Elizabeth Chadwick - The Leopard Unleashed

‘We thought … We did not know if you were …’ Elene stopped, unnerved by his blank grey stare. ‘Do you want to bathe?’

‘Do I what?’

Elene bit her lip, and instead of casting herself into his arms as she had first intended, she gathered her skirts and fled.

Renard stared after her and swore. He knew it was not fair to vent his temper on her just because she still looked all eager innocence when he had been through the pit of hell. ‘Welcome, my lord,’ said de Lorys with a touch of irony.

Renard responded by thrusting his helm into the knight’s hands. ‘Hold this,’ he said, and hastened in pursuit of his wife.

He caught up with her just beyond the gateway to the inner bailey, grasped her arm, turned her round and kissed her, hard.

‘Christ!’ he muttered, surfacing briefly. ‘Do I want to bathe indeed? I can think of better ways of drowning.’ He kissed her again.

The snow fell in a thick, white curtain. Elene clung to him, her fingers in his hair, her lips parted and starving. Despite the cold, her body felt as warm and pliant as sunlit willow. His embrace softened, but the core of urgency remained.

‘Let’s go within,’ he muttered against her ear, and then with an effort stood back and touched her cheek. ‘Nell,’ he said softly. ‘Jesu God … you don’t know …’ He broke off, his throat working. Taking her hand, he led her to the hall and through it to the adjoining bedchamber.

A steaming tub stood in the centre of the room. Renard eyed it speculatively.

‘Shall I get rid of it?’ Elene blushed, wishing she had never given orders for it to be prepared in the first place.

‘No, just the maids.’ He jerked his head.

Elene nodded at Alys and the other two women. They curtseyed and left, taking Hugh with them. Renard’s eyes dwelt briefly on the child, but for the moment, all his interest was centred on Elene and his need. He could not, did not want to think — desired only oblivion and a release from thinking.

From the direction of the hall, Elene heard a man’s voice raised in laughter and realised it was the first merriment she had heard since Renard went to Lincoln. He sent a look towards it and she thought that he grimaced, but then his eyes returned to her and devoured. Closing on her, he pulled off her chaplet and her veil, then unfastened the brooch at her neckline with predatory fingers. Elene swayed towards him and retorted by reaching to the buckle of his swordbelt. The thickness of the leather and stiff latch frustrated her, and Renard had to stop undressing her to do it himself. Removing his surcoat and, with an effort, his encumbering hauberk, he dropped them on the rushes, then kissing her, pulled her to the bed, uncaring of control, driven by white-hot need.

Elene gasped and subdued a cry as he entered her, but the initial pain swiftly subsided. She shifted beneath him, arching her hips to meet the downward thrust of his, her breathing rapid and erratic. She remembered a frosty night at Salisbury and her wistful longing for Renard to want her as badly as this, without time for dalliance or finesse and she clutched him, triumph sweeping through her.

With a muffled groan he buried his face against her throat, and she felt his fingers grip with the pleasure-pain of his release. She was swept on to the crest of it herself, and clung tightly to him as the intensity of climax rippled through her body.

As his breathing eased, he nibbled the lobe of her ear and the corner of her jaw. She turned her head to return the compliment. Her fingers moving in a caress touched his face, and then the healing wound on his cheekbone. He jerked and winced.

‘I’m sorry, I forgot!’

‘So did I for a moment.’ Renard raised himself up. She wriggled, reluctant to end their union but made uncomfortable by the rucked skirts bunched under her hips. She made a slight murmur of protest as he withdrew, but quickly realised that it was only so that he could continue removing their garments at a more leisurely pace. She sat up as he dictated and let him take her shift.

‘You don’t want to get it wet,’ he said, a sudden glint in his eyes.

‘Wet?’ Elene looked at him blankly, then her stare went to the tub and widened. The first heat of passion had been vented in mere moments and the tub still steamed. It was of the upright cask variety. Room for two perhaps, but a very close fit — very close indeed.

The glint spread from his eyes to become a mischievous smile. His gaze dropped to her full, brown-tipped breasts, then lower still. ‘No sense of adventure?’ he teased, and tilting her chin on his forefinger, kissed her. ‘Pleasure me,’ he said softly. ‘God knows, if I could have had control of my dreams these past few weeks, they would have been of this.’

His expression became bleak, almost desolate. All doubts and hesitations left Elene. Willingly she went with him to the tub.

Pulling her ivory comb down through the wet tangles of her hair, Elene listened in appalled silence to Renard’s brief summary of the Lincoln campaign and its disastrous results, of the price paid so far and the price yet to be exacted.

‘Mama says that she is going to endow a convent at Ravenstow on that piece of meadow just outside the town,’ Renard said in that same, careful voice he had used throughout the narrative. ‘She wants to dedicate it to my father, and Henry, and Miles. You never knew my oldest brother, did you? He drowned on the White Ship. Stone, Mama says, will be there long after she’s gone … long after we’ve all gone.’

Elene put the comb down on her coffer. ‘Poor Henry.’ Her voice wobbled and her eyes filled with tears.

‘That is what we have all said about him throughout his life. I suppose he’ll have more dignity when the stone carver has finished with his effigy. Mama intends Nottingham alabaster. She has it all planned.’ He laced his shirt and pulled on a tunic of wine-coloured wool. ‘Probably we’ll all need effigies if Matilda gains the throne. Either that or hasten into exile. I suppose I could hire my sword to Prince Raymond again.’ Picking up his indoor shoes of soft kidskin, Renard stared at them as if he did not know what they were and said wearily, ‘Christ’s blood, I’m sick of it, Nell.’

She blinked away her tears and looked at the tub, the water now merely tepid and much of it splashed on the floor. Her body still ached and tingled. ‘Will Earl Ranulf come against us?’

‘Of a certainty. I’m a rebel now.’

‘Can you hold him off?’

‘I do not know. It depends upon so many things — how he is received at Gloucester, how Matilda’s fortunes progress, and how quiet the Welsh remain.’

‘How long do we have?’

Renard finished dressing and came to lay his hand on her shoulder. ‘Again, I do not know. As long as this snow lasts we are secure. Beyond that …’ He heaved a deep sigh. ‘Nell, I don’t want to talk or even think about it — not for today, at least. I have told you all that you need to know, and that was grief enough to recount.’ He kissed her mouth and his hand lightly strayed between her breasts, then rested on her waist.

‘Now, before I yield to temptation again, let me see my son, and is there anything to eat?’ His tone was plaintive as he used the mundane as a safe path through the quagmire. ‘I broke fast at Woolcot but that seems ages ago and it was no more than rye bread and weak ale.’

‘There is only pottage.’ She raised to him a smile both tremulous and teasing.

‘Do you remember that night at Salisbury?’ He gave a small shake of his head. ‘That seems ages ago too. I wish that time had stood still.’

The snow fell heavily for the next two days, and inter — mittently for the three after that. Hushed beneath a sparkling quilt the world held its breath. Animals had to be dug out of drifts. Some were not found until the snow had melted, and among the victims was an old packman who had been caught out in the first blizzard.

Whether their dwelling was in castle, cottage or hovel, people stayed close to their hearths — mending tools, telling tales, sewing, weaving, drinking, quarrelling, fighting and making love.

Renard spent the first blizzard days either in bed or very close to it, and most of that time he slept, restoring his drained reserves. In his waking periods, he took the opportunity to play with his infant son and enjoy the soothing balm of Elene’s company. The knowledge that this interlude was only a respite, that there might never be such an opportunity again, made the time spent even more precious, each moment to be savoured to the full.

Gradually, however, a degree of restlessness returned to his spirit, a need to go beyond passive pleasures. Elene discovered suddenly that she could no longer beat him at tables and she had to exert every ounce of wit and concentration to hold him at nine men’s morris. They had a wild snowball fight in the bailey that was adjourned, minus snowballs and amid much giggling, snatched kisses and horseplay, to the bedchamber.

That same night upon the wall walk, gazing out on the black and white emptiness of moon, sky, forest and snow, their hackles were raised by the howling of wolves. ‘Human or four-legged,’ Renard murmured to Elene who was wrapped inside the warmth of his cloak, body pressed close to his. ‘They may cry at our gates all they wish, but if they bite, they will find it is more than they can chew.’

The next day he had a grindstone fetched from the armoury and set up in the hall. While Elene plied her needle through soft fur slippers for Hugh, he occupied himself in sharpening his meat dagger and hunting knife, and oiling the razor-keen edges of his sword. He had lost his own at Lincoln, it having become a spoil of war. His mother, eyes liquid, chin firm, had given him the one that had belonged to his father. The hilt was set with Lothian garnets and the grip of slightly worn, shrunken leather still bore the pressure marks of his father’s hand. It had originally belonged to Renard’s great-grandfather, Renard le Rouquin, after whom he had been named, and the Lombardy steel was still as bright as the day on which it had been forged more than a hundred years ago. One day, if it too did not become a spoil of war, it would belong to Hugh.