‘Then stop her.’
‘How?’ Adam spread his hands. ‘She knows I hate even the taste of de Mortimer’s name on my tongue, and anything I try to tell her, she’ll dismiss as raving or fantasy. What do you want me to do? Abduct her over my saddle?’
‘Worth a try if all else fails,’ Miles said. ‘I’m past four score years, lad. Do I have to spoonfeed it to you? Go to the King, put the matter in his hands, and while you are about it, ask of him a boon.’
Adam eyed him suspiciously. ‘What sort of boon?’
‘Has he rewarded you for your tireless efforts to keep his delightful daughter alive? Knowing Henry, you’ve had a bagful of promises and a pocketful of nothing.’
‘And he’s unlikely to change!’ Adam growled. ‘If it’s going to hit his purse, then he’ll refuse.’
‘It is no concern of his purse,’ Miles said. ‘Ask him for Heulwen to wife.’
Adam’s tawny eyes widened. ‘Ask him for Heulwen?’ he repeated, voice rising and cracking as it had not done in ten years.
‘You hold your tenure direct from him, as did Ralf, and I shouldn’t think after the first shock Guyon will object to your suit. In a way, he may be relieved.’
Adam shook his head and walked away from the old man to stare at a hanging on the wall. It had been worked by his mother long before his birth and the moths had eaten it bare in places. His thoughts raced to the erratic thudding of his heart.
‘You need a wife,’ Miles added mischievously. ‘This place frequently resembles a midden.’
‘I can’t,’ Adam said in a flat voice. ‘I’m her foster brother.’
Miles said something very rude in Welsh, then reverting to French asked, ‘Is that how you feel?’
Adam swung round, sat down on a stool and placed his head in his hands. ‘Once, yes, when I was small, I did love her like that, but it changed a long time ago, for me, anyway. Heulwen still thinks of me as a brother.’
Miles raised a sceptical brow. ‘You know that for a fact?’
‘It was rammed down my throat when I brought her the horses.’
‘With more fear than conviction, I’ll warrant.’ Miles pursed his lips. ‘Of course, you don’t have to ask Henry at all, just tell him about Warrin and Ralf and hope he will act on it and that Heulwen will find a better mate in time. The choice is yours.’
Adam sat in self-contained silence. The candle fluttered in the sconce and light rippled suddenly on the fittings of his belt as he drew a shuddering breath and raised his head. ‘What if she turns on me with hatred?’ he said, recoiling from the thought of being rejected by her yet again.
‘Then I would call it a disguise for other feelings.’
Adam shook his head and looked away, but within him the hopes and terrors aroused by Miles’s suggestion jousted with each other for dominance. Heulwen. He could have Heulwen at his board, living day to day with him, sharing his bed in the great chamber above. Heat rose in his face. Heulwen looking at him in disgust, fighting him, derision on her tongue, and unlike Warrin de Mortimer he did not think he could find it in him to strike her silent if she baulked him, even if it were a matter of life and death.
‘I’ll leave you to think about it.’ Miles pushed himself out of the hard, high-backed chair. ‘I’d like to see the lass settled before I die, so you’d best make haste.’
‘I don’t know whether to kiss or kill you!’ Adam said ruefully.
‘Save the kiss for Heulwen and the killing for where it belongs,’ Miles advised him. Legs stiff from having sat so long, he limped carefully from the room.
Adam stared at the archway through which Miles had disappeared, and slowly rose himself, a bemused expression on his face, his thoughts walking a mental tightrope. After a while, he began to realise that the rope was strung across a gorge that stretched into a distance he could not see, that behind and below snarled the demons and serpents of self-doubt and cowardice, and that the only possible way was forward. That understanding made his burden suddenly seem much lighter. He straightened and squared his shoulders, and strode from the chamber, calling for Jerold and Sweyn.
Chapter 10
Down in the south, the snow had turned to freezing rain and the ground was a morass of puddles and melting, muddy slush. The court was keeping Christmas at Windsor, and almost every royal tenant-in-chief was present in answer to the summons from the King. The lesser but still important barons were here, the high clergy and the King of Scots with his retinue — all present to swear allegiance to the Dowager Empress Matilda, King Henry’s daughter and designated heir. Banners and shields adorned the balconies of the wealthy, and the evergreen bunches outside every alehouse welcomed the swollen ranks of Windsor’s temporary population
Heulwen shivered and tried to huddle deeper into the folds of her cloak as the wind flurried her garments and blustered rain into her face. She struggled to display an interest she did not feel in the bolts of cloth laid out for her inspection upon the counter of a cloth merchant’s booth. Dutifully she rubbed the fine, white linen between her fingers and agreed that it would be perfect for making shirts and shifts, trying to smile as lengths were cut and folded to one side.
‘Now,’ Judith said with a note of satisfaction, her discerning gaze on the merchant’s displayed bales of cloth, ‘your wedding gown. What about that green silk over there?’
Obligingly the merchant reached for the bolt indicated.
‘I don’t know, I had not thought.’ Heulwen shivered, her face pinched and pale.
‘Well in the name of the saints do so now!’ Judith snapped with the exasperation that came of having trailed around the market-place all morning with a limp rag in tow. ‘Heulwen, you’re to be betrothed tomorrow morning and married at Candlemas. You haven’t time for vagueness!’
‘I’m sorry, Mama. It’s just that I’m cold and out of sorts,’ Heulwen excused herself, giving again that wan, forlorn smile that made Judith want to scream. ‘The green will suit me very well.’
‘God in heaven, child, you haven’t even looked at it!’
The merchant lowered his eyes from the irate lady of Ravenstow and the woebegone young woman at her side, and busied himself unfolding the bolt and rippling the grass-green silk across the counter.
Heulwen’s lower lip trembled as she fought with tears. Fine sleet stung her face like flung shingle. Behind, two accompanying men-at-arms were stamping their feet to keep warm, and Helgund, her stepmother’s elderly maid was grimacing at the pain from her chilblains.
‘I trust in your judgement, Mama,’ she said in a subdued voice and stared at the muddy hem of her cloak.
Judith closed her eyes and swallowed. A packhorse laden with brightly coloured belts was led past, and someone else’s servant scurried by clutching a cloth-covered pie dish, the savoury steam teasing the nostrils and torturing the empty stomachs of those freezing at the draper’s booth. ‘Very well,’ Judith said with commendable calm for one who was so sorely tried. ‘The green silk, and some of that gold damask over there for an undertunic and trim. Have them brought to my lodgings and my steward will pay you.’
The merchant bowed, and started to refold the bolt of silk, his face expressionless.
As the women left the booth, Judith’s exasperation gave way to concern, for Heulwen was following her with the vapid docility of a sheep. ‘Perhaps this betrothal should be deferred until you are feeling better,’ she said with a frown.
‘No!’ That response at least was sharp and swift and so at odds with Heulwen’s mood that Judith stared at her stepdaughter with widening eyes.
‘No,’ said Heulwen in a more controlled voice. ‘I’m not ill, Mama. I need this betrothal to take place tomorrow. It is the waiting as much as anything else that is dragging me down. I cannot take an interest in my wedding gown when I have this dreadful fear that something will happen to prevent the marriage.’
