Rhiannon pursed her lips and longed to fill her palm with water again, only to cast it into Marcella’s face. “I beg pard—”
“Oh, please!” said Marcella. “Spare me, Lady Blackwood! I know your kind!”
Rhiannon was momentarily disarmed by the vicious presentation of her title—Lady Blackwood. For the past few hours, she’d somehow been able to keep Cael off her mind—thanks mostly to Jack. Clearly, Marcella could not.
“All your life you’ve been blessed in your affinities, and perhaps you believe yourself better than those with less. Regardless, merely because I’ve chosen alchemy as my profession, and simply because I’ve no elemental affinity, does not mean my dewine blood is less than yours!”
Rhiannon opened her mouth to speak, but the paladin wasn’t through…
“What I lack in my affinities, I make up for in expertise elsewhere. Unlike you, Lady Blackwood, I’ve made it my life’s devotion to know my kin.”
Rhiannon countered, “And yet, you would hunt and slay your own kind?”
Marcella’s eyes narrowed till they were slits. “You know nothing, Rhiannon Pendragon,” she declared, with the emphasis on her ancestral name, and the rebuke left Rhiannon dumb. Once again, she opened her mouth to argue that she, too, had dedicated her life to her Craft—practicing even when her sisters dared not. But she closed her mouth again, wondering…
Could it be true?
Did she believe herself better than others?
Was this why Marcella had been casting her the evil eye all day long? She had only assumed it was her affection for Cael, but perhaps it was not…
She peered over at Jack, but the young man looked like a frightened rabbit facing a wolf, and his shoulders lifted and froze.
Snapping her reins indignantly, Marcella harrumphed, hitching her chin. And once again, as she had this morn, she spurred her mount ahead, taking the lead. Only this time, as she went, she said, “When you are ready to humble yourself, Lady Blackwood, and perhaps learn something more than you think you know, please let me know!”
16
Humble?
Sweet fates! For five years, Rhiannon had been humbled by no choice of her own.
Even before her confinement at Blackwood, she and her sisters had spent nearly every day of their lives taking whatever scraps were offered.
At Llanthony, they’d occupied a single-room cottage with a crude, dirt floor and one bed—five girls, sleeping all together in whatever corner could be found.
In this day and age, she and her ilk were ill-favored—condemned by the Church as heretics or demons. And nevertheless, they were far from that lot; dewinefolk were flesh and blood like anyone else.
Moreover, it didn’t matter that she and her sisters were blood to a King, they’d suffered no less humility than leper-infected beggars.
Each of them had gold aplenty they’d never even once benefited from—not even her wedded sisters, because they’d married men of whom the Crown did not approve.
It was only after becoming Cael’s “ward” that Rhiannon had ever even owned a new dress she didn’t sew herself. “Humble!” she said crossly.
How dare that woman imply she was anything but.
Jack rode silently beside her, saying nothing at all—at least not for the longest while, and then he suggested, very gently, “Some folks believe you must be poor and suffering to comprehend humility. But my father used to claim that betimes, even the poor, sometimes perceiving humility to be honorable, will borrow the cloak.”
There was little rebuke in his tone, and something about his expression led Rhiannon to resist the temptation to lash out at him. She bit her tongue, considering the parable.
Indeed, she was prideful—had always been. She knew her faults as well as any.
In fact, her pride had more than once led her to argue with Elspeth, because, as the eldest, Ellie had so often carried herself as though she knew everything. Rhiannon couldn’t bear to be told what to do, or how to think…
And yet, knowing what she knew now, if she could take back one moment of prideful disagreement with any of her sisters, she would do it in a heartbeat. Never in her life had she appreciated them more than she did right now… and clearly, she’d underestimated them as well.
Seren would be Regnant?
And Arwyn… were the situation reversed, would Rhiannon have sacrificed herself the way Arwyn had?
Alas, no one could say for certes how they might respond in any such moment, but Rhiannon liked to believe she would. And yet, she had always believed herself to be the indispensable one… so, then, perhaps she would not?
And now, as it turned out, though her hud was quite strong, she didn’t have half the ability Seren had proven to possess. Still, no humbler person than Seren had ever lived. She needn’t have seen her these past five years to know it was still true.
“I know your sisters quite well,” said Jack, as though he’d read her mind. “I spent a good deal of time with all three before returning to Calais. It has been my pleasure to know them, and yet I have never encountered so much kindness.”
“Indeed… my sisters are wondrous,” said Rhiannon, still mulling over his parable. “It is for love of them I’m so much a fiend.”
“Aye,” said Jack, with a wink. “So I’m told.”
Rhiannon smiled ruefully, embarrassed, and then she cast yet another glance at Marcella’s rigid back.
“I can only imagine,” she said, wondering over the things Jack might have heard. Clearly, Marcella hadn’t any respect for her, she and Elspeth had argued all too oft, and while the rest of her sisters had tried in vain to keep the peace, admittedly, Rhiannon was possessed of a temper.
“Only to hear them speak of you, I admired you well,” said Jack. “So I am told, you are the best, the wisest, the most talented dewine of our age. Naturally, I could not wait to meet you…” He shrugged. “And here I am.”
Surprised by the compliments, Rhiannon shifted her gaze to meet his. “Have I disappointed you?”
The young man’s golden brows lifted. “Not at all, m’lady. I can see why Lord Blackwood is so smitten.” He inclined his head toward Marcella. “In fact, were my heart not already taken, I might be obliged to offer it to you.”
He winked at her again, but Rhiannon’s smile faded, thinking about Cael. “Not so smitten he would abandon my mother,” she groused.
Jack sighed then, sounding weary.
How old was he? she wondered yet again. If he had been thirteen when he first knew her sisters, he must be no more than seventeen or eighteen—younger than the nineteen she’d first presumed. Comparatively, Marcella was easily ten years his senior, with a decade’s worth of life and knowledge that would naturally leave the poor lad wanting.
What a jumble this was: Rhiannon loved Cael but couldn’t have him. He claimed to love her, as well, but not enough to abandon her mother. Marcella loved Cael, Rhiannon suspected, and yet here she was left in the cold. And so, too, was Jack, because he coveted a woman who was well out of his league and whose heart belonged to another.
“Your mother is… quite… the force,” he said. “In truth, she frightens me out of my wits. I see you do resemble her, Rhiannon… so, then… I must presume that while there may be something of her in you… there may also be something of you in her.”