Robert’s face reddened. ‘You will keep a civil tongue in your head when you speak of my sister.’

Adam gave him a look and gathered the reins. ‘Why? She never extended that courtesy to me.’ He clicked his tongue to the horse.

Gloucester caught at his bridle. ‘Wait, my lord, at least allow me to finish what I have to say. It avails us nothing if we each ride away in anger.’

Vaillantif started to plunge and sidle. The Earl took his hand off the bridle. Adam checked the stallion and in so doing, mastered his own anger. Robert of Gloucester had always had a blind spot where his sister the Empress was concerned, and Adam liked the Earl who, despite his royal blood and high status, still managed to be as genuine and honest as a plain rye loaf. He slapped Vaillantif ’s neck, and said, ‘You are right, it avails us nothing. I apologise.’

Earl Robert removed his hat and looked dismally at the dripping feathers. ‘I leap to her defence because no one else ever does,’ he said wearily. ‘Like you, everyone sees a bad-tempered bitch who needs a whip taking to her hide to teach her humility, but that’s just a façade. If you knew her as I did, you would be more charitable.’

Adam raised a sceptical eyebrow but forbore in the interests of peace to comment.

The Earl sighed, cast him a doubtful look from beneath hoary brows and said, ‘Geoffrey of Anjou is far more than a champing young stallion bought to prove his worth at stud. I grant you that he’s tall and handsome to look upon, but he’s also well-educated, and certainly no political innocent. His father has taught him well and he has the makings of a fine warrior and general. If we make Geoffrey Matilda’s consort, then Fulke, as his father, won’t be as eager to stir up the mud using William le Clito as his stick.’

‘Ah,’ said Adam, beginning to understand. Henry’s obsession. ‘It has to do with le Clito again.’

‘It has to do with a very dangerous thorn in our side,’ the Earl corrected him. ‘Pluck out the root from which it draws sustenance, and it will wither and die.’

‘You are gambling for very high stakes.’ Adam leaned down to adjust his stirrup. ‘If you succeed and your father can hold the reins until he has grandsons old enough, then it will be a gamble well repaid. If it fails. ’ He straightened and looked bleakly at the cascading water without finishing the sentence.

‘It won’t fail,’ Gloucester said forcefully. ‘Can I give my father your yea-say that you’ll go herald in payment of your forty days’ service this year?’

‘I’ll think about it,’ Adam said neutrally.

‘I need to know within the week.’

Adam inclined his head, but refused to give more response than that.

‘My lady.’ The Earl inclined his head to Heulwen as she guided her grey mare carefully down to join them.

‘Sire.’ She slackened the reins to let Gemini crop at the grass and looked at the Earl. ‘Mama wants a word with you — something about getting Henry to learn English. She thinks it will stand him in good stead when Papa gives him Oxley, and she also wants to ask you the name of that stone carver from Bristol you mentioned yesterday.’

The Earl smiled at her, but in a distant way, his mind obviously not on such day-to-day trivia. He looked hard at Adam. ‘Within the week,’ he repeated, setting his cap back on his head at a rakish angle. ‘Is de Gernons still at the keep?’ he asked Heulwen.

Her lip curled. ‘Just preparing to leave. His temper’s about as vile as the headache he’s nursing; I shouldn’t go near him.’

‘I won’t. I think I’ll take the long way back. The horse needs a good workout, anyway.’

They watched him leave. The hoofbeats and the voices of his escort faded through the trees. The falls roared. Adam’s face felt stiff. He slid his fingers along the reins and applied gentle pressure.

‘Trouble?’ Heulwen followed him back to where Austin and Sweyn were waiting.

He turned his mouth down. ‘Only to my conscience. I have known this has been coming for a long time. I should have been better prepared, but I’m not.’

Vaillantif’s hind legs slithered on mud, but he lunged powerfully with forequarters and neck and recovered. The woods enclosed them, smelling of damp and fungus. Dormant bramble bushes snagged at their cloaks as they rode through the forest in silence. Heulwen let the reins hang slack, for Gemini was placidly following the stallion’s lead. She stared anxiously at Adam’s back, knowing that she could not force him to tell her what was on his mind.

The trees thinned and they came suddenly upon a clearing and the mossed-over remains of a once-proud building, now reduced to chunks of tumbled stone. Some white edges only just beginning to rethread with green gave evidence of pieces having been recently cut.

Adam dismounted and tethered Vaillantif to a young tree. A weasel leaped over his boot and streaked away through the damp grass. The sunlight broke through the clouds and trees to stroke weak fingers over the ruins. Heulwen jumped down from the mare and tied her beside the destrier.

‘Why have we stopped?’ Shivering, she stooped under a low hanging branch. Twigs stretched like fingers. She felt as if hidden eyes were watching her every movement.

Adam caught her hand in his. ‘Whimsy,’ he smiled. ‘I used to come here sometimes as a boy when we visited Milnham-on-Wye with your father.’

‘You never brought me!’ she said half indignantly, for in childhood she had thought to share every secret and experience of Adam’s — the still, clear backwater of the Wye so wonderful for summer swimming, the haunted well at the farmstead where the Welsh had raided, the rock upon Caermoel ridge with its strange carvings.

He tightened his fingers around hers and raised them briefly to his lips. ‘It was in the days when you did nothing but dream about Ralf and scheme how to get him,’ he said without rancour, and drew her around an outcrop of masonry and between some broken stumps of rock. ‘I wasn’t good company myself, then. I think it’s Roman. Look, you can see where they’ve taken pieces recently for that new section of curtain wall.’ He rubbed his hand over a jagged white edge, then wiped away the smear on his cloak.

‘Was I really so heedless?’ Heulwen asked.

He shrugged, trying for lightness and not quite succeeding. ‘You had other matters on your mind, and I had long been a piece of familiar household furniture taken for granted — your foster brother.’

‘Oh, Adam!’ Her throat tightened and her eyes began to sting.

‘Everyone blamed my moods on my growing body, not on jealous sulks — and this was an excellent place to come and sulk alone, opportunity permitting.’ Abruptly he tugged at her hand. ‘Come.’

He led her onwards until they came to a short avenue overgrown with brambles, straggling grass and tree saplings. Out of the tangle grew jagged slender pillars of grooved, weathered stone, and at the end of the avenue was a section of tessellated mosaic floor depicting a hunting scene. Fragments here and there were missing or displaced by tree roots, and chunks of stone from what had once been a roof married one edge, but the overall effect was still magnificent.

‘There’s another one over there,’ Adam nodded, ‘but it’s more broken than this one. I would come here and work on it — clear the debris so I could see what lay beneath.’

Heulwen picked her way among the ruins to look. He followed her. A spring of icy water bubbled up near their feet and meandered away in the rough direction of Rhaeadr Cyfnos. Rooks cawed somewhere above the dark trees. Behind them the horses snorted and champed. Adam returned to Vaillantif; unslinging the wine costrel from around the cantle, he brought it to Heulwen, who now sat on a block of lichened stone regarding the hunting mosaic.

‘Drink?’ He withdrew the stopper and held it out to her. Companionably they shared the wine and contemplated the ruins.

‘I wonder who lived here?’ Heulwen mused.

Adam wiped his mouth and shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Some of the stones have inscriptions, but they’re either too weathered to read or parts are missing. I had thought to make a copy of the hunting mosaic at Thornford in the plesaunce. What do you think?’

Heulwen nodded approval and swallowed her mouthful of the rich, tart wine. ‘And the herb beds fanning out from it.’

Adam gave her a bright amber glance. ‘I thought I’d change some of the animals, though — wolves and vixens instead of boar, perhaps a leopard or two since they are your father’s device, and most certainly some horses.’

‘A sorrel with cream mane and tail,’ she smiled.

He raised one eyebrow. ‘In pursuit of the vixens?’

She laughed and swiped at him. He ducked and dragged her down off the stone and into his arms. Cold, tasting of wine, their lips met and through the laughter, desire rippled suddenly like a bright thread decorating a garment.

‘I think you should also include a priapus,’ she murmured against his mouth.

‘Only if there are nymphs in it too!’ he retorted. ‘Stop that, you hoyden. Austin might not bat an eyelid, but Sweyn’s more set in his ways. You’ll shock him for certain!’

She glanced over his shoulder. ‘They can’t see us from here.’ She kissed him, her tongue flickering as delicately as a serpent’s. His hand strayed down to the curve of her buttocks and squeezed her against him. Despite his protest, he began to wonder hazily where they could lie, or failing that if it would be possible standing up, for there was no great discrepancy in their heights. The novelty of that thought increased his arousal and his breath caught and shortened as Heulwen tightened and relaxed against him. What had started out as a jest was swiftly becoming a desire-driven imperative. ‘Heulwen, let me. ’ he said hoarsely, but the jingle of harness and the noise of horses pushing through the trees made him look up and then stop what he was doing and swing her hard around, so that she was shielded by his body.