Elizabeth Chadwick - The Wild Hunt

Judith inclined her head. 'Master Madoc?'

'I believe you wrote to the widow of Huw ap Sior, offering to her the sables that had come by underhand means into your possession. She has asked me to act for her in this business and gratefully accepts your generosity.'

'It is naught of generosity, it is her rightful due,' Judith said with a grimace. She had put the sables away at the bottom of a chest, wrapped in fresh canvas, and had thrown the bloodstained coverings on the back of the fire. Even to think of them made her shudder.

Guyon looked at her with surprise and approval.

He had not asked her what she had done with the furs, merely assumed that their disappearance marked their disposal.

Madoc too studied her and wondered if she knew her own power. Probably not; she was still very young and her eyes were innocent of all guile. One day she would be formidable. A black leopard and his golden mate. He smiled at the whimsy.

'You will need an escort,' Guyon said. 'Sables these days are worth their weight in blood.'

'Is Rhys yours too?' Judith enquired a trifle acidly when they were alone in their bedchamber.

Madoc and his grandson were asleep on bracken pallets in the hall among the other casual guests and travellers seeking a night's hospitality.

Guyon scratched the sensitive spot just behind Melyn's ginger ears. The cat purred and kneaded his tunic with ecstatic paws. 'No,' he said, giving his attention to the cat.

'You look alike.'

'Colouring mainly. His father was black of hair and eye. You're not the first to assume my paternity. I wish it were true. He's a fine lad.'

'You have a daughter of his mother's blood,' she said, watching him through her lids.

Guyon's fingers stilled in the cat's thick cream and bronze fur. 'Not one who will know me as more than a shadow,' he said carefully.

'Why did you not tell me about the child before?'

'Where would have been the point? It is not as though she is going to be raised beneath my roof.

Rhosyn will give her a Welsh name and raise her to be Welsh.'

'And you have no say in the matter?' she demanded incredulously.

Melyn leaped from his knee and lay down to wash beside the hearth. 'What should I do?' he growled testily. 'Snatch her from her mother's arms and bring her to Ravenstow and salve my pain at the expense of Rhosyn's hatred and a blood feud with her people?' He rose and, going to the flagon, splashed wine into a cup. 'My say has been said. I once asked Rhosyn to stay with me and she refused. I could no more constrain her to live with me, or give up the child, than I could bear one of those caged birds in my bedchamber.'

'Will you go to her tomorrow?'

He looked at Judith over the rim of the cup. Her expression was guarded, her face milk-pale, the stubborn chin lifted in challenge.

'Probably.'

Judith's fingers were claws. She fought a completely new and unsettling emotion that left her wanting to shriek at him that she was not going to stand for him riding off into the arms of another woman, and longing to scratch out that woman's eyes and call her whore.

Frightened, she turned away and busied herself unlocking the chest that contained the sables.

True to his word, Guyon had not taken a maidservant or mistress into his bed, or if he had, it had been discreetly elsewhere without insult or humiliation to herself. Having lived beneath the cruelty of her father's code, she should have been grateful and was both confused and chagrined to find that instead she felt betrayed. Desperately she scrabbled in the chest.

'Why ask me if you do not want to know?' Guyon said and crouched beside her to put his arm lightly across her shoulders. 'I have known Rhosyn for many years and her father since I was your own age. You cannot expect me to sever those ties.'

The package of sables came into her hands.

She lifted them and turned. 'I do not, my lord.' She gave him one swift look before lowering her lids.

'It is just that you pat me on the head and give me presents and laugh when I amuse you, but I wonder if you ever see me as more than a troublesome child with whom you are saddled.'

She put the furs on top of the chest and stood up.

So did he, a frown between his eyes.

Her gaze was still lowered. After a moment, he tilted up her chin and kissed her gently. 'Come, Cath fach , look at me.'

Her lashes flickered up to reveal a shine of tears. She pushed herself away from him. 'Don't patronise me!'

Guyon let his hands fall to his sides and drew a slow breath. Then, carefully, he let it out. 'How should I treat you?' he asked with baffled exasperation. 'You are not a woman, you are not a child. You waver over the line between the two like a drunkard. You laugh and play knucklebones with my nieces and skip around the keep hoyden-wild. You tease me like an experienced coquette, but were I to take up the offer in your smile you'd bolt in terror. In God's name, Judith, make up your mind!' He swallowed down the wine and picked up the flagon.

Her gaze widened. 'Where are you going?' she Her gaze widened. 'Where are you going?' she said breathlessly.

'To think,' he said with a twisted smile. 'Don't wait up for me.'

The curtain dropped behind him. Melyn stretched in a leisurely fashion, eyed her mistress from golden agate slits and padded to sit expectantly at her feet. Judith scooped her up, buried her cheek in the thick, soft fur and refused to cry.

In the event, Guyon did very little thinking. He took his flagon to the guardroom, sat down, propped his feet on the trestle and with relief, was soon thoroughly absorbed in the convivial, vulgar gossip of his soldiers. It was a long time since he had spent an evening thus and, besides relishing the salty, masculine conversation, he was able to bring himself abreast of current marcher gossip. Walbert of Seisdon's wife was pregnant yet again. One of the mill s at Elford had a broken grindstone. The remains of a butchered deer had been found in the woods on Ravenstow's border with Wales. Robert de Belleme had brought a grey Flemish stall ion to run with his native mares.

Robert de Belleme had offered the widow of Ralph de Serigny in marriage to Walter de Lacey.

Guyon's face emerged abruptly from the depths of his cup. 'What?'

'It's true, sire. My sister's married to a Serigny retainer and is a seamstress up at the keep. Regular upset it has caused, I can tell you.'

Guyon wiped his mouth and removed his feet from the trestle. 'You are telling me that Walter de Lacey is to marry Mabell de Serigny?'

'Yes, sire. Not common knowledge yet, but it soon will be.'

'Imagine waking up wi' that in bed beside you.'

'De Lacey won't be too impressed himself!' quipped the joker in their ranks to a response of loud groans.

De Bec leaned over to refill Guyon's cup. 'De Serigny's estates are rich,' he said. 'Mabel's dowry was huge and Sir Ralph a regular miser.'

Guyon sent him a look that said far more than words, then he drank. 'Do you think he'll invite me to the wedding?' he asked.

'More likely the funeral,' grunted de Bec.

'Mabel's not likely to outlive her second husband, is she?'

Guyon pursed his lips. The Serigny lands and the keep at Thornford lay on Ravenstow's south-west border, separated from Wales by a deep, defensive ditch. There were other keeps in the honour too, forming part of the fortifications ringing Shrewsbury and, coupled with what de Lacey already possessed, it would make him a baron of some considerable standing along the middle marches and increase threefold the threat he posed to Guyon's interests.

One step forward and two steps back, Guyon thought, staring at a puddle of wine on the trestle.

'You'd better tighten up on the patrols,' he said to de Bec. 'I don't want him cutting his new-found teeth on my borders.'