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Rhun planted himself in the middle of the room.

“Imagine my shock the other day when I heard through one of my men, who is keeping an eye on Bryn Glas, that my wife was about to get married again.”

Johanna took in a sharp inhale. He had a man watching over Bryn Glas? He hadn’t told her as much last night. Who was it? One of the servants? And why had that man not reported on the sorry state the castle was in, or how she had been treated? It was clear from the expression on Cadell’s face that he was wondering the same thing.

“How long have you been near here, hiding, watching your wife struggle?” he asked, contempt audible in every word.

“A couple of weeks.”

Weeks! And in all this time, he had not thought to tell her, his wife, that he was alive? He’d only come back because he’d heard about her impending wedding and meant to put a stop to it. The pain caused by this last betrayal was sharp. He really cared nothing for her, nor did he trust her if he didn’t think it despicable to keep such a secret from her. Bitterness filled her mouth. Her marriage had been built on a lie, she could not ignore it any longer.

“So you only came back because you didn’t want me to⁠—”

“I had no choice but to stop you from committing a mortal sin,” Rhun cut in. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame you for wanting to ally yourself to another man when you thought I was dead, but I had to stop you. I think everyone will agree.”

Ally herself. He thought she had decided to remarry for purely practical reasons, to have the support a lone woman needed in his opinion. But he was wrong. She had not agreed to marry Cadell because he was Welsh, efficient and would help her rule over Bryn Glas. She had agreed to marry him because he had given her what she had been searching for all her life, because he made her feel special.

And because… Dare she think it? Yes.

Because she had fallen in love with him.

The lord help her, she was in love with another man than her husband.

“I understand that you needed help with the managing of the castle,” Rhun carried on. “It was inevitable that you would need support from someone unmistakably Welsh, as Bryn Glas is filled with people opposed to English rule.”

His smile indicated that the servants had been chosen for this specific reason. Well, that explained a lot, Johanna thought. The people had been prepared to hate her. From the start, this had been destined to be a failure. And she had been caught unawares.

“My man told me the wedding was to take place at Castell y Ddraig, which made me think that Cadell, who had helped you thus far, would not be the groom, unlike I had first assumed. But I see now that I was right all along, and he is the man you chose.”

Indeed, the way he had barged into the room demanding to see her had not left much room for misinterpretation.

Rhun turned to face Cadell, who had gone still as a statue.

“Cadell ap Llywelyn. No need to wonder why you came to my wife’s rescue when she arrived from England. I should have known you would do whatever was needed to get her. From the moment you met her all those years ago, you were smitten. Any fool with eyes in his head would have seen it.” He gave a sigh as if he pitied him. “You would have offered for her hand then, young as you were, poor as you were, had I not done so before you could gather up the courage, wouldn’t you?”

Everything within Johanna collapsed.

Rhun had known about Cadell’s feelings for her. All along, he had known that the young Welshman was in love with her and yet he had asked her to marry him, knowing that married life was not something he would ever find satisfactory. Learning all this now made her feel used, and ridiculous. Her husband had known another man was in love with her—irremediably, honestly, heartbreakingly in love—and he had chosen to whisk her away from under that man’s nose instead of allowing him a fair chance to woo her. And she, the fool without eyes in her head, apparently, had been the only one unaware of the youth’s feelings.

She felt as if Rhun had made a mockery of everything—of his own destiny, of her hopes for a happy marriage, and of Cadell’s love for her.

How many shocks would she endure today?

Cadell was beside himself with powerless rage and pain.

When he had received Johanna’s letter that morning, though he had felt as if his heart was being wrenched out of his chest, he had not thought that his life would be over, because he had not thought that she would literally be unable to marry him. He’d put the message down to an attack of nerves that had gotten the better of her, or scruples about her supposed unsuitability for a man who deserved to have children, anything other than…this.

He’d not thought for a moment that she would be unable to take him for her husband because she was already married—to a man everyone had thought dead.

“How did your people convince themselves you had died when you obviously had not?”

How could things have gone so awry? How had Rhun not rectified their wrong assumptions?

“They did not convince themselves, they believed what my man Ioan told them, on my orders.”

His orders? Cadell’s gaze flashed to Johanna, who had closed her eyes, as if fighting the pain invading her. Was she already aware of what had happened or had she just realized the extent of what her husband had done? But, of course, he should have guessed that all of this could not have been a misunderstanding. Hadn’t Rhun said only a moment ago that he had a man watching over the castle? Every bit of this deception had been carefully planned, which made it even more despicable.

Cadell lifted his chin, indicating he was waiting for the rest of the explanation.