Elizabeth Chadwick - Shields of Pride

Linnet sighed with relief. ‘I could not have endured the bedding ceremony.’

‘Once must be penance enough for anyone,’ he said wryly and sat down in the chair before the hearth. He knew what he wanted. He also knew that to take it with the directness that was now his right would be a grave mistake.

‘Was Robert asleep?’ he asked as he unwound his leg-bindings.

‘Indeed yes.’ Her face brightened. ‘Thoroughly exhausted by all the excitement. He’s head over heels in love with that pony you brought.’

‘I thought they would suit.’ Joscelin felt a glow remembering the joy in Robert’s small face when he set eyes on the little Galloway mare.

‘Do you know what he’s called her?’

Joscelin shook his head.

‘Giles once said that Leicester’s wife had the teeth and backside of a mare. Robert must have been listening. He’s named her Petronilla after the countess.’

Joscelin choked. Petronilla de Beaumont did indeed resemble a horse, although her colouring was more iron-grey than chestnut, and on balance he thought the Galloway pony the more attractive. ‘I don’t know whether the horse should be insulted, or the countess,’ he said with a grin.

‘Is it true that she girds herself like a man and rides into battle at her husband’s side?’

‘More or less. She’s with him now for certain.’ He looked at her from under his brows. ‘Not thinking of following her example, are you?’

‘Perhaps it would be easier than to sit here waiting,’ she said and looked at him as she unbound her braids.

Leaving the chair, he took her wooden comb from her coffer and sat down beside her on the bed. ‘Give me your hair,’ he coaxed. ‘You don’t want to unbar the door to summon your maid and I’ve done this many times before.’

She had tensed at his approach but now she relaxed and gave him an inquisitive smile. ‘Is that by way of reassurance or confession?’ she asked mischievously.

‘Which do you want?’ he responded in a similar tone, and taking her hair in his hands started to brush out the twists of braid. The firelight caught the ripples that the plaiting had left behind, gilding the soft honey-brown with golden-red lights. The scent of rosemary and chamomile rose from the slow movement of the comb and delicately assaulted his senses. ‘If you think I’ve led a debauched life of bedchambers and broken hearts, you are sadly mistaken.’

‘And you a tourney champion?’ Her voice was pitched low as her head yielded to the gentle passage of the comb. He watched the movement of the sinews in her slender throat, the soft hollow above her collarbone. The memory of Breaca hovered bittersweet in the shadows.

‘I do confess to plucking the occasional ripe fruit from a tree overhanging someone else’s orchard wall but, if not into my hand, it would have fallen elsewhere.’ He worked in contemplative silence for a moment. Her hair crackled and glowed with light as if it were an extension of the fire. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘for a long time I had a woman of my own and no inclination to go filching forbidden apples. Breaca would have gelded me for certain.’

She turned her head. ‘Conan has made mention of your past,’ she said.

‘I thought he might. Probably he believed you would feel sorry for me and your heart would melt.’

‘He was watching you and Robert together. I think he spoke because he was pleased for you, and he said very little. Only that your son had died and that you and his mother had parted.’

How distant it sounded, spoken softly in this chamber resonant with his new beginning. ‘Bloody flux,’ he said. ‘He was only four years old. Breaca nearly died, too. He is buried in a churchyard on the road to Falaise and it cost all the silver I had to bribe the priest to let Juhel lie in consecrated ground - a mercenary’s unshriven bastard child.’ He gathered her hair to one side and stroked the back of her neck with gentle fingers. ‘It hit me hard. For a time I was wild, didn’t care. The summer Juhel died was my most successful ever on the tourney route. I earned back all the silver I had paid to the priest and enough to employ my own troop of men instead of traipsing in Conan’s wake.’

‘Your son’s name was Juhel.’

‘It’s Breton, the name of Breaca’s father.’ He felt her tremble beneath his touch or perhaps it was his hand that trembled with the effort of controlling all that was within him. ‘He was small like his mother but quick and bright as a pin.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s ten years ago now.’

Again she turned to look at him, her brows arching this time in startled question.

‘I was a little short of seventeen when he was born.’

‘And Breaca?’

‘She was two and thirty - old enough to have been my mother,’ he added with a hint of self-mockery.

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘You think it would stay a secret long with Conan in the same household? He would let you have it piece by little piece and I would know from the way you looked at me which occasions he had chosen to enlighten you. Now it is told, it no longer lies between us.’

Her throat moved. Her lashes swept down, making feathery shadows on her cheekbones.

‘Or does it?’ Frowning, he tilted her chin on his fingertips.

‘No,’ she said huskily, ‘it doesn’t.’ But other things did. She was not brave enough to give him the sword of her own past to break across his knees.

He brushed his fingers lightly over her face, traced her brow, her cheekbone, her mouth. She felt his urgency and his restraint and her breathing shuddered as she too fought for control. The tentative first intimacy yielded to a more sustained assault on her senses, but refined and delicate. They drank the last of the spiced wine from earlier and shed their garments slowly, layer by layer, until they were skin to skin. Gestures became bolder, more explicit, as pleasure and tension mounted and they lay down on the bed. Perspiration dampened Linnet’s brow. She was no longer cold. The hot pressure of Joscelin’s body pinned her to the feather mattress but it was a good feeling. Against his ribs she felt the driving thud of his heart. Her palms slid upon the textures of wet skin, smooth muscle and taut tendons. She tangled her fingers in his hair and sought his mouth at the same time arching her hips and opening herself to him. She felt him push inside her - no inexpert fumbling here but the surety of experience. The sound of pleasure he made caused her to gasp and tighten her arms around him.

Someone banged on the door with what sounded like one of her best silver-gilt cups. ‘Joscelin, open up, you spoilsport!’ Conan bellowed. ‘You haven’t been properly bedded yet!’

Linnet stifled a scream and stared over Joscelin’s shoulder at the shuddering door, hoping that the bar would hold.

Joscelin muttered an oath and tensed.

‘Joscelin!’ The door quivered beneath the repeated hammering. Then there was a curse of pain. Milo de Selsey’s voice came muffled through the thick oak and Henry’s, too, trying to cajole Conan away from the barred door. ‘Not fair! ’Tsnot tradish—tradishnal!’ Conan complained.

Henry murmured enticingly that a new cask of wine was about to be broached. Footsteps staggered and scuffled. ‘That’s it, Sir Conan,’ Linnet heard Henry say. ‘It’s much better down in the hall than up here on a draughty landing.’

‘Spoilsport!’ There was a final thump on the door. Sounds retreated and the silence resumed. Joscelin sighed and pressed his head into the curve of Linnet’s throat. ‘Conan in his cups is a fiend straight out of hell,’ he muttered. ‘It’s because we’ve come out of one battle to go straight to another. Drink and women, the mercenary’s sovereign remedy.’

She heard the self-mockery in his tone and touched his sweat-damp hair. ‘Then lose yourself,’ she whispered.

He was quiet for a moment, then he lifted his head and breathed soft laughter. ‘Conan was right,’ he told her. ‘We haven’t been properly bedded - yet.’

He was still within her, although somewhat diminished. Now she felt his surge of renewed eagerness.

‘Do you think he’ll come back?’ she wrapped her legs around him.

‘I’ll kill him if he does!’

Linnet strained her ears, wondering if anyone was listening outside the door, but there was nothing, just the intimate sounds of lovemaking: the growing harshness of Joscelin’s breathing, the movement of their bodies, the rustle of the bed clothes. Her voice catching in her throat. Her loins were stretching and filling with a pleasurable tension so huge that she knew she was going to burst.

Joscelin’s lips were upon her breast, his head butting the angle of her jaw. She clenched her teeth, trying not to make a sound, but the cries came anyway. Against the curve of her breast, Joscelin groaned. His spine arched, his head came up. She closed her eyes and gripped him, absorbing his tremors through her own.

As his breathing eased, he lazily returned his attention to her breast, throat and jaw. Linnet shivered, savouring the sensations. The edge between this tender, feathery nibbling and Giles’s sated wet fondling shone as keen and narrow as the edge of a blade. One slip and she would bleed to death. She did not want the memory of other occasions to mar this one and she pressed herself against Joscelin’s body, hiding her face in his sweat-salty skin as if by doing so she could absorb even more of him into her than she had already taken.

Maude de Montsart shook out her crumpled riding gown of Flemish twill. ‘Has there been any news, my dear?’ she asked Linnet as a groom led away the placid bay ambler to be watered and rubbed down. The two soldiers who had escorted her from Arnsby were already on their way to the guardroom to wait out her stay before the comfort of a stoked brazier.