no need to publish it abroad.’ He touched her cheek and saw her own colour come up. Her eyes were luminous and he could have drowned in them. Abruptly he said, ‘Your grandfather is waiting,’ and removed his hand to command Austin to help him down.
She saw that his face had closed again, every plane taut and resisting, and with a feeling of helplessness she turned from him, lifted her skirts and cloak free of the bailey floor and almost ran to the old man who stood expectantly at the foot of the forebuilding steps. With a cry of relief, she cast herself into the haven of his embrace, and hugged him tightly.
‘How now, child,’ he said softly. ‘It is a smile that I thought to see on your face, not these floods of tears!’ And then with a lightness that covered serious concern, ‘Do not tell me, you and Adam have quarrelled again?’
‘Worse than that, Grandpa,’ she gulped. ‘I’ve married him on the heel of disgrace, and it’s been a terrible mistake. I know it has!’
‘Wandering in the wood again looking for the trees,’ he answered comfortably, patting her shoulder, and looked over the top of her head towards Adam who was advancing on them slowly and stiffly, his face wearing the guarded, defensive look that Miles knew of old. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
Heulwen dragged the trailing end of her sleeve across her eyes and turned in his arms to study her husband. To her own eyes Adam was moving a little more easily now, only his tight jaw muscles betraying his pain. ‘He took on Warrin in a trial by combat,’ she said and felt her grandfather’s hand grip her in surprise.
‘Warrin’s dead then?’
‘No, but severely wounded and accounted the loser and banished from Henry’s domains. It’s been horrible, Grandpa. I don’t want to talk about it, not now. Can we go inside?’
He looked at her bruised face, seeing more than just the fading marks. Hugging her against him, he turned to the forebuilding.
Adam eased himself carefully into the high-backed chair, closed his eyes while he mastered the pain, then opened them again upon Miles and the cup of usquebaugh-spiked wine he was holding out. He managed to give the old man the semblance of a smile. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks. I’m just stiff from the saddle, that’s all.’
‘How serious are your wounds?’
Adam drank and felt the usquebaugh hit his stomach like a swallowed hot coal. ‘Not mortal, but sore. I’ll wear a lifelong scar from hip-bone to lower ribs. I made a mess of things in Windsor, not just my body.’
‘A trial by combat was always a possibility,’ Miles said.
‘Well, yes, but you do not know the half of it.’ Adam glanced at Heulwen. Her back was turned and she was talking in a low murmur to Elswith her maid as they unpacked the travelling chests.
Miles looked too. ‘Like that, is it?’ he asked, remembering Heulwen’s distress in the bailey.
‘Worse.’ Briefly, Adam gave him the flesh-pared bones of the tale.
Miles pursed his lips. ‘No wonder you headed with such haste for the marches rather than make a prolonged feast for those vultures at court.’
‘I was an idiot. If I had not raced head-first into the thing I would not have come such a cropper, would I?’
‘Probably not,’ Miles admitted, ‘but at least Ralf ’s murder is avenged and you have your heart’s desire.’
‘Yes.’
Adam’s tone of voice caused Miles to raise his eyebrows and then, after a moment’s hesitation, reach inside his tunic. ‘I warned Heulwen against walking in the forest looking for trees, and if you are doing the same thing at the opposite end of the same forest, how are you ever going to meet?’ he demanded gruffly, and held out on his shiny, age-creased palm a piece of cunningly worked gold.
‘What’s this?’ Adam reached out, winced, and completed the movement to discover a circular cloak brooch of intricate English craftsmanship — a wolf curved round, chasing its own tail, its eyes set with red garnets.
‘It belonged to Heulwen’s grandmother, my first wife Christen. She was English, and it had been in her family time without memory. She treasured it the most of all her jewels, not for its beauty, but because it represented a new beginning. I was going to give it to Heulwen as a wedding gift, but perhaps it might be more appropriate coming from you when the time is right.’
Adam raised his head to meet Miles’s shrewd, patient gaze. ‘Is there anything you don’t see?’ he asked ruefully.
‘Put it down to my ancient years,’ Miles said with a like smile in reply. ‘That and knowing you are both more stubborn than mules, and I do not have much time.’
Behind them the noise of two stalwart servants tipping buckets of hot water into a bathtub filled the small silence of words unspoken, and when all was quiet again, Miles changed the subject.
‘It has been as peaceful here as a nest when the swallows have flown — neither sight nor sound of Davydd ap Tewdr in search of his fledgeling.’
‘Does he know we have the boy? Are you sure the news has reached him?’
‘The last two market days have been bustling with Welsh faces. He knows, all right.’
Adam’s brows twitched together. ‘Then what is he waiting for? Why hasn’t he come?’
Miles spread his hands. ‘Perhaps Rhodri’s expendable. Perhaps he wants to put the fear of God into the boy by making him sweat awhile. You could always arrange to hang him in public on market day and find out.’
Adam flashed him a look. ‘You are jesting of course!’
‘Bluffing,’ Miles said with a gentle smile. ‘It is one way of testing brotherly affection.’
Adam snorted. ‘And if my bluff is called? What should I do? Let him swing? Or prove my word is so much chaff and keep him neck-whole?’
‘At least you would know whether to change the direction of your attack. If Rhodri ap Tewdr is no good as bait, he may yet make an excellent pawn.’
Adam narrowed his eyes. Their captive’s attitude to his older brother had been ambivalent when he had spoken from his sick-bed, and if Davydd ap Tewdr chose not to negotiate for Rhodri’s life, it was hardly going to increase the love side of the balance. ‘You mean replace Davydd ap Tewdr with someone a little more receptive to Norman ideas?’ he murmured. ‘Someone who has reason to be grateful he was picked out of the road and restored to health rather than being left to die of cold among the corpses of his own folly?’
‘Something like that. The lad’s got a practical head on his shoulders, and while he might dislike us, he’s not yet progressed into hard-bitten hatred. I estimate him redeemable.’
‘So all I have to do is remove Davydd ap Tewdr and unleash Rhodri to replace him.’ Adam drained his cup and sighed heavily. A dull ache pulsed behind his lids. ‘I don’t feel much like confrontation just now. I could sleep for a year.’
‘At least a couple of days,’ Miles amended cheerfully. ‘Which is more than most newly married men ever get, you must admit.’
Adam looked down at the glittering brooch in the hand not holding the empty cup. ‘Yes,’ he said more wearily than ever. ‘But then most men don’t have to fight their way to the altar and take for their bride a woman who would rather run in the opposite direction.’
Through half-closed lids, wound newly dressed, Adam lay on the bed and watched Heulwen pick up his abandoned garments, consigning some to be taken by the maids for laundering and others to be folded away in his clothing chest. His limbs were lethargic, but his mind was as restless as a confined animal. He was home, should have felt at ease and relieved, but perversely he was tense and on edge.
Heulwen set about removing her travel-stained garments and pinned up her braids, then waited beside the tub, shivering a little, while a maid heaved a fresh bucketful of hot water into it.
Adam perused the generous contours of her body. He knew now how it felt, pressed against his in the act of love, knew it within as well as without. Taking her to bed was no longer a darkness of the imagination, but a reality barbed with doubt. Even now there was no satisfaction.
Heulwen dismissed the maid and stepped into the tub, which was constructed from a large barrel with a bench lodged across its width. She seated herself upon it and pensively contemplated the bed and its silent occupant. ‘Adam, are you asleep?’
‘No.’
