Page 45 of Cadell the Dragon

Hesitantly, she extended her arm. Cadell could have screamed in frustration at this new awkwardness between them. Only the morning before, he had awoken with her delicate hand around his cock and he’d thought that was something he would feel every night. He closed his fingers around hers and brought her hand higher, barely resisting the urge to bring it to his lips. Then he showed her the ring.

It was a simple, thin band of gold that had once belonged to his mother.

“I would like you to have this,” he told Johanna, not daring to tell her that he actually would like her to wear it. “It belonged to my mother. She told me on her deathbed to give it to my wife when I got married.”

He slid the ring straight to her fourth finger, not placing it first on the first three fingers successively, as he would have during the actual wedding ceremony. They were not really getting married. This was the best he could do to ensure there would always be a part of him in her life.

“Cadell.” Her voice was trembling and she was not looking at him. “You know I cannot take this.”

“You can.”

She would have ended up wearing it if things had gone the way he wanted; he would have gone to retrieve it at the earliest opportunity, so she had every right to it. He would never give such an heirloom to anyone else, anyway. He would never love another, and he might well never marry now. He could not imagine ever committing himself to another woman, even to have children, even to protect himself from the English. His mother had told him to give the ring to his bride because she had assumed that woman would be the woman he loved.

Johanna was the woman he loved.

That he could not have her didn’t change that fact.

“I’m sorry it’s just a simple band,” he carried on, wishing he could lavish the most precious gems on her, “I had another, more elaborate one ready to give you at the chapel but that one I cannot⁠—”

“No buts,” she interrupted fiercely, closing her fist, as if to stop him from taking the ring back. “I love this ring as it is. I will wear it, always.”

As a memory of what could have been.

She didn’t say the words but he heard them all the same. He bowed his head, defeated.

“I know I should not accept this ring,” Johanna carried on, “but I cannot make myself do the right thing. But why do you want to give it to me?”

He shrugged. “I suppose it is like it was when we first met all those years ago, I cannot bear the idea of being parted from you before giving you one last gift.”

Gift?

Johanna started. What gift had he given her when she’d met him at Castell y Ddraig? Realization tore through her as the question crossed her mind. It was as if a veil obscuring her vision had suddenly been torn away.

Dear God, it had been him placing the bag of almonds on her bed, not Rhun. All these years she’d been mistaken. The first man to see and want her, who had thought her worth the effort of procuring what she craved had not been Rhun. It had been Cadell. All along, it had been him. And she had been too blind to see it. She really was a fool with no eyes.

“The spiced almonds. It was you?” she breathed.

“Yes. It was me.” He sounded bitter, and no wonder, as her question revealed that she had attributed his precious gift to the wrong person. “I thought you would have guessed it, after our discussion in the storeroom, where you had gone looking for something to nibble.”

Yes, she should have guessed, and she had wondered how Rhun had known about her love for all things sweet, as she could not remember mentioning it to him. It turned out, she had not. She had told Cadell, who had then gone out of his way to procure the treats for her. And she had not even thanked him, or even realized what he had done.

Oh, how she had hurt him, without knowing. How could he still love her after all the pain she had inflicted on him?

“You should have told me, or given them to me directly.”

“I could not presume to do so. I was no one, and only young at the time.” He shrugged again. “Besides, it matters not if you didn’t guess who they were from, as long as you enjoyed them. That was the point.”

“I did. I loved them. Thank you.” Tears were threatening. “It was the most thoughtful, selfless thing anyone had ever done for me at the time.”

Or since.

Johanna fell into Cadell’s arms, sobbing against his chest. From the moment they had met he had been there for her, and she had been too stupid to see it.

It was terrible.

Because, though she would not tell him as much, the gift had been what had decided her to marry Rhun. She had thought the almonds had come from him. He had left with his men, telling her he would be back before the month was over and ask for her hand. She was to think about his offer of marriage in the meantime. She had, and though she had not been quite sure that what she had felt for him in those short few days was enough to justify such a momentous decision, the sweets and the intention behind them had swayed her. Surely a man who listened to what she said and went out of his way to please her would be a wonderful husband? It turned out that she’d been right. Only, she had attributed the intention to the wrong man.

From the start, she had been dazzled by the wrong suitor.