A Warrior's Passion

“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.”

She saw a flash of emotion in his gray eyes, but what it was exactly, she could not be sure.

“Then you continue to assert that you stayed of your own accord?” he asked evenly. “Perhaps I should compliment you on your boldness—but I would rather not.” He looked past her to Lisid. “What a pity she is there. If she were not, you could attempt to seduce me again.”

Flushing even more—although whether with shame or at the notion of being in his arms again, she didn’t want to consider—Seona forced herself not to say anything in hasty anger. “Please, Sir Griffydd—”

“Griffydd. After that kiss, I think we have no need of titles.”

Although his words made her burn with shame, she wished he would shout at her or at least appear angry instead of just standing there as calmly as if they were discussing the price of wool.

She drew herself up, deciding she would not demean herself further by seeming to beg. “I would appreciate it if you did not speak of last night to my father. Otherwise, I will rue it greatly.”

Griffydd DeLanyea’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

“It was by his order that you escorted me to my quarters,” he reminded her.

“It was most certainly not by his order that I voiced my unwillingness to be used.”

“Are you telling me that he will punish you for that?” he charged, his voice low, yet firm and commanding. The voice of a lord. A king.

“For trying to warn you, of course.”

“How?”

“Does it matter?”

He. eyed her speculatively, “No doubt if I reveal my own lack of proper behavior, he will be mollified. Indeed, he should be quite pleased to know his plan was so effective.”

“No!” she cried sharply, angry tears welling in her eyes.

Again his expression altered ever so slightly and she thought she saw a glimmer of genuine concern on his handsome face. “I would not allow him to hurt you.”

She gazed at him with undisguised surprise. “You would not allow him?”

“No, I would not,” he said with such conviction she could believe that a stranger she barely knew would protect her from her father’s wrath.

Before she could respond, they heard a commotion in the trees near them along the path leading from the fortress to the stream.

“DeLanyea!”

Her father came charging out of the pine trees like a hunted boar, his men trailing behind him, and a grin split his broad face as his shrewd gaze darted between an apparently impassive Griffydd DeLanyea and a flushed Seona.

“Well met!” he shouted happily, addressing the Welshman.

“When you were not in your quarters, I thought you might be here,” he said as he came to a halt. “And Seona, too.”

He glanced somewhat sternly at Lisid and her children, as if wondering what the devil they were doing there.

Naoghas, Lisid’s husband, seemed far from pleased to note their presence, too.

Even at this distance, Seona could see Lisid’s petulant frown as she tossed her lovely head before hurrying away, leading a reluctant Fionn by the hand.

“I was helping Lisid with her children,” Seona explained, “and Sir Griffydd came to wash.

“It was a good thing,” she went on, looking at Naoghas as much as her father, “for Fionn fell in the stream and might have drowned if Sir Griffydd had not rescued him.”

“Is this so?” Diarmad cried. “Then it is well you were here. You have my thanks, DeLanyea.”

“And mine,” Naoghas said, albeit with less than good grace. “I am Lisid’s husband,” he added with a slightly belligerent tone, for Naoghas was a fiercely jealous man.

Seona wondered what Sir Griffydd made of him. Unfortunately, she could get no clue at all to that, or anything else the man might be thinking as he bowed his head in greeting.

“Our guest still has not yet had a chance to perform his ablutions,” Seona said, anxious to get away from her slyly grinning father and his men, as well as the confusing, infuriating, compelling Griffydd DeLanyea.

“Oh?” Diarmad responded, as if it were inconceivable that a man would want to wash.

“Perhaps we should leave him to do so in peace.”

“I would appreciate that,” the Welshman said evenly.

“I was thinking we should hunt this morning, while the weather is so fine,” her father remarked. “Plenty of time to talk of trade later.”

“If you wish,” DeLanyea replied.