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None of these explanations would do.

“Different,” she finished in his stead.

“I suppose so,” he agreed, grateful she had offered him an easy way out. “Not that it’s any problem. I mean, we all look different. A snail looks nothing like a fish, with reason, since they don’t come from the same place.”

Cadell gritted his teeth. What was he doing? Sounding like an idiot again, that was what, like the impressionable youth he had once been. Like the other night of the banquet. What was it that with her, the person whose opinion mattered the most to him, he was incapable of being the charming, insouciant rogue he was with others? That man never failed to please. And yet here he was, comparing her to a fish. Or a snail.

Jesus.

But to his relief, Johanna smiled. She was not offended, rather amused by his ridiculous comment.

“I think I know what you mean. And I am the snail to your fish, I suppose. Or the other way around. You do look nothing like me. And nothing like Rhun either, though he was Welsh as well. But after all,” she added with what could almost pass for a wink, “no two fish look the same, do they?”

He was delighted to hear a laugh escape her lips. No one was more beautiful than Johanna when she laughed. Or when she cried. Or when she talked. Hell, the truth was, no one was more beautiful than Johanna.

Realization hit. He had been obsessed with her before, during those ten long years, because he had seen her. He was now in love, because he’d gotten to know her and see that she was as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside.

In love…

That revelation only made it more imperative that he win her round. It had been hard being without the woman who occupied his thoughts. It would be impossible to be without the one who made his heart beat in the right rhythm.

“Thank you for making me laugh with your talk of fish and snails,” she said, her eyes shining with mirth. “It was sorely needed. Life has been difficult of late.”

“Yes, I can imagine.”

When Cadell nodded to himself, Johanna understood that he was referring to Rhun’s death. It was true that the blow had been severe, and her reception at Bryn Glas had not helped matters. But her life before that had not been easy, far from it. The last few years, spent almost alone, had robbed her of most of her joy and the opportunities to smile had been few and far between and she was grateful to Cadell for this moment of levity.

“Do you know how Rhun died?” he asked, proving he was attributing her lack of happiness to her husband’s death.

“Not exactly.” But it had been violent, that much she could guess. “A man came to tell me he had been killed during an ambush destined to kill a small retinue of English soldiers, not too far from here.”

But far from her, who was waiting in England, oblivious to everything.

She had only been told about her loss weeks after the event. Not knowing what her husband’s final moments had been, or where he was buried, weighed heavily on her mind. She had not seen his body, had not been able to say goodbye as she should. The last time she had watched him ride away, she had not suspected it would be the last time she would ever see him, which only added to her misery. With no tomb or resting place where she could go to pay her respects, it was hard to imagine that Rhun was really dead, and not on one of the numerous campaigns that had kept him away from her for months on end. Over the course of their marriage, she had spent far more time alone than with him.

Only for the first few months had she been able to fool herself that marrying in such haste had been a good idea. Rhun had been a demanding but generous lover, seeing to her needs every time the opportunity arose, introducing her to many delights, being attentive to her pleasure. It had not taken Johanna long to see, however, that being a skilled lover and a good husband were two different things.

If Rhun had never shunned her bed at night, he had rarely sought out her company during the day. He’d explored every inch of her body but had rarely delved into her mind to see what she thought. He’d accepted the pleasure she wished to offer, but not her advice. They had been husband and wife but not a couple, in most of the ways that mattered to her.

The distance between them had only grown worse after the Scots’ victory over the new king of England. It had fanned his desire to fight and finally regain his country’s independence. Most women had to deal with their husbands dallying with other women, but Johanna had had to contend with a far more dangerous passion of his, one with which she could not compete: his devotion to the Welsh Cause. This was a situation she had not anticipated. No female rivals for her, just an ambition she would never be allowed to share.

“Have you ever thought to take part in the fighting?” she asked Cadell, before kicking herself for the question.

Why would he confide in her over something as potentially dangerous? Telling an English person that he was secretly working to bring them down would be folly. And why should she care anyway? He was not married to her, or indeed anyone, he could do what he wanted.

“I have not. Like most Welshmen, I wish the English had not taken over the land so brutally, but I also have the lucidity to recognize that it might well be too late to change the situation. I was not even born when the Statute of Rhuddlan was declared, and my father was only two years old when the Treaty of Aberconwy was signed in ’77. He didn’t have any memories of a free Wales. There only ever were two Princes of Wales anyway; before them, the country was divided in various counties.”

“Yes. Rhun explained it all to me.”

Though he had never tired of explaining the history of his country to her in a bid to convince her of the legitimacy of his actions, he had failed. She had long concluded that the dream of a united Wales was an illusion and she was glad to see that Cadell shared this opinion, as his next sentence proved.

“It will be impossible, and perhaps not even advisable to get rid of the English rule now that it has been so firmly established. That is not to say we should accept unnecessary cruelty or not try to protect what is left of our dignity, but our efforts should go toward ensuring a good life for our people, not toward reinstating a prince who will never be able to unite a country that was never one in the first place. Grand ideas are all well and good but real people’s lives are at stake here. For most of us this is not a political game, but a reality, and decisions taken during lavish banquets or played out in battlefields far from home have consequences. Destroying villages and burning crops so that the enemy has nothing to seize is forgetting that people live in these villages and rely on these crops to survive.”

He paused and gave a sigh. Johanna could tell he was worried she thought him a coward. She did not. It was rare wisdom to see that your pride mattered less than other people’s suffering.

Rhun had been fighting for an ideal, not for his tenants’ comfort. Not only had he not succeeded, but in the meantime he had abandoned his wife and left his domain to fall into disrepair, thereby endangering the lives of the people who relied on him. It was hard to agree that it had been the right thing to do.

“I think you’re a very wise Welshman,” she told Cadell, impressed by his honesty. If more men thought in this way, wars would be less of an issue in the world.