The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) by Lisa Ann Verge Page A

leg of lamb.
    Aileen said, “Wait—”
    Dafydd raised his hand to silence her. “You don’t want to insult her.”
    “What did you tell her?”
    “I told her that you were moved by her generosity, and that you wish her health and happiness with her growing family.”
    “A bit got lost in the translation, then.”
    “You’d shame her if you refused her gift.”
    “And what I am to do with this thing?”
    “I’m partial to having it basted within a suet crust and served with mountain–ash jelly.”
    “Very well. I’ll give it to Marged.”
    Aileen turned on her heel and headed toward the door. Dafydd’s soft leather boots made no sound in the rushes. He shot out an arm to open the door before she could do it herself.
    “You’ll be getting plenty more of that before the week is done,” he said, falling into step beside her as she made her way through the faint drizzle toward the kitchens. “It has been years since we’ve had a healer here. The Welsh don’t live clustered up in towns and villages like the English and most of the Irish—our people live on small homesteads scattered about these hills, hills that don’t make it easy for travel. This llys is the largest settlement in half a day’s ride.” He stepped around a pile of gorse and straw undoubtedly destined for the Calan Gaeaf fires, and tossed the hazel shoot he’d been chewing into the pile. “All our people are grateful for what you did yesterday. You’re needed here.”
    “I’m needed on Inishmaan, as well.”
    “But you’re staying until spring.”
    A couple of hounds, scenting the lamb, trailed in the mud behind them, their muzzles in the air. “Your brother didn’t give me much of a choice.”
    “My brother is not one for diplomacy these days.”
    “Your brother,” she began, rising to a good Irish temper, “is the most arrogant, undeserving, con—”
    “He is my brother,” Dafydd reminded her. “And the lord of this place.”
    She felt the heat of a blush. Perhaps she shouldn’t speak badly of the lord of this house—especially to his brother—but she’d been too ill–treated to grant her host the respect he would normally deserve.
    Dafydd reached over his shoulder and scraped something out of his quiver with his good hand. “See this?”
    Aileen suffered a glance at the arrow gripped in his fist, then looked in surprise at Dafydd’s raised bow, somehow attached to his handless arm.
    “A clever little device, isn’t it?” Dafydd paused in the courtyard. He raised the bow to show where his wrist lay snug within a molded leather cup hanging from the center. “I was nearly fourteen, and Rhys was ten, when he returned here one day from the house of Gerwyn ap Rhain, where Rhys was being fostered.” With a twitch of his leather–covered wrist, he turned the bow flat and nudged the arrow across a wedge in the wood. “Rhys overheard our father threatening to give me up to the church.”
    She glanced at his fine purple mantle, trimmed in soft gray fur growing matted in the drizzle. “You like your comforts too much to be any kind of priest, I’m thinking.”
    “Our father thought a one–handed man would make a better priest than a warrior.”
    He twisted the bow level again and then dragged the tail of the arrow back with his good hand, curling his fingers over the bowstring. “For though I could shoot a lance as straight and as far as any man, a warrior needed two hands to use a longbow. And a Welshman isn’t a man if he can’t shoot a bow.”
    He searched for a target free of danger and waited until the path was clear. With a twang, he launched the arrow. It cracked into the doorpost of a food shed, clear across the courtyard.
    “On that day of Rhys’s return,” he continued, calmly fisting the bow back into the quiver, “I shot my first arrow alone. And my father relented.”
    “Are you telling me Rhys made that thing for you?”
    “A cruder version, but yes.”
    “A fine, pretty story.” She