The merchant’s wharf was deserted. Adam rested his hand on the weed-slippery mooring post and stared out across the dark water at dark nothing. The torch hissed and sputtered and the wind wavered streamers of heat back into his face. ‘The boat isn’t here,’ he said over his shoulder to Sweyn. ‘There was one moored here when we took these lodgings, and it’s gone. It would be the safest means of abduction; no guards to pass.’
‘What now? He could have taken her anywhere.’
‘We alert the Count and turn Angers inside out,’ Adam said, tight-lipped.
‘Where do you want me to start?’
The smell of the river was very strong. Adam’s nostrils clenched. ‘Try the wharves and warehouses along the waterfront; start on this bank and work your way across to the other — I’ll join you as soon as I’ve seen the Count — try the drinking dens too. It may be that we can run Thierry to ground. He can’t get out of the city until the gates open.’
‘What about by boat?’
‘The chain is down across the river until dawn.’
‘My lord. ’
Adam turned. Sweyn closed his mouth. ‘Nothing,’ he muttered into his beard and trudged back towards the house. Adam stared down at the small silver fillet in his hand, then closed his knuckles over it and clenched them so hard that he distorted the shape of the ornament. Then he set off after Sweyn.
For a moment Warrin stood panting, the pounding of his heart almost blinding him as his vision throbbed with each beat. Heulwen lay where she had fallen, face pressed in the straw, waiting and wanting to die.
‘You can stop pretending,’ Warrin said between breaths. ‘I know that you are aware.’
The canvas billowed in the wind. She heard the scrape of his feet on the planking as he moved and with difficulty turned to stare at him. He stared back and, chest still heaving, slowly drew the dagger from the tooled sheath at his belt. ‘Wondering what I’m going to do with this?’ he mused, flipping it end over end like a juggler. ‘Well, so am I.’ And his cheeks creased into the mockery of a grin as he squatted down beside her.
Heulwen flinched and tried to back away from him.
‘There’s no cause to be afraid,’ Warrin mocked. ‘If you’re a good girl, I am sure we can come to a bloodless agreement.’ Setting to work, he cut the cords that bound her ankles.
Heulwen stared at his rain-darkened pale hair, thinning at the crown, and wondered queasily if this was an appetiser to whet his hunger for rape. However, after he had freed her legs, he cut the ropes at her wrists and released her mouth from the foul gag. She watched the rings sparkle on his fingers as he worked and found herself fixing on them with unnatural concentration, for she dared not look at his face and see what was written there.
He frowned down at her as if unsure of what to do with his prize now that it was in his possession. Her chin was trembling, not with distress, but with cold, and her flesh was a pinched bluish-white. He thought of her in de Lacey’s arms last Christmastide — her hair a lustrous copper swirl, skin flushed with a satisfied glow, eyes both brilliant and misty — and contrasted the memory with the shivering, half-dead creature lying at his mercy now.
‘Sit up!’ he commanded harshly, disturbed by the ambivalence of his thoughts.
When she did not move, he seized her by the wrists and dragged her up. ‘I said sit up!’ he snarled.
Heulwen screamed as his fingers dug savagely into the weals left by Thierry’s expert binding. Her hair, heavy with water, had begun to untwist from its braids, and hung about her face in sodden strands. She bent her head, breathing in shuddering gasps and keeled sideways. He slapped her across the face and her eyes opened, but they were barely focusing, and in the next moment she flopped limply forward against him.
Warrin swore and shook her to see if she was feigning, but she jerked back and forth in his grip like a child’s rag doll.
‘Bitch,’ he said, but with more irritation than malevolence, and laying her back down on the straw he studied her with a scowl. He had sufficient experience of cold-season battle campaigns to know the signs and what would happen if he just left her, and he did not want her dead…at least not yet.
Methodically, quickly, he stripped away her soaked garments and then, starting with her dripping hair, began to rub her vigorously with the coarse woollen blanket from the pallet. Her flesh was goose-pimpled and ice cold to the touch, but under the rapid friction it began to warm and turn a scrubbed red.
Her breasts were full and firm, tipped by taut pink nipples and they undulated against the wool as he worked. Lower down at the juncture of her thighs, a red-gold triangle drew his eyes and for a moment his imagination ran riot as he thought of it tangling in a lovers’ knot with his own flaxen bush. He quelled the image sharply. De Lacey’s father had been the one to pleasure himself futtering corpses; such a desire had never been the core of his own need.
Heulwen moaned and stirred, her eyelids fluttering. He dragged the pallet into the middle of the room, close to the brazier, and wrapped her in his own fur-lined cloak before fetching from his belongings a flask of aqua vitae and a small horn cup.
One of his men-at-arms poked his head through the opening and he snarled at him to get out. When he tried to pour the aqua vitae from flask to cup he discovered that his hands were shaking. He set the cup down abruptly and turned round to Heulwen. Her eyes were open now, heavy-lidded, watching him with awareness and apprehension.
‘Is this in the cause of revenge?’ she asked weakly.
‘Revenge?’ He knelt down beside her and drew her towards him to tip the contents of the cup down her throat. He felt her tense and try to resist him, applied pressure to the back of her neck and felt a small flicker of triumph as she was forced to yield and, choking, swallow it. ‘It’s more than revenge, sweetheart,’ he said with satisfaction, ‘much more.’ He refilled the cup, his hand steady now. ‘Drink,’ he commanded.
‘I can’t…I don’t want to.’
‘Shall I force it down your gullet?’
Heulwen looked at him; saw that there was no way out except to comply. Shuddering, she gulped the stuff down in two fast swallows. It hit her stomach and exploded into her blood. She gasped for breath. Tears stung her eyes.
He adjusted his cloak around her shoulders and drifted his hand casually down the midline of her body within the folds as he arranged it. His palm brushed the crest of her nipple, paused, travelled lower. Heulwen recoiled. A wry smile twisted his lips. ‘You might be a whore, but you’re still a beautiful one,’ he said.
‘Why did you murder Ralf?’ she asked.
His head reared back at that. ‘I didn’t,’ he said.
‘As near as makes no difference.’
He waved his hand. ‘He was playing a double game: selling information to us and then selling us back to Henry. I put a stop to it because he had gone too far. I had to.’
‘And you are not playing a double game?’
Warrin shook his head vehemently. ‘It is my father who owes his allegiance to King Henry and then to the Empress. I have given my oath to neither of them, so how can I be forsworn? William le Clito has more right to England and Normandy than that sulky bitch will ever have. He is the eldest son of the eldest son.’
‘I see,’ she said in a small, distant voice.
‘No you don’t, you never have!’ Goaded by her tone, he pushed her down on the straw with her arms braced either side of her head. ‘You promised yourself to me then played the whore behind my back. How dare you talk to me of double games!’
‘You murdered Ralf and your honour to get me!’ she spat. ‘I counted that promise null and void.’
The distance receded. He saw her eyes begin to flash with anger, felt the resistance of her body and his own flamed hard in response. ‘Come, Heulwen,’ he muttered, ‘kiss me…Kiss me like you kiss de Lacey.’ His mouth descended, hot and avid.
All her senses rebelled, but were whipped into line by the common one, aided by an instinct for survival. If she fought him, he would beat her. She could see the wildness in his eyes, as if he were more than half hoping for her to do just that, and if she was going to escape, she needed her wits and her limbs in functioning order. She parted her lips to the greedy demand of his and responded with all the superficial expertise taught to her by Ralf, using it as a shield.
