back all the silver I had paid to the priest and enough to employ my own troop of men instead of traipsing in Conan’s wake.’
‘Your son’s name was Juhel.’
‘It’s Breton, the name of Breaca’s father.’ He felt her tremble beneath his touch or perhaps it was his hand that trembled with the effort of controlling all that was within him. ‘He was small like his mother but quick and bright as a pin.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s ten years ago now.’
Again she turned to look at him, her brows arching this time in startled question.
‘I was a little short of seventeen when he was born.’
‘And Breaca?’
‘She was two and thirty - old enough to have been my mother,’ he added with a hint of self-mockery.
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘You think it would stay a secret long with Conan in the same household? He would let you have it piece by little piece and I would know from the way you looked at me which occasions he had chosen to enlighten you. Now it is told, it no longer lies between us.’
Her throat moved. Her lashes swept down, making feathery shadows on her cheekbones.
‘Or does it?’ Frowning, he tilted her chin on his fingertips.
‘No,’ she said huskily, ‘it doesn’t.’ But other things did. She was not brave enough to give him the sword of her own past to break across his knees.
He brushed his fingers lightly over her face, traced her brow, her cheekbone, her mouth. She felt his urgency and his restraint and her breathing shuddered as she too fought for control. The tentative first intimacy yielded to a more sustained assault on her senses, but refined and delicate. They drank the last of the spiced wine from earlier and shed their garments slowly, layer by layer, until they were skin to skin. Gestures became bolder, more explicit, as pleasure and tension mounted and they lay down on the bed. Perspiration dampened Linnet’s brow. She was no longer cold. The hot pressure of Joscelin’s body pinned her to the feather mattress but it was a good feeling. Against his ribs she felt the driving thud of his heart. Her palms slid upon the textures of wet skin, smooth muscle and taut tendons. She tangled her fingers in his hair and sought his mouth at the same time arching her hips and opening herself to him. She felt him push inside her - no inexpert fumbling here but the surety of experience. The sound of pleasure he made caused her to gasp and tighten her arms around him.
Someone banged on the door with what sounded like one of her best silver-gilt cups. ‘Joscelin, open up, you spoilsport!’ Conan bellowed. ‘You haven’t been properly bedded yet!’
Linnet stifled a scream and stared over Joscelin’s shoulder at the shuddering door, hoping that the bar would hold.
Joscelin muttered an oath and tensed.
‘Joscelin!’ The door quivered beneath the repeated hammering. Then there was a curse of pain. Milo de Selsey’s voice came muffled through the thick oak and Henry’s, too, trying to cajole Conan away from the barred door. ‘Not fair! ’Tsnot tradish—tradishnal!’ Conan complained.
Henry murmured enticingly that a new cask of wine was about to be broached. Footsteps staggered and scuffled. ‘That’s it, Sir Conan,’ Linnet heard Henry say. ‘It’s much better down in the hall than up here on a draughty landing.’
‘Spoilsport!’ There was a final thump on the door. Sounds retreated and the silence resumed. Joscelin sighed and pressed his head into the curve of Linnet’s throat. ‘Conan in his cups is a fiend straight out of hell,’ he muttered. ‘It’s because we’ve come out of one battle to go straight to another. Drink and women, the mercenary’s sovereign remedy.’
She heard the self-mockery in his tone and touched his sweat-damp hair. ‘Then lose yourself,’ she whispered.
He was quiet for a moment, then he lifted his head and breathed soft laughter. ‘Conan was right,’ he told her. ‘We haven’t been properly bedded - yet.’
He was still within her, although somewhat diminished. Now she felt his surge of renewed eagerness.
‘Do you think he’ll come back?’ she wrapped her legs around him.
‘I’ll kill him if he does!’
Linnet strained her ears, wondering if anyone was listening outside the door, but there was nothing, just the intimate sounds of lovemaking: the growing harshness of Joscelin’s breathing, the movement of their bodies, the rustle of the bed clothes. Her voice catching in her throat. Her loins were stretching and filling with a pleasurable tension so huge that she knew she was going to burst.
Joscelin’s lips were upon her breast, his head butting the angle of her jaw. She clenched her teeth, trying not to make a sound, but the cries came anyway. Against the curve of her breast, Joscelin groaned. His spine arched, his head came up. She closed her eyes and gripped him, absorbing his tremors through her own.
As his breathing eased, he lazily returned his attention to her breast, throat and jaw. Linnet shivered, savouring the sensations. The edge between this tender, feathery nibbling and Giles’s sated wet fondling shone as keen and narrow as the edge of a blade. One slip and she would bleed to death. She did not want the memory of other occasions to mar this one and she pressed herself against Joscelin’s body, hiding her face in his sweat-salty skin as if by doing so she could absorb even more of him into her than she had already taken.
Chapter 21
Maude de Montsart shook out her crumpled riding gown of Flemish twill. ‘Has there been any news, my dear?’ she asked Linnet as a groom led away the placid bay ambler to be watered and rubbed down. The two soldiers who had escorted her from Arnsby were already on their way to the guardroom to wait out her stay before the comfort of a stoked brazier.
Linnet sighed and shook her head. ‘Not since last Tuesday. Joscelin sent me some hides he’d bought at a bargain price from a tannery on Leenside and wrote that he was leaving Nottingham the day after, but that was all. What about you?’ She drew Maude across the bailey and up the forebuilding stairs into the great hall.
‘William sent a messenger to fetch his thick cloak and waxed linens. That must have been about the same time that Joscelin wrote to you. My brother never communicates well even at the best of times.’
‘No,’ Linnet said wryly, thinking of her wedding day.
Maude looked at her curiously.
Linnet told her about Ironheart’s ungracious behaviour. ‘And then he had the gall to soak in the tub until the water was nearly cold!’ she said indignantly. ‘Nor did he object when I gave him Giles’s old fur-lined bedrobe to wear afterwards while he was barbered, the hypocrite!’ Then she laughed reluctantly. Recounting it now, she could see the humour in the situation.
Maude’s eyelids creased with amusement. ‘William has a reputation to maintain. He’s not as hard as people think. That myth grew out of the time after Morwenna died when he was mad with grief and no one could approach him without getting their head bitten off.’ She smiled at Linnet. ‘Look at it this way, my dear, rather than riding to Arnsby, he chose to stay at Rushcliffe before leaving to rendezvous with the constable’s troops.’
Linnet nodded. It was a dubious sign of favour, she thought, and one she could easily have foregone.
Maude lifted her eyes to the high windows. ‘I cannot blame him either. This is a beautiful room.’
Linnet looked up too. The proportions of this, Raymond’s lair, were surprisingly elegant. The strong, pure lines picked up and carried the Romanesque curves of windows and supporting arches like embroidery on a beautifully cut but austere gown. ‘Giles’s grandsire went on Crusade and captured an emir. He put all the ransom money into this place,’ she said and led Maude up the stairs to the bower.
Panting somewhat from the climb, Maude surveyed the large, sun-flooded bower, its whitewashed walls decorated with Flemish hangings. ‘Oh, it’s lovely! Just look at the size of this fireplace, and a stone canopy too!’
Linnet was silent as Maude examined and enthused over the bower. At length the older woman plumped herself down on the padded settle. Something of Linnet’s mood must have communicated itself to Maude for she cocked her head inquisitively.
‘Do you not like living here, my dear?’
