“You stole that from me!” I never wanted the bracelet at all, but she went through my things. The few things that are mine.
“I only borrowed it. I was going to give it back.”
“How?” I square up like one of the lads. “That’s not how these things work, you know. Once you pay a man to do a job, he tends to keep what you give him.”
“Lower your voice!” she hisses. “It’s not what you think.”
“Look. Surely we’ll be back in Wales soon.” I’m fighting for calm. “Cadwgan is sure to send for Owain any day, either to move against Madog or because this whole thing has been settled. Then Cadwgan will see to it that you’re back with your little ones like he promised. They’ve got to be missing you to bits.”
Nest’s face goes hard. “Owain ap Cadwgan is never going to let me go. You know that, don’t you?”
There was no reason to bring Nest with us into exile. No reason but one: Cadwgan demanded that Owain release her to Gerald. In public. In front of everyone. That moment alone would have been enough, but Owain still has one eye to vengeance that can’t be had without her. I nod miserably.
“God knows my husband can do little for me while I’m in Ireland. He might not even know where I am, or if I’m alive.” Nest sighs, long and shuddery. “That means I must look to myself if I want to get clear of Owain ap Cadwgan.”
“Get clear of — you’re not planning to have him killed?”
Nest cracks a grim smile. “Tempting. But no. Too risky, and it won’t get me what I want.”
“Your babies,” I whisper, and she chokes on a buried sob.
“That graybeard with the scar? He fought for my father in one of his hired armies. He agreed to see me home out of respect for my father’s memory and for a big reward of silver that my husband will trip over himself to provide. That’s why I had need of your bracelet. As proof of my blood. But here.”
Nest fumbles it off her wrist, and I will not think of my father, who never in his whole life had two coins to rub together, as I push it back into her hands. “Just don’t let Owain see it.”
She drops it into her apron and holds a hand against it. “I’d get you clear, too. I’d have you come with me. Mayhap you can’t have back what Owain ap Cadwgan and his lot took from you, but you can have a family — mine. It can be ours.”
I fall against the kitchen wall and let it hold me up.
“William’s already claimed you.” Nest smiles halfway, sheepish. “Do you know he slept with the bladder ball you gave him tucked under his arm every night? I suspect he still does. I don’t even want to think what’ll become of David should Alice never come back. You always knew what to say to them, even when things were . . . bad.” She swipes at tears, then flutters an awkward smile. “You’ll live in our house. You’ll be their nurse. When they’re grown, you will be my companion. Unless you choose to marry. Even then you won’t be rid of me. I will expect spiced wine when I visit.”
A cozy chamber. Playthings scattered around. Not Miv’s tiny fingers winding through my hair. William bouncing his ball to David, who catches it with both hands because his comfort rag is stowed somewhere for safekeeping. A place where Margred can visit all the time because it won’t matter whose sister she is.
“. . . before the se’ennight is out,” Nest is saying. “Will you come?”
“I . . .” I look over my shoulder at the hall, then down at my lovely, well-stitched shoes. “I like it here.”
Nest sighs. “Oh, child, of course you do, but you being a wife is a playact, same as me wasting away in the maidens’ quarters. It’s not real.”
“My gown is real. My shoes are real. It’s all real. It’s ordinary.”
“You’re playing house. Owain ap Cadwgan is not. He hasn’t played for a moment while he’s been here, and he definitely won’t play once you’re back in Wales.”
“Let’s not forget which of us told Sadb I was Owain’s wife in the first place,” I reply through my teeth, “and which of us sold him that not-real made-up story before he could think it through so he wouldn’t get us run out of Rathmore in disgrace.”
“Believe me, I haven’t forgotten,” Nest says, quiet and sharp. “This is my fault. I should have told Sadb the truth right away, but you . . . lit up, putting on that gown. You moved differently. Spoke more easily. Smiled like you meant it. Like all at once you were in command of the room. In command of yourself.” She shakes her head and sighs. “I thought for sure that’s what you’d walk away with. How it feels to belong. That this is who you are, and how you got here doesn’t matter. I meant to do you a kindness. Not give you a shovel and stand by as you dug a deep hole.”
I look down at my dress. My shoes. I blink hard.
Nest puts her arm around my shoulders like she did on the sea crossing. “Come with me. By the time he realizes we’re gone, we’ll have put foot on shipboard, and there’s nothing on Heaven or earth that’ll let him catch us. I’ll be back with my husband, you will be nurse to my children, and I will actually pity Owain ap Cadwgan if he happens within a stone’s throw of Gerald of Windsor for the rest of his natural life.”
“You’ve forgotten what I am to Owain,” I reply quietly, “and how he repays betrayal, be it real or in his mind.”
“I thought you’d be pleased. That you’d want to be their nurse.”
“I want a lot of things I can’t have, but there’s one thing I want that I can have. William and David and . . . and the baby, I want them to be safe. If I go with you, none of us will ever be safe.”
Nest takes my hand. “Gerald will protect you. I know he will. In fact, Gerald will welcome you if by sheltering you he can tweak Owain ap Cadwgan’s nose. Or lure him close.”
“No.” I pull away from her. “No, I’ll not be part of anything that puts Owain in harm’s way.”
She groans faintly. “He’s done nothing to earn your loyalty. He does less to keep it.”
“It has nothing to do with loyalty.”
“Not loyalty,” Nest says slowly, puzzling, “and not love, either. Then . . . what?”
The patter rises to save me, but it’s hard to make it hold water when there is Nest and her silver-hungry warbander and the promise of the little ones at the end of the voyage, and before, there was only Owain ap Cadwgan holding out his hand.
“Will you at least think on it?” Nest whispers. “I don’t think I can face them if you’re not with me.”
I nod. I let her slip away toward the maidens’ quarters believing it to be true.
IT’S LATE. THE SLEEPING CHAMBER IS STILL AND dark. I’m alone in bed. If I peek through the curtain, I can see the faint glow beneath the door that leads to the yard. Owain and the lads are still at their fire, where they’ve been all evening and long into the night. It’ll be Saint John’s Day soon, and that means Cormac has escapades from last year to top. Gormlaith has let exactly what those might be sink into the language bog, and Aoife went white to the ears when I even mentioned the Feast of the Baptist.