‘No, she has one of those, a woman who is proving to be useless!’ Matilda began to edge around him, squeezing herself flat against the inner wall of the stable entrance, grazing her spine against the cool stone so that no part of her body came into contact with him. He turned, watching her. Once free of his disquieting stance, she moved along the stalls, her step quick and fleeting, gown skimming across the loose straw on the packed-earth floor. Where was the grey mare, the docile animal that she always rode when she stayed with her sister? Ah, there she was.
Aware of Gilan’s diamond gaze surveying her from the entrance, she lifted the bridle from the rusty hook and raised the iron latch on the wooden half door, pushing it open. Standing on tiptoe, she managed to slide the bridle over the horse’s head, settling the metal bit between the animal’s teeth. The mare whinnied softly, moving big teeth across Matilda’s hands, searching for the carrots, or apples that Matilda normally brought for her.
‘Sorry, I have nothing for you.’ Matilda patted the horse’s nose. With a gentle tug on the reins, she led the animal from the stall and out towards the entrance. There was no time to fit a saddle to the animal and she certainly wasn’t going to ask him to help
Gilan’s broad frame stood silhouetted in the arched entrance, long muscled legs planted firmly astride, blocking her path. His mouth was set in a firm, hard line.
‘Would you let me pass, please? I have to be quick!’ Urgency plucked at her voice.
‘Who is going with you?’
She gave a quick shake of her head, dismissing his question. She would pretend she hadn’t heard him; the less this man knew about her domestic circumstances, the better. Hitching up her dark pink skirts, she climbed the flight of steps that served as a mounting block inside the stables and slid herself over, astride, on to the horse’s back. Her feet poked out from the bottom of her dress, and to her dismay, one of her leather slippers peeled off the back of her heel and plopped to the ground.
Moving into the shadows of the stable, Gilan bent down and picked it up, holding the pink leather between his fingers. Matilda eyed him warily.
‘I said, “who is going with you?”’ His voice held an edge of steel.
‘Can I have my slipper back, please?’ she asked, her voice petulant. The thin leather of her slipper looked incongruous against the muscled strength of his fingers, pinpoints of fire streaking out from the diamond cluster decorating the toe. She held out her hand, but realised, in shock, that he had grasped her ankle, clad in a silk stocking. He slipped the shoe back over her foot, the heat from his hand travelling up her leg, driving every muscle in her body to rigid alertness. The breath drove from her lungs, she couldn’t speak, or protest…
Fury rose at his outrageous manhandling. Alarmed by her own response to his touch, she kicked out, toes colliding with his chest. His fingers twisted swiftly, almost as if he anticipated her movement, crushing both foot and slipper against a solid wall of muscle, one big thumb pressed up into the tender skin of her sole, sending sparks of…of what? Of sheer pleasure, scything up her leg? She glared at him, astounded, and tugged her foot once more, to no avail.
‘Let go of me!’ she hissed down at him. ‘Your behaviour is unspeakable!’
‘Not until you tell me who is going with you.’
His head was on a level with her chest, his glinting hair inches from the spot where her hands grasped the reins. The urge to sift her fingers through those glimmering strands surged up within her; she smashed down the scandalous thoughts, wondering at her own sanity.
‘They’re all drunk to the world up there! Completely wasted.’
‘You cannot go out alone. A young maid, riding through the woods at night, dressed in all your finery? You’d be attacked, or worse.’ His eyes raked her slim frame, her low-cut bodice, his meaning obvious. ‘There are a lot of lonely men out there, looking for companionship.’
She hunched her shoulders forwards, embarrassed by his scrutiny, his allusions. ‘I am fully aware of the dangers out there,’ she replied, her voice quiet, ‘but my sister is in trouble. I have no choice. There is no one to go with me.’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I can. I can go with you.’
Chapter Six
‘You?’ she blurted out, astonished. ‘How can you possibly go with me?’
‘Easy. I fetch my horse—’ Gilan pointed back into the gloom of the stables ‘—and I climb on his back and ride with you.’ He released her foot and she tucked it hurriedly against the horse’s flank, conscious of the lingering imprint of his fingers.
‘But…but…’ she spluttered, frowning as he moved along the stalls, his stride purposeful, ‘you can’t come with me. You’re a stranger. I hardly know you!’
Gilan led out a huge stallion, coat glossy and smooth, muscles rippling beneath gigantic haunches. Hefting up a saddle, he then looped a bridle over the animal’s head. ‘I think I might be your only option.’ He glanced meaningfully in the direction of the great hall, sticking a booted foot into the metal stirrup to mount up. The movement was graceful, practised; of course, he would have done it hundreds of times before. The silver light casting through the gaps in the cob wall patterned his body with stripes of dark and light; the gemstones on his sword hilt gleamed, red and violet streaks of fire.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ she said, stumbling over her words in an effort to dissuade him. The thought of spending any length of time in this man’s company sent her heart skittering off in panic. She seemed incapable of even looking at him without a surge of unwarranted emotion, of tickling excitement. ‘I grew up round here. It’s very safe. I can look after myself.’ She chucked the words out to him without logical thought, like weapons, hoping to deflect him. Her mare sidled gently beneath her slim stature, the air from its lungs blowing out through rounded nostrils: a stifled, impatient sound. Matilda leaned forwards, patted at the flowing mane.
He brought his horse alongside her, hooves clattering against the cobbles. ‘Like this afternoon, you mean?’
She flushed beneath his silvery perusal. ‘That was different. Those ruffians saw the expensive hangings on the litter and thought there might be coin to be had.’ Through the side split of his tunic, she could see his bulky thigh muscles pressing against the fawn wool of his chausses.
‘And what do you think those same men would do if they saw a well-dressed lady, riding alone in the middle of the night?’
‘Why…they…they wouldn’t dare!’ Heat flooded her body at her feeble response. She was losing the argument and she hated him for it.
He cocked his head to one side, his mouth curling upwards, faintly mocking. The shadows beneath his high cheekbones made them look like they had been carved from stone. ‘I think you’re living in a dream world, my lady. Do you think you’re invincible? That you can ride unmolested through the dark and remain secure from the harsh realities of life? Of what hot-blooded men in the need of solace might do?’
She flinched at his harsh words, fingers tightening around the leather reins. Yes! she wanted to shout at him. Yes, I am invincible! Oh, how she wished it were so, how she wished she didn’t have to rely on male protection. Instead she glared at him, her expression mutinous.
‘Forgive me, my lord, but for all I know, you might be one of those ruffians,’ she answered boldly. ‘How do I know that I can trust you?’ She stuck her chin in the air, openly defiant. ‘You might be tricking me. You might be the one who ends up attacking me!’
His eyes darkened. ‘Is that what you think? That I would pin you to the ground and throw your skirts above your head? What a low opinion you have managed to form of me in such a short time.’
‘No! No!’ she gasped out, head rearing back in shock at his deliberately coarse speech, eyes flicking upwards in alarm at the detailed image he portrayed. Her knees and legs trembled; if she hadn’t been sitting on the horse, s
he would have fallen. ‘You go too far with your words, my lord,’ she whispered out on a scant amount of breath. She shook her head vigorously, blotches of violet exhaustion appearing beneath her beautiful eyes. ‘Stop saying such horrible things to me!’
Gilan watched the colour drain from her face; her whole stature seemed to shrink before his eyes, reducing her appearance to that of a pale ghost, wan and shaking. He hadn’t meant to frighten her, only to warn her, to make her aware. But she was correct; he had gone too far. A wave of unexpected guilt surged through him. ‘My words will not hurt you, my lady Matilda,’ he said, more gently. ‘But men can, and will, if they have a chance. Don’t give them that chance.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘You have nothing to fear from me. Remember, I have already saved your skin today. With many opportunities to take advantage of you, I might add. Opportunities which I have not taken.’
‘When?’ she blurted out, unthinking, drawing her eyebrows together in a deep frown.
His mind tacked back to the hot afternoon, a vivid picture forming in his mind. ‘When you lay unconscious on the grass beside me, scarcely breathing, when we walked side by side into the forest by the tower, when…’
‘Enough!’ She held up her hand to silence him. A rapid blush flooded her cheeks; she hoped he wouldn’t notice. To her dismay her fingers shook from his earlier words; she tucked them away. She had no wish to be reminded of her own vulnerability, no wish to recall her humiliating fall from the tower, her defeat at his hands.
‘You can trust me, Matilda.’ He tapped his heels against his horse’s rump, the fractional movement enough to set his horse in motion, to move out into the bailey. She was more than safe from him. How could he tell her he was immune to the ways of women, incapable of feeling, his spirit deadened from the moment his brother’s body fell from the scaling ladder through the thin, frosty air and hit the hard, icy ground.
Matilda peered after him, hating his arrogant assumption that she would follow without further argument or question, that she would allow him to accompany her as if she were a grateful lapdog or some pathetic piece of doe-eyed femininity. Let him think that, if he wished, but she was none of those things, and above all, not in the least bit grateful to him. She didn’t want him there at all.
‘Can you ride like that?’ Gilan asked, eyeing her slipping seat doubtfully. His horse shifted beneath him, front hoof scraping against the cobbles of the bailey, ears pricking up with excitement.
‘Of course,’ Matilda scoffed at him, squeezing her knees into the mare’s rounded sides. ‘I’ve been riding like this since I was a child.’ She leaned down, wrenching the hem of her gown over her ankles, as her horse trotted through the yard.
‘Astride?’ His voice was a low, seductive rumble.
‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘But most times when I knew no one was looking.’ She threw an anxious glance up at her sister’s window, before fixing Gilan with a more disparaging glance. ‘We’d better go then.’ She couldn’t have sounded more reluctant if she had tried.
He followed her out of the inner bailey, through the gatehouse and across the shining moat until they rode out into the gently undulating countryside. The night held the heat of the day, a thick muggy air that stuck fabric to skin. Perspiration gathered at Matilda’s brow; her circlet pressed against her forehead, hot against her temples. Her gown bunched up beneath her, two gowns, in fact, two layers of material to make her even hotter. The material gathered around her thighs, annoying and cumbersome. She eyed Gilan’s pleated tunic and fitted trousers with annoyance. How easy it was for men, with the simple cut of their clothes and the absence of endless layers. He appeared cool, self-assured in the saddle, while she must look like an overheated fishwife. No matter. She wasn’t out to impress him.
They rode across a landscape soaked in moonlight, a pearly shine from a navy sky. Freed from the towering confines of the castle walls, they broke out into rolling, open grassland, fields stretching away from the dusty chalk track in a series of haphazard gridlines. Scrubby hawthorn hedges delineated the rough squares of pasture; sinuous lines of willow denoted a watercourse, or spring line. Towards the west, towards the estuary, the sky lightened, imperceptibly, the fading mark of a dying sun.
Acutely aware of the man following her, Matilda fought hard to maintain an upright seat on the mare; riding bareback was far harder than she remembered, despite her brave assurances towards Gilan. Along the narrow rope of her spine her muscles protested with clenched exhaustion, but she would not give in, would not slump in front of this man. He had seen her weakness once, after she had fallen from the tower; she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing it again.
She curved her body around in the saddle, searching him out in the shadows. The embroidery on his tunic glimmered; she caught the flash of gems from his sword hilt. ‘We can gallop along this next bit,’ she explained, chewing at her lip. ‘The track runs straight for a good mile now.’ The breeze from the coast tussled at his hair, sending a few glinting strands wayward. Her heart constricted and she turned smartly back in her seat, eyes fixed on the horizon line, brows drawn together sharply, puckering the skin on her forehead. What was it about this man that made her heart pound so?
Laughter bubbled in his chest, eased the constricting band that seemed permanently strapped across his torso. The chit made it sound as if she were apologising for the fact that he had to gallop, as if he were unable to perform such a manoeuvre, that she doubted his dexterity on a horse! Her way with words was delightfully obtuse, unconventional. Another man might have taken offence at her speech, but with him? Nay, it made him smile.
Matilda kicked the flanks of her mare, picked up the pace. Her horse’s tail fanned out, picking up the shift of air. She hunkered down against the animal’s back, gripping the bridle, gripping the mane, anything that would help her to maintain her seat.
* * *
After what seemed like an interminable length of time, but was perhaps in fact not longer than a mile, she spotted the substantial outlines of Wolverhill against the dusky sky: the dark heft of the grain barn, the rising stone walls of the priory. A flame burned in the small church tower which also acted as a lighthouse, a marker for any ships out in the estuary.
Sighing with relief, Matilda hauled on the reins, slowed the mare to a walk in front of the small gatehouse. Her leg muscles burned from the amount of effort she had exerted in trying to stay on the horse at speed and she rubbed the tops of her thighs surreptitiously. There was no guard, no soldier to challenge them or prevent them entering. The whole place was quiet, save for the whisper of breeze through the willows along the drainage ditches, an owl hooting in the distance. The nuns were safely tucked into their hard, narrow beds at this hour, bolted into their grey stone cells. Gilan drew alongside her, his knee jogging into her hip as he skittered his horse to a stop.
‘What is this place? Whom do you seek?’ Gilan asked.
‘It’s a nunnery,’ she explained. Her veil, a diaphanous shift of white silk, blew forwards, around her face, and stuck against her cheek. She pulled it away. ‘There is a woman here who is skilled in the art of childbirth,’ she explained, edging her horse carefully away from him. He didn’t need to know that the woman was her mother. ‘She has the ability to turn babies who are the wrong way around, breech babies.’
He nodded. ‘You’d better go in alone. I don’t want to scare the living daylights out of a bunch of nuns.’ Leaning over, he grabbed her reins. ‘I’ll stay here, hold the horses.’
She slithered awkwardly down to the cobbles, staggered back a little under his astute gaze. Brushing down her skirts, she stalked towards the open archway and disappeared.
* * *
‘No, I can’t do it, Matilda! You can’t ask that of me!’ Her mother stared at her, shocked and terrified.
‘Mother, listen to me! This is Katherine’s baby we’re talking about. Your own daughte
r! I’d understand if I were asking you to attend some stranger, but this…this is Katherine! You know how much it means to her for this baby to survive! You know the problems she has endured.’
Her mother sat on the side of the truckle bed, hunched over. Her long dark hair was bundled into a thick plait that fell over one shoulder. Her nightdress flowed out from her neck, voluminous, a wealth of undyed linen, plain—no embroidery, no adornment. Through the slit window, Matilda could see a strip of midnight-blue sky, sparkling with stars. She sighed; she had been here for too long already, pleading with her mother, cajoling her…begging her.
‘You know my situation, daughter—’ her mother raised tear-soaked eyes towards her ‘—since your father died, I…I sought seclusion, I sought a way forwards without the man I loved.’ She scrunched a white linen handkerchief between her fingers, the fabric sodden with tears already shed. ‘And I found it here, with these good nuns. I haven’t been out in the world for nearly two years. Katherine will understand.’
Matilda shook her head. A stump of flickering candle cast her mother’s jittery shadow on the wall. Damp gleamed from the thick white stone like a skin of sparkling sweat. ‘I’m not certain she will, Mother. Not this time. John is putting great pressure on her. I suspect it might be her last chance to provide a viable heir.’
Her mother placed her face into the palms of her hands, weeping openly. ‘Please don’t do this to me, Matilda, please don’t make me do this! It would kill me to go out there, you know it would. Since your father…’ Drops ran from her chin, plopping down into the coarse-weave nightgown covering her lap.
Matilda closed her eyes with despair, squeezed them so tightly, she could see flickers of light cross on the red insides of her eyelids. Her mother was not going to come. Katherine’s baby would die. Her shoulders slumped with misery, with disappointment. She had failed.
‘Matilda!’ Outside in the corridor she could hear a rough male voice calling her. ‘Matilda!’ And alongside the deep, masculine tones, an outraged tirade, overlaying his constant shouting. Oh, good Lord, she thought, what is he doing here?
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