Lady Gwynn sees the beauty of it

“So,” Gwynn whispered eagerly once they had shivered and snuggled their way down between the chilly sheets. “Now we may talk!”

Condal offered up a feeble smile. Now they could talk? They had been talking on the rug for so long that her lashes were wet from teary yawns. She had just been telling herself: Now she could sleep!

“What shall we talk about?” she asked politely.

“I want to ask you an earnest question,” Gwynn said low. “Pray do not think to spare my feelings, but only tell me the solemn truth.”

The corners of Condal’s smiling mouth twitched uneasily. Oh, if she asked about Cearball!

“Dear Condal,” Gwynn intoned, “tell me truly: do you consider us bosom friends?”

Condal blinked her damp lashes. Had she heard correctly? She did not yet know much of English. She did not know much of friendship either, and for that matter she was only just learning the knack of having a bosom. Fortunately she knew Gwynn to be an expert on all three subjects, and she was not too proud to defer to her wisdom.

“What’s a bosom friend?” she whispered.

“It means a friend who is nearest and dearest to one’s heart,” Gwynn explained. “It means one’s very best friend.”

Condal sucked nervously on her bottom lip. She almost wished Gwynn had simply asked her about Cearball.

Finally she faltered, “I haven’t quite given up hoping my sister will be coming home…”

“Oh, no!” Gwynn gasped. Her hand slid up between the sheets and clasped Condal’s wrist. “I would never presume to be dearer to you than your own sister. Sisters are a different case. Your bosom friend is your best and dearest friend who is not your sister.”

Condal grinned in relief. “Then you may be my bosom friend,” she agreed.

Gwynn released her wrist only long enough to clasp her hand and twine their fingers together.

“Bosom friends!” she whispered. “Forever!”

Condal smiled and nodded enthusiastically. Now she could sleep!

Gwynn wriggled her hips and shoulders a little closer. “Now,” she announced, “we may talk.”

“Ach!”

“You see, it was most urgent that I assured myself of our eternal friendship, for I have a dark secret to tell that I may tell only to a bosom friend.”

Condal braced herself. Now she was going to ask her about Cearball. Or worse–tell her something about Cearball that would pain her to hear. She had not quite given up believing he was not that kind of bad.

“But if it’s a dark secret…” she said, remembering what the Duke had asked of her, “…oughtn’t you to tell your father? He will forgive you anything, and he will help you.”

“My father already knows,” Gwynn assured her. “It’s a family secret. But I feel I must tell you,” she said fervently, “for I want you to understand why, sometimes, I cannot help but shed a silent tear.”

She made a dramatic pause, substituting silence, perhaps, for a tear that was slow to come.

Condal bit her upper lip and pulled it taut to stifle a yawn.

“Now,” Gwynn began ominously, “I am certain you have heard that my father suffered an injury last month: an accident with his sword. But that is not quite true.”

That was all! Of course everyone already knew what had truly happened that night: the Duke had quarrelled with Lord Hingwar over Hetty, and they had fought with swords and both been wounded. Condal knew perfectly well that a man could not have “an accident” with his sword unless it were at the very least drawn.

But she humored her bosom friend and opened her eyes wide in solemn surprise.

“In truth,” Gwynn continued darkly, “he tried to kill himself with it. He – ”

Her voice squeaked and snapped like a burst harp string, and her theatrically tragical expression fell away, revealing a frightened little face and a pained smile. Her dark eyes sparkled with tears she refused to let fall. Condal had never before seen Gwynn trying not to cry.

Gwynn fought against a sob until the trembling corners of her mouth made a little sucking sound, as unrehearsed and unromantic as a baby’s whimper. It seemed to startle her into remembering her lines.

“But you must not judge him harshly,” she warned. Her voice was thicker, but the trembling was gone. “In the heat of the moment, passionate men are known to do things they later regret. And let us not forget, it was the second time it happened to him. Leofric seduced my mother, too. A man’s heart may be broken only so many times before it shatters forever.”

Condal swallowed. Her English failed her, and she could only remember what comfortless words of comfort had been said to her. She hoped they sounded warmer to a girl whose father had not truly died.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

It did explain a few things, she thought: not quite mysteries, but the way an innocent word could sometimes cause the dinner conversation to splutter like a candle in a gust, only to flare up still more brightly afterwards… or why the children could not meet without asking one another where their father was and determining who had seen him last…

Gwynn rubbed Condal’s hand reassuringly. “He feels better now. And Hetty could not help what she did. Leofric has a terrible gift for seducing unhappy women. He did it to my mother when she was so unhappy because she had lost her baby and Father had to go away. And he did it to Hetty when dear Lili died, and he did it to your sister, too, when Paul had said cruel things to her before they were ever married. So the blame is all his.”

Condal’s head sank deeper into the pillow as she unraveled the English. Leofric was a bad man. Leofric was searching for her sister. If he found her… if she was unhappy…

If only he brought her home!

Gwynn squeezed her hand and snuggled down into the blankets. “I’m so glad I could tell you, Connie!” she sighed. “I feel as if I need no longer bear my sorrows alone!”

Condal tried to smile. “For now we are bosom friends!” she reminded her.

Gwynn squeaked, “Yes!” and kicked her feet excitedly in the sheets like a swimmer. Her moments of unrehearsed, childish glee were fortunately frequent, and Condal could not help but giggle.

And now she could sleep!

She lifted her head to pointedly squint and blink at the candles left burning behind Gwynn’s head, but Gwynn had a hint of her own wherewith to point.

“You may tell me your secrets, too, you know!” she reminded Condal.

Condal’s head dropped onto the pillow. Her secrets… A warm current flowed up from deep inside of her, making her hands damp and her dimpled cheeks hot and pink.

“But I haven’t any… dark secrets,” she said shyly.

“They needn’t be dark,” Gwynn reassured her. “Only intimate secrets that you have never shared.”

In her excitement she squirmed between the sheets like a puppy – and then she waited.

Condal had one intimate secret, and now it broke the surface of her thoughts as it had so many times throughout the day, when she could not confine it to swimming around her tummy like a warm, velvet-​​finned fish.

But could she tell it? She almost wished she had a dark secret of her own. She almost wished Gwynn had simply asked her opinion of Cearball.

“You have one!” Gwynn squeaked. “I can tell! You’re simply glowing with it! Connie, you’re in love!”

An unsuspected school of secret minnows tickled all around inside of Condal’s belly, and she giggled breathlessly to try to shake them out.

Gwynn squeezed both her hands. “You are! Oh, tell me, please! I swear, I shall never tell a living soul.”

She freed one hand to make some English sign of swearing beneath the sheets.

Recklessly Condal decided she would tell her – and then she realized she had nothing to tell. Nothing had been decided. Nothing had been declared. Nothing could be said, except–

Condal sat up. “You can read, can’t you?”

Gwynn sat up beside her. “Of course I can! Oh, Connie, do you have a letter?”

“But names, I’m meaning?” Condal begged. “Celtic names?”

“Names?” Gwynn scoffed. “If it’s names, I can read any name written in the Greek or Latin scripts.”

“Then come!”

Condal pulled the blankets to the left, and Gwynn pulled them to the right, and laughing at their giddy awkwardness, they both tumbled out of bed and dashed for the chest of drawers by the mirror, which had been given over to Condal’s intimate affairs.

Gwynn had the candle lit long before Condal had fumbled her way through her stacks of slips and nightgowns in search of the precious package. Gwynn’s hands shook like butterflies, and her little feet thumped on the floorboards as she danced in gleeful impatience.

“Is it a letter, darling?” she begged. “I swear I won’t read it if you only want to show me the name – but oh!” she moaned in ecstasy. “A love letter! You lucky girl! How I long to receive one!”

At last Condal’s fingers slid between sheets of cool silk to find the parchment, slightly warm, slightly oily, like living skin.

“It isn’t a letter,” she said. “And you may read it all.”

Gwynn swiped it away before she had quite unfolded it, and she watched it go with the politely stifled dread of a new mother trusting her baby to untested hands.

Gwynn’s gaze flickered over the parchment from top to bottom, and then she read: “Kelpie– Condal– Malo!”

Her dark eyes were wide with unfeigned surprise. Condal’s heart throbbed. Her most precious, most intimate secret shuddered and gasped like a fish exposed to the raw air.

Then Gwynn looked up at her over the edge of the page and grinned at her.

“Connie! You darling!”

She leapt up and threw her arms around Condal’s neck, and leapt away again before Condal had even moved to embrace her. She hopped around on her two bare feet in excitement.

“Malo!” she squeaked. “You sly thing! And last night we were talking about him and you never said a word and you were already in love with him!”

Condal grinned foolishly.

“And all those terrible, cruel things Emmie and Meg were saying about him, and how you must have longed to defend him!”

Condal nodded and pressed her grin flat into a hard line of defiance.

“And he isn’t a criminal!” Gwynn insisted. “And he isn’t a traitor. Or–no!” she gasped. “Perhaps he was a traitor to some man – a mere mortal man, Connie – but loyal to some higher, nobler cause!”

“Are you thinking so?” Condal asked hopefully.

“I am certain of it! Aren’t you? Isn’t he good and generous and kind?”

“So kind!” It squeezed her throat like a sob to say it, and it hurt – and it felt so good!

“Oh, Connie! So romantic!”

Gwynn grasped Condal by the arms and arranged her squarely before her, though the forced gravity of her little face made it seem it was herself she was trying to calm.

“How did you meet him? You must tell me everything!”

“In church! Look, I have this, too!”

Gwynn clutched her hands to her bosom and moaned, “In church! So holy!”

Meanwhile Condal pawed through her nightgowns in search of the little folded square.

“He gave me a handkerchief…” she explained. “He saw me crying the day we met…”

“Oh, Connie!”

Condal found the cloth and pulled it free. It flapped open, and for an instant she was petrified with modesty and fear. It was such an unassuming handkerchief, with its simple blue threads running through it, so unlike the embroidered, perfumed cloths the Duke and his sons carried. Lady Gwynn would not see the beauty of it.

But Lady Gwynn snatched it up and danced away with it like a veil.

“And he gave you his handkerchief!” she trilled. “It is as if he dries your tears for you, even when he is not there!”

Condal sobbed and laughed, “Aye!” Her bosom friend understood!

Gwynn danced back and pressed the handkerchief into Condal’s grateful hands. Gwynn wrapped her hands around them and squeezed.

“You must tell me everything, Connie. It is the most romantic–erotic romance I have ever heard! If love were pennies, he would be the richest man in the world, with you for a lover. Oh, but Connie, have you kissed him? Have your lips met?”

Condal remembered herself then, and her giddy spirits tumbled back onto the cold floor.

“Ach, no!” she whimpered. “Nothing like that at all. I’m not certain he’s thinking of me that way at all. I’m not certain he loves me at all…”

“Are you silly?” Gwynn gasped. She pointed imperiously at the parchment and flipped the hem of the handkerchief up with her hand. “Look at the evidence. He wrote your names together! Did he not?”

“Aye…”

“Did you ask him to?”

“No, I did not! I would never dare!”

“So, do you see? And–oh, Connie!” she moaned.

Condal asked uneasily, “What?”

“Oh, Connie!”

“What, then?” Condal quavered.

“I am certain he loves you. I would swear to it!”

She made another English sign of swearing across her breast.

“Why, then?” Condal begged.

“My father has been trying ever since Bastien died to get him to work here – and for weeks beforehand trying simply to invite him to dine. And now, at last, Connie, he consented. And do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because you’re here, ninny-​​nanny!” Gwynn squealed. “And better still, because he’s a poor man, and he has told himself that he must earn a good living before he may ask you to be – his – bride!”

“Ach, du lieber!” Condal gasped in a confusion of tongues.

Gwynn hugged her suddenly as high as she could reach. “Such happy times ahead!” she laughed shakily. “For it will take time, of course, but such a happy, romantic, erotic time! I almost envy you!”

Gwynn’s feverish trembling seemed to pass into Condal as she squeezed.

“But he hasn’t even kissed me yet,” she protested weakly for the pleasure of hearing herself gainsaid. “He hasn’t even tried!”

“He will try, darling, mark my words! And it’s mistletoe time – we shall make it easy for him. You shall have your first kiss by Christmas, Connie. Mark – my – words!” She stubbed her finger down on the parchment upon the table. “Or ask him to mark them for you,” she added slyly.

“I wouldn’t dare!” Condal breathed.

And yet she imagined herself daring… saying airily to the young man, as the Duke did his secretary: “Take note, good sir: I shall have my first kiss by Christmas.”

Gwynn danced one last turn around the room in honor of Condal’s own joy.

“Let’s put out the candles and get in the bed… and in the dark you may tell me everything! Won’t you, Connie?” she begged. “Now that we are bosom friends?”

“Everything!” Condal whispered eagerly. “Now we may talk!”