his betrothed among them, but Julitta was like none of them.
'Then she is ugly?'
He nuzzled Gisele's warm throat and sought her lips. 'That neither,' he murmured. 'She… she resembles your father, and of course she has scarcely left childhood.' He stroked a tentative hand up her side towards her breasts. Usually this was forbidden territory, but tonight, Gisele's insecurity permitted him the liberty. She yielded passively to his questing touch, a slight frown between her eyes.
'You'll meet her soon,' he said, an undercurrent of impatience in his tone. 'Then you can judge for yourself.' And knew as he spoke that any judgement Gisele made would be based on that of her mother. He felt her nipple bud beneath his fingers and in that same moment she pushed herself out of their embrace, a flush creeping over her throat and mounting her cheeks. Benedict started to speak, but Arlette entered the hall, carrying a wax taper on an iron spike.
'Gisele, are you coming to bed?' It was an order framed as a question, terse with reproach.
'Yes, Mama,' Gisele said as meekly as a child, and without even a parting word or glance for her betrothed, pushed out of his arms and hurried towards the taper's glimmer.
Benedict sighed, scooped his hair off his brow in a gesture of frustration, and sought his pallet, ignoring the amused glances of the tafel players.
CHAPTER 41
Julitta curled up in the hay loft above the stable and hugged herself, moaning softly. The grief was a physical pain in her stomach, doubling her over, surging through her, filling all the spaces that had been blank with shock.
At first, gazing down on her mother's body, shrunken in death, the flesh clinging to the sharp bones and pitiful hollows, she had been filled with a merciful numbness. That state had remained and carried her through the first day and night following the death. She had slept beside Felice, clinging to her for comfort, while Aubert bedded down on a pallet in the hall. Then, this morning her mother had been sewn in a shroud and taken away to the parish church of St Martin. There had been some dispute with the priest over Ailith's right to be buried within its precincts. Officially she was a resident of Southwark and Aubert had been forced to pay an indemnity of silver to have her remain.
These considerations of etiquette had passed over Julitta's head. She only knew that they were quarrelling about her mother's body as if it were a scrap of carrion to be devoured by kites. That was when the numbness had begun to wear off. The pain had attacked her vitals in earnest when they finally reached an agreement and removed Ailith to St Martin's. Suddenly the house was bereft of her presence. Standing in the bedchamber, looking at the stripped mattress, awaiting the attention of Felice's maids, at the withered bunch of flowers in the glazed pitcher, Julitta had realised that her mother was truly dead, that a great empty chasm had opened in her life and although others might create bridges across it, it would never go away.
Footfalls sounded on the hayloft ladder and the trap was thrown open. A pitchfork was tossed through the hole. A mop of hair, blonder than the straw, appeared, then a tanned face with wide-set grey eyes.
'Who's there?' Mauger demanded suspiciously.
Julitta jerked her head from her makeshift hay pillow.
'Oh, it's you,' he grunted. 'I thought for a moment it was that accursed stable lad and his wench again. It wouldn't be the first time.'
Julitta sat up and dragged her sleeve across her swollen eyes. Mauger stepped into the loft and, frowning slightly, picked up the fork. He was not much above average height and chunkily muscled. His brows were heavy, his face square in shape with slanted cheekbones and a considering mouth that seldom smiled. Julitta was wary of him. She had the vaguest recollection of teasing him, of being very naughty and leaving him to bear the brunt of the punishment. He had been about Benedict's age then, perhaps slightly older. Now he was a grown man, dour and solid.
Mauger advanced to stand over her, his boots crackling on the warm, meadow-scented hay. Clearing his throat, he said gruffly, 'I'm sorry about your mother… and about what I said when Ben and I found you on the Southwark bank. Lady Ailith was always kind to me.'
'I… I thought you didn't like us,' Julitta snuffled.
Mauger's frown intensified. 'That's foolish!' he growled. 'What reason should I have to dislike you?'
At fourteen, on the verge of womanhood and armed with the knowledge that came of dwelling in a bathhouse, Julitta could have told him the reason for his brusqueness with her. She was Eve and he was scared of temptation. But at the moment, she was no more than a frightened, grief-stricken child. 'You're always scowling. You never smile or try to be nice.'
'You are Lord Rolf's daughter. I mind my manners and keep my distance, unlike others who should know better,' he said with heightened colour and strode away to unbar the large doors at the end of the loft. Throwing them wide to admit a torrent of sunshine, he began pitching forkloads of hay down to two stable hands below. Julitta watched him work, his movements forceful and jerky beneath her scrutiny. Patches of sweat glued his linen shirt to his body, and she knew that, but for her presence, he would have removed it.
Suddenly he stopped work, and leaned on the pitchfork stale. 'Your father's here,' he announced, and half- turning, looked her up and down. 'Best clean yourself up. You don't want him to get the wrong idea about you.'
Julitta scrambled to her feet. Stalks of straw adhered to her gown, which was the threadbare one of her first arrival with a large patch near the hem where the original fabric had been scorched by a cinder. Her face, she knew, would be grimy with tears, and a rapid exploration of her hair revealed that, as usual, it had begun to escape its braids and it too was tangled with straw. She was imbued with a feeling of panic at the expectations being laid upon her, one after the other, in layers so thick that she was in danger of losing herself. What indeed was her father going to think of her after so long? And surely if he could not accept her as she was, his love was flawed, if he loved her at all. Perhaps she was just an inconvenience to him, a nithing. These thoughts flashed bewilderingly through Julitta's mind as she hurried down the rungs of the loft ladder. Suddenly she did not want to see her father lest he should be nithing in her eyes.
Mauger's warning and her escape were not, however, swift enough. As she emerged from the stables, her skirts gathered above her shins the better to run, she was almost knocked down by a rangy dappled stallion. The man astride cursed and wrenched on the reins. The horse plunged across the path of the rider behind and he in his turn had to back and control his own mount.
Her breathing swift and shallow, her stomach flopping over and over, Julitta watched the leading rider bring his horse to a stand. Her eyes fixed on the sinewy working of his fingers and wrists, the green linen cuff with its edging of blue and buff braid. And then she lifted her gaze beyond the mundane detail and met the furious glare of the man. The strong, clean features of her half-buried memory were overlaid with harsh lines of care. The laughing green eyes were stormy and opaque.
'Have you no more sense than a hen to run out beneath the hooves of a horse?' he snarled at her.
Behind him, Benedict de Remy, the second rider, drew breath to speak, a look of alarm on his face.
Julitta was in no fit state to answer. Filled with dismay that this bad-tempered, harsh-faced stranger, so familiar and yet so different from her memories, now had responsibility for her life, she uttered a gasp and fled, her movement so abrupt that it set the grey horse off again. By the time Rolf had steadied the animal down, she had made good her escape.
'These kitchen wenches are all the same,' Rolf snapped contemptuously as he dismounted. 'Their brains are only ever in one place!'
Benedict cleared his throat. Rolf's temper had worsened with every step they took towards London. This morning he had been unbearable. Benedict could almost see apprehension sitting on his lord's back like a large, grey demon armed with nine-inch claws. It was not entirely Julitta's fault that the horse had played up. The beast was only responding to Rolf's tension. 'That was Julitta, sir,' he said neutrally.
'What?' Rolf glared round at him. 'That raggle-taggle waif is my daughter?'
'Yes, sir.' Avoiding Rolf's stare, Benedict dismounted. 'My mother has commissioned a seamstress to make
