‘It’s no cause for laughter, Ren. Henry hasn’t just summoned her home to comfort his dotage or her widowhood. She’s to be our future queen, and when I see her treating men like dirt under her feet, it chills me to the marrow.’

‘Just how did you end up in the entourage sent to fetch her?’ Renard asked.

Adam smiled darkly. ‘I’ve served at court, so I suppose Henry knows I’m discreet and stoical — unlikely to boil over in public at being called a mannerless oaf with mashed turnip where my brains should be.’

‘She said that to you?’ Renard bit his lip in an unsuccessful effort to conceal his mirth.

‘That was the least of her insults. Of course, most of them were in German, and I didn’t ask to have them translated. Even a mannerless turnip-brain has his pride. I—’ He stopped and stared across the hall, suddenly transfixed.

Heulwen stood in a shaft of sunlight that fired her braids beneath the simple white veil to the precise colour of autumn oak leaves. Her russet wool gown was laced tightly to her figure, and as she approached the hearth the delicate gold embroidery at the throat and hem of the dress glittered with trapped light.

Adam closed his eyes to break the contact, swallowed, and prepared to endure. He would rather a hundred times over have undergone the haughty scorn of the Empress Matilda than face the woman who approached him now: Heulwen, Lord Guyon’s natural daughter out of a Welsh woman whom his own father had murdered during the dispute for the crown more than twenty-four years ago.

He rose clumsily to his feet and some of the wine slopped down his surcoat, staining the blue silk. He could feel his ears burning and knew he had coloured like a gauche youth.

‘Adam!’ she cried joyfully, and with complete lack of self-consciousness flung her arms around his neck and drew his head down to kiss him full on the lips. The scent of flowers engulfed him. Her eyes were the colour of sunlit sea-shallows — azure and aquamarine, flecked with mica-gold. His throat tightened. No words came, only the thought that the Empress’s remarks were perhaps not insults but the truth.

Heulwen released him to step back and admire the new style of surcoat he wore over his hauberk, and the ornate German swordbelt. ‘My, my,’ she teased, ‘aren’t you a sight for sore eyes? Mama will be furious to have missed greeting you. You should have sent word on ahead!’

‘I was in half a mind to ride to Thornford first,’ he said in a constricted voice, ‘but I have a letter to your father from the King.’

‘Churl!’ she scolded, eyes dancing. ‘It’s fortunate that some of us are not so lacking in courtesy. There’s a hot tub prepared above.’

Adam stared at her in dismay. He was accustomed to bathing at least once in a while. Indeed, he enjoyed the luxury and relaxation it provided, but he was filled with dread, knowing that Heulwen, as hostess, would be responsible for unarming him and seeing to his comfort. ‘I haven’t finished my wine,’ he said woodenly, ‘or my conversation.’

Renard said unhelpfully, ‘You’ll only have to repeat it all later to my parents, and there’s no law against taking your wine upstairs.’

‘And since I have gone to the trouble of preparing a tub, the least you can do is sit in it. You stink of the road!’ It was hardly the way to speak to a welcome guest, and Heulwen could have bitten her tongue the moment the words emerged. Since Ralf ’s death she had found herself being irritable and snappish. People made allowances — those who knew her well — but it was a long time since she and Adam had shared the closeness of childhood friendship.

Adam stared obdurately at the wall beyond her head, refusing to meet her eyes. ‘Well that’s because I’ve been on it for a long time — too long, I sometimes think.’

She touched him again with eyes full of chagrin. ‘Adam, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said such a thing.’

‘Because you have gone to the trouble and I am not suitably grateful?’ he replied with a grimace that just about passed for a smile. ‘Well if I am not, it is because I’ve had a crawful of being ordered around by a woman.’

‘Straight to the middle of the target!’ crowed Renard at his blushing half-sister.

‘No insult intended in my turn.’ Adam put down the cup which was still more than half full of wine, and went towards the curtain that screened off the tower stairs. ‘Bear with me awhile until I’ve found the grace to mellow.’

‘Jesu,’ Renard said to her with a shake of his head. ‘He hasn’t changed, has he?’

Heulwen looked baffled. ‘I don’t know. When I mentioned the bath, I thought he was going to turn tail and flee.’

‘Perhaps the Germans mutilated him below,’ Renard offered flippantly, then shot her a shrewd glance. ‘Or perhaps they didn’t.’

Renard was like that. The unwary were lulled into seeing a likeable, shallow youth, wallowing through the pitfalls of adolescence towards a far-distant maturity, and then he would suddenly shatter that assessment with a piercing remark or astute observation far beyond his years.

‘Then he’s a fool.’ Heulwen tossed her head. ‘I’ve bathed enough men in courtesy to know what sometimes happens if they’ve been continent for too long. I won’t be embarrassed.’

‘No,’ Renard quirked his brow, ‘but he might.’


Adam stood in blank contemplation of the steaming tub, while around him the maids bustled, checking the temperature of the water, scattering in a handful of herbs, laying out towels of thick softened linen, setting more logs on the fire and fresh charcoal in the braziers to offset the seeping cold from the thick stone walls.

‘I’m sorry if I made a mistake,’ Heulwen said, lowering the curtain behind her. ‘I thought that a bath would be a comfort after a long day on the road.’

His mouth smiled, but his eyes remained on a distant point beyond her. ‘And so it is. As you said, I was just being a churl.’

She considered him. There had been no engagement in his voice; she might as well be speaking to a tilt yard dummy for all the response she was receiving, and her irritation flared. ‘Is it just a matter of venting the heat?’ she asked in a practical tone. ‘Shall I summon one of the soldiers’ sluts?’

That at least elicited a gratifying widening of his eyes. ‘What?’ The pitch of his voice revealed that he had heard her perfectly well, but did not quite believe his ears.

‘Well, what other reason could you have for refusing a bath? You can’t be shy and you are not the kind to take vows of abstinence in order to purify your soul.’

‘I didn’t refuse.’ He compressed his lips.

‘You tried.’

‘Because I’m tired and I haven’t the wit or patience to match bright talk with you!’ he snapped, and through the anger and shock, realised she was baiting him to see just how far his temper and credulity would stretch. As of old.

‘That’s better,’ she approved. ‘I was beginning to think you had remained in Germany and sent a wax effigy home in your stead, and were afraid of it melting in the bath water.’

Adam suppressed the urge to throttle her out of hand; and then his sense of humour fought its way to the surface and stepped carelessly upon the ruins of his pride. He snorted. ‘You did that apurpose.’

‘I wanted to destroy that mask you’re wearing, and I’ve succeeded, have I not?’ Her head cocked to one side, she studied him. ‘Was the Empress so awful, then?’

‘I’ve experienced worse,’ he said, smiling now.

‘Churl!’ she repeated, and laughed. ‘All right, I’ll stop plaguing you for the moment. Here, give me your surcoat!’ Efficiently, she whisked the garment from him, then exclaimed with pleasure at the quality of the silk, and with regret that it was snagged and marked with rust from his hauberk.

‘It keeps the sun off your mail,’ he said, laying aside the swordbelt, ‘and it’s good for impressing the peasants — essential to the escort of an empress.’

Heulwen helped him remove his weather-stained mail shirt. ‘This needs scouring before you can wear it again,’ she tutted as she dropped it on the floor and spread it out. ‘I’ll have it sent to the armoury. There have been several Welsh attacks this year, including the one that killed Ralf and you might need it.’ Carefully she rolled the hauberk into a neat but bulky bundle, and before he could protest that he was not intending to stay and that there was no need, the garment had been spirited away for refurbishing.

He sat down on a low stool to remove his boots and hose. ‘When I left, the Welsh situation was fairly quiet, otherwise I wouldn’t have gone.’

‘Well it’s fluid now. They have a new lord over the border and he’s been cutting his teeth on your lands during your absence and on Ralf ’s since early summer. My father hasn’t had the time to engage him properly. Miles would have been of an age to take some of the burden, but Miles is dead — we can’t even mourn his grave because he drowned.’ She bit her lip and steadied herself. ‘John’s chosen the church because he’s blind as a bat, so he’s little use. Renard’s shaping up well, but he’s not old enough to bear any serious responsibility yet, and Henry and William are still only children.’ She gave him a taut smile. ‘Still, now you are home you can set the worst of it to rights, I am sure.’

‘Oh, there’s nothing I enjoy better than a good fight,’ he said flippantly, and lowered his eyes to the unwinding of his garters.

Heulwen’s smile dropped, and faint vertical lines appeared between her brows. Adam had always been difficult. Although not her brother by blood, she had always regarded him as such. She had romped with him in childhood — climbed trees and swung from a rope in the stables, stolen apples from the undercroft and honey cakes from beneath the cook’s nose. They had shared a passion for the fine blood-horses that her father and grandfather bred. A bareback race for a dare had resulted in a thrashing. She had been confined to the bower for a week and Adam had been sent in disgrace to one of her father’s other keeps to ponder the folly of his ways.