Elle smiled modestly. “The past two months have been quite an education for me,” she said. “I have had to learn quickly. I have had to change my way of thinking, with many things. And… and I think I like it.”
As Dustin and Christin continued to congratulate her and discuss other ideas worthy of making money for a castle and its inhabitants, Elle caught sight of Gruffydd. He was standing by himself as Christopher and Curtis were off speaking with other lords and their wives.
I’ve had to change my way of thinking.
That meant with her brother. All Curtis had asked her was to be civil to him. Perhaps they would never been the best of friends, but he was her only living sibling. As she gazed at him, he could feel herself easing when it came to Gruffydd. Had he ever wronged her? She honestly couldn’t think of a time he had.If she thought very hard, she remembered a time in her life, when she’d been very young, that he’d sung her a song or tried to help her catch a fish. Little things.
But things she remembered as being… pleasant.
But she’d grown older, and he went away. She went to live with her grandmother. And when she came back from her grandmother, Gruffydd was on a different path than she was. His was diplomacy; hers was fighting. They never agreed on anything, and her animosity toward him grew to the point where she’d given him a sleeping potion and thrown him in the vault.
And now, they were here. At a crossroads. Did she want to hate the man for the rest of her life because he chose to ally with the English and she didn’t agree? Now, she found herself married to an Englishman. Her life was changing for the better.
Perhaps she needed to rethink her attitude toward Gruffydd.
Perhaps it was time to put the hostilities aside.
“Will you excuse me a moment?” she said to Dustin and the others. “I see my brother. I should like to greet him now that Curt is not taking all of his attention.”
The ladies waved her off as they continued their conversation about revenue and running a castle. Elle stood up from the table, making her way around it and toward the hearth, where Gruffydd was nursing a cup of wine. It was warmer over here because the hearth was blazing like mad, spitting sparks and smoke into the hall. Most people were congregating away from it, in the center of the room, and Elle came up behind Gruffydd as the man swallowed a big gulp of wine and then burped.
“Is the wine to your liking?” she asked.
Startled that she’d snuck up on him, Gruffydd turned to her quickly. “It is very good,” he said, eyeing her warily. “Your husband told me that it was from Burgundy.”
Elle nodded. “Aye,” she said. “He had it brought from Lioncross. It seems that the family buys it by the shipload.”
“The English do indeed like their fine wines,” Gruffydd agreed, but he quickly moved to the meat of the situation between them. There was no use in avoiding it. “I know you were not told that I was invited, but I did not realize that until I arrived. Had I known, I might not have come. If my presence here is upsetting, know that I had nothing to do with it.”
Elle could see that he was gearing up for what he thought was going to be a fight. “I know,” she said evenly. “Be at ease, Gruffydd. I come in peace. I know this was my husband’s doing.”
That seemed to relieve him but also confuse him, as if he weren’t certain how to act now. “Right,” he said, a bit nervous. “Then try not to be too hard on him. He wanted all of his allies here. If that displeases you, then I am sorry.”
Elle could hear the same old Gruffydd in his tone, in his words. The man was a diplomat. He’d never been much of a fighter. That had fallen to her. She cocked her head as she gazed at him, perhaps through new eyes. Or perhaps she wastryingto see him through new eyes. Marriage to Curtis was causing her to see many things differently.
Even Gruffydd.
“I never did understand you,” she said. “It occurs to me that much of it stems from the fact that you were never a soldier, Gruffydd. Always the diplomat, the peacemaker. Our father taught you that, didn’t he?”
Gruffydd wasn’t sure he wanted to speak on this subject, the root of every wrong between them, but he answered. “Aye,” he said. “Elle… I have said this before and I will say it again. I am sorry that our father did not treat you well. I am sorry he ignored you. Do you remember when you were very small and I would come to you and tell you stories? And sometimes I would even take you with me when I went to be with Papa?”
Elle nodded. “I remember,” she said. Then she snorted ironically. “In fact, I was just thinking about that. I remember all of that, but one day, you simply stopped coming to me.”
“Do you know why?”
“Nay.”
Gruffydd grew serious. “Then mayhap it is time for you to know,” he said. “It wasn’t because I wanted to. It was because I needed to.”
“Neededto? Explain.”
He lowered his voice. “Because Papa had grown… senile,” he said. “There was some kind of madness in his mind. He was already an old man when I was born, and even older when you were born. There is eleven years between our births, Elle. You were, and always will be, my baby sister. But I stopped coming to you because Papa developed this madness and a real hatred toward our mother. Even the mere mention of you would cause him to rage. I stopped coming because he needed to be managed. And I needed to keep that rage away from you.”
Elle looked at him in shock. “But… no one ever said anything about madness,” she said. “I never heard anything at all.”
“I know,” Gruffydd said, somewhat agitated. “There were only a few of us who knew, and we tried to keep it very quiet. There was no knowing what would happen if it got around that Gwenwynwyn ap Owain suffered from madness. It would have destroyed his rule, his control over his own vassals, and it would have given Llywelyn a great opportunity to seize Powys. But I never had a chance to tell you, for you were sent away to our grandmother, and when you returned, you reflected all of the bitterness and love for Llywelyn that she had. Certainly, I would not have told you then.”
Elle was feeling a good deal of astonishment at the revelation. “Of course not,” she said. “It would have gone straight to Llywelyn.”
