Page 57 of The Cornish Princess
Last year, she’d brought them a curious red dye calledkokkos, made from crushed insects fromAn Ghréig. They’d sewed themselves three dresses that year and went about looking like triplets. This time her head was too filled with…other things.She would arrive empty-handed, except for the missive from her father.
An ocean-scented breeze swept by, raising gooseflesh, and Gwendolyn shivered. Inconceivably, the man at her back wore only thin black leathers, with hosen, and a modest cloak—precisely as he’d arrived during midwinter. And still his body was as warm as a low-burning brazier. So warm, in truth, that despite that it vexed her to do so, she slid back in the saddle so her back was pressed firmly against his soft leathers.
Just like that, she rode with her teeth clamped to keep from chattering, and her lips pursed, only wondering why her tongue would not stir, when there was no way they could travel the distance without resting their horses or taking respite. Indeed, the surest way to get Málik to put her down would be to assent to his request to make camp. And yet she did not.
Once more time, she peered back at the guards, and this time relented. “We should stop,” she said, and added, “For their sakes.” How prideful she was.
“For their sakes?” he asked, with an unmistakable note of amusement.
Gwendolyn nodded. “Indeed.”
“It couldn’t beyouare weary?”
“Of course, I am!” she confessed. “Aren’t you?”
“Nay,” he said blithely, and Gwendolyn bristled, wishing she’d stopped when he’d first suggested it. Now he would perforce make her beg. “Naturally,” she said.
And there it was, again, that low, throaty chuckle he smothered before it could find his beautiful lips—lips that appeared so lush and soft and generous, until he opened his mouth, and filled it with sharp words to match his sharp teeth.
“You’ll fare better on the morrow if you rest now,” he advised.
They wouldallfare better, but Gwendolyn longed to seehimgrovel. “I do not need a keeper,” she assured.
“And yet you have one. But though I am not yourfirst,I’ll not be undermined,” he said, and Gwendolyn gritted her teeth, uncertain which of these veiled insults most displeased her.
She didnotundermine Bryn. Nor was Bryn her lover—first or second or otherwise, as implied by the tone of his voice. “If you are referring to Bryn,” she said, “he was never my keeper—nor my lover.”
“A least we are agreed you undermined him,” he argued. Anddeargods, she had. Although she wished more than anything to protest, she couldn’t. And regardless, Gwendolyn needn’t answer to Málik, nor to anyone else.
By Cornish law, on the night she gave Loc her torc, she became a woman unto herself, beholden only to her word, which she willingly gave to Prince Loc. “Tell me,” she demanded. “When all is said and done, do you answer to me, or do you answer to my father?”
There was a lingering note of mirth in his voice that grated on her nerves. “Unless my ears deceive me, Princess, this appears to be a trick question?”
“It is not,” Gwendolyn said primly. “It is quite simple, really, and I’d like to know where your loyalties stand.”
“At the moment, I am sworn to you,” he said.
“And yet I never saw you swear any such oath.”
Silence.
“If I ask you now, will you bend the knee?”
“I find it interesting, Princess. First your concern for the guards, now you wish to see me on my knees? Art certain this isn’t your way of begging a halt for the night?”
“I beg nothing.”
Gwendolyn loathed the way he made her respond—as though a harpy lived inside her skin—someone she didn’t recognize. And still he made no effort to answer, nor did he stop, and Gwendolyn was prepared to leap from his mount, ready to be away from him.
Trotting along beside them, her mare was clearly fatigued. Proffering another glance over her shoulder at the guards, she found them riding with shoulders slumped, and despite that, Gwendolyn persisted, “You seem to be ignoring my question,fae.”
“Which question, precisely?”
“Will you bend the knee?”
“There is only one reason I have ever found to bend the knee… and ’tis really quite pleasurable. Would you like me to demonstrate?”
Gwendolyn’s cheeks heated, though she didn’t entirely understand his meaning. Enough to say there was a note to his voice that suggested if she made a complaint to her father, he might lose his head. “Well?” she persisted, overlooking his suggestion.
