Rhiannon by Vicki Grove

Author:Vicki Grove
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US

She was surprised to find Thaddeus already standing where they’d agreed to meet at the beach, since she herself had arrived some early. He stood facing the wide water, and something about the set of his shoulders made Rhiannon reluctant to disturb him. He was clearly involved in thinking his thoughts, and the holy brothers’ thoughts were always deep, surely never simple. Or indeed, he might be praying.

While she stood hesitating, Thaddeus bent and picked up a rock, then skimmed it hard across the water so it jumped four, five, six times.

“Thaddeus!” she called at that sign, and ran to join him.

He turned to her, but the stricken expression upon his face made her come to a halt while still some yards away. Her heart felt turned to ice.

“Has . . . something happened to Jim?” she whispered. Things could go horribly awry in sanctuary, as they sometimes did in gaol. Suicides, or escapes that ended bloodily.

Thaddeus dropped his head without making her an answer, then bent to take another rock. And when he threw this one, he hurled it so viciously it ricocheted hard several times against the cold sea before finally sinking within the waters.

He was angry, then. Rhia could not have been more shocked if he’d turned to a lizard or a dog. She’d not thought anger could find any corner in him, so mild did he seem. But there it was—in the white of his face, the blaze of his eyes, and in the ferocity with which he’d fight the very sea with his small stones.

David he’d become, but against what Goliath did he rage so fierce?

Then Thaddeus suddenly reached and grabbed her by the hand. He began running, and with her free arm she hefted her pack more securely then held her skirt above her ankles and struggled to keep up. He veered from the sand, where folk walked and idled the time in conversation, and sped across the rough rocks, right toward the wilderness. He then veered into the narrow passageway where the bluff met the water, a place too rough for common use, ventured into only by pirates who would hide from other folk.

The boulders here were slick with sea brine. The path was a ledge of tumbled rock where, Granna claimed, mermen and mermaids basked in the light of each full moon.

Finally, when no trace of Woethersly or the castle or the quay was visible behind them, Thaddeus slowed and let go her hand. She dropped to her knees, out of breath and dizzy with the run. He bent with his hands on his own knees, winded as well.

Presently, he got his breath back enough to wheeze out, “I beg you forgive me, Rhia, but I had to put Woethersly at my back! I could not breathe in its surrounds.” He sat down hard, put his chin into his hands, and stared at the sea. “I am sorry to have brought you along so roughly,” he murmured. “What a fool you must think me.

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