Page 30 of Wolfehound (De Wolfe Pack Generations #11)

H e bore the title of the Earl of Warenton.

He was only the second man ever to hold that title and even that was simply because of the luck of his birth order. He had a twin, less than ten minutes after him, but he had been the first, so to him went the entire de Wolfe empire.

Scott had made an excellent earl so far.

His brothers all thought so. He was extremely fortunate in that none of them had been aiming for his title. Greed was not something that ran in the de Wolfe bloodlines, but ambition did. All of his brothers were accomplished, ambitious men and he was proud to be related to them.

Even the one who didn’t bear the de Wolfe name.

Along with the responsibility of the de Wolfe empire, he was also the keeper of its secrets.

There were many. One of the biggest, however, was the fact that his father had sired a son out of wedlock, before he’d met Scott’s mother, and that son was none other than War Herringthorpe.

It was mostly the worst kept secret in the north because War looked like a de Wolfe brother.

He looked like William. He also acted like a de Wolfe to the bone, but the decision had been made long ago, when the bloodlines were discovered, that War should keep the name of the man who raised him, the man who had knowingly married his pregnant mother, out of respect for him.

War was proud to carry the Herringthorpe name, and that meant his children were also Herringthorpes even though their bloodlines were de Wolfe.

That included Liam.

Scott was attending the wedding of Liam and Cambria because of another secret.

There was a certain Welsh princess living incognito at Folkingham Castle and Scott’s father had put her there.

That was a secret that had been entrusted to Scott by his father, and it was Scott’s responsibility to keep an eye on the situation.

Now, the wedding they’d been anticipating for about twenty years was on their doorstep and that Welsh princess, the one with dual bloodlines, both Welsh and English, would be marrying a man of de Wolfe blood.

It was all quite complicated, but that was the situation.

Scott had been on hand those years ago when his father made the decision.

At the time, he knew why and he agreed with it.

That had never been in question. But the years had passed and the brother they believed to have been killed in Wales turned out to be alive after all.

Although that was a joyous event, it put into question the very reason why William did what he did with the Welsh princess, but it was too late to change anything.

In fact, William had never mentioned any kind of a change.

He simply let things go on the way they were.

Just because James had returned, although little remained of the man they had known before, that didn’t ease William’s sense of vengeance.

The decision had remained.

Now, the wedding was about to take place and Scott had departed Castle Questing almost immediately after receiving the announcement of the nuptials.

With him, he’d brought his wife, his mother, two of his sons, and a ward of the family.

Scott and his wife, Avrielle, had several children, but most of them were fostering and he didn’t particularly want to bring the youngest ones on a long and exhausting journey.

His wife hadn’t fought him on it and even now sat in a fortified carriage that was midway back in the escort pack.

Scott suspected that she might have even been enjoying the time away from her youngest children, because they could be a handful. But she wasn’t alone in the carriage.

She had companions.

One such companion was Caria de Wolfe. She had been a ward of William de Wolfe since birth.

Born Tacey ferch Dafydd, she was the niece of the Earl of Coventry, Bhrodi de Shera, who had married William de Wolfe’s youngest daughter, Penelope.

Her mother had been Bhrodi’s younger sister, who had perished in childbirth, and Caria was a product of two royal Welsh bloodlines.

William had taken the child, at Bhrodi’s request, to hide her from Edward, who had been tearing through the country at that time.

Even though Bhrodi was the Earl of Coventry, he also held an even older title—heir to the Kingdom of Anglesey through his matriarchal line.

He was Welsh to the bone. Being married to a de Wolfe gave him some protection from the king, but he didn’t want to risk his sister’s infant because she would suffer the same fate as Gwenllian had she been captured.

Scott had always found it ironic that his father had hidden not one, but two Welsh princesses from the king and Edward had never been the wiser.

William was open about Caria’s heritage being Scottish, a cousin of his wife’s, so she had been raised in complete safety.

Caria was fair-haired, not dark as the Welsh could be, so it was easy to believe she was Scots.

Until two years ago, she’d believed the same until William told her the truth upon her eighteenth birthday.

He also told her what her official title was, something granted to her by her brother— Tywysoges yr Ynys Dywyll .

Princess of the Dark Isle.

It had taken about a year for Caria to become accustomed to her true origins.

The hardest part was getting used to the idea that a woman she believed to be her foster sister, Penelope, was in truth her aunt, and the man she knew as Penelope’s husband was, in fact, her uncle by blood.

That had been quite strange to her. Given that she’d grown up as a foster daughter of William de Wolfe, she understood the history and politics of England very well.

She knew what being Welsh meant to a king who had been trying to subdue them for years.

She also knew what would happen to her, and her foster father, if her identity became known.

She’d been very good at keeping the secret.

The last family member of the party from Castle Questing was none other than the dowager Countess of Warenton, Jordan de Wolfe.

Questing was her home, and even when Scott and Avrielle moved in upon the death of William, they still deferred to Jordan on nearly everything involving the castle or family matters.

She was the great matriarch, much loved and respected by her children.

She tagged along to Folkingham because Caria was going and she was never far from Caria, whom she viewed as her child.

Jordan may have been quite elderly, but her mind and body was still solid, and she and Caria and Avrielle had ridden in the carriage companionably for almost a week now.

Better still, they’d been working on an embroidered blanket, the three of them, for the newlyweds, which had turned out spectacularly well.

But that journey was about to come to an end.

“Papa!” came a shout. “Look! Riders!”

Scott was riding near the carriage and his sons, Jeremy and Nathaniel, were riding point.

The shout came from Jeremy, twenty years of age and already knighted.

He was a big lad, blond like his father and paternal grandmother, but with the big de Wolfe build.

He was pointing off toward the south, and Scott pushed his horse forward, trying to get a better view of what Jeremy was seeing.

When the field of men and horses cleared, he could clearly see the riders in the distance, heading in their direction.

He spurred his horse to the front of the column.

“Shall I charge them, Papa?” The younger son, Nathaniel, was gripping his excited horse. “Shall I demand to know their business?”

Scott glanced at Nathaniel, who was a great deal like Scott’s youngest brother, Thomas, in that he was big and aggressive and had no idea how strong he truly was. Like wild colts, men like that were sometimes hard to rein in. They tended to have more fire in them than sense at that age.

“Nay,” Scott said evenly. “Since we are so near to Folkingham Castle, I am going to assume they are from Folkingham and are, in fact, coming to ask us to identify ourselves.”

That didn’t seem to ease Nathaniel. “We are flying Warenton standards,” he said. “They know who we are.”

He said it so indignantly that Scott had to grin. “Aye, they do,” he said. “But it is always wise to get a confirmation, is it not? What if we were outlaws who stole Warenton banners?”

Nathaniel didn’t have an answer for that, mostly because it made sense and he was insulted that he hadn’t thought about it himself.

At this age, and he’d barely seen eighteen years, nearly everything insulted him because he was a de Wolfe, son of the Earl of Warenton, and the world bowed at his family’s feet.

Well, mostly.

As Nathaniel was wrestling with his inflated ego, Scott held up a hand to the incoming riders, who responded with a similar gesture. They reined their horses close, but not too close.

“My lord,” one soldier said. “You fly Warenton standards. May I address the earl?”

“You are,” Scott said. “I am Scott de Wolfe.”

Both riders saluted him smartly. “Lord de Royans sends his greetings,” the same soldier said. “He asks that we escort you to Folkingham.”

“Lead the way.”

Jeremy and Nathaniel fell right in behind the riders as Scott shook his head at his eager sons.

But he lifted an arm to the party behind him, indicating for them to pick up the pace.

With his sons tucked in behind the escort riders, Scott ended up riding alone the rest of the way to Folkingham, but he truly didn’t mind.

It gave him time to think about the coming union and the culmination of the plans his father had for the daughter of Llywelyn the Last. Long ago, they’d been plans of revenge for the death of a son, but now…

now they were simply plans to keep the woman from the fate Edward had planned for her.

Not that it really mattered now, because once she was married to Liam, Edward couldn’t touch her.

But the fact remained that he could still do damage.

If Edward were to ever find out about William’s plans, and furthermore find out where Gwenllian had been hidden in plain sight, even if she were married to Liam, he more than likely wouldn’t let the subject rest. He’d see it as a challenge to his rule, a de Wolfe challenge to the will of the Crown, and given both War and Liam were garrison commanders at royal outposts, it could very well mean the end of their royal appointments.

Scott had to have a backup plan if that happened. He couldn’t let Liam or War take the fall for something his father did, but first, they had to get that young woman married to Liam as the final act of keeping her away from Edward.

God help them, they had to get through this day.

Then they could all breathe.

Or so he thought.