Gilliane (Roselynde Chronicles, Book Four)

by Roberta Gellis

  Adam and Gilliane spent the day riding the demesne, speaking to the bailiffs and the people of the town, and Adam made sure it was Gilliane who asked the questions and received the answers. The people were still nervous and worried, but that was common when a new overlord took hold, and Gilliane could see that if young Sir Richard was as careful as his father, all would prosper.

  The next day they rode to Kemp, where Adam found that Robert de Remy had gone for a few days to Telsey, all being safe and quiet at Kemp. Adam presented Gilliane to his servants and gave orders that they obey her as they would obey him—or else. He then left Gilliane in the keep and rode out to see how matters went in his absence. Gilliane knew she had no rights in Adam’s household, but the maidservants flocked around her with questions and appeals, and when she saw the disorder to which all things had come in two years without a mistress, she could not bear it. She started with the sheared wool and stalks of flax, divided, assigned tasks to be performed, sharply settled questions and arguments about whose duty each task would be. Spinning was ordered, the yarns spun in the past examined and accepted or rejected; weaving projects were examined, planned and designed.

  Long before her work in the women’s quarter was half done, an outdoor maid crept trembling up the stairs to beg the lady if she would be so good as to come to the cooks. Memory stirred in Gilliane of Ian’s and Geoffrey’s complaints of meals, ill cooked and ill served in Adam’s keep. Wondering whether Adam would be offended, but unable to resist the plea, Gilliane went down.

  A sight of the kitchen sheds nearly made her faint. Such filth! Such waste! Such disorder! Only rigid self-control and self-reminders that these were not her people restrained Gilliane from ordering them all soundly whipped. Her compressed lips and flashing eyes had almost as violent an effect. Perhaps the cooks had expected quick advice on how to flavor a dish; what they got was quite different. A clearance and cleaning were made of two sheds and a portion of the cooking utensils while Gilliane returned to the maids. An hour later she descended to approve the cleaning and to give recipes and instructions on what to cook. Later she came down again to taste and to order more of this and a touch of that to be added.

  When Adam rode in, he found the hall set for dinner, the servants mostly seeming to know what to do and when to do it. The service did not move with Roselynde’s or Hemel’s greased perfection, but it was a far enough cry from the usual madhouse that had prevailed at Kemp that Adam noticed.

  “Tsk, tsk,” Adam said in Gilliane’s ear. “I see I have not broken you of the habit of muddling about with dinner. Food, food, food—all you think of is food.”

  But publicly he thanked and complimented Gilliane. Aside from the brief teasing, his manner was formal. Except for that teasing and the fact that Adam’s eyes were very tender, Gilliane would have been frightened out of her wits. As it was, when Adam took her no further than the stairs and kissed her hand formally in parting with her for the night, tears of mixed gratitude and frustration filled her eyes. It was marvelous that Adam would not dishonor her, even before his servants, but she wished…

  The gratitude was a little marred by fear. Was it his reputation or hers with which Adam was concerned, Gilliane wondered. Could he be tiring of her? Neither his looks nor his conversation added to her doubts. On the ride from Kemp to Tarring, Adam was as attentive as any woman could wish. Propriety had to be maintained before Sir Richard’s son, but after he left, Adam still only bowed over Gilliane’s hand at the stairs. Then fear overwhelmed her and she clutched at him.

  “You swore you would not put me aside,” she whispered. “Are you tired of me already? Why will you not come up with me?”

  Adam knew quite well that he should say he wanted a wife, not a mistress. That if Gilliane did not feel she could trust herself to him in one way, why should she trust him in another? He should have pointed out that if she was willing to share his bed, she should be willing to share all things. Instead, heat washed over him as he looked into her lovely face, flushed with embarrassment and desire. His loins tightened and his knees felt weak. “It is not my right to come into your women’s quarters without your permission,” Adam said huskily. “I have been waiting and waiting for you to ask me.”

  He should have said that it was she who rejected him, she who had no faith, believing he wished to rob her of her lands and her pride. Instead, he pushed her back into the stairwell and kissed her until she shook with desire. They came into the women’s quarters handfast, and Gilliane did not care. These were her people, and she would deal with them if so much as a glance was cast askance. That thought flickered through Gilliane’s mind, but she never realized how much the thought marked the great change in her in a few short months. After that she thought of nothing besides the deep pleasure of undressing slowly, of caressing Adam and having him caress her without hurry or shame, of the slowly building feelings that drifted over this part and that of her body.

  Then there was the big bed, fresh made, sweet scented, and more slow caresses, sweet, idle words, kisses that wandered from fingertip to breast tip, steel-hard hands so light, so gentle, as they fondled a beloved body. There was time for Gilliane to touch also, to giggle and have her laughter broken by passion and giggle again at Adam’s reaction to kisses that did not aim at his mouth. Excitement grew and deepened. There was neither anxiety nor weeks of deprivation to drive it into a flashing explosion. The five-day abstinence had built appetite but had not pushed it out of control. The need Gilliane felt for Adam and he for her was hot and steady, like the bright red core of a long-burning Yule log.

  There were, this time, no sparks and flashes, no cataclysm of sensation, over too soon. When Adam mounted Gilliane, he arched above her, his lips gently on hers, his shaft touching, entering slowly, so slowly, while both pairs of eyes shut languidly to hold in the exquisite relief and fulfillment. He withdrew as slowly, Gilliane sighing softly at the loss of his pulsing warmth and simultaneously thrilling with joy at the knowledge that her satisfaction would be renewed. Withdrawn, renewed, each time the core of heat grew hotter, as if a steady breath of air flew into the heart of the burning log. Still there was no urge to hurry, no need to find culmination before they should be interrupted.

  Nonetheless, each time Adam thrust a little harder, a little quicker, sighing and then moaning softly with each movement. The image of heat grew more intense. Behind her closed eyes, Gilliane could imagine her whole body deep red with lust, then orange as her excitement intensified. Then, at last, a sharper pleasure stabbed her, as if a yellow tongue of flame found a crack in her smoldering body. That stab of fiercer joy, like a split in a log that allows an exit to trapped air and therefore provides for a renewal of the substance that supports fire, broke Gilliane’s quiescence. She cried aloud, arched herself upward under Adam’s weight. The single tongue of flame changed to a sheet of fire, flashed over her whole body, encompassed her, yellow and then white-hot, an agony of delight. She heard Adam groaning above her, higher, higher, until his voice broke.

  There was further joy—no hasty uncoupling, no need for shamefaced straightening of garments. There would be no others waiting, with eyes carefully averted from their faces, lest they see too much. Aware of his weight, Adam turned on his side, Lifting Gilliane with him and supporting her on a powerful thigh so that their bodies could remain joined. When eventually they slipped apart, they still lay nestled together. Adam made a lazy comment about a chair in the hall that needed mending. Gilliane riposted, with soft laughter, that chairs were not made to support oxen, but that she would see that it was strengthened, and all the others, too. There was an easy silence, a gentle kiss. Gilliane reminded Adam that she had been cleaning out the lowest level of the keep. The servants had discovered some arms and armor in a dark comer. Likely, they were too rotted to be of use, but would Adam look and see if any could be salvaged?

  Both thought longingly that this was what marriage should be, hot and sweet, passion mingled with the small tasks of every day and with time
enough for everything. Neither could spoil the ease and sweetness by speaking of what each feared the other did not desire. It must be enough for me, Gilliane thought. Let me not be so mad as to lose all my joy for a few words mumbled by a priest.

  I will have her, Adam resolved. I will give her these few weeks, until I return from Bexhill. Then I will force her, if I must, despite what Ian said. He feared my mother still loved my father and did not love him. I know Gilliane loves me. It will be different for me. But the idea lay heavy and cold in Adam’s mind. He did not want to force Gilliane into anything. He did not want a wife who would watch him fearfully for a change of heart or a desire to steal her heritage.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Adam and Gilliane had almost three weeks of near-perfect joy. Except for odd moments now and then, both forgot they were not husband and wife. Adam strewed dirty garments over Gilliane’s neat bedchamber, played silly tricks on her, lost his temper and roared over nothing as was his habit when he was perfectly at ease. Gilliane picked up the dirty garments, scolded him, laughed at his jokes, yielded, made him laugh, or even, few times, gave him his own again to cure his bad temper.

  They were not too much nor too little in each other’s company. Adam was recruiting and training men for the assault on Bexhill, changing and improving the machines and defensive armament of Tarring; Gilliane was molding Tarring, its demesne, and the town it controlled into as close an image of Roselynde as she could make it. Her methods were not identical with Alinor’s, but the results were equally good.

  The port was not really Gilliane’s, of course. It had a charter and was governed by its mayor and aldermen. When things ran smoothly, Gilliane had little contact with the townsfolk and was not terribly interested in their doings. She had enough to occupy her among those directly under her control. Thus, she was not aware of a special visitor in one merchant’s house. She was aware that the merchant brought goods to the castle with greater frequency than others in the town and that his prices were lower and that he seemed desperately eager to please her. Since Gilliane recognized him as the merchant she had both punished and saved, his behavior did not seem unusual to her. It was logical that he should be both grateful and eager to prove that his practices had changed for the better.

  Life was easy and sweet in Tarring, undisturbed by the news that came regularly from Roselynde. Geoffrey had managed to convince the young king that, at present, his presence on the battlefield would be a great danger to his men. As an example, he pointed out how, when his own father had thought only of saving him, Salisbury had been struck down. Bouvines was lost anyway, Geoffrey agreed, but something might have been saved if Salisbury’s attention had not been distracted. If every leader was thinking more of the king than of the battle, disaster must ensue. Geoffrey and Joanna had then gone home to Hemel where Joanna would lie in near the end of June. After the family news, Alinor reported briefly Louis’s success…in reoccupying the castles Pembroke had taken while the prince was in France. This was expected and did not trouble Adam; he continued his preparations for the attack on Bexhill.

  Osbert listened to the merchant’s and the whores’ reports on Adam’s progress and licked his lips with anticipation. His plans had been enlarged after he had reported the object of Adam’s warlike preparations. His own part remained unchanged, but, when the position of Bexhill had been pointed out, it had seemed reasonable to Louis that Lemagne should be punished for his activities against Lewes and Knepp and for the shame he had caused FitzWalter.

  With Pevensey less than ten miles to the west and Hastings not much more than six miles east, it would be easy enough to fall upon Lemagne from both directions and smash him like a roach. They would not need extra men. The garrisons could be stripped from Pevensey and Hastings for the day or two that would be needed to attack and defeat Lemagne with the help of the garrison of Bexhill. Their advantage would be increased because Lemagne would not expect any attack. He would reason that Louis’s forces would all be occupied with destroying Pembroke’s work and in the new attack upon Dover that Louis had begun.

  This device would regain for Louis not only Tarring itself but Kemp and Wick and, indeed, all the properties Lemagne controlled. An additional security and advantage would be that Louis himself would be near at hand to see that nothing went wrong. The prince had not forgotten the danger and embarrassment he had undergone when he tried to leave England in February. He had resolved to take Dover once and for all, and ensure himself both an escape route, if necessary, and free entry for reinforcements and supplies. Since Dover was only about forty miles from Hastings, Louis could have news within the day of Lemagne’s doings and could swiftly order attack or change the plans to suit the situation.

  However, Louis was not to have everything his own way. As soon as the prince invested Dover, gracing the siege with his own person and swearing publicly that he would not move from that place until it was his, Pembroke put his own plans into operation. He had determined, as his first move, to clean out any stronghold of Louis’s that thrust into territory largely loyal to the king. In pursuit of this plan, he instructed the Earls of Chester and Ferrars to besiege Mountsorel and sent out summons to the other vassals of the king to join him in Newark on the first of May to give Mountsorel the coup de grace.

  Adam received this summons on April twentieth and cursed luridly for ten minutes before he shouted for the priest to write summoning letters to his own men. He dictated the text quickly, having the wording by heart, adding fresh only where and when they were to meet him. Then, while Father Paul set about writing the correct number of copies, leaving blank the place for the name of each man, Adam began to count up the force each would provide. Suddenly, the blasphemies he had been uttering, which had been making Father Paul wince, although he had sense enough not to make any reprimand, and making Gilliane wring her hands because she did not understand why Adam was so angry, ceased. Adam’s eyes began to sparkle with pleasure rather than flash with rage and smiles replaced grimly gritted teeth.

  “The dear old devil,” he exclaimed, “he remembered I wished to take Bexhill.”

  “Then you do not have to go?” Gilliane breathed.

  “Oh, I must go. That is of no account. What is important is that he called me to bring no more men than my own castellans will provide. Also, the times fall in excellently. I summoned Sir Richard and the others to come on the last day of May, you remember.”

  “Yes, I remember,” Gilliane replied, trying desperately to hide her disappointment and fear.

  Adam looked at her doubtfully. Was she going to try to keep him from answering this summons? “You agreed it was the best time, with all the spring planting finished and before the first haying so that the men pulled off the land would work no hardship on the crops,” he pointed out.

  “Yes,” Gilliane agreed. She had accepted that date because it was the latest Adam would agree to.

  “Well, then, you must see why I am pleased. My term of service for this summons will run only until June tenth, and I am sure Pembroke will allow me to substitute Robert de Remy for myself for the last ten or fifteen days. Thus, this summons will not interfere at all with my taking of Bexhill.”

  “No, I see,” Gilliane said in a strangled voice, and turned away.

  She made blindly for the nearest wall chamber where she could pretend to busy herself with something—anything—until she could choke down the fear that had risen up to blanch her face and restrict her voice. It would be worse, alone in Tarring, than it had been when Adam left from Roselynde, where she had Joanna and Alinor for exemplars and comforters. In the privacy of the wall chamber, tears and terror made her even blinder so that she could not see the storage chests and she stumbled ahead until she walked right into the wall. There she clung, pressing her face against the cold, rough stone. Her heart was hammering so hard that she could hear nothing except the blood pounding in her ears. She was not aware that Adam had followed her until he spoke.

  “I will not endure it,�
�� he snarled. “When you accepted me as overlord, you accepted the fact that I was Henry’s man. What is it that binds you to Louis? That makes you weep and quarrel with me each time I act against his good?”

  The sound of Adam’s voice made Gilliane jump as if he had lashed her with a whip, but what he said made no sense at all. “Louis?” she gasped, turning and leaning back against the wall. “Who is Louis?”

  “What lunacy is this?” Adam bellowed. “Do you think me an idiot that you can hide your wishes by pretending you do not know I speak of the Prince of France?”

  “What has the Prince of France to do with me or you?” Gilliane shrieked, completely unbalanced by Adam’s rage and her own fear. “What do I care for his good or ill? If I weep and quarrel, it is only to stop you from running to war. May a pox take Louis! I do not care if they all die of a pox—Louis, Henry, Pembroke, Sir Godfrey, all! All! Only let them cease from tearing you away from me.”

  This time there were no modest, downcast eyes, no soft murmurs of excuse, no reason. Even Adam could read no pretense into the naked fury of Gilliane’s response. In that moment, what Geoffrey had assured him, and his mother, and Joanna, was hammered home and Adam realized what an ass he had been. It was true Gilliane had opposed the taking of Wick and Bexhill—but those were the places that would not yield except by war. Whenever Adam’s purpose could be accomplished by peaceful means, Gilliane had aided and encouraged him most enthusiastically. In fact, several times when he would have resorted to force to bring her men to heel, Gilliane had shown him a way to lead them willingly to loyalty—which was far more detrimental to Louis’s cause in the long run than subduing unwilling men. Geoffrey had struck it right, as usual. Gilliane had no political particularity.