Page 19

Lady Catrin took her seat, and Beti sat on a stool beside her.

“A word, if you please, Rhys.” Gwilym was at his side, his expression serious.

“If you would excuse me, Lady Catrin,” Rhys said, offering a slight bow.

She nodded, concern obvious in her hazel eyes. “Of course.”

Rhys followed Gwilym across the room.

When he reached the head table, Gwilym swung around to face him. “Lady Catrin Buckley? Truly, Rhys? What were you thinking, inviting the daughter of the Constable of Beaumaris Castle here?”

Rhys felt himself bristle. “I was thinking what any decent gentleman would think if he happened upon a noblewoman caught in a storm miles from her own home.”

Gwilym ran his fingers through his hair. “Mayhap that reasoning would have worked when Richard was still alive. But not now. Not with Owain poised to wage war on the English. By all the saints, Rhys, ’tis like inviting the enemy in to dine.”

“Lady Catrin is not the enemy.” Rhys worked to keep his voice even. “I would not even go as far as to call her father the enemy. Maredudd himself agreed that Lord Buckley’s leanings are yet to be determined where the new monarch is concerned.”

Gwilym stared at him. “If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would not have believed it.”

“Seen what?” Rhys returned his look with irritation.

“Your head has been turned by a beautiful woman.” Gwilym leaned forward. “Where’s the man who was so alert to danger on the ferry that he suspected a pimpled youth of carrying communications to the castle from Henry himself? Where’s the man who insisted on going to the castle at the first possible opportunity because something felt off-kilter? Where’s the Welsh warrior I fought beside these last three years?” He let his words hang between them for a moment. “With the news we just received, that’s the man I want beside me—and so does Owain Glyndwr.”

Gwilym’s verbal punches left Rhys reeling. Was Gwilym simply redirecting his frustration over having blurted out the potentially dangerous news so openly? He would not deny that Lady Catrin was beautiful, but surely Gwilym did not truly believe that the short time Rhys had spent with her had changed him so completely.

Before he had the opportunity to rebut, Maredudd appeared beside them. “Did she hear, do you think?”

“Undoubtedly,” Gwilym muttered.

“You were speaking in Welsh,” Maredudd reminded him.

Attempting to push past Gwilym’s unexpected attack, Rhys dragged his focus to his brothers’ ongoing conversation. “What did you say that she will not learn for herself the moment she returns to the castle?” he said.

“The very fact that she is aware that we are following Owain’s activities is dangerous,” Gwilym said, scowling.

“Every peasant in Wales will be doing the same,” Rhys said.

Maredudd rubbed his chin anxiously. “Aye. But we are not peasants, Rhys. We are the Tudors of Penmynydd, and ’tis expected that we shall act. Our allegiance to Wales and to our cousin demands it.”

“And so we shall,” Rhys said. “Lady Catrin’s visit here will have no bearing on that whatsoever.”

“Unless we are arrested before we can join Owain’s men,” Gwilym said.

Rhys rolled his eyes. There was no reasoning with Gwilym when he was like this. He turned to Maredudd. “Was there anything more in Owain’s missive?”

“He has men from all over Wales ready to join the fight,” Maredudd said. “Once they have settled upon a location to gather, he desires us to lead those from North Wales.”

Rhys’s military mind was already racing. Where would Owain wish to set up camp? Somewhere near the border? In the Marchlands, where they could slow the advance of an English army? Or up in the mountains, where the Welshmen had the advantage of knowing the terrain?

“What is to be done until then?”

Maredudd shrugged. “We are to await word and be ready to act immediately upon its receipt.”

“I picked up your arrows from the fletcher in Beaumaris,” Gwilym said stonily. “And ordered six dozen more.”

Rhys nodded. He was tempted to suggest that if anyone at the castle learned that the Tudors were stockpiling arrows, he and his brothers were even more likely to be arrested than if Lady Catrin mentioned their knowledge of Owain’s fledgling campaign. But he refrained. Gwilym needed to come to that realization himself.

“Then we wait,” he said. “And do what we can to prepare to leave Penmynydd at a moment’s notice.”