He reached with a gentle hand to brush at a wisp of silvery hair lying on her cheek. 'You look as if you have just stepped from the land of faery,' he said softly, 'so beautiful and delicate. Look at the difference in our skin.' Adroitly he peeled aside the sheltering covers, exposing her satiny shoulder, and laid his fingers there, warm brown upon white.
Gisele looked and shivered, small goose bumps rising on her flesh. 'I won't hurt you,' he murmured, 'I promise I won't. Just let me touch you for a moment. Here, rest against me, you're cold.'
Although Benedict would not be nineteen until Christmastide, it had been more than three years since he had lain with his first woman, and in that time he had learned that to light a blaze in a cold hearth, you had to pay great attention to setting the fire. You could not brutally thrust a torch into the kindling and expect it to burn. The flames had to be coaxed and fanned.
Of course, he also knew that he could throw Gisele flat on her back and take her within a matter of seconds to sate his own lust, that it was his marital right to do so, but Benedict's was a sensual nature. He derived as much pleasure from the slow spiralling of his senses as he did from the core of the act itself. He wanted Gisele to feel as he did, wanted to see her eyes grow hazy with desire and then widen in astonishment, wanted to hear her gasp as she arched against him. He could not allow her mother's shadow to have the dominance of their wedding bed.
He continued to whisper how beautiful he thought her, and moved his hand up and down her spine in a slow, stroking rhythm that warmed and soothed. After a while she began to relax and he persuaded her to drink some of the spiced wine that had been left on the night table in case they became thirsty at their endeavours. Benedict set his lips to the place where she had drunk, holding her eyes while he tilted the cup. And then, handing it back to her, he was deliberately clumsy and spilled some of the sweetened wine upon her shoulder. Gisele jumped with surprise, then raised an edge of the bed-sheet to dry herself. Benedict quickly set the cup down on the coffer and grabbed her hand before she could accomplish her intention. Bearing it down, he leaned over her and began to kiss and lick the wine from her skin, following the track of the droplets from shoulder to armpit, to the small swell of breast and the roseate crown of tight nipple, by which time Gisele had given up all resistance, permitting him to have his way.
Benedict led her slowly through the labyrinth of desire towards its core, pausing here and again to explore and savour. She came with him, eager, and at the same time reluctant. Even as she arched towards the feather-lightness of his touch between her thighs, her breath hissing through her teeth, she kept her eyes tightly closed, protecting herself. And although she put her arms around his neck and her fingertips dug furiously into his shoulders, she refused, even at his gentle coaxing, to touch him intimately in return. It was as if he was asking her to place her hand upon the devil's branding iron.
And then, beneath his sure, soft stroking, her closed eyelids tensed and she began to gasp and buck. Benedict entered her then, and as her flesh enclosed him, he felt the exquisite closeness of release and relief. He had been holding himself in check for a long time while he concentrated on bringing Gisele to a state of excitement that would overcome whatever pain there was, and now she had reached the pinnacle, he let his body have its way, and quickly, before she descended from the height of her own pleasure. The barriers in his mind dissolved, there was nothing but her smooth, tight sheath, and himself filling it, bursting. Her throat arched, her short fingernails imprinted half-moons of lust across his shoulders and she sobbed once aloud, the sound caught back and smothered behind her teeth.
Finally, Benedict caught his breath. Bracing his weight on his elbows, he looked down at her. Still her eyes were closed. Her breathing was short and swift, and a rosy flush illuminated her face, throat, and breasts. He dipped his head to nibble her shoulder and tasted a residue of wine, salty now with sweat.
'That wasn't so bad, was it?' he murmured.
Wordlessly she shook her head, and the colour mantling her face darkened as she blushed.
'You can open your eyes, you know.'
Reluctantly she did so, avoiding his dark gaze as if they had done something shameful.
'Pleasure can be God-given too.' He rolled off her and lay down at her side. 'We are man and wife, we have not sinned.'
She nodded agreement, more to please him, he suspected, than from true belief. She raised the covers and looked down, checking that there was blood between her thighs and that some of it had smeared on the sheet. 'It didn't hurt,' she said in a puzzled, almost accusing voice.
'I suppose your mother told you it would?' he said neutrally.
Gisele frowned and shook her head. 'She said that it might, but not to worry, it would soon be over. But Father Hoel says that it is a woman's lot to bear pain for the sin of Eve, that anything else is lust.'
'Father Hoel is a sapless old stick,' Benedict snorted. 'I could have given you more than enough pain to satisfy your guilt, but I wanted it to be good for you.'
She bit her Up and was silent for a while. 'It was,' she said in a small, tentative voice, and pulled the bedclothes back up, covering herself from his gaze.
Benedict felt a surge of irritation. What was good was obviously not necessarily right. He drew her against him, his hand sweeping over the curve of her spine and her buttocks. He had intended going to sleep, but a different resolve grew inside him as he witnessed her reaction to his lovemaking. 'Next time,' he said a trifle grimly, as if responding to a challenge, 'will be even better.'
And as Gisele twisted and wept beneath the relentless onslaught of his tongue and fingers, Julitta lay in the bower with the other women, and twisted and wept too in anguish of her own. And alone with his hand, so did Mauger.
CHAPTER 45
Julitta stooped, formed a snowball from the thick white carpet at her feet, and hurled it at the young squire who had just struck a direct hit on her cloak. Her missile hit him on the side of the neck and showered in crystalline fragments down his tunic and shirt to find his skin and make him bellow. Julitta shrieked with delight and pressed home her attack. The youth rallied and chased her. Giggling, she fled across Brize's lower bailey for the safety of the stain, but her skirts hampered her, and the squire caught her by the arm and spun her round to face his handful of snow. Half-screaming, half-laughing, Julitta fought him off, her hair untwisting from its braid.
Mauger paused at the top of the wooden stairway linking the keep with the lower bailey and stared down on the tussling pair. His mouth tightened, and his hands clenched into fists. 'Arnaut!' he bellowed furiously. 'Arnaut, who gave you permission to leave your duties?' He thumped down the steps and strode over to Julitta and the squire. 'What do you think you are doing?'
The youth released Julitta as if she had suddenly become a scalding ingot, and looked guiltily at Mauger. 'I was on an errand for Lady Arlette,' he stammered. 'I didn't mean anything, it's only bit of fun.'
Her hair more than half undone, Julitta beat snow from her cloak and looked at Mauger through lowered lashes.
'A bit of fun?' Mauger said incredulously and cuffed the lad across the ear. 'More important than your errand, eh?'
'No, sir.'
Mauger cuffed him again. 'Then see to it, and if I catch you dallying again, I'll have you forking dung with the stable lads for the next month!'
'Yes, sir.' The youth fled.
Mauger rounded on Julitta, his hands planted authoritatively on his hips. Since the autumn she had been wilder than usual, as uncontrollable as the steep seasonal winds that came blustering off the Normandy coast scattering everything before them with a wanton disregard. She had no sense of the impropriety of wrestling in the courtyard with one of the junior squires. Good Christ, she was almost fifteen, far too old to be romping like a puppy, far too much of a woman to be a child.
'You should not encourage the lad,' he growled. 'It is not seemly.'
Julitta tossed her head. 'There was no harm in it
.'
With some difficulty Mauger bit back the comment that she was no longer a street-hoyden and that she had to learn to behave with decorum. 'Does Lady Arlette know where you are?'
'Yes.'
The word was spoken with such defiant bravado that Mauger knew Julitta was lying.
'You are in her charge while your father is away in Flanders,' Mauger said sternly, 'and you should obey her will.'
'Why should I?' Julitta glowered at him defiantly. 'She only wants to sit me down with a pile of smelly fleeces and make me spin while informing me how much better Gisele would do it if she were here!'
'But you don't even try,' he said. 'I have seen the way you bait her and flout her rules. Do you think your mother would joy to hear and see you now?'
Julitta continued to glare at him, but now her eyes brimmed with tears and her jaw trembled. 'I hate you!' she spat, and whirling round, ran towards the hall, stumbling and slipping in the ankle-deep snow.
Mauger did not pursue her, except with his eyes. She needed a firm hand, he thought, more specifically, the hand of a firm man who would brook no waywardness. Not her father; he was too scarred by the past to deal with her effectively. Head bent in thought, he continued on his way to the stables.
By the time Julitta arrived at Lady Arlette's bower, she was unusually meek and silent, for Mauger's words had chastened her. What indeed would her mother think? Ailith would have laughed at the snowball fight with Arnaut and seen no harm in it, of that she was sure, but Julitta's certainty wavered when she thought of other aspects of her recent conduct. As she silently picked up her drop spindle and began to twirl the raw wool into yarn, she admitted to herself that she was often badly behaved for the sole purpose of spiting Lady Arlette and a world that had treated her ill.
It was a moment of painful revelation to Julitta, as she faced herself and realised that she did not like all that she saw. And when she sought her mother's image in her mind's eye for comfort, she discovered that she could no longer see her face. Her eyes filled and her hands trembled on the spindle, but she continued to ply the thread with determination so that Arlette would not notice and pounce upon her distress.
Arlette, however, had distractions and problems of her own, and although her gaze fell upon Julitta as she worked, in actual fact, she was less aware of the girl than usual. Her thoughts were all for her absent daughter.
She had not wanted Gisele to cross the narrow sea in November with her young husband, it was far too dangerous. A stubborn line to his mouth, a frown in his dark eyes, Benedict, however, had insisted, and Rolf had supported him.
'I cross the narrow sea all the time,' he had answered her protest. 'You have to let her go. She has to stand in her own light, not your shadow.'
It was the truth and it hurt like the cut of a sword, but even more painful was the being apart. Gisele was not only Arlette's daughter, she was her friend, confidante and ally. Not for one instant would Arlette have considered opening her mind to the child who was left for her to tend. Julitta was a cuckoo in the nest. Even to tolerate her was a chore.
Arlette had never quite forgiven Rolf for arranging the marriage to Benedict de Remy when they could have negotiated a match to a family of high Norman blood. Benedict was handsome, diligent and, according to Rolf, so talented that he could spot a good horse with his eyes blindfolded. But to Arlette's mind, he took his pleasures too seriously, and his responsibilities not seriously enough. Quite simply, he was not good enough for her daughter. He could have been a saint and still he would not have measured up to her standards.
Her brooding was interrupted as a maid entered the room and informed her that Lord Rolf had returned from his journey to Flanders. Arlette set aside her sewing and went down to greet him. She was more than halfway to the hall before she realised that Julitta, usually so eager to fling herself upon Rolf, had remained in the bower at her spinning.
Grimacing at the pain in his knees, Rolf eased his legs forward beneath the trestle and wished for spring. He was forty-six years old and in fine summer weather, he was still a young man. But on days like this, after a gruelling journey through bitter wind and snow, his joints told him that this was not so, that if he looked over his shoulder, he would see his youth disappearing towards the horizon.
'Once I helped to dig an English village out of the snow after a blizzard,' he said ruefully to Mauger as he raised his cup. 'I worked all day, and then sat around the elder's fire telling stories and drinking mead all night. The winter of sixty nine it was, the year before Julitta was born. It seems like yesterday, but it is more than sixteen years.'
He and Mauger had been discussing the progress of the stud during his absence. People were preparing to retire for the night, dragging pallets towards the warmth of the fire, shaking out blankets cloaks. Outside, the wind whistled like a demon.
Mauger nodded and fiddled with his empty cup. Rolf eyed the young man thoughtfully. Their business was concluded, and Mauger was not usually one to linger for the purposes of conversation. Had it been Benedict here instead, Rolf might have stayed talking all night as he had done round the fire sixteen years ago, and forgotten his aching knees, but Mauger was not cut of the same cloth.
'What is on your mind?' he asked. 'Is there some problem with the horses you have not broached to me?'
'No, my lord.' Mauger shook his head and drawing a deep breath, looked Rolf in the eye. 'It is about your daughter, Julitta, that I would speak.'
'Julitta?' Rolf eyed him with surprise which quickly darkened into worry. 'What has she done now?'
'Nothing, my lord, I am not bringing a complaint.'
'Then what? I haven't got the patience tonight to play at riddles.' Rolf rubbed his leg a trifle irritably.
Mauger swallowed. 'I know that I am breaking the rules of convention by approaching you myself, that I should have a mediator, but there was no-one I felt I could trust. The task would have fallen to my father were he still alive, God rest his soul, but since he is not, I have no alternative.' Mauger paused, took a deep, steadying breath, and said, 'I am asking you to consider me as a suitor for Julitta's hand in marriage.'
Rolf was nothing short of astonished. Mauger and Julitta? 'Has she given you any encouragement?' he asked faintly.
'No more than to any man,' Mauger answered, and then reddened. 'No, my lord, she has not, but I would give her a safe and steadfast home where she would be her own mistress, and not want for anything.'
Rolf eyed the young man warily. Mauger was stockily handsome. Blond and strong. His best attributes were persistence, endurance, and foursquare solidity, his worst, that he had a tendency to be sullen, and when he got stuck in a rut, it took an almighty shove to remove him. Until now, Rolf would have said that Mauger was incapable of taking a risk, but then perhaps he had never wanted anything badly enough to do so. Wanting his lord's daughter to wife, especially a girl like Julitta, was more than a calculated risk, it was downright dangerous. Rolf knew that he was well within his rights to dismiss Mauger as his overseer for such presumption, although he could hardly banish him from tenure of his ancestral holdings at Fauville. Mauger might be his vassal, but his bloodline was just as noble and respected as that of Brize-sur-Risle.
'I have no intention of betrothing Julitta anywhere yet,' Rolf said with caution. 'After all the upheaval in her life, it is too soon to unsettle her again. Since she has given you no encouragement, then neither can I, and I would advise you to look elsewhere for a wife if that is your need.'
Mauger nodded, his expression carefully neutral. 'I understand,' he said. 'But I had to ask, and now you see why I had to do it in person. It is between you and me. No-one else knows.'
'I understand too,' Rolf said. 'For your father, whom I loved as a friend, and for yourself, whom I value, I will take no offence.'
Mauger gnawed his lower lip, rose to leave, and then turned back. 'One of the reasons that I came to you is that I am concerned for her, my lord.'
'In what way?'
&nb
sp; 'It worries me to see her running around the keep the way she does.'
Rolf's eyelids crinkled. 'You think she should be at her distaff like all good women, eh?'
Mauger's face suffused with colour. 'I am worried that not all men are honourable, Only this morning I had to reprimand Arnaut for horseplay in the snow with Mistress Julitta. She made light of it, but young squires — ' he screwed up his face, 'they need very little encouragement.'
Rolf eyed him thoughtfully. 'I take your point,' he said, 'but you do not tame a wild thing by stifling it. Julitta will always be a little different because of her upbringing. You mention marriage. I say it will take a special man to know how to treat her, to yield at the right moment and yet maintain control.' He rose to his feet and limped stiffly in the direction of the bedchamber. 'She knows how to defend herself,' he said over his shoulder to Mauger. 'Besides, while I am the lord of Brize-sur-Risle, no man will dare to lay a finger on her unless he wants to be a gelding.'
CHAPTER 46
Julitta stood beside Mauger in the bailey, silently watching him inspect some horses that a hopeful trader had brought up from the regions far to the south. He said that he was on his way to Paris, but having heard of the fame of Brize-sur-Risle, he thought he would bring his stock here first.
In Julitta's opinion, his prices were far too high for what she considered to be very ordinary beasts. Her father or Benedict would not have entertained the thought of purchasing any of them. Mauger was being slow and deliberate as he examined each one. She knew that he would reject them too, but it would take him twice as long as the other men to make up his mind.
Julitta walked over to the horses which Mauger had rejected earlier before she emerged from the confines of Arlette's bower to watch him. For the most part they were mere nags, basic riding beasts that would serve well enough in ordinary domestic situations where excellence was not desired. The trader had brought his wares to the wrong market. Her father was no bucolic dabbler in the art, but a man who bred, bought and sold top quality horse-flesh for the high nobility. From what she could hear of the conversation between Mauger and the trader, Mauger was expressing those sentiments precisely, and not mincing his words. Lately, Mauger had been more irascible than ever, and she avoided his company unless, like now, the lure was too great. On the other side of the coin, he seemed to be doing his best these days to avoid hers.
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