Read Online Dryden's Bride by Margo Maguire - Free Book Online Page A

he’d delivered to her last night during the storm.
    With a heartfelt sigh, Siân gathered the children around her and they sat together on a blanket of dry leaves under an ancient oak tree. She had to stop thinking of Hugh and truly resign herself to her fate at St. Ann’s.
    Owen’s decision was final. Siân had no choice in the matter.
    “In my country, there is a place called Llanfabon, where the faeries like to make mischief,” Siân said as one of the older girls sat down and began to plait her hair. Another child picked wildflowers and threaded them into Siân’s russet tresses. “And in Llanfabon, there once lived a widow woman and her small son, Pryderi.”
    By telling the old tale, Siân hoped to get her wayward thoughts under control. It was no use thinking of Hugh Dryden or his heroic rescue—not only of her, but of Clairmont itself. He was remote and aloof, alwaysso serious, Siân thought. Surely he had not been afire the night he’d gotten her out of her wet clothes. Siân knew she was not likely to inspire any sort of longing in a man.
    Siân tamped down her irrational sense of defeat and continued her tale. “One day, while the widow was making her little son’s breakfast, she heard a commotion outside. The cattle were lowing down in the byre. Pryderi’s mother was afraid something was amiss.”
    “What could it be?” a little girl asked.
    “’Twas a wolf!” cried one of the boys.
    “No…” Siân said dramatically. “Remember, there were faeries in that part of the country…”
    Which started a flurry of questions about faeries and whether or not they could be seen nearby, and if ever they caused mischief among the cows and pigs at Clairmont. The children crowded around her and plied her with their queries, so preoccupied that none of them took note of the knight who’d walked up behind them.
    Hugh delayed his return to Clairmont to tell Siân to move in closer to the town with the children since there could still be danger lurking in the outlying forest. He’d intended to speak to her right away, but instead, kept his silence as he approached her and the children, unwilling to put a stop to the sound of her engaging voice and her pleasing Welsh accent.
    She continued her story as the children sat spellbound. “When the poor mother returned to their cottage, she was suspicious that something had changed. ‘ Och , child,’ she cried, ‘you look like my sweet Pryderi, yet you are somehow different. I fear it is not really you I see before me.’
    “The child, who was different, awakened. He said, ‘Of course it is I, Mother. Who else would I be?”’
    One of the little girls interrupted the story. “Did the faeries take Pryderi from his mother?”
    “Did they give her a changeling?” another asked.
    “The poor old mother did not know for certain,” Siân replied. “But the only way she knew to find out, was to ask the wise man of the village…”
    Hugh leaned his back against a tree and watched as Siân wove her magical spell for the children. She was a gifted storyteller, he thought as she changed her voice and moved her delicate hands to emphasize parts of the story. His earlier impression of Lady Siân as a faerie sprite was not too far from reality, and he found himself falling under the spell of that voice, those hands.
    And as he stood there, enveloped in the enchantment of the moment, Hugh wondered how it would feel if she were to touch him. Not the competent touch of a healer to his wound, as she’d been last night, but the soft caress of a feisty red-haired woman who wept with abandon in private, and laughed without restraint in the company of children.
    “…and the boy’s mother sought the counsel of the old wise man once more,” Siân continued. “‘You must perform a difficult task,’ the old man told her. ‘Search out and find a hen as black as night, whose feathers reflect no light. Close up your cottage, block the doors and windows, but leave the