said. 'On my soul I swear I won't.'
'It is forever.' Her hands remained in his hair, gripping him. 'Say it is forever.'
He hesitated again. 'It is forever,' he repeated, and broke her hold, pinning her beneath him, assaulting her senses until she sobbed aloud, half with pleasure and half with pain.
CHAPTER 32
Two days later, Rolf gave Mauger instructions to spruce up a young grey stallion which was to be inspected for the royal stables by a representative of King William, and rode out in the misty, gleaming dawn to keep his promise to Ailith.
Smoke twirled from village cooking fires and the people were already up and about their daily business. He was greeted according to each individual's adjustment to the fact of a Norman lord, but mostly with respect. Curious stares followed his progress down the village street to the house at the end where dwelt Inga, the woman from the north, and eyebrows were raised when he dismounted and tethered his horse to the low palisade surrounding her property.
Inga herself was just emerging from her house. She had a knobbed walking stick in one hand, although she had no need of it, the item was just a matter of habit, a prop to make people keep their distance. Over her other arm was draped a fine, dark blue cloak. Her small terrier growled at Rolf, but she commanded it to silence. Her cool hazel stare assessed him.
'How may I help you, my lord?' Her voice was cool too, but like Scots usquebaugh, it possessed an afterburn that set his nerves tingling.
'I want to talk to you about your geese… about your gander in particular.'
Inga pursed her lips. Her gaze flickered beyond him to the interest being generated in the village street and turning back, she reopened her door. 'Then you had best enter,' she said and commanded the dog away to his kennel in the yard.
Feeling uncomfortable, Rolf followed her into the house. The beaten earth floor had been stamped solid and covered with a layer of rushes. There was a bedding bench along one wall, piled with goatskins, and shelves upon the wall boasted an array of jars and pitchers. It was far from poor, but much less than that which had been her due in the north.
'They don't like me, your villagers,' she said, depositing the cloak, and gesturing him to be seated on the bedding bench. 'I don't fit in with their customs or their ways.'
'You don't try to like them,' he answered. 'Your son Sweyn has been accepted easily enough.'
'He's a man now, and they're short of men. I'm a rival for the few available — my own house, an income of sorts. They're jealous.' She reached down a flask of mead and poured a measure into a round wooden cup, then held it out to him. 'What about my gander? I suppose Widow Alfric's been complaining again.'
Their fingers touched as Rolf took the cup from her hands. Cool, with an afterburn. He was playing with fire and he knew it. 'Widow Alfric would have taken her complaint to my reeve first,' he said. 'This comes closer to my own threshold. Two days ago, your bird attacked my daughter Julitta, and she has the marks on her body to prove it. If my Godson Benedict had not happened along on his pony, she might have been killed. As it was, the gander attacked him too, and he had to throw his cloak over the thing to save himself.
Inga's face became ivory pale, but she maintained her composure. 'I am sorry to hear that,' she said in her clear, astringent voice. 'It is in the bird's nature to protect his territory. Belike the children came too close. Was there no-one there with them?'
He saw through her attempt to turn the tables and his lips tightened. 'It is not his territory, Inga. And what you say wanders from the point. It could have been anyone crossing that land – Widow Alfric for example. You know as well as I, that this is not the first time your gander has made an attack. If you value him as much as you say, then you had best keep him penned up and make sure he causes no more trouble. If he does, I will come here and neck him myself.'
Inga eyed him stonily. 'It will not happen again,' she said. He gave her his empty cup, but instead of setting it aside, she poured it full again from the mead pitcher and fetched another cup for herself. 'And if the gander is to be necked, I will do the deed. He is mine, not yours to destroy.'
Rolf knew that he should refuse the drink and escape, but his body would not obey his conscience, preferring to remain and play her game, whatever it was. And he thought he knew.
She drank her mead swiftly, like a man, tilting, swallowing, setting down. 'But then you're a Norman, aren't you?' she added when he did not speak. 'You do not care what you destroy.'
'Is that what you truly think?'
'Why should you care?'
Rolf shrugged. 'It might explain why you are so hostile. I do not believe I have ever seen you smile or utter a glad word.'
'What reason do I have?' She eyed him scornfully. 'You come here to complain of my geese, my livelihood, and expect me to smile you fair.'
'No,' he answered dryly. 'I did not expect you to 'smile me fair'. I expected you to behave exactly as you are.'
Colour tinted her creamy skin and her eyelids narrowed. 'So then, my lord Rolf, do you truly desire to know what I think?' She moved closer as she spoke, and now she unpinned the two brooches securing her overgarment in place. It puddled in the rushes at her feet, plain brown fabric enlivened by a braided border of scarlet, green and gold. She pulled off her kerchief and shook down her long, flaxen hair, and her eyes held his, golden-green, clear as mead and set beneath finely sketched tawny brows.
The attraction had always been there, as dangerously beautiful as the blade of a well-honed knife. Once her flaxen hair had reminded him of his ache for Ailith when he was in a strange country. Now it made him ache for the freedom to tumble a woman out of lust with no thought beyond the present. Off came tunic and shift, hose and shoes. Her figure was firm and lithe, her shape sleeker than Ailith's. She took his hands, placed them over her breasts, drew them down to her waist, and held them there while she straddled him upon the bed of piled skins. Uttering a soft groan, Rolf yielded to her demands, and was soon making demands of his own, his conscience cast aside with the same rapid urgency as his clothes. And as they thrust against each other with the fierce greed of lust, he discovered that she was right. For the moment he did not care what he destroyed.
'Where's Ben?' Julitta demanded. She could not pronounce his full name and so had shortened it to the one which only his immediate family were privileged to use.
Ailith was kneading enriched dough to make a spiced fruit bun, but now she stopped and regarded the small curly red head at her side with exasperation. Felice's son had become Julitta's talisman. She followed him everywhere, demanding his attention, wanting him to play with her. The boy had excellent manners, and despite a slightly martyred air, also possessed exceptional patience. Rolf's instinct was right; Benedict de Remy would make an admirable son-in-law. The pity was that he was going to marry him to the wrong daughter.
'He's gone with your papa and uncle Aubert to look at the horses,' Ailith replied and scattered some more flour on the trestle. The large, spiced fruit bun was a tradition that had been handed down in her family from the time of her great-grandmother, each woman teaching her daughter so that the fragrant, wheaten delicacy should gladden the table at every feast and holy day. Julitta, however, was a less than apt pupil. It was not that the child was incapable — she had nimble fingers and an equally nimble brain – it was just that, to Ailith's chagrin, she was not in the least interested.
'Will he be back soon?' Julitta prodded her finger into her own small lump of dough and watched it slowly spring back into shape.
'I expect so.'
'Can I go and look for him when I've done this?'
Ailith pummelled the main batch of dough. 'You know what happened the other day with Inga's geese. I want you to stay here with me,'
'But I don't want to stay!' Julitta's hyssop-blue eyes darkened stormily and she stamped her small foot. 'I hate making bread.'
