Armand's Daughter

by Diana Dickinson

  “You look like a piece of Christmas holly,” Jean Paul said with an appreciative grin.

  “I do, don’t I?” Catherine laughed, twirling round.

  “Don’t forget your cloak.”

  “I won’t need it. This gown is warm enough.”

  “You’d better hurry – my lord will think you’ve deserted him!”

  Feeling both scared and excited, she hurriedly ran down the stairs and out of the tower. In the courtyard below, two huge fires blazed. There was the mouth-watering aroma of roasting meats and the sound of voices and laughter.

  Raoul was alone in the solar, gazing into the fire, a wine-cup in his hand. Catherine had not noticed before that he was wearing a long red velvet tunic trimmed with gold round the hem and at the edges of the sleeves. His belt was also decorated in gold. He looked magnificent; even she had to admit it. Sensing her presence, he turned round.

  “I thought you weren’t coming,” he said, his speech slightly slurred.

  Catherine realised that he’d been drinking.

  “I’m here now,” she said.

  He held out his hand to her and she put hers in it, her heart suddenly racing.

  “Come on, then.”

  He parted the curtains and led her into the Hall. All of Raoul’s knights were there already, with their wives or sweethearts, drinking cups in hand. There was a rousing cheer and Father Alain stepped forward.

  “First we will make our way to the church to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, then, when we return, the feasting can begin.”

  Not everyone could fit into the church but the doors were left open and everyone else crowded round them, able to hear the priest, if not to see him. When they returned to Radenoc, scullions ran round with loaded platters, serving those in the Hall and carving for the eager throng of villagers. The courtyard was brightly lit, full of merriment and laughter. Catherine happily agreed to stay there with Raoul rather than take her seat inside. She called out greetings and waved cheerfully to all the people she knew, readily accepting a cup of warm spicy wine. Sipping it seemed to increase her feeling of recklessness and excitement. Raoul drained his cup rapidly and grabbed another from a passing page. As he did so, the village musicians struck up a tune. Slightly to Catherine’s alarm, Raoul immediately gulped down the contents of his new cup and took her arm.

  “Dance with me.”

  It was a command, not a question. She steered him towards the circle which was forming – he had become slightly unsteady on his feet – and again took his hand. Once the dance was underway, he seemed to recover a little. Without disgracing himself, he performed the movements nimbly enough, even though he seemed reluctant to relinquish her to the next partner as the dance progressed. When the music finally ended, Catherine, panting, desperately needed to rest. Two girls from Kerhouazoc were supporting Raoul between them. As she turned away, he called out to her.

  “It’s all right,” she called back, “Anne and Tillie are quite harmless – they’ll look after you!”

  She went up the steps into the Hall where there was also dancing – this time to a tune played by Connell on his pipe. She only managed to sit out for a few moments before Guillaume Rénard claimed her as a partner. After that, she had no chance to sit down at all.

  She was starting to feel tired and her head was swimming strangely when, much later, Jean Paul found her. She had been wondering where Raoul had gone because even when she went outside again, she could see no sign of him.

  “If you’d like to go to bed, my lady,” the squire whispered to her, “I’ll bring Lord Raoul up to you.”

  “Oh, yes,” Catherine said, blushing furiously. “Yes, I’ll do that.”

  When she reached the tower room, her hands were shaking so much that she could hardly unfasten her clothing. She considered removing everything, even her shift, then felt overwhelmed with embarrassment for even considering something so wanton. But she felt so unlike herself – it was the effect of the wine, of course. She almost felt that far from simply having to endure his embraces, she might even...enjoy them. Again she found herself blushing hotly.

  Below, on the stairs, she could hear footsteps and...singing? Suddenly more sober, she sat up. The door crashed open and Raoul lurched into the room supported by Jean Paul. Off key, and at the top of his voice, he was bawling a bawdy ballad.

  “Sorry, my lady,” the squire said. “He’s not himself. I don’t like to ask, but could you help me?”

  Immensely relieved that she’d not taken off her shift, she climbed out of bed.

  “If I hold him up, can you pull his clothes off?” Jean Paul asked.

  “I’ll do what I can,” she said, tentatively starting to unlace the fastenings on his tunic.

  “Tha’s it, sweetheart.” Raoul beamed at her owlishly then wrapped his arms round her and planted a hearty kiss on her cheek. “Le’s get all our clo’s off.” He staggered and nearly fell.

  “This is hopeless,” Catherine exclaimed, giggling. “Let’s just get him to the bed.”

  As they manoeuvred him across the room he began to sing again, one of his favourite plaintive love songs. By the bed side he stopped, refusing to move.

  “Where is she?” he demanded. “What’ve you done with her?”

  “Done with whom, my lord? Lady Catherine’s here.”

  “Not her, unfrien’ly bitch. T’other wench...lovely wench...with ribbons in ‘er hair.”

  “Get him onto the bed, Jean Paul,” Catherine said coldly, having suddenly lost any inclination to laugh.

  “He doesn’t know what he’s saying, my lady,” the squire said in consternation. “He was asleep in the stable when I found him, not with a wench.”

  Tight-lipped, Catherine watched from a distance as Jean Paul coaxed and encouraged Raoul first to sit and then to lie down. Once he was flat on his back, he fell instantly asleep and began to snore. The squire unbuckled his sword belt, pulled off his boots and covered him with a fur rug.

  “He should be all right now, my lady. If you need me again, just call.”

  Catherine didn’t reply, merely barred the door after him. It was a long time before she could bring herself to crawl under the covers next to Raoul. Eventually, frozen, miserable and furious, she did so. She had heard it said that truth was in wine. Well, she knew the truth now. At least she had been prevented from humiliating herself.

  The next morning Raoul, white-faced and bleary eyed, was full of contrition and remorse. Although his head was obviously splitting, Catherine saw no reason why she should find anything to sooth it. He thought she was unfriendly, did he? Well, by comparison she would show him that previously she had been delightfully friendly.

  For the next few days, pointedly, whenever Raoul came into a room, she left it. At night she pretended to be asleep when he came to bed. Often, when she woke up in the morning, usually having lain rigidly awake for hours, Raoul’s side of the bed was empty. He had already dressed and gone.

  The bad weather returned. Although Catherine was prepared to exchange occasional remarks with Raoul, there was even less warmth between them than before. Catherine felt continually sour and tense. She couldn’t bear to be in the solar any longer when Raoul and Connell chatted or sang their songs. She tried instead to distract herself in a frenzy of activity.

  She commandeered the services of two of the scullions and set about cleaning and re-organising her still room. When that was neat and orderly, she decided to make preserves and sauces from the bottled fruit and spices in the undercroft. Then she decided to make a list all their stores – there was considerably more than she had thought, and she was unsure where some of it had come from.

  On days when the weather was better, Raoul and his knights went hunting and on their return there was a lot work to be done curing or salting down part of the game. Catherine crammed her days with endless domestic duties, allowing herself no time for rest and painful reflection. As Father Alain had suggested it, she began to sew an embroidered hanging w
hich could be sent to the new Countess of Morbihan in the spring. She worked on this in the evenings, by candle light, in the tower room.

  “Do you know the woman your friend is marrying?” Catherine asked Raoul one day as he changed out of his wet clothing. He had been out that afternoon, only arriving back as darkness fell.

  He looked across the room at her, obviously surprised that she had spoken to him voluntarily.

  “Anne de Bourbriac? Yes. She’s a kind, gentle woman.”

  Catherine read criticism of herself in his words.

  “Is she wealthy?”

  “No. And quite possibly she is unable to have children. She and Bertrand love each other.”

  “Doesn’t he need an heir?”

  “He has one already, by his first wife. Perhaps they’ll visit in the summer. I miss Bertrand’s company – we were together for several years in Outremer. He helps me to make sense of what I don’t understand.”

  Again Catherine felt that what he said was directed at her. Not knowing what reply to give, she bent over her work. Raoul sighed and left the room.

  That night Catherine dreamed about her husband. She was feeling intense desire for him and begging him to satisfy her. He merely looked at her bemusedly and said that he didn’t understand. She took his hand and put in on her breast, then on her thigh, then thrust his fingers between her legs so she could rub herself against them and demonstrate her need. He repeated, over and over again, “But I don’t understand you.” When she awoke, the dreadful unsatisfied ache was still there and her first thought was that perhaps, in her sleep, she had really done those terrible things. Raoul’s part of the bed was cold, however. He had evidently left her long ago. When she saw him at dinner, later in the day, she felt herself blush painfully as she took her seat beside him. But as he was behaving no differently from usual, she consoled herself that it might be all right.

  The next night to her disgust and fury, she had the same dream again. This time, in the morning, she made Marie lug the bath-tub upstairs, determined to scrub away all trace of the filthy lust. She couldn’t bear to look at Raoul when they were together.

  In the days that followed, she hardly dared to fall asleep, dreading the dream’s frequent return. She was still afraid that she might be doing what she dreamt and worried, every time he looked at her, that she might find it proved by an expression of disgust and repulsion on his face.

  Far from doing so, as January continued, Raoul seemed to become less tense. He talked pleasantly both to Catherine and to Jean Paul when he was with them. When alone with Catherine, he was usually quiet but she no longer felt that he was accusing her of something. As she had often done before, she found herself watching him when he was busy with his papers: noticing the curve of his cheek, his long dark lashes, his strong jaw, the way his hair curled slightly at the nape of his neck. Once she caught herself wishing that she could touch him and she forced herself to look away. That night, as she almost expected, she dreamed about him again.

  It was different from before, pleasanter but almost more disturbing. In the dream he was kissing her, very gently, his warm lips barely touching hers. She heard herself moan, and reached out her arms to draw him closer. He kissed her again and her lips opened beneath his, inviting his kiss to deepen. Then, with an angry exclamation, he pulled himself away. Catherine, bereft and rejected, opened her eyes to find the bed still warm and to hear their chamber door closing. It had really happened, she was sure of it.

  The next day, despite rain and a gusty wind, she rode down alone to Lanhalles. Edain was in her hut and she greeted Catherine with less than her usual warmth.

  “What are you doing, my girl?” she demanded, hands on hips, once Catherine was seated by the fire.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Oh yes, you do. Christ, you’ve the finest man in Léon in your bed and you don’t know how to satisfy him!”

  “How do you know that?” Catherine had intended to say something else, but once the indignant question had slipped out, there was no sense in denying it.

  “It stands to reason. If you did what you should, he’d have no need for a whore.”

  “Whore? What whore? My husband’s been lying with a whore?” Indignation and fury surged up inside her.

  “Just listen to yerself, Lady. ‘My husband’ is it? I thought you didn’t want ‘im? You’ve changed your tune soon enough.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question. I think you’re lying to me!” Catherine was on her feet, shouting at Edain. “How would you know what Raoul does?”

  “You’ve only just missed him, my dear – he was here earlier today – oh, it’s all right, I don’t mean here with me! I mean in Lanhalles – an’ he often is. Thanks to ‘im, Jeanne’s purse is full of gold. If you want ‘im back, you’d better mend your ways.”

  “I don’t want him! Why should I mend my ways?”

  “Because you’re jealous, you stupid girl. Who do you think you’re fooling?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Raoul leaned on the stone parapet and heaved a bitter sigh. It was only just past midnight. He had come up to his refuge, the top-most roof of Radenoc’s Western Tower, disgusted with himself for finally, stupidly, giving into temptation – thus making matters worse, if that was possible. Catherine obviously knew what he had done. Whenever he had seen her that day she had been angry and hostile, more so than she had been for months – and Raoul couldn’t blame her. He had even tried to apologise but she had cut him short, refusing to listen.

  He had not realised that one woman could make a man so miserable. He had Radenoc. He had achieved his heart’s desire, but it gave him no pleasure. She had turned what should have been a triumphant victory into a hollow sham. If she hadn’t lost the child, it might have been different, he thought. The morning after the wedding there was a chance that it might have been all right. She had been looking at him with the oddest expression on her face, as if she was considering his potential as a husband. Had she known what iron self-control it had taken for him to keep his distance from her on their wedding night, how would it have affected her judgement? She had looked so beautiful, so utterly desirable, that had she made the slightest move towards him, all his resolutions would have gone for nothing.

  There had been so many times when he had to exercise the same desperate will-power, times when he had had to force himself not to say how he felt, not to do what he longed to do. That terrible morning when she had looked so broken, so defeated by the pain of her ordeal – despite all her hurtful words, how he had longed to hold her. Should he have done so? Ridiculous thought! She hated him. He had taken her once against her will and, unsurprisingly, she had never forgiven him for it. He had sworn that he would never touch her again, unless she was willing. And it was hardly likely that she ever would be. So he had stood and watched her, helplessly, as she sobbed: for her lost brother, he assumed. He could hardly imagine that she would weep for her baby, conceived as it had been in so foul a way. Raoul himself had wept for its loss. It would have meant so much to him to have had a child.

  Then at Christmas, fool that he was, he had undone weeks of patience and self-restraint. He had been stupidly optimistic, full of hope that feasting and dancing, not to mention a little wine, might break down her defences. Then, thinking she was refusing to attend the feast after all, he had lapsed into despair and tried to drown his grief in drink. Then she had come and somehow it had all gone wrong. He remembered dancing with her, fascinated by the scarlet ribbons twined with the burnished copper of her hair. Then there were spinning faces and confusion and finally a yawning chasm of darkness out of which he had emerged with a splitting head and a raging thirst. He knew that he had said or done something unforgivable. Jean Paul wouldn’t tell him what, though his manner was stiff with disapproval for several days. Any trace of friendship between himself and Catherine had simply vanished.

  Almost harder to bear than any of it, though, was his constant physical awareness
of her. She lay merely inches away from him in the bed, her body warm, lovely and inviting, and he must not touch her. Once, hardly daring to breathe, he awoke to find her pressed against his side. It would have been so easy to have turned over and taken her into his arms. But she had been asleep and hadn’t known what she was doing. He had heard her startled exclamation and had felt her move hastily away from him again as soon as she had realised where she was.

  He had found it more and more difficult to lie there with her. She had once suggested going back to the room that she had had as a girl. However much he was suffering, he knew that if she did that, he would never win her. So he said nothing. But desire for her tormented him. Often, having lain awake for hours, he would get out of bed towards dawn and come to the roof-top. As the light grew and the sun rose, he could look out over the lands which he had won at so great a cost. Was Radenoc worth Etienne’s death and his own and Catherine’s misery? As the weeks dragged by Raoul grew more convinced that it was not. But, whatever the price paid, Radenoc was his inheritance, his birth-right, his responsibility. He had no choice in the matter.

  If it hadn’t been for Edain, he thought he would have lost his reason months ago. He had ridden to Lanhalles, desperate, a short time after Christmas. The fisher woman had counselled patience, explaining how miscarriages could hit women hard even if supposedly they hadn’t wanted the child they had carried. Then she had taken him to Jeanne and the pleasant wholesome peasant girl, in a cheerfully professional way, had at least satisfied the worst of his physical need. Lying with her at regular intervals had helped him to continue to show restraint with Catherine – until the previous day.

  He had been asleep, surprisingly, and had woken to find a shaft of moonlight slanting through a gap in the curtains and illuminating Catherine’s sleeping face. He had lifted himself on to one elbow, intending merely to look at her. But then he found his lips seeking hers, apparently of their own volition. Had she cried out or pushed him away, he might have come to his senses at once. She had not. She had made a low moan and put her arms round him, drawing him closer. How he had had the will power to tear himself away from her he didn’t know. But it had all been for nothing. She had woken up, he knew she had, and any trust she might have had in him was gone – she had made that perfectly plain. So tonight, instead of going to their room, he had come up here, tormented by an almost uncontrollable desire for her. This time his visit to Jeanne had not helped. All he had done was to talk about Catherine. It was ridiculous, laughable. He had had the temerity to kiss the woman he had been legally married to for nearly five months and he felt as if he had committed another rape.