"Will you go too?" Wynne asked Nesta.
"Aye, I must," Nesta told her. "I must see the end of this and know truly that Brys can never harm any of us again."
That evening Wynne and Madoc sought privacy in the peddler's wagon which had been placed neatly to one side of the courtyard of Gwernach's manor house. Emptied of its goods, it was quite spacious. A mattress filled with sweet meadow grass and fragrant clover had been placed upon the floorboards of the wagon to be topped with a featherbed and several sheepskins. The bleached linen that covered the top and sides of the cart gave them complete seclusion from prying eyes. Naked, they lay stroking each other's bodies to tender arousal.
"You are delicious," he growled low, nipping at the smooth curve of her hip.
"Villain!" Wynne smacked playfully at her husband. "Do I not feed you enough that you would attempt to feast upon my person?"
"I love feasting upon you," he murmured low. Then he rolled her onto her back, and pouring a little wine from one of two goblets they had brought into the wagon upon her belly, he lapped it up with his tongue. "I am drunk with my desire for you, Wynne of Gwernach," he told her passionately.
"And as randy as a stallion in heat too, my lord," she said, her heart beating a quick tattoo. How she loved him!
"Aye," he admitted, and rolling upon his own back, he begged her, "Love me, dearling! I need to feel your mouth upon me tonight."
Rising up upon her side, Wynne looked down at him sprawled upon his back, his manhood engorged and stiff as it thrust upward. She bent and rubbed her soft cheek against it, then placed a kiss upon the ruby tip, her tongue snaking out to encircle the smooth skin of the head, her fingers clamping firmly about it.
He groaned with pure pleasure when she took him into her mouth, reveling in the warmth of her tongue against his skin. "Dear God!" he exclaimed suddenly, "I am nigh to exploding with my desire for you, Wynne, my beautiful wife!"
Releasing him, she raised her head and looked into his eyes. "I feel no desire yet," she said frankly. "How quickly you men are ready to couple, fired by your own lusts, and by wine, no doubt. We women are not so quickly aroused. Alas, though I would give you all the pleasure that I could, Madoc, my dear lord, I am not ready to receive your wild and wondrous passion."
What other woman of his past acquaintance, he wondered, would have made so honest an admission? Other men, he knew, would have been angered by a wife's refusal to offer instant gratification, but then it had never been that way with them. Reaching up, he caressed her full breasts hanging like twin moons above him. Seeing the pleasure begin to creep into her eyes, he smiled slightly. One of his greatest delights in Wynne had always been her enthusiasm for making love. Lifting his head, he licked at her nipples, teasing at the sensitive pinkish-beige flesh until they contracted into thrusting nubs and she murmured with contentment. His hands closed about her waist, and Madoc buried his head in the deep valley between those soft breasts, rubbing his face against the perfumed skin. The fragrance of white heather, warmed by the heat of her body, assailed him.
Gently he tumbled her back onto the soft sheepskins, spreading her wide to him. His night-black head lowering, his mouth sought the honied sweetness of her. His skilled tongue began to stroke expertly at the sensitive coral-pink flesh. Beneath him she began to writhe and whimper with the familiar sound of pure pleasure. He felt his own desire beginning to rise as she cried softly, "Madoc! Oh, Madoc, my love!" with a building urgency he also recognized.
When he had brought her twice to a full and shuddering release by means of his tongue, he mounted her, filling her full with his throbbing passion; riding her furiously until they had both attained mutual pleasure a third and final time. Then rolling off of her, Madoc gathered Wynne into his strong arms.
It had begun to rain outside, and Wynne lay happily within the security of his embrace, listening to the sound of it against the tentlike top of the wagon, thinking her mixed thoughts. Tomorrow night they would leave for Cai. They would reach it in several days' time. Arvel, her precious son! Their son. How she longed to hold him once again within her arms. How proud Madoc would be of the little boy! Curiously she wondered what Brys wanted with the child. Brys with his angel's face and black soul. She would soon know.
The rain had stopped by mid-morning of the following day, but it had grown colder. Enid sought among the storage chests and found clothing that had belonged to Wynne several years earlier, before she had gone to Raven's Rock. Together she and Mair stayed up practically the entire night altering the garments, that Wynne would have warm clothing for the trip.
"They are not the elegant garments you are used to wearing at Raven's Rock," her grandmother apologized, "but they are clean and warm and will keep the wind and rain out."
Wynne thanked Enid lovingly and said, "I have not worn elegant garments for some years now, Grandmother. I am certainly not ashamed of my old clothes." Her fingers stroked at the soft wool fabric of her tunic dress. Both it and her under tunic, which was lined in rabbit's fur, were dark green in color and matched the heavy green mantle which was edged in wolf's fur. Wynne fastened the mantle shut with a pretty brooch of silver, a single piece of green agate in its center.
"Megan will be bringing Wynne's richer garments to Cai, that she may face my brother at her grandest," Madoc told Enid.
Averel was already in her cot sleeping when they finally departed Gwernach. The little girl fully understood that her mother would be leaving her for a time, but did not object as she was assured that Mair would be there with her. Hugging Wynne and placing a noisy kiss upon her mother's cheek, she had toddled from the hall that evening garbed in a little white chemise, her hand tucked securely in Mair's. Then suddenly she pulled away from Mair and, racing back across the hall, threw herself at Madoc.
He lifted her up into his lap and gently inquired, "What is it, Averel?"
"Da?" Averel said, and there was no doubt in anyone's mind that the word was posed as a question. For some inexplicable reason, Averel needed to identify exactly who Madoc was in her life; and she needed to know it now.
"Aye, bunny, I'm your da," Madoc replied, and looking over the little one's head, he almost wept at the look of gratitude in Wynne's beautiful green eyes.
"Da come back?" Averel asked.
"Aye, Da is coming back," he reassured her.
Averel wrapped her arms about his neck and hugged him with all her childish strength. Then climbing down from the prince's lap, she ran back to Mair, and together they left the hall.
"Thank you," Wynne said simply to her husband.
"Do not shame me any further," he answered her low. "Did not the Saxon, Eadwine Aethelhard, who was her father, take my son to his heart without question? In my pride I have been slow to act, but in the presence of our families I say now that I take Averel Aethelhardsdatter for my own true daughter. I will dower her, and never will I treat her with any less love or respect than I will treat my own natural-born children."
A quarter-moon lighted their way as they rode forth from Gwernach. Enid watched as they went, the six horses outlined darkly atop the hill. Dewi had insisted upon going, and there was nothing that either Wynne or Enid could do to dissuade him.
"He's fourteen and 'tis past time he had battle experience," Rhys agreed. "How do you expect him to defend Gwernach from attack, if it should ever be attacked, if he has no battle experience?"