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of your own accord?” he asked evenly. “Perhaps I should compliment you on your boldness—but I would rather not.” He looked past her to Lisid. “What a pity she is there. If she were not, you could attempt to seduce me again.”

      Flushing even more—although whether with shame or at the notion of being in his arms again, she didn’t want to consider—Seona forced herself not to say anything in hasty anger. “Please, Sir Griffydd—”

      “Griffydd. After that kiss, I think we have no need of titles.”

      Although his words made her burn with shame, she wished he would shout at her or at least appear angry instead of just standing there as calmly as if they were discussing the price of wool.

      She drew herself up, deciding she would not demean herself further by seeming to beg. “I would appreciate it if you did not speak of last night to my father. Otherwise, I will rue it greatly.”

      Griffydd DeLanyea’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

      “It was by his order that you escorted me to my quarters,” he reminded her.

      “It was most certainly not by his order that I voiced my unwillingness to be used.”

      “Are you telling me that he will punish you for that?” he charged, his voice low, yet firm and commanding. The voice of a lord. A king.

      “For trying to warn you, of course.”

      “How?”

      “Does it matter?”

      He. eyed her speculatively, “No doubt if I reveal my own lack of proper behavior, he will be mollified. Indeed, he should be quite pleased to know his plan was so effective.”

      “No!” she cried sharply, angry tears welling in her eyes.

      Again his expression altered ever so slightly and she thought she saw a glimmer of genuine concern on his handsome face. “I would not allow him to hurt you.”

      She gazed at him with undisguised surprise. “You would not allow him?”

      “No, I would not,” he said with such conviction she could believe that a stranger she barely knew would protect her from her father’s wrath.

      Before she could respond, they heard a commotion in the trees near them along the path leading from the fortress to the stream.

      “DeLanyea!”

      Her father came charging out of the pine trees like a hunted boar, his men trailing behind him, and a grin split his broad face as his shrewd gaze darted between an apparently impassive Griffydd DeLanyea and a flushed Seona.

      “Well met!” he shouted happily, addressing the Welshman.

      “When you were not in your quarters, I thought you might be here,” he said as he came to a halt. “And Seona, too.”

      He glanced somewhat sternly at Lisid and her children, as if wondering what the devil they were doing there.

      Naoghas, Lisid’s husband, seemed far from pleased to note their presence, too.

      Even at this distance, Seona could see Lisid’s petulant frown as she tossed her lovely head before hurrying away, leading a reluctant Fionn by the hand.

      “I was helping Lisid with her children,” Seona explained, “and Sir Griffydd came to wash.

      “It was a good thing,” she went on, looking at Naoghas as much as her father, “for Fionn fell in the stream and might have drowned if Sir Griffydd had not rescued him.”

      “Is this so?” Diarmad cried. “Then it is well you were here. You have my thanks, DeLanyea.”

      “And mine,” Naoghas said, albeit with less than good grace. “I am Lisid’s husband,” he added with a slightly belligerent tone, for Naoghas was a fiercely jealous man.

      Seona wondered what Sir Griffydd made of him. Unfortunately, she could get no clue at all to that, or anything else the man might be thinking as he bowed his head in greeting.

      “Our guest still has not yet had a chance to perform his ablutions,” Seona said, anxious to get away from her slyly grinning father and his men, as well as the confusing, infuriating, compelling Griffydd DeLanyea.

      “Oh?” Diarmad responded, as if it were inconceivable that a man would want to wash.

      “Perhaps we should leave him to do so in peace.”

      “I would appreciate that,” the Welshman said evenly.

      “I was thinking we should hunt this morning, while the weather is so fine,” her father remarked. “Plenty of time to talk of trade later.”

      “If you wish,” DeLanyea replied.

      “Good, good!”

      “Unfortunately, I had not thought to bring my hunting weapons.”

      “We will give you spears and one of our finest horses,” Diarmad offered.

      Griffydd DeLanyea laid a hand on his breast and bowed. “I am honored by your generosity.”

      Diarmad cleared his throat loudly. “I, um, am pleased to let you have the loan of them.”

      Seona started to walk away, vaguely attempting to think of ways to occupy her time while the men were hunting. She hoped Griffydd DeLanyea would say nothing to her father about last night. She prayed she could trust him to keep silent.

      Thankfully, the fleeting expression of concern she had seen on his face before her father had arrived made her think her hopes were not unfounded.

      In the meantime, she could help Lisid with the dying of cloth, or Maeve with baking bread, or assist in the drying of the day’s catch—

      “Seona!” her father barked.

      She halted abruptly and turned to face her suddenly irate parent. “I have not given you permission to go.”

      Blushing again, she wondered what he was doing, beyond humiliating her by treating her like a child.

      “If you will excuse me, Father, Sir Griffydd,” she said, trying to be as inscrutable as the Welshman as she dipped her head in a bow, “I have many things to do.”

      “Go to my hall and wait for me,” her father ordered, waving her away as if she were one of his dogs.

      Or perhaps not even as important as that.

      

      Griffydd didn’t watch Seona leave. Instead, he kept his attention on his host and Lisid’s husband.

      He had to keep his wits about him. He had to remember that he was here to conclude a trade agreement between his father and MacMurdoch, not to interfere in the man’s family.

      It should not matter a whit to him how Diarmad treated Seona. He should not have implied he would come between her and her father, even if the man did speak to her as if she were his servant, or a slave.

      Perhaps this was all part of the plan. Maybe they were trying to make him feel sympathy for her. Despite her protestations, it might even be that the only reason she had spoken to him this morning was because she had failed in her objective to seduce him in order to force a marriage, and she didn’t want her father to know that.

      Clearly, he dare not let down his guard against her, despite the proud, pleading look on her face when she asked him to keep silent, or the equally proud resentment that flashed in her eyes when her father sent her away so rudely.

      “Well, a fine day for stag hunting it is, and no mistake,” Diarmad declared. “I’ll leave you now to wash, and we shall meet in my hall to break the fast.”

      Griffydd bowed in acknowledgment while Diarmad strode away, followed by his silent warriors, including Naoghas, who gave Griffydd a hostile glance before he disappeared through the trees.

      Although Griffydd had

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