Elizabeth Chadwick - The Running Vixen

Heulwen set about removing her travel-stained garments and pinned up her braids, then waited beside the tub, shivering a little, while a maid heaved a fresh bucketful of hot water into it.

Adam perused the generous contours of her body. He knew now how it felt, pressed against his in the act of love, knew it within as well as without. Taking her to bed was no longer a darkness of the imagination, but a reality barbed with doubt. Even now there was no satisfaction.

Heulwen dismissed the maid and stepped into the tub, which was constructed from a large barrel with a bench lodged across its width. She seated herself upon it and pensively contemplated the bed and its silent occupant. ‘Adam, are you asleep?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want me to mix you something to ease the pain?’

‘No, it’s not necessary.’

She gnawed her lower lip, wondering how to cut through this frosty reserve of his when all her compliance and concern were rejected as though she had offered him an insult. She tried again. ‘Adam, is there something wrong?’

‘No.’

She heaved a sigh. ‘It’s impossible to talk to you when you keep pushing me away like this.’

Suddenly he was no longer recumbent, but struggling to sit up, eyes wide and amber bright with indignation. ‘Is it any wonder? I haven’t needed a nursemaid since I was a brat of six. I’ve been coddled and swaddled and scolded like some puling infant, and every time that I’ve baulked, you’ve either wrung your hands or sulked!’

The bath water swished as Heulwen grabbed the sides of the tub. ‘I am not the one who has been sulking!’ she flashed in return. ‘How dare you accuse me! If you are going to behave like a brat of six, then expect to be treated like one! You should be grateful for my care, not hurl it back in my face as though I had cursed you!’

‘Grateful!’ he choked. ‘Grateful, when it makes me feel like a leper receiving charity from the hands of a guilty patroness!’ Tears of frustration and rage glimmered in his eyes.

Heulwen clenched her fingers on the side of the tub, throttling the wood in lieu of the man on the bed. ‘Should I then ignore your wounds?’ she spat at him. ‘Abet your stupidity by pretending they do not exist? Adam, you have been worrying me sick the way you drive yourself!’

Abruptly, the anger drained out of him. He slumped back against the pillows, pain etching two deep lines between his brows. ‘Perhaps I do it because I dare not stop,’ he said wearily.

Heulwen finished washing then left the tub and dried herself on the linen towels that the maid had left to hand. She donned a loose gown and said in a voice as weary as his own, ‘You should have taken one of those other girls that Henry was going to offer you. I will only make you unhappy.’

He conceded her words with a lift and drop of his brows. ‘It’s a risk I’ll have to live with. Are you done? Don’t stand there shivering; come to bed.’ He shifted, making room for her.

She hesitated, unable to fathom his mood.

‘Please.’ He raised his lids.

‘Oh, Adam!’ What she saw there brought her to the bed before she was aware of having moved. There was a lump in her throat. She leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. It was meant to be a conciliatory gesture, contrition for hot words scattered abroad, but Adam’s arm banded hard around her waist, pulling her down and the kiss deepened possessively before he broke it to investigate her throat, pulling down the fabric of her gown, parting the deep opening to seek the swell of her breasts.

Heulwen gasped, for this was not what she had bargained for in his tired, weakened state. His weight came clumsily down on top of her and her gasp became an exclamation as he entered her, because she was not ready and he was eager. She closed her eyes and made herself go as limp as a piece of tide-rolled flotsam. Instinct moistened her body and the discomfort diminished. Deliberately she arched and subsided to his rhythm, fanning her hands down over his narrow flanks. He was breathing in harsh, agonised gasps. Without fuss she increased her pace, urging him on, was touched by the edge of the maelstrom herself and felt pleasure burn within her, but before it could intensify or culminate Adam cried out and gripped her to him, his body shuddering with the violent ripples of climax.

She listened to his breath whistling past her ear, felt the sharpness of stubble scraping her throat and the rapid rise and fall of his ribcage inhibiting her own attempts to breathe. ‘Adam, you’re squashing me,’ she told him in a calm, practical voice, and when he did not move, pushed at his broad shoulders, trying to lever herself out from beneath him.

Through the numbness of aftermath and the zigzagging renewal of pain, Adam became aware of Heulwen’s struggles, and gathering himself withdrew from her. He rolled over on his back and with a groan bent one elbow across his eyes so that he would not have to look at her, for he was ashamed.

‘You’re bleeding again and no wonder!’ she reprimanded him. ‘Adam, you need not have been in such haste. If you bolted your food in the same way you’d have terrible indigestion, and serve you right!’

Cautiously he took his arm away from his eyes, drawn to look at her but terrified of what he might see in her face. Her expression was cross; no, exasperated, and the look she returned him was speculative, assessing, as if an item taken for granted had suddenly sprung a hidden compartment. Nowhere did he read anger or revulsion. She adjusted her gown, left the bed to fetch bandages, then returned to him, shaking her head. ‘If only you’d taken the time to ask, I’d have shown you a way that would not have put pressure on that cut.’

Shocked surprise replaced the bleakness in his eyes as he stared at her. For a woman to admit to such superior knowledge of the bedroom arts was beyond his experience, and probably that of most men. Whores, or at least the high-paid ones he had occasionally bought, were usually all soft, urgent compliance, begging and breathless in praise of his skill — and totally dishonest, he thought wryly. He had never owned a more permanent mistress to make him aware of anything different…until now.

Heulwen lifted her shoulders in a gesture that strove for nonchalance but didn’t succeed. ‘I was married to Ralf for ten years. He was the kind of man who grew bored without novelty. Once the freshness of my virginity had paled, he amused himself by teaching me all the other devious little paths to the centre of the maze, and when I was accomplished the boredom set in. I was his mare and I was saddle-broken. He moved on in search of a new mount. In the end, the times he came back to me I could not bear it, knowing that I was just a “good ride” among countless others.’ Efficiently she rebound his wound with a roll of fresh bandage. Her hands were steady. It was her chin that wobbled.

‘Your father was right,’ Adam said gently after a moment. ‘You do know how to choose your husbands. We’ve all been bastards.’ He touched a tendril of hair that had uncoiled from her pinned-up braids. ‘If I behaved badly just now, forgive me. It was because I was afraid and overwrought. Starving men and feasts do not go very well together.’

She blinked hard and turned away to remove her gown, surreptitiously wiping her face on it as she did so. She had cut through the protection of his indifference and seen what was layered beneath, but in doing so had revealed more of her own self than she wished to see. She felt soul-naked, vulnerable and frightened. Adam was watching her — she could feel his eyes boring into her spine. Quickly she pinched out the night candle so that abruptly there was darkness, but when he drew her against him, she went unresisting into his arms and rested her head upon his breast.

He felt her cheek cool and damp and, stroking her hair, wondered if he was in heaven or hell.

Miles felt the grey’s pace falter for the third time in as many minutes, and with a worried glance at the encroaching clouds, drew rein and stiffly dismounted, the pain in his joints a gnawing ache. He removed his gauntlets, to run his hand carefully down the stallion’s suspect near foreleg and, as he felt the hot, swollen cannon joint, knew the worst.

‘Trouble, my lord?’

He faced the knight in command of his escort who was himself dismounting, and spread his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘It’s an old strain. I thought he’d rested up enough after these weeks at Thornford, but obviously I’ve misjudged it. You’d best fetch the remount from the back of the wain and hitch him there instead. He’ll not bear my weight for the distance we’ve to cover before dark.’

‘Yes, my lord — are you all right?’

Miles smiled at the young face, so earnest behind the helmet’s broad nasal. ‘Naught that a warm fire and cup of hot wine won’t cure, Gervase. My blood’s running as sluggish today as the Dee in midwinter.’ He struggled to pull his gauntlets back on and clapped his hands together to try and revive the feeling. There was pain today, a thin knife wedging itself between his joints and grating them apart. The biting damp and cold shredded his lungs as he breathed it in, and sent a chill shuddering through his body. He wondered briefly if it was the homing instinct of a dying animal that had filled him with the urge to travel down the march to his main holding, denying the weather and the exhortations of his granddaughter and her new husband that he remain with them at least until Candlemas. He went slowly towards the wain where Gervase’s squire was saddling up the brown remount.

‘You could always sit within, my lord,’ the young knight said, indicating the cart with its load of travelling chests and supplies pressed on him by Adam and Heulwen.