Page 28 of A Lover for Lady Jane (The Welsh Rebels #5)

Chapter Fourteen

“ Y ou’ll never guess. I’m betrothed.”

Jane and Sian looked at one another in stupefaction.

At fourteen, Bethan, Gwenllian’s friend, was two years older than their sister but still very young to be betrothed.

She was also extremely beautiful, which perhaps accounted for the fact that she had attracted a man’s attention and moved him to offer for her hand.

“Do we know the lucky suitor?” Sian recovered first, as usual, and asked the question burning Jane’s lips.

Bethan made a face that left no doubt about what she thought of her husband-to-be. This was definitely no love match. “I doubt it, as I don’t know him myself. His name is Dougal Campbell. He’s a Scot.”

“A Scot? How on earth did a Scot find you?”

Bethan sighed. “Our fathers met in ’77 at the start of the conquest. Dougal’s father, then a young man of twenty, was shocked by King Edward’s invasion.

Fiercely attached to his own land, he decided he could not stand idly by while the English tried to force a country that did not belong to them to submit to their governance.

Having just become laird of a powerful clan, he had means at his disposal.

He quickly assembled a contingent of men and rode to Wales to help the fighters.

There, he met my father, who saved his life in battle. ”

Jane thought she understood where this was going.

This union with a powerful clan would be a way of restoring the family’s lost prestige by calling in old debts.

Bethan’s father, a brewer’s son who’d gained standing by his efforts, had been dispossessed of his lands in 1283, like many other local lords.

In the wake of the conquest and in order to establish his domination and quell any rebellious intent, the English King had given lands to his most trusted advisers.

Jane’s own father had been one of these lords.

And now poor Bethan was going to be the instrument with which her father regained what he had lost. She could almost sympathize with him, as the man had done nothing to deserve being stripped of all he’d worked so hard to earn. But still she found it hard to condone the using of his daughter thus.

“What does this have to do with anything?” Gwenllian, being younger and somewhat na?ve, had not understood the link between this story, which had happened more than thirty years ago, and her friend’s current predicament.

“When I started to bleed, my father declared he would find me a husband whose fortune could help rebuild the one he had lost. But all the lords he’s approached over the last year have made it plain that a match with the daughter of a man whose own father had been a brewer, and Welsh to boot, would by no means be advantageous to them.

Ambitious men are now turning their gazes toward England for useful alliances.

That’s when he thought of Laird Campbell.

He hoped that being a Scot, his old friend would not refuse to wed his son to the daughter of the man who had saved his life and was…

” Bethan blushed as she repeated her father’s words.

“Who was an acknowledged beauty. He did not. We received the letter this morning, confirming his agreement. And so I am to marry Dougal Campbell and end my life in a foreign country, far from everything I know and love.”

Jane’s chest constricted. Having known Bethan since the day she was born, she was aware her father was nothing like Connor Hunter, who had allowed his daughters to grow into healthy women before considering marriage and even then, had not tried to force them into unions they did not desire.

In the last ten years, Gwenllian’s friend had spent more time at Castell Esgyrn than in her own home, accompanying them to England on more than one occasion.

She was almost like a fourth sister. Hearing that she was being treated so callously was hard.

No doubt her father was doing what he thought best to ensure her future, but in typical male fashion, had not taken into consideration what his daughter might feel.

A child bride, married off to a stranger, sent alone to an unknown country, was no cause for concern in most people’s mind, and he would have thought only of his family’s prestige in this affair.

“Dougal is thirteen, even younger than me,” Bethan continued, her voice flat. “Because of our age, the wedding will only take place in three years, at which time he will come to get me. My brother, Siaspar, is furious but he cannot do anything. He cannot go against our father’s word.”

Of course, the boy was only twelve, he didn’t have any say in the matter, any more than his sister did. If Bethan’s father and his Scottish friend had agreed on this alliance, then there was nothing she, Siaspar, or anyone could do.

“I’m going to miss you terribly.” Gwenllian sounded on the verge of tears at the idea of her friend leaving for remote Scotland to be the wife of a man she didn’t love or even know.

“Me too.” Bethan fell into her arms, sobbing. “Oh, I wish my betrothed won’t come for me until I’m an old maid!”

Deeply affected by the scene in front of her, Jane walked over to the bay window to restore some calm to her tumultuous thoughts.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t claim to be shocked at Bethan’s father’s decision.

Most, if not all the women she knew, had been married off to strangers they didn’t like for strategic reasons.

Very few were lucky enough to marry men they had chosen, much less loved.

The women of her family, though, seemed to have avoided that dreadful fate.

Branwen, Carys, Sian… All of them had made love matches.

Even her mother, who’d been forced to wed an English knight, had found happiness in the end.

Jane vowed she would be the next one to marry a man she loved, as, mercifully, her situation was nothing like Bethan’s.

Her father was not trying to ally himself with rich lords and make people forget his humble origins.

He was also a loving, generous man. As a consequence, she was free to choose her husband, and she would not settle for less than what the other people in her family had.

Just then the door behind her opened on Christopher and Griffin—and it all became clear.

If she married him, she would avoid Bethan’s fate and have a husband she loved.

Because yes, she loved this man, she realized.

This man who had saved and protected her, shown her that there was more to her than beauty, who had made a woman out of her with skill, patience and generosity.

That he had appeared in the room at the exact moment when she had been pondering her future union had to be a sign.

She was destined to marry none other than him.

Arglwydd Mawr .

Griffin’s heart fell to the bottom of his chest when he saw Jane standing in the shaft of light piercing through the window.

No woman had ever looked more alluring than she did today.

In her sumptuous clothes, she was a vision.

The gown of soft velvet, with its straight, narrow sleeves embroidered at the cuff, drew the eye to her delicate wrists and beautiful hands.

The blue of the bodice, deep and shimmering, was the perfect foil for the inky black tresses cascading over her shoulders and the generous breasts he had not been able to forget.

Even without any jewelry around her neck or at her ears, she was breathtaking, every inch a nobly born lady.

He saw it all with painful clarity.

They could never be together. Any foolish thought he might have entertained about wooing her vanished like mist under the glaring sun, because everything was different now.

As a hostage, she had relied on him for her protection, and while they’d been on the road at the mercy of the elements, the gulf between them had not been so wide.

Restored to her usual magnificence, surrounded by her family, she was no longer the naked lover he’d been allowed to possess, no longer the approachable traveling companion, no longer the captive woman who’d needed a protector.

He stared and stared, knowing this might be the last time he would ever see her.

Then, after a while, he saw that for a reason he could not fathom, Jane seemed as stunned as he was.

She was looking at him as if she had never seen him before.

Yet he knew he would not appear anywhere near as striking as she did.

Christopher’s clothes were finer than any he had ever owned, admittedly, but still nothing like those of Lord Sheridan.

While Christopher and the three ladies by the fire started a conversation, he waited for Jane to speak first, as was proper.

“You’ve shaved,” was all she said.

“Yes.” She’d made it sound as if this was the most extraordinary thing he could have done when they both knew there was nothing more normal for a man than to shave in the morning. He cleared his throat, unsettled by her scrutiny, and ran a hand over his smooth jaw. “I prefer it that way.”

“I like it both ways.”

“Being clean shaven is more comfortable.”

“I can imagine. You must have wished you could shave while we traveled.”

“I did.”

Griffin blinked at the unlikely exchange.

Were they really talking about his beard in such a stilted manner?

Was that all that was left to them? He should be asking her how she felt, now that she was reunited with her family, and safe, he should beg her not to send him away but to find him a position at Castell Esgyrn, anything but talk about the bloody hairs growing on his face.

But he didn’t know how to recapture the ease between them.

In front of old Enid and Myfanwy, he had not felt out of place.

Here, in a lavishly decorated castle, surrounded by noble people, he did.