Puffing, Sir Thomas helped her down from the mare. Rain dripped from the nasal of his helmet into the groove of his upper lip. He blew upwards, spraying droplets. ‘Lord Renard’s home,’ he announced unnecessarily, sounding relieved. Elene picked up her skirts and ran.

The great hall was crowded with armed men and stank of unwashed bodies and wet wool steaming rankly in the smoky fug. Firelight flashed off rust-speckled hauberks and sword hilts. Servants were busy with jugs of cider and baskets of bread.

Elene tapped a huge, broad-shouldered knight on the back. ‘Ancelin, where’s Renard?’

He swung round. His blond hair was greasy from crown to cheek hollow and the ends hung in wet strings upon his coif. There were tired pouches under his eyes but his smile was as broad and genuine as ever as he looked down on her from an advantage of a full twelve inches. ‘In the solar, my lady.’ He pointed with his cup, then, with a sudden bellow of joy, rose on tiptoe and extended one brawny arm, affording her a whiff of rank armpit as he snatched a chicken leg off a loaded tray a maid was trying to carry to a trestle.

‘Is he all right?’ Elene felt a pang of fear for she knew that Renard was not a lord to hold aloof from his men without good reason.

‘More or less,’ Ancelin said indistinctly through a massive mouthful of meat. ‘A trifle bad-tempered with the pain, but if you can bear with him, you’ll not find him too sorely wounded to greet you fittingly.’

‘Wounded!’

Ancelin chuckled and wiped his lips on the freckled back of his hand. ‘And not even in the thick of battle … excuse me.’ He broke away from her to dive after a wide wicker basket of hot bread.

Elene gathered her damp skirts and ran, inasmuch as that was possible, down the hall to the solar. She knew that Ancelin would not be guzzling with such joyous abandon if Renard was seriously hurt, but nevertheless it was with a heart full of apprehension that she drew aside the hanging across the solar archway and stepped inside the room.

Renard was sitting in a high-backed chair, one leg propped on a footstool, and Judith was bent over, carefully examining his exposed foot. ‘They’re not broken,’ she said doubtfully, as if not quite sure, and turned round as his gaze flickered to the curtain where Elene stood as white as a ghost.

‘It’s all right, he isn’t going to be crippled for life, just a few weeks,’ Judith said by way of reassurance. Leaving him, she went out, touching Elene lightly on the shoulder.

Renard raised the small cup of usquebaugh near his elbow and drained it in one fast gulp.

Elene advanced on him. Like Ancelin’s, his hair was long and unkempt, and through a grizzle of beard his face was harsh with pain and fatigue. She looked at his foot. The skin was broken here and there and across his toes the swelling was a magnificent conglomeration of shades of purple and blue. ‘What happened?’

He made an impatient sound. ‘A baggage wain stuck in the mud at a ford this morning. I dismounted to help push it free, and the carter’s accursed nag took fright at a pheasant flushed from cover by one of the dogs and shied sideways on to my foot!’

Elene bit her lip. It did no good. She covered her mouth with her hand. He glared at her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘It looks as though it hurts dreadfully.’

‘It does,’ he growled.

Contrite, she stooped over to kiss him. He relaxed slightly and curved his arms around her waist. The damp end of her braid tickled the back of his hand. He became aware that she was only a little less wet than he was himself. Her lips were cold and tasted of rain, but then everything did — rain or river or stagnant weed. Sighing, he released her.

‘Did Bishop Nigel get his comeuppance then?’ she asked.

He tipped back his head and closed his eyes. ‘After a fashion, I suppose. We built a bridge of boats and hurdles to cross to Ely where he was holed up at Aldreth. A local monk with a grudge against him guided us through the marshes. We took the good Bishop Nigel by surprise from behind his back.’ He lifted one hauberk-clad shoulder. ‘Unfortunately he escaped — to Bristol we think, but we captured some of his knights and most of his treasure. There’s a necklace in my baggage — that’s a personal present from the King to you. Apparently you made a good impression on the Queen at Christmas.’

‘Did I?’

‘She likes strong-minded women who rule their men,’ he said drily and raised his lids to flash her a look full of brooding amusement. ‘I was not altogether flattered, although I suppose it might be true. You’re just not as obvious as Mama, are you?’

Elene was slightly taken aback. It had never occurred to her that she might be able to rule Renard, or that the Queen might think her capable. ‘She had the advantage of your father’s devotion,’ she said, and began to pluck at the sodden leather laces of his coif.

‘Ah now, that is fishing with either a very subtle or a very foolish bait, Nell,’ he smiled, and wrapped his fingers around one of her braids to draw her down to him again, adding just before he kissed her, ‘I’ve missed you.’

Her palm was against his throat and she felt his pulse surge rapidly. He slipped his hand beneath her cloak to stroke her body, revelling in a luxury that had been six weeks absent from his life. The camp whores had proved no trial to celibacy. Most of them stank worse than the surrounding fetid marshes and he was still smarting too much from the wounds Olwen had inflicted on his pride to seek a whore for the mere easing of boredom.

He closed his eyes again, savouring. Elene’s lips were as soft and cool as damp silk. Her fingertips traced a delicate, fiery pattern over his throat and her body, pressing upon his, made him groan. ‘Oh Jesu, yes, I’ve missed you.’

Elene caught her breath. From the way he had taken fire at such preliminary stimulus, she surmised that he had not been with other women whilet on campaign, and that acted as a spur to her desire. ‘Me?’ she asked. ‘Or this?’ And boldly sought beneath his hauberk and gambeson. At which embarrassing juncture Judith returned. Elene snatched her hand away, her face poppy-scarlet.

Renard was sufficiently graceless to guffaw for all that he tried to stifle it behind his hand.

‘You will do that on the other side of your face!’ his mother warned. ‘I’ve had Elflin prepare you a tub in your chamber and to get there you’ll have to walk on that foot — unless of course you intend hopping across the hall like a mad heron.’ Ignoring his scowl, she turned to Elene. ‘Child, his father and I were often interrupted on occasions far more intimate than this one. If my mind had not been so full of housing and feeding that untimely rabble out there, I’d have given you due warning.’

Her words had been meant to comfort, but made Elene realise that in her haste to reassure herself of Renard’s safety, she had been remiss in her duties as chatelaine. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have left it all to you. I’ll …’ She started towards the doorway.

‘Don’t apologise.’ Judith waved her hand. ‘Your place is with your husband, undeserving wretch though he be, and it keeps me busy.’

‘Rabble?’ Renard protested as he levered himself carefully to his feet, assisted by the two women. He had seen Elene’s hesitation and the pain underlying his mother’s response, and knew when to steer the conversation into less turbulent channels. ‘They’ve been working their backsides off for the last six weeks and in conditions only a frog would enjoy. Don’t salt your tongue too liberally while you see to them, Mama.’

Judith’s lips twitched. ‘As if I would!’ she said.

By the time Renard sank into the steaming tub that had been prepared for him, he was grey with pain, all thoughts of chaffing anyone erased from his mind by the pain from his foot, muffled curses the limit of his ability. Through a throbbing haze he was aware of Elene and his mother consulting low-voiced about the best method of bandaging his damaged toes.

Judith departed. Silence fell, punctuated by the small sounds of Elene returning to his coffer the few items of clothing in his baggage that did not require laundering or discarding.

The pain eased and his knotted muscles relaxed in the hot, herb-infused water. Elene came to the tub and examined him with a critical eye but could see no other signs of injury on his body. There was a shallow scratch on his face between eye socket and beard, but it looked like a scrape from a tree branch that would heal quickly of its own accord. Unstoppering the jar of stavesacre lotion she was holding, she knelt beside the tub and handed him a cloth. ‘Cover your eyes.’

The smell of the lotion was pungent and familiar. He did as she bid and said in a muffled voice, ‘I hope you have plenty. We’re all alive with lice.’

‘Heulwen had a surplus. She sent some over last month knowing how likely that would be.’ She worked the lotion into his hair and left it while she barbered off his beard and its occupants.

‘I didn’t see Henry when I arrived,’ he remarked, and when she did not reply, lowered the cloth and looked at her piercingly. ‘Gave himself away, did he? I thought he might.’

Elene paused in her ministrations to lean back and return his stare. ‘You knew?’

‘I’ve known since our wedding day.’ And then, defensively, ‘Well, what was I supposed to do? Swell into a jealous rage and swathe you up in black cloth like an infidel would do to his wife? Throw Henry half-dead with wound fever out of the keep?’ The bath water churned. Somewhat grimly he set about the motions of a wash. ‘What happened?’

Elene said hoarsely, ‘He was struggling to undo his sword-belt. I went to help him and he … he told me how he felt.’ She shook her head. ‘He came to apologise later, and then he left.’ There was no point in telling Renard the full story.