to be so seemingly modest one moment, a spirited maiden the next and a brazen temptress after that, he thought with a twinge of bitterness.

      “I will leave you to your ablutions,” he said abruptly, turning to go.

      “No, please, wait a moment!” Seona cried when he had gone a few paces.

      He stopped and glanced over his shoulder. He was not the only one taken aback by her sudden outcry, for Lisid’s expression was one of surprise, too.

      “I…I wish to speak with you, Sir Griffydd,” Seona stammered. Then she ran her gaze over him and frowned. “Unless you are too cold and wet. Perhaps later…”

      His lips twitched in what Seona thought was supposed to be a smile. “I have been trained to endure the cold, and a Welshman doesn’t mind the wet. If you have something you wish to say to me, I would rather hear it now—when I have a witness.”

      Blushing at his implication, Seona asked Lisid to excuse her. With a somewhat reluctant look, Lisid set Fionn down on the ground, then took Beitiris, leaving Seona free to follow after Griffydd.

      As he waited for her, his visage impassive, standing as motionless as one of the rocks of the hills around her, clad only in an unlaced, short-sleeved tunic belted over breeches yet apparently oblivious to the chill of the morning, Seona hugged herself for warmth, and comfort, too. This was not going to be easy, despite his rescue of Fionn.

      “What is it?” he asked when she reached him, as if she were a servant offering something for which he had no need.

      She swiftly checked to see that Lisid was in sight yet out of hearing. “I have to speak to you of what happened last night.”

      Still his expression did not alter. “What of it?”

      “Were you intending to tell my father?”

      Griffydd raised one eyebrow quizzically.

      “Please don’t.”