Elizabeth Chadwick - The Running Vixen

Heulwen stumbled and Adam had to lunge and grab her elbow before she fell headlong down the dais steps. At their foot, Warrin de Mortimer regarded Adam with a mingling of irritation and strong dislike. Heulwen freed herself from Adam’s grasp and went to take Warrin’s cloak with a smile of greeting. As she reached for the fastening pin, he circled her waist with his hands and stooped to claim her lips. The kiss did not linger, but it signalled possession.

‘Home and unscathed from your jaunt with the Empress, I see,’ he said to Adam.

‘So it would seem.’ Adam leaned across the table for his scabbard, and without haste began to belt it on.

De Mortimer gave him a look of contemptuous amusement, as though he were watching a truculent child over whom he had a clear and confident advantage. ‘You know,’ he mused, ‘it doesn’t seem a moment since we were sparring in that tilt yard out there.’ He grinned nastily. ‘I hear you have learned from the drubbings I gave you.’

‘A great deal more than you, Warrin,’ Adam answered evenly, and turned to Heulwen as if the other man did not exist. ‘The money is in my saddlebags. I’ll have Austin bring it to you. What about the piebald?’

‘I–I don’t know,’ she stammered, floundering in the currents of hostility swirling between the two men. ‘I will have to think about it.’

Adam sent a jaundiced glance in de Mortimer’s direction. ‘I’ll leave him, then. If I’m any judge of character, you’ll not be selling him at Windsor either. As to the other matter, leave it in my hands. If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.’

She nodded and raised her chin. ‘Thank you, Adam.’

‘Think nothing of it.’ His mouth was wry as he swept on his cloak and, leaving his wine, brushed past her and de Mortimer to summon his men.

‘Aren’t you going to congratulate us?’ needled de Mortimer. ‘I’ll almost be your brother-by-marriage, won’t I?’

Adam did not turn round, and he had to swallow his gorge to answer. ‘Congratulations,’ he said stiffly, and strode down the hall, away from the temptation to do something utterly stupid.

Once outside in the cold, clean air of the bailey he let go, crashing his fist into the solid forebuilding wall in lieu of Warrin de Mortimer’s handsome, contemptuous face. His skin peeled away from his knuckles in small grated strips. He looked at the thin welling of blood and welcomed the pain that blotted out thought.

‘He affects me like that too,’ Renard said strolling down the stairs to join him. ‘He’s so damned patronising — he treats me as if I were no older than William.’

‘You act that way sometimes.’

‘Are you going back to Thornford now?’

Adam examined his raw, bunched knuckles, the price of holding on to control for too long, then shot a dark glance at Renard. ‘Why?’

‘Oh, no reason.’ Renard shrugged. ‘I thought I’d ride with you. Starlight needs the exercise and I’d rather not stay here while Warrin crows and struts before Heulwen like a dunghill cock longing to tread a hen. Did you see all the rings he had on his fingers?’

Adam looked at his ally and found a brief smile. ‘He was somewhat over-endowed.’

‘He’s wearing spikenard too. I could smell it on him a mile away!’ Renard wrinkled his nose. ‘There’s not going to be much room for Heulwen in his heart. He’s madly in love with himself!’

Without comment, Adam went to Vaillantif and unlatched a saddlebag. Withdrawing a leather money pouch, he handed it to his squire. ‘Go within, Austin, and deliver it to Lady Heulwen. Tell her that the other twenty are her wedding present. She will know what you mean.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Adam watched him lope off, then turned back to the horse, and unslinging his helmet from the pommel, put it on. ‘You’ll need armour,’ he said to Renard. ‘Do you have a hauberk?’

‘I have the one that was my brother’s before he drowned. It fits me better than it used to fit him. Will you wait for me?’

Adam nodded at the dun stallion resting slack-hipped beside Vaillantif. ‘You can use my remount instead of your own horse if you like. I noticed you were outgrowing that grey when you came to Thornford.’

Renard’s dark eyes kindled. ‘Adam, you’re a friend!’ He embraced Adam in a fervent hug that almost squeezed the breath from the latter’s body.

‘What do you do to your enemies?’ Adam asked weakly.

‘What’s this for?’ Warrin de Mortimer lifted one of the bags of silver just delivered to Heulwen by the snub-nosed squire, and jinked it back down on the trestle.

Despite the offhand tone of his asking, Heulwen could tell he was irritated. ‘I sold him Vaillantif.’

Warrin flicked his forefinger against the side of the bag. ‘For a goodly sum, by the looks of things.’

‘He insisted on giving me more than was due. He was very stubborn. I didn’t want it.’

‘So stiff-necked that one day someone is going to snap it for him,’ Warrin muttered.

‘You?’

He laughed and shook his head. ‘Is it so obvious?’

‘You were like a pair of dogs circling each other, waiting for the right moment to leap at one another’s throat.’

‘I don’t like the bastard, I’ll admit that outright.’ He extended his hands to the brazier. ‘Never knew his place as a junior squire, and I doubt he does yet.’

Heulwen watched him, her stomach a mass of tiny butterflies. His hands were steady over the heat. Broad and powerful, they did not suit the various rings with which he had bedecked them. Her father very seldom wore jewellery and neither did Adam.

‘What was the other matter of which he spoke?’ he asked into her silence.

She shook her head, knowing a grievous mistake when she saw one. ‘It was trifling,’ she dissembled. ‘Ralf sold a horse and I want to buy him back.’

‘You could have asked me to do that.’ He looked at her reproachfully. ‘There was no need to involve Adam de Lacey.’

‘You were in Normandy, and besides, Adam knows the owner.’ His jaw tightened, but so did hers in determined response. ‘Warrin, don’t scowl at me like that. Adam has been my foster brother since I was two years old. If you cannot tolerate his occasional presence on mutual ground like Ravenstow, then you might as well seek a different woman to wife!’

Immediately he was contrite, turning from the brazier to take her hands in his. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that I arrived here eager to greet you, and I did not expect to find Adam de Lacey sprawled in your father’s chair. ’

‘And you are accustomed to having your own way in all things,’ she agreed with an arched brow.

‘Yes, I am!’ Before she could rebel, his hands had slipped around her waist again and his breath was warm on her cheek as his head descended and he claimed her lips, imprinting them with the will of which he spoke. His arms tightened and his tongue probed. Heulwen stood passively within the embrace, neither welcoming nor resisting it, but it was sufficient for him that she was warm and pliant in his arms, and he persisted, driven by the anxiety to possess, and a more basic need.

The smell of spikenard was too powerful to be pleasant. It irritated her nose and made her want to sneeze. He was wearing his hauberk and the links began to bruise her arms where they were trapped by his. A small, inner voice asked her if she would have noticed such discomforts if Adam had been holding her. She tried to respond to Warrin, but the heaviness of his jaw grinding on hers made it impossible and she broke the kiss. ‘Warrin, you’re crushing me.’

He was breathing hard and his eyes were opaque with lust, but he had sense enough to realise where he was and what was at stake. Taking a grip on himself he released her and folded his long body into the chair that Adam had previously been occupying. ‘In Christ’s name, Heulwen, let us soon be wed,’ he said roughly. ‘I know you’re still mourning Ralf, but time doesn’t stand still — well, not unless I’m abroad talking cheeses with some stuff-witted steward on my father’s Norman lands and counting the hours until I can come home and gladden my heart with a sight such as you.’

‘Flatterer,’ she said lightly, sitting down beside him.

‘It’s true though. Heulwen, you’re driving me mad.’

His arm was resting on the trestle and she rubbed her index finger upon his wrist, stroking the wiry golden hairs the wrong way. ‘Once you and Papa have formally agreed the terms and you have asked the King for Ralf ’s lands, we can be married without further delay,’ she said.

‘It cannot come quickly enough for me,’ he said, thinking of her ripe body beneath his in the marriage bed, and of a chest full of recently minted silver.

‘Nor me,’ she said, her own tone more grim than eager, her mind upon Adam and the lessons learned from her time with Ralf.

‘No chance of a hot bath?’ he asked hopefully, his glance becoming decidedly lustful.

Heulwen stopped stroking his wrist and stood up. ‘A cold one might suit your need better,’ she laughed. ‘I’ll see what the maids can do.’

It was only when she reached the haven of the tower stairs and stood alone in the cold, musty silence, that she realised how much she was shaking.

‘Snow,’ grumbled Sweyn, twitching his powerful shoulders and glowering at the massing banks of greyish-yellow cloud piling in from the direction of the Welsh mountain ranges.

Adam’s troop had emerged from the forest and on to the drovers track that would lead them in a few miles to the Thornford crossroads. Behind them the trees swayed like dancers striving to shake off the last vestments of parchment-dry leaves. The grass at the edge of the road was pale and limp, the road itself a ploughed morass of hoofprints and deeply gouged cartwheel tracks. Come full winter, it would qualify for the title of bog.