“Hmm, just so.” Isabelle scrunched her nose. “But one step at a time. You will talk to Tristan and help me give these stubborn brothers a nudge, yes?”
“I will.”
There came a prod to her side. “You could do it now.”
“Now?”
“Hmm. Mr Pugh told Mrs Pugh, who told me, that this morning he absconded to the stables and asked for the docile Flint to be tacked. Mr Pugh said his lordship wanted to see if his damaged leg would allow him to sit a horse and ride out to the stone circle ofBedd Ddraig.”
“Well, I’ll wait for him to come back then.” Gwen’s hand crept to the paper bag. “We could have some cinnamon biscuits firs–”
The bag was snatched to Isabelle’s woollen-clad bosom. “Or you could grasp time by the forelock and go now. And it’s not raining.”
“But the stone circle is two miles away!”
“Take my horse.”
“I’m not wearing a riding habit.”
“Rhys told me you used to ride with your skirts hitched.”
“I was eleven!”
“You wish for adventure.”
“I wish for biscuits.”
“I’ll keep them safe till you return.”
“That’s blackmail.”
“I know.” Isabelle smiled smugly, delving a hand and popping a cinnamon biscuit into her mouth. “I learned it from Mrs Pugh.”
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CHAPTERNINE
“This is the first time my heart has been made really alive.”
Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey…
Mrs Thrale. 1789.
Black dusted the low clouds as though a giant had reached a palm up to coat each one with soot, and they gusted relentlessly across a sky the colour of slate and teal.
The air was bitter and pained his throat and lungs, yet Tristan felt alive here, senses alert and body thrumming as he lay flat upon the ground in the middle of the stone circle ofBedd Ddraig.
Sun stabbed through the cloud where it could and he twisted his head upon the blanket, watched the dead copper-hued bracken shake in the wind, beheld the circle of three-foot upright stones that stood motionless and silent, witnesses to the centuries of change.
Legend said the sixteen jagged stones were dragons’ teeth, that this was the resting ground of the two mighty beasts who’d flown this land in ancient times, mythical ancestors of the Llanedwyn lineage, and hence whose blood flowed in Tristan’s own veins.
Even now, in this age of one religion, many villagers still came up here to place a silver coin before the stones and ask the dragons to grant their wishes.
Sitting up, he admired the view of the Llyn Peninsula to the east and Tremadog Bay ahead, the clouds casting patterns of furtive dark shoals on the sea. Behind him, the snow-capped inland mountains rose like clefted spines upon a sleeping beast of the past, sublime yet perilous places for mortals to tread.
Tristan delved in his pocket, found a silver sixpence and flipped it to the nearest stone that burst from the grass like a dagger. Breathing deep and without thought, his hand seized the pendant at his neck. He’d meant to ask Rhys about it as perhaps he knew where it’d come from, but there hadn’t been the moment.
And he made his wish.
