Footsteps in Time: A Time Travel Fantasy (The After Cilmeri Series) by Sarah Woodbury

Author:Sarah Woodbury [Woodbury, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Morgan-Stanwood Publishing Group
Published: 2011-01-19T11:00:00+00:00

* * * * *

The wedding wasn’t, as it turned out, the next day. Goronwy had objected, not because he didn’t want Mom to marry Papa, but because it sent the wrong message to the rest of Wales. To do it right, they needed a big wedding, if only to thumb their noses at King Edward and his Church.

Invitations went out to all the lords of Wales, from the tiniest commote to those whose power rivaled Papa’s. Thus, it was only a week before David’s sixteenth birthday that everyone gathered at Aber, Papa’s primary seat in Gwynedd.

The moment Anna had walked through the castle gate for her own wedding to Math a year earlier, she’d nearly swooned with happiness. Aber wasn’t a castle in the traditional sense. It had a large ring wall surrounding it, within which were the usual stables and kitchens and a large chapel. However, the two primary structures were an ‘H’-shaped building, several stories high that served as Papa’s administrative center, and a large manor house that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the 18th century. Made of stone and wood with many rooms, it was the warmest place Anna had slept since coming to Wales.

It also, miraculously, had a bath. Papa’s forefathers had built Aber over the top of an old Roman villa, meaning it had tunnels underneath it, some of which were walkable, and amenities Anna hadn’t experienced since leaving Pennsylvania.

The year before, when Papa had given Anna away, David had stood up with Math. Anna had worn a wine-colored dress (not a white one—that was a later custom) made of the finest carded wool, with floor length drop sleeves and embroidered neckline, sleeves, and hem. It had laced up the back and even had a train. Anna had felt like a real princess, like any girl would want to feel on her wedding day. What had felt the best, however, was how right it felt. It had been the culmination of everything she’d been through in the year since she’d come to Wales. Even though butterflies had filled Anna’s stomach, she was nervous only about the wedding ‘show’, not about Math himself. How could I have met anyone like Math in Oregon?

Mom’s and Papa’s wedding was set for a Sunday, after a noon mass, but Papa decreed that the assemblage of nobles should meet in the great hall on Friday. Two years before, when the nobility of Wales had assembled, the war with the English had been less than a year old. Now they gathered again, more confident and secure in their power.

Unfortunately for David, he had to participate in the conference. For once, Anna wasn’t sorry to be a woman if it meant she didn’t have to sit through an all-day meeting, which David later told her consisted almost entirely of pontificating by one baron or another.

Mom, however, had wanted to attend but hadn’t been able to defy convention enough to do it. “It isn’t that I object to being a

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