Page 2

Chapter One

H ere he was again.

Heart thumping hard in her chest, Sian stared at the retinue in the bailey.

The boy who had captured her imagination the last time she had come to England—her future husband—had just ridden through the gate.

Except this time, he looked more like a man than a boy.

In two years, he’d grown even taller and broader, even more handsome.

Was it the black stallion he was riding that made him appear like a knight about to charge at his opponent in a joust?

No. The horse was admittedly magnificent, nothing like her own, slightly too-plump Welsh pony, but the imposing bearing of its rider was all his own.

Though the change in him was drastic, Sian knew it was him at first glance. She could not have mistaken him for anyone else, not with those eyes. No one she had ever seen possessed eyes like his. Up until the previous year, she hadn’t even known it was possible to have eyes like his.

At first, she’d thought a trick of the light had made her see one eye lighter than the other.

Perhaps the candle placed to his side was illuminating one while the other remained in the darkness.

But no, his left eye was indeed blue, whereas his right was deep brown.

The effect was most striking. Not that he would have been anything other than striking without that.

It was hard to say what appealed to her the most. Perhaps the mane of hair the color of ripe wheat falling over his strong shoulders in thick waves.

Or the jaw that seemed to have been cut with an axe and was enhanced by the first traces of stubble.

He reminded her of her uncle Matthew. Her adoptive father’s milk brother was one of the men she loved most in the world, and the resemblance between them seemed to suggest that the boy on his black horse would indeed be perfect in the role of protective husband and loving father.

“Look over there,” she told Jane while he jumped off the saddle with impossible grace.

She would ask her sister, who had lived in England for seven years before coming to Wales, whether she knew who he was.

The question would surprise her, but Sian could not keep thinking of the man she wanted to marry as a stranger.

She was almost twelve; she had to start planning ahead.

Her mother and father kept telling her she had plenty of time to think about such things, but it was not that simple.

She might have years ahead of her, but her future husband was older than she was, perhaps as old as fifteen or sixteen, by the looks of things.

It would not be long before he started looking at women, perhaps even bedding them.

What if he fell in love with one of his conquests?

What if his parents thought he was old enough to be married off to a rich heiress in the new year?

The opportunities for disaster were endless.

She had better start planning without delay.

Jane looked in the direction she was indicating and let out a little gasp. “How did you know?”

Sian frowned. She had known as soon as she’d seen him that he was the one she was destined to marry, but surely, that was not what Jane meant? “Know w-what?” she stammered, feeling caught out.

“To warn me he was here.”

Warn her? What was Jane talking about?

Her bewilderment must have shown on her face because Jane answered, lowering her voice to a whisper. “That’s Lord Ashton’s grandson, the horrid boy I told you about.” She cocked her head, considering. “Well, I guess he’s not a boy anymore even if I’m certain he’s still as vile as ever.”

Sian’s heart skipped several beats. That was Christopher Harrison?

Her future husband was her sister’s enemy?

Surely, Jane had mistakenly thought she had pointed to another man in the retinue?

It had to be a mistake because if he was Christopher Harrison, everything was about to get more complicated.

Over the years, she’d heard all about the boy who had made Jane’s life a misery when she’d lived at Sheridan Manor, and she refused to believe that the man who had captured her imagination was none other than that nasty persecutor.

As if to settle the matter once and for all, the boy chose that moment to approach them with what bore an uncomfortable resemblance to a victor’s swagger.

“Well, if it isn’t little Jane Hunter.” A smile that, deplorably, could have been described only as mocking uncovered a row of shiny white teeth. “How long has it been since we haven’t seen one another?”

“Not long enough,” Jane answered drily. She was not impressed, and Sian wasn’t sure what to think. There certainly was animosity there. So … was he really Lord Ashton’s grandson? Or perhaps her sister had more than one enemy?

That slim hope, if hope it was, was dashed when a knight slapped him on the shoulder and asked, “Will Lord Ashton be joining us today?”

“No. My grandfather is unwell. He won’t be coming.”

So he was Christopher Harrison; there was no doubting it anymore.

Sian forced herself not to despair. All could not be lost. It had been years since Jane had left England.

Perhaps he had changed in the meantime? The victor’s swagger and the mocking smile didn’t have to mean anything.

She sometimes swaggered, as she imagined everybody did, and her own smile, with its regrettable crooked tooth at the front, might well appear mocking at times. Yes, perhaps.

The boy— man —Christopher—threw Jane an appraising glance. “Still as neat as ever, I see. That dress doesn’t have a single crease on it, and your hair is perfectly pinned in place.”

More dismayed than ever, Sian ran a hand over her gown.

It was creased, and earlier that afternoon, she had noticed a stain on the bodice, just above the waist. As to her hair, it was most certainly not pinned in place, perfectly or otherwise.

It was far too untameable, so she usually let it loose.

Because of that and her unfortunate clumsiness, she looked as wild as her sister looked neat.

The contrast between the two of them had always been stark.

It usually didn’t bother her, but she could have done without looking so ruffled since Christopher seemed to admire neatness in a woman.

Surely, he would not want a wife who could not keep her clothes clean and her hair securely contained?

But when he spoke again, she understood that, far from praising Jane, he was only mocking her, just like he had done when she lived in England. The weight crushing her chest became near unbearable.

“Do you ever do anything that might land you in trouble?” he asked, eyeing her sister up and down.

“Of course not. No need to ask if you do that.”

His smile widened, going from mocking to dangerous. Sian wasn’t sure it was an improvement. “No need. I think you have already guessed the answer.”

“Indeed.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head. He really was quite manly for his age. Having learned who he was, she knew him to be four years older than she was. Which was to say, almost sixteen. She also knew he was the last person she should have taken a fancy to.

Except it was not a fancy. On the contrary, it was deadly serious.

The two of them were supposed to marry.

She knew it not only because he had appeared in front of her mere moments after she had understood she needed a husband if she was to have children but also because, upon returning to Castell Esgyrn, she had asked old Myfanwy at the village if she could see what type of man fate had in store for her.

The woman was renowned for her powers of divination, and she had told Sian she was destined to marry a man with two identities.

The prediction had made no sense at first, but then Sian had understood that it had to refer to Christopher’s two different-colored eyes, each presumably betraying a different aspect of his personality.

It did make sense. Hadn’t she often heard her mother remark that her husband’s green eyes appeared to change color depending on his mood?

No, unfortunately, she knew she was supposed to marry Christopher Harrison, and nothing anyone did or said, him included, would make a difference. Fate knew what she was doing.

“Do you know,” he said when the silence between them was in danger of becoming awkward, “someone told me the other day you lived in a place called Bones Castle now. Is that true?”

“It’s called Castell Esgyrn, actually.”

“Yes, but unlike you, I don’t speak Welsh, do I?” He waved the comment away. “I assume it means Bones Castle?”

“It does.”

“Well, then.” A scoff. “I cannot get the image out of my head of Perfect Little Jane Hunter lying in her bed at night surrounded by pile after pile of cracked old skulls and dusty skeletons waiting to topple on top of her. How many people the savages had to kill to be able to build a castle out of their carcasses is anyone’s guess. ”

“The castle is not actually made of bones,” Sian couldn’t help but retort, piqued.

“It is made of stone.” That was her home he was talking about.

She could not let him disparage it thus.

He sounded as if he imagined walls constructed of long white bones and doorframes adorned with hollow-eyed skulls. It was a terrifying image.

Christopher turned to her and looked at her for the first time since she had decided they would marry and arched a brow. It was the one over the blue eye, and she found herself shivering. Dear, oh, dear. At that moment, she felt like a child about to be scolded.

“Normal castles are made of stones, I will grant you, but one can never know what these Welsh people are capable of.”

Sian’s heart fell to the bottom of her stomach. His first-ever words to her, and they were to tell her he despised her people. He had called them savages earlier, but she had hoped it was just a way of adding to the image of the castle he was creating. It was not.

How could their first meeting be so disastrous?

What had she done to deserve that? Why did the man she was destined to marry have to be the one her sister hated because of his high-handedness and cruel taunts toward her?

Having met him, she could see that Jane hadn’t been lying or even exaggerating.

He was … She hesitated, knowing a woman was not supposed to think such a thing of her husband but still unable to repress the thought.

He was horrible.

“Do you know many Welsh people, then, to know what they are capable of?” Jane replied, taking her defense the way she always did in front of people making scathing remarks about her countrymen.

Because Sian spoke English without any accent, people didn’t immediately identify her as Welsh or hesitate to voice their worst prejudices out loud in her presence.

She had not imagined she would hear such insults out of her future husband’s mouth, however.

In just a few moments, Christopher Harrison had been exposed as her sister’s tormentor, a braggart, and hostile to the Welsh, believing them capable of building castles out of the bones of their enemies’ corpses.

He’d barely spared her a glance because of her age and shown himself to be imbued with his self-importance, mean-spirited, and proud of it.

It was an inauspicious beginning, to say the least, and she wondered whether she had better set her sights on someone else. He was not like Uncle Matthew at all. Surely, a man like that would not make a good husband or supportive father?

But … Old Myfanwy had never once been proved wrong.

However odd her predictions might have sounded, they always ended up being surprisingly accurate.

A few years ago, she had told them that Bethan, Gwenllian’s best friend, would soon transform into a chicken.

It had sounded so ludicrous that everyone had dismissed the prediction as mad ramblings.

But the following week, the little girl had fallen headfirst into the vat where the cook of Castell Esgyrn collected the soft feathers from all the fowl she plucked to make a blanket for her daughter.

When poor Bethan had emerged into the bailey covered in downy feathers, she had looked just like a chicken, as predicted.

So what was Sian to think? Was she destined to marry Christopher or not?

Perhaps he would grow up and forget all that nonsense when he became a man, because, black stallion notwithstanding, he had only just turned sixteen.

Yes. That had to be what it was.

“Let me introduce you to my sister Sian,” Jane said, sounding very pleased to be able to put him back in his place. “She’s Welsh.”

Of course, he was not in the least perturbed by the revelation. “Is she now? She looks rather normal, I have to say. Except perhaps for her hair. I’ve never seen such a wild mane before. At least not on a person.”

When he finally walked away, his swagger definitely that of a victor, Sian realized, to her shock, that she was glad to see him go.

Their first meeting had been a disaster.