Gwynn finds the friend of her heart's desiring

Britamund laid a heavy hand on Flann’s shoulder as she passed and waved the other at Cat and Hetty.

“Don’t get up, don’t get up, ladies,” she said breezily. “I will not have expecting mothers standing on my account, and I will not ask the rest of you to partition yourselves accordingly, lest you be forced to reveal any little secrets you would rather keep.” She winked down at Flann.

“But won’t you have a seat, Brit?” Gwynn asked slyly.

Britamund only shook her finger at her, which delighted Gwynn more than an outright reply.

Gwynn was almost certain the Princess had a little secret of her own, and though Britamund was crafty enough not to let it slip, Gwynn had only to say the word “baby” and watch how red her brother’s ears turned to gauge the likelihood of this happy future event.

She waited with simmering impatience for Britamund to greet the elder ladies, and then she pounced.

“Did you see him?” she squeaked.

“Whom?”

Gwynn grabbed her sister-​​in-​​law by the sleeves and shook her – but gently, on account of her secret. “You beastly woman!” she squealed. “Him!”

“Which him?” Britamund asked pertly. “I saw two ‘hims’ downstairs.” She then turned a wicked smile on Hetty, which proved she was well aware there was only supposed to be one, and well aware, therefore, of which “him” Gwynn spoke.

“Ach du Himmel!” Hetty whimpered, suddenly frantic with worry over this overturning of her supper plans. “Who is it? It is not Father Matthew, is it?”

“It isn’t Finn, is it?” Margaret asked hopefully.

Britamund clucked at them both. “I saw more than two ‘hims’ if we’re counting gentlemen I know. I’m speaking of the foreign guests.” She threw up her slyest, most devilish, most secretive smile, which she was wearing ever more often in the last weeks.

“Foreign guests!” Hetty wailed and wrung her skirts between her hands. “Ach du lieber! And only one kind of meat!”

“This is some kind of trick,” Margaret said warily. “What’s this foreign guest? Did Cearball bring his dog or something?”

“This is some kind of trick,” Britamund agreed, “but I’m not the one playing it. It seems Sir Egelric forgot to mention that Cearball was only accompanying a gentleman of higher rank than he.”

Hetty stopped her hand-​​wringing and went white with shock.

Gwynn felt her face change color, too, but she thought it must have been to a passionate pink. For a moment she was free to imagine anything her heart desired – verily the handsome prince of her dreams. Perhaps Egelric had even been mistaken about which of the two gentleman had the violet eyes.

Then she remembered her new friend was nigh. Two gentlemen! Two young ladies! She caught Condal’s wrist and held it tightly. Condal glanced down at her, and Gwynn instantly knew she was thinking the same thing.

The advent of Condal was already nearly more happiness than Gwynn could bear. Even if the gentlemen turned out to be wrinkly old grandfathers, there would be the delicious gossiping and giggling about them afterwards… for Condal had accepted her invitation to stay the night!

At last Gwynn too had a friend of her own age to whisper with in her big new bed, as Margaret and Emma did three and four nights out of the week. At last Gwynn too would have someone to tell her secrets to, and – what was more sacred still – she would be trusted with the secrets of another. Out of the ashes of the saddest time of Gwynn’s life, there seemed to be growing the first green shoots of the gladdest.

“It’s a Welshman,” Brit said. “The son of the old Prince of Gwynedd. Dunstan says he’s your mother’s cousin. He’s small enough to be,” she added with a fond smile.

“Our cousin!” Margaret cried. “That beats a dog! How old is he?”

“How handsome is he, more importantly?” Flann cooed.

“I don’t know,” Britamund shrugged. “Younger than Dunstan.”

Gwynn paused to calculate: if he was younger than Dunstan, yet not evidently a child, he was just the right age. She glanced up at Condal, who smiled hopefully down at her. She had thought the same thing!

“But is he more handsome?” Gwynn asked for the two of them.

“Ach!” Cat laughed. “Don’t bother asking a new bride whether a man is handsomer than her husband.”

Hetty interrupted them with a wail. “Your mother’s cousin! Where shall I seat him?”

Britamund’s teasing smile softened at the sight of Hetty’s distress. “Alred said not to worry about that, Hetty. He already took care of it.”

“There’s a chair,” Margaret reminded her. “Father Matthew isn’t here.”

“But I cannot put a prince’s son in that chair!” Hetty whimpered. “Now where shall I put Cearball?”

“Alred already took care of it, Hetty,” Britamund said firmly. “I don’t know who is sitting where, but you know Alred – he could have us all sitting on the floor in our stocking feet with trenchers on our heads, and he would make everyone feel perfectly at ease.”

“But what does he look like?” Gwynn begged.

Britamund shrugged and smiled. “I don’t know. Normal.”

“What about Cearball?” Cat asked. “Leave the Welshmen to the Welshwomen – it’s the Gaels that interest us sisters.” She smirked at Condal.

“I don’t know…” Britamund began hesitantly.

“Let me guess! Normal!” Gwynn groaned. “When did you become so blind to the traits of young men, Brit?”

“Mid-​​August?” Cat laughed.

“Is he old or young?” Flann demanded.

“I don’t know…” Britamund mused. “About Dunstan’s age.”

Gwynn grinned excitedly up at Condal, and Condal grinned excitedly down.

“Married?” Flann asked.

“I don’t know! Ask him!”

“Dark or light?”

“Has he violet eyes?” Cat asked.

“I don’t know!” Britamund wailed. “He stayed in the shadows most of the time.”

Gwynn shivered in romantic delight: a mysterious, shadow-​​dwelling, possibly violet-​​eyed man who was not too old and not so ugly as to be remarkable… it seemed almost too much to hope that he should be unspoken-​​for too.

“Were you noticing nothing at all?” Cat sighed. “I’m married to a beautiful elf, and I can tell you at a glance the color of a man, his height, weight, and age, the color of his eyes, and which one he uses to wink at a pretty girl!”

Britamund threw up her hands. “I only noticed that the Old Man has already had too many ‘just a sips’ of wine, and Dunstan must have had powerfully cold hands after our ride, for he couldn’t keep them off of me!” Her attempt at Cat-​​like sauciness was spoiled by a rampant blush.

Cat smacked her hand down on the arm of the couch and declared, “That proves it! At least one of those lads is handsomer than he has any right to be, and Dunstan saw it!”

“Beware, ladies!” Flann smiled.

“Beware, absent husbands!” Cat corrected.

Gwynn’s little fists were shaking, and her little stomach was fluttering beneath the tightly-​​cinched waist of her gown. She had not felt so excited since before the Old Man’s tragic birthday party – no, since before Lili’s death – and not since the Christmas mornings of her girlhood had she been so simply happy from sheer anticipation. Moreover, she was finding that such feelings were doubled by being shared.

“But which one?” Gwynn whimpered. “Oh, Connie, I can’t bear it!”

“If you truly wanted to spare yourself such agony,” Kraaia muttered, “you could simply go down and see for yourself.”

Sometimes it seemed to Gwynn that Kraaia liked to stand silently by until she was forgotten, waiting for one of Gwynn’s bright fancies to bubble up, merely to take the vicious pleasure of piercing it with her needle-​​sharp tongue.

Cat and Flann exchanged a sour look, but in the time it took them to decide which one would make the cutting retort, Condal stepped into the breach armed with nothing more than her own sweetness.

“But if the men are very ugly or very dull, at least we had the fun of the wondering. Sometimes the wondering is the funnest part!” she giggled, ungrammatically but adorably. “And the talking it over afterwards. Isn’t it, Gwynn?”

Gwynn could scarcely speak through the grateful trembling of her little jaw, but she managed to whisper a passionate, “Yes!”