‘Then your perceptions were flawed. It was not determination I lacked then. The king commanded me to be in France at the very time I needed to be at home. I am a soldier. I may not protest that I have a woman to woo when the king needs me.’
‘You are a jouster!’ she snarled, pouring as much scorn into the word as she could.
‘A soldier, lady. A captain in the king’s cavalry. The jousting is for practice when we’re not fighting, though I can see how your misunderstanding arose when your late husband couldn’t tell the difference either.’
‘Do not speak of Sir Piers, sir!’
‘Why not? Don’t tell me you’re still mourning him.’ His eyes swept over the shining silk and the auburn glory of her candlelit hair. ‘And still annoyed, I see, that he took what you had hoped to bestow on me. Don’t bother to deny it, my lady. I’m not so inexperienced that I cannot see a woman’s interest from the far end of a room.’
‘Your vast experience of women is common knowledge, sir, but my lack of interest in you was that of a young and innocent maid.’
‘Hold it!’ He dropped his hands and approached her, picking up a stool on the way and setting it so close before her that his knees almost touched hers as he sat. ‘Hold it,’ he said, quietly. ‘Let’s understand this, shall we? Neither of us was innocent, my lady. You ran off with a lover when you were seventeen and still at convent school. Apparently the nuns couldn’t teach you all you wanted to know, could they?’
‘God’s truth!’ she yelped, trying to stand.
Sir Owain grabbed her by the wrist and pulled, making her stay, angering her further by his restraint.
‘They told you about that, did they?’ she continued. ‘Is there anything they missed, for your interest? You have only to ask my brother; he’ll give you every last detail. If he’d not found us and dragged me back here, I’d still be living happily in a barn, no doubt. Let go of me!’
‘Whoo…oo, lass!’ Sir Owain kept hold of her wrist with enough pressure to keep her seated. ‘I don’t have to ask Sir Rolph. I made it my business to ask your parents, as any man would. Even a soldier doesn’t buy a pig in a poke.’
‘Thank you!’ she snapped, pulling her wrist free. ‘And are you as particular about every woman who interests you? Do you keep a stud-book of the countless women you’ve covered?’
His head ducked, fractionally, as a smile tweaked at his mouth. ‘Er…countless in the sense that I’ve never counted them. Well…no. I find I can remember all I need to know, as a rule.’
‘And you needed to know every misdemeanour of my youth, did you? I was not nearly so interested in yours.’
‘I prefer to know if the woman I offer for is a virgin or not. It helps.’
‘You are presumptuous. That’s something you cannot possibly know.’
‘Yes, I can. There was a nail-biting month, so your father says, after your return. What was all that about if not virginity?’
Like a head of steam released, she leapt away from him and across the room in an attempt to escape the humiliating inquisition. ‘This is too much!’ She pointed to the door. ‘Go! Just leave, sir. Insufferable…arrogant…’
But Sir Owain was not ready to be dismissed. Boldly, he approached and took her wrist again, easing her away from the wall, back to the chest. ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘I haven’t finished. Now, let’s just run through the rest, shall we? I’m sure you’ll tell me if I get it wrong, but I have a fair memory for such things.’
‘No…no, sir!’
He sat before her again, ignoring her protest. ‘You ran off with a lad from Lichfield who I don’t suppose taught you much you couldn’t have worked out for yourself. So that was the end of your education at Farewell Priory and the beginning of another sort. Correct so far?’
Furious, Eloise looked stonily beyond his head.
‘Then there was some urgency to get you wed before you got the bit between your teeth again…no…stay where you are…so your father found young Lionel from Carlisle. I knew him, by the way. Nowhere near strong enough for you. He got it in the neck in a skirmish in France, didn’t he? So his family released you from the contract as the betrothal was only three months old and not consummated. Which I can well believe. He didn’t have much idea about warfare, either.’
‘Sir Owain, this is intolerable. Your insults—’
‘My insults, lady, happen to be facts, which is more than can be said for yours to me before members of your family. Now, do you prefer this recital to be in private, or in public?’
Again, she was silenced and he continued. ‘So, after that fiasco came the next attempt to old Sir Norbert of Essex who got caught by the tail-end of pestilence. And that was another three months gone. I can see how you believe all your connections follow a time span. Strange, isn’t it? No small wonder your father was getting desperate, but I was back from Crécy by then and I offered for you, I recall.’ His face tipped sideways to attract her scowl, but she avoided his teasing smile. ‘But then, after that brief meeting, I was summoned by the king to return to France without a moment’s delay to negotiate the release of some of his relatives. I sent your father an offer. It was all I could do, in the circumstances. Except the letter, of course, which you apparently chose to ignore.’
Letter? She frowned into his eyes, expecting to find some insincerity. They held hers without a flicker. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A letter. A personal message sent to you a few days later from London.’
She could find nothing to say. She had received no message, yet his eyes told her that this was no lying excuse.
His lips moved, framing a reply. ‘You didn’t receive it,’ he said, flatly.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I received nothing from you. Not a word.’
‘Then I shall tell you what it said.’ He took the shock in his stride, as any jouster would. Messages sent by hand had been known to go astray, and Sir Owain was well aware of at least one impediment to his plan.
‘Please…!’ She put up a hand. ‘Don’t tell me.’
‘But you believed I lacked commitment. Believe me, I did not.’
‘I had no choice, sir.’
‘So you allowed your meddlesome brother and Sir Piers to rig up such an appealing case in my absence that your father was bound to think that Sir Piers was God’s answer to desperate parents. I don’t blame him. Your father is usually very thorough, very particular, but he was obliged to be at Westminster at that time and naturally he expected that Rolph would handle things as well as he. But your brother was taken for a fool, lady, as you were. Thank heaven that only lasted three months, too.’
Eloise swung her head round to contradict him with the full force of her anger. ‘On the contrary, Sir Owain, it was the short duration of our marriage that complicated matters beyond anything you can imagine. For which I have you and your friend Sir Phillip Cotterell to thank. Even if you had managed to convince me of your own thwarted interest, you can hardly expect me to be gracious to a man who was involved in my husband’s death. Even for you, sir, that would be stretching things too far.’
‘I do not deny some involvement, but it was not how you think. Far from it. But nor am I going to attempt to explain exactly what happened at Windsor last year to a widow who has no intention of believing me. You haven’t, have you?’
‘No.’
‘As I thought.’
‘You are very sure of yourself, Sir Owain,’ she whispered. ‘But don’t make the mistake of judging me by the standards of your many conquests. I am not of that mould and never will be. You have recited my past as if it explained some irresponsibility on my part, but none of it was my own doing except the first, and that I do not regret even if I don’t boast of it. It has nothing to do with you or with anyone else, and if you had it in mind to make Master atte Welle aware of it, don’t bother. He knows.’
‘Nothing was further from my mind at this moment than your steward, my lady, believe me. Nor have I ever believed you to be of the same mould as the countless o
ther you refer to. If you had been, we would not be having this conversation.’
‘Then why are we having this conversation, Sir Owain? Do explain.’
‘To level the ground, my lady.’ He stood, swinging the stool away and replacing it beside the bed. ‘You had your say down there, now I’ve had mine. From now on we’re on equal footing, so don’t expect to score without a return hit. I shall not be so chivalrous as to be a public target for your barbs. Understood?’
This was plain speaking with a vengeance. ‘Oh, perfectly, Sir Owain. Men may suffer another man’s hit and laugh it off, but a woman’s is a different thing, is it not? Do you know, I didn’t even realise I’d scored. Now, isn’t that strange?’
Laughing quietly, he strolled to the door and paused with a hand on the latch. ‘Then you will have to tread very carefully, my lady, in case you score accidentally. The penalty could be particularly humiliating, coming from a man with so many conquests under his belt. Eh? Sleep well, my beauty.’ Still laughing, he let himself quietly out of the room.
Eloise was still sitting there, pensive and none too pleased, when Saskia returned a few moments later, ready to explain her absence. However, Saskia’s perfectly valid reason for leaving her mistress to face Sir Owain alone, which was because he had asked her to, seemed to concern Eloise less than the knight’s conduct, which was not quite what she had expected, if she’d had any expectations at all.
‘Are we talking about what he did?’ said Saskia. ‘Or what he didn’t?’ She began to unlace the back of the topaz kirtle, harbouring her own thoughts on the subject. When Eloise made no reply, Saskia made it for her. ‘Ah, then it’s what he didn’t do, is it? Well, he’s a gentleman, that’s for—’
‘He’s not a gentleman. He’s an overbearing, condescending, insolent…ugh! I hate the man!’
‘Well, that may be so, love, but I’ll wager there’s not many women he visits at this time of night without ending up in their beds. I’d not have left you alone with him if he’d not assured me he only wanted a few moments to talk. He wants to get to know you, that’s all.’
‘That’s not the impression I got. He seems to think he knows all about me already. Peasant! Well, he doesn’t, Saskie. He knows nothing. And if I had any sense I’d let him think what he damn well likes.’
‘And do you, love?’ Saskia turned her mistress round and sat her down.
‘Not enough. I’ll teach him how not to speak to a woman who knows what she wants and what she doesn’t want, and if he thinks I’m going to step carefully over his precious ego he can think again. Penalties, indeed! We’ll see who’s humiliated longest, Sir Knight. I can hold the reins as long as you.’
‘Whe-e-ew!’ Saskia let out a long quiet breath and began to unbraid the auburn hair.
While the candles still burned in her chamber, it was difficult, if not impossible, for Eloise to admit that her perceptive maid was right in her summing up of the thorny situation, so she concentrated on the other source of her anger: his warning that in future she would get as good as she gave. But in the darkest hours of the night, there seemed to be a bewilderment of answers to the vexed question of why, when he could have kissed her, he had not done.
There was another question, too, which he would have answered had she not stopped him. The content of the letter she could almost guess, but who had received it and why they had not passed it on was harder to understand. If it had indeed been sent from London a few days later, then it must have been received first into her half-brother’s hand, or in her mother’s, perhaps. Lady Francesca would not have kept it from her. But Rolph? Would he have tried to close her heart so forcibly against Sir Owain and keep it open for his own choice, Sir Piers? What devilry had the two of them hatched in those confusing months?
Chapter Three
St John’s Day came to Handes Castle in a shimmering haze of peach-coloured sky and a breeze that barely lifted the pennants off the knights’ striped arming-tents over on the tournament field. Jolita was an early visitor to her sister’s cool chamber, her eyes shining with a new radiance that had been missing the day before.
‘What’s this?’ Eloise took her by the hand and led her to the window, scrutinising the face with a teasing severity. ‘Not happiness, surely? One is not supposed to be happy, my child, on one’s betrothal day. Now, a sober modest face, if you please.’ The accent was distinctly Irish.
They hugged, laughing and squeaking. ‘Oh, Ellie! You sound just like Father Eamonn.’
‘Well,’ the Irish lilt continued, ‘I’ll let you off the penance for looking happy if you assure me that procreation is uppermost in your mind. Well, child? Is it?’
‘Hah!’ Jolita yelped, merrily. ‘Yes, if you must know, it is. Oh, Ellie! He’s not as we thought, our Henry.’
‘You thought. So where did you disappear to, last evening?’
‘Talking.’ Jolita grinned, leaning her elbows on the deep sill, her face illuminated by the day’s early glow.
‘I saw the talking. What else?’
Jolita blushed, holding her cool hands to her cheeks and suppressing a laugh. ‘Oh, just getting acquainted. You know.’
‘Jollie…you didn’t…?’
‘No, heavens, no. Of course not. We’re saving that for tonight.’
‘So soon? Then he’s not unloverlike, after all. And you’re going to like him?’
‘Oh, yes!’ Jolita wrapped her arms around Eloise, vibrating with happiness. ‘I was mistaken. He’s kind and gentle.’
‘And experienced?’
‘Yes, oh yes,’ she gurgled. ‘And he has a lovely sense of humour. Quiet, you know. And he listens, too. He wanted me to tell him what I did and what I liked, and today I’m going to show him—’
‘Today, love, you’re going to be betrothed.’
‘Yes. Yes, Ellie!’ The squeeze tightened with excitement.
The hug relaxed as Jolita suddenly recalled her sister’s situation. Full of concern, she drew her towards the rumpled bed to sit by her side. ‘Ellie, what’s happened? You’re sad. Please don’t be sad today, dearest. Is it…is it him?’
Unable to lie convincingly, Eloise looked away, sighing before she could stop herself. ‘I’m not sad, love. Really I’m not.’
‘But?’
‘Oh, nothing. It’s Sir Piers’s year-day and I’m supposed to be a grieving widow, according to Father Eamonn, but for the life of me I cannot be. I’ve been to say prayers for his soul, and the good chaplain expects me to say how I’m missing him, but I’m not, Jollie. I’m free, and yet…’ Her smile took on the colour of sadness. ‘Oh, nothing.’
It was not in her nature to be envious of her sister, or indeed anyone, but no one could have been unmoved by dear Jolita’s unexpected happiness, her bubbling excitement at the discovery of delights to come, her relief that Henry was, after all, more than capable of making her love him. So far, nothing of that nature had ever come remotely near her own experience, she who ached to give herself, body and soul, into a man’s careful and loving hands. At seventeen, she had placed the gardener’s lad in this role but had encountered the same inexperience as herself. Since then, her parents had done their best to match her up to worthy knights who had proved to be as insubstantial as snow, for one reason or another. All four of them. Fate was enjoying herself at her expense.
The two sat without speaking as the vibrant sound of a man’s singing came from somewhere below them, drifting through the door that Jolita had left ajar.
‘Sir Owain,’ Jolita whispered. ‘Every time I saw him last evening he was watching you. Even Henry remarked on it.’
With a shake of her head, Eloise would have none of it. ‘It’s only a man’s looking at something he’s missed, Jollie. Wait till this afternoon, you’ll see how things change. He’ll have women hanging from each arm and another two waiting to mop his brow. You’ll see,’ she repeated. ‘Now, love. What do sisters wear on betrothal days, then? Green sleeves are not the thing, are they?’
Green
was thought to be inappropriate for a bride-to-be as it had often been used to cover up grass stains made by too close contact with the ground.
‘No, certainly not. Come and see what Mother had the tailor make for me.’
‘Shameless red?’
‘No, silly. Maidenly blue.’
Attended by all the castle guests, the betrothal took place under a bower of white roses in the orchard, a large green canopied space that now came alive with splashes of bright colour, men’s as well as women’s. Eloise, hoping to blend into the background in a soft pink madder-dyed kirtle and matching surcoat, was noticeable for the deep mulberry sheen of her hair that hung past her waist in one thick plait braided with gold. Over this, she wore a gold amethyst-studded circlet, a style that was taken by her family to be a sign of a return to her former unmarried status sometimes reverted to by ladies of rank who could also, if they wished, re-adopt their maiden names.
Lord and Lady Pace, magnificent in gold-speckled blue and red, smiled across at her as she stood on the de Molyns side next to her half-brother, and it was the way their smiles passed over her shoulder that made her half-turn to see who was there. Her heart lurched as she recognised the gold-and-black embroidered sleeve of Sir Owain and felt his warmth at her back and, from that moment, the exchange of betrothal rings and vows took second place to the mad beating of her heart. With the others, she applauded as the ceremony was concluded and tender kisses were exchanged, as they had been for her on three occasions.
Lady Griselle, her sister-in-law, was quick to remind her of this. ‘You must be well used to this by now, my dear,’ she said to her in a loud whisper. ‘Next time lucky, eh?’
Usually so quick to find a retort, Eloise was by this time already rattled by the close proximity of the man behind her, whom she preferred not to hear whatever defense she might have to offer. Nor did she think it appropriate to bicker with Lady Griselle on this happy occasion. She bit back her retort, quietly fuming at the woman’s bulging presence but unable to move away.
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