'Cadi might hate cats, but she makes an excellent guard dog,' he explained with a grin as he returned to the bed. 'Not that she'll bite anyone, but she'll greet them with such enthusiasm that we'll have warning enough of eavesdroppers.'

Judith smiled wanly. Her eyes flickered again to his crotch. Guyon sought out his indoor cloak, swept it around himself and handed Judith her chemise from an arm's length distance. She took it and struggled clumsily into the garment, feeling all fingers and thumbs.

Guyon paced over to the narrow window and pulled back the hide covering to look out on a slit of whirling white darkness. 'I meant what I said, Cath fach, ' he murmured without turning round.

'You need not fear me.'

The logs in the hearth crackled and settled. 'I am not afraid,' Judith lied, clutching the bedrobe across her breasts.

'No?' He glanced over his shoulder.

'Well , only a little. I know mama and the others meant well , but they besieged me with their good advice.'

'Such as pots of salve,' he said and, pinning back the hide, turned around. She was watching him anxiously, like a dog desiring desperately to please but afraid of being kicked. Her tawny hair tumbled over the coverlet taking on ruddy highlights from the fire, and was really quite attractive. Her eyes were mingled grey and brown like the muddy water churning beneath the battlements and equally full of turbulence. A veil of honey-gold freckles dappled her face and throat and, for an infinitesimal moment, she reminded Guyon of someone else. The impression, however, was too fleeting to be caught as she moved her head, changing the play of light on the angles of bone.

'My mother is skilled in herb lore,' she said. 'So it would seem,' he said drily. 'Do you have the same competence?'

'She has taught me what she knows.'

He poured himself some wine from the flagon left on the chest and, returning to the bed with it, seated himself on the end and considered her.

'So if I cut my arm with a blade, what would you do?'

'Self-inflicted? I would dose you with valerian to rectify your disordered wits!' she answered with spirit and then, at his silence, sobered and looked down, thinking that she had gone too far.

'No, inflicted by the blade of my wife's tongue!'

he chuckled, 'which I hazard is as keen as a sword once unsheathed!'

Judith eyed him warily, but saw nothing in his face to contradict the honesty of his amusement.

'If it was a deep wound,' she said, 'I would sprinkle it with powdered comfrey root to ease the bleeding, then stitch it and bind it with a piece of mouldy bread.'

'Mouldy bread!'

'It is a remedy handed down from Grandma FitzOsbern and it usually works. Deep wounds heal cleanly without going proud or filling with pus.

The main danger is from the stiffening sickness. If the wound was only a scratch, I would clean it with water in which pine needles had been steeped and then smear it with honey and bind as necessary.'

Guyon studied her as she spoke so earnestly and fought a battle to keep his amusement from showing on his face. In itself, the information was interesting and her obviously detailed knowledge showed that Alicia was justified in commending her daughter's skill . It was just so incongruous that this slender willow-twig of a girl with all her innocence and uncertainty should hold forth like a grey-haired matron of sedentary years.

The incongruity continued to deepen as he fur the r explored her knowledge of matters domestic. He learned the best way to salt pork and hang sausages, exactly how much madder was required to dye cloth a certain shade of red and which water to use, the correct ingredients to make a venison ragout, how to buy spices without being cheated. He almost choked on his wine when she began to explain to him the best way to go about honing a sword.

'Your mother taught you that too!'

'Of course not!' she retorted, tone indignant now that she had gained a spark of confidence. 'De Bec showed me last winter when we were snowed in. He showed me how to use a knife too... Are you all right my lord?'

Guyon wiped his streaming eyes, speechless between laughter and coughing. 'God's eyes!' he croaked at last. 'When I said that this marriage would kill me, I never thought that you would be the hazard!'

'My lord?'

He waved her away as she leaned towards him, her face full of concern. 'Do you number riding among your many talents too?' he asked after a moment, when he had contained his mirth.

Judith shook her head regretfully. 'Mama prefers to travel by litter and my father said it was a waste of time for a girl to master a saddle when she should be at her distaff. I know a little, but not enough to venture out on more than the most docile rouncy - but I am willing to learn.'

'Good. There are several estates in my honours that are not negotiable by litter.'

'You intend taking me, my lord?'

He lay full length on the bed, plumping up the bolster and pillows to support his back. Judith moved away, but with more wariness than fear.

'My parents always went together and the people have become used to the arrangement. Besides,'

he added with a smile, 'there is nothing like the imminent visit of a chatelaine to set a manor humming with industry.'

Judith stirred uneasily. 'My lord, I fear I will not be equal to the burden you lay on me.'

'If you can sharpen a sword and dagger-fight your way out of a corner, you are wholly capable of handling anything else I ask of you!'

She looked doubtful. True, she could manage Ravenstow efficiently. It had been drilled into her without surcease ever since she could remember, but to venture further, tackle people and situations she did not know, that was daunting. It was easy for him to speak. He was a marcher lord with access to the royal ear, his experience far beyond hers.

'Trust me,' he said and kissed her cheek lightly as he might have done to a child. The gesture magically bolstered her flagging resolve and she sat up straight.

Her chemise gaped open at the neck affording Guyon a glimpse of her breasts, scarcely raised from her narrow ribcage. Judith saw the direction of his gaze, and hastily fastened the ties, colour scorching her face.

There was an uncomfortable silence. Guyon bit his tongue to avoid being unkind. He would need to be desperate to take advantage, and he was far from that. Tonight was probably the least amorous he had ever felt when alone with an available young woman.

'Do you have a mistress, my lord?'

'What!' Once more he found himself utterly thrown off balance. 'What kind of question is that!'

'Do not be angry with me, my lord!' She held out a supplicating hand. The fingers were long and elegant and not at all the hands of a child. 'It is only that I do not want to make mistakes. Mama once threw out one of my father's women for insolence and my father beat both of them when he found out.'

Guyon looted disgusted. 'Your father was a fool and a tyrant. I am surprised that with all your knowledge of simples, one of you did not seek to spice his food with monkshood.'

'And have Uncle Robert assure our welfare?

How long do you think we would live?'

He grimaced and finished the wine. 'No, Cathfach, since you ask, I do not have a mistress. I did have but we parted last month. The borders are no longer safe for her to travel in her father's wool train and, being Welsh, she would not be constrained within one of my keeps.' He shrugged and looked down at his hands, remembering them lost in the black waterfall of Rhosyn's hair. 'A marcher lord and a girl from the Welsh hill s. Such matches are fleeting at the most.'

Judith swallowed, wishing that she had not asked the question.

'Even if Rhosyn had agreed to live a Norman life, there are still such things as courtesy and discretion,' he said after a moment. 'It is neither considerate nor far-sighted to have a mistress and a wife beneath the same roof. Grief is bound to come of it.'

Judith nodded sensibly. It never occurred to her that Guyon would be faithful. Her father had been lecherous and indiscriminate in his ruttings and the friends and vassals who dined at his board, the same. Discretion was not a word they knew.

Gratitude was an emotion Judith seldom felt.

'You are kind, my lord.'

He shrugged. 'Not necessarily, but I have had no choice but to learn the ways of women. My sister rules her roost and she has three daughters, all of them lively, and Rhosyn has a daughter too, Eluned. One learns to tread with care.'

He spoke with such obvious affection for his womenfolk that another shard of fear broke from the frozen lump at Judith's core and dissolved away. 'Will you tell me about your family, my lord?

The marriage was arranged so quickly that I know very little.'

Guyon obliged. It was safer ground than talk of mistresses, or so in his ignorance he thought.

Indeed, all went sweetly until he spoke of his half-sister Emma and her marriage to a royal official.

From there, the conversation drifted into the murkier waters surrounding life at court.

'De Bec says that the King is a ...' Judith caught herself just in time from committing another fauxpas. 'A mincing ferblet' was not a safe remark.

Guyon had not missed her sudden dismayed check. He could well guess the reason. Rufus's tendencies were common guardroom scandal and one did not learn how to sharpen a sword and fight with knife without ingesting gossip.

It was not really amusing, not when the King, who was short, portly and red complexioned, preferred his partners to be tall , honed and possessed of dark good looks. On several occasions the royal groin had stood in imminent danger of damage from Guyon's knee. That had been in the early days before he discovered the amicable company of the ambitious Prince Henry and that the occasional night spent carousing with him amid women of doubtful character, and wine of opposite excellence, was sufficient to dampen Rufus's ardour and send him in pursuit of more co-operative game.