Elizabeth Chadwick - The Leopard Unleashed

He put down the quill, carefully set the inkhorn out of reach, and folded his arms to regard her warily. ‘What do you want?’

‘Do you not know?’ She tossed her head. The wine glistened on her lips. She licked them slowly.

She said, ‘You have been avoiding me.’

‘I’ve been …’ He cleared his throat and started again. ‘I’ve been too busy seeing to the affairs of the estate. I cannot just walk into your chamber as you have walked in here now. It is a matter of common courtesy to my mother and father.’

Yawning, she slipped from the table, but only to come round and sit down next to him. ‘You’ve been trying to pretend you don’t want me, but I can see straight through you.’

Renard looked rueful. ‘You’re wrong. I haven’t been pretending at all. I do want you, Olwen … too much.’

‘Ah,’ she murmured, stalking him with claws unsheathed. ‘Proving to yourself that you can abstain if you have to.’

He shrugged, conceding her the point. She looked at the parchments and tally sticks strewn upon the table, and then through her lashes at Renard. ‘This man you all keep talking about — Ranulf de Gernons? Is he very powerful?’

‘Yes, on his own territory. He wants some of ours to add to it and there is a personal grudge between us going back ten years.’

She teased her hand up his thigh, kneading gently. ‘Do you fear him?’

Renard hesitated. Her hand moved higher and his senses swam. ‘I fear his ambition,’ he said in a distracted voice. ‘And his greed. The man himself … No, I do not acknowledge him my master.’ Gasping, he caught her hand. She gave him a bone-melting look and slowly eased her fingers from his grasp and pushed down her chemise, baring herself to him. Round, full breasts, the nipples puckered by the cold of sudden exposure, slender waist, taut belly and generous hips framing the gate to heaven … or hell. Renard could no more resist the lure than a wasp could resist the jar of honey in which it would ultimately drown.

He grasped her naked shoulders and crushed her against him, fingers seeking and tightening in her hair, mouth taking hers. She yielded utterly for a moment, then clawed him and tried to make her escape. He caught her back by the wrist. She tried to bite him. On both sides it was more battle than play. Growling and stiff-legged, the dog circled them. Then he barked. Renard stopped, aware that in a moment they were going to have an interested audience of disturbed sleepers and summoned guards.

Carefully he released Olwen and turned to command Cabal down and into a corner, then, breathing hard, he looked at her. Olwen returned his stare and a slow smile parted her lips. Her eyes were as dark as liquid sapphire as she laid her palms on his chest and pushed him gently back down on to the bench and straddled herself across his thighs, lips descending on his.

Heavy-lidded, breathing once more on the level, and mind now functioning above instinct, Renard watched Olwen don her chemise and shake her tumbled hair. She was avoiding his eyes as if embarrassed. He had had to stifle her scream of pleasure against his hastily raised palm. It was as if she resented the violence of the response he evoked in her — no less violent than his own. His teeth ached from gritting them against his own voice and his body was still boneless in the aftermath.

‘God’s life,’ he said sombrely. ‘Olwen, you turn me inside out.’

She flicked him a brief glance full of caution and something deeper. ‘Will you say the same thing to your wife?’

He snorted. ‘I doubt it very much. Nell’s too innocent to remotely imagine the things you do to me — or I hope she is.’ The smile became a wry chuckle.

‘But you could teach her?’ Olwen licked her finger and rubbed at a flea bite on her wrist.

He shrugged. ‘Perhaps. I don’t know what sort of pupil she would make. Not jealous, are you?’

She gave him a withering look. Renard’s eyes narrowed in amusement, some of it at his own expense. Rummaging among the heaped parchments on the trestle, he picked one up, glanced at it and handed it across to her.

‘What is this?’ She looked at the detailed capitals of a professional scribe, the strong brown ink strokes beneath it and the attached seal. To her unlettered eyes they were meaningless patterns on a page.

‘A charter granting you lifetime rights to the manor and demesne of Hawkfield and an annual sum of twenty-five marks to be paid each year at Michaelmas. It’s all couched in legal terms but I’ll read it to you if you want.’

Her eyes became huge and dark and still. ‘Please,’ she said, with a gesture.

Renard almost made a sarcastic remark concerning her lack of trust, realised what her retort would be, and contented himself with a pointed look before reading to her the fine details of the charter. It had been his mother’s suggestion, and he would have thought it inordinately generous of her had she not declared that the sooner Olwen was out of Ravenstow, the better for all concerned, particularly herself.

Olwen stared down at the document in her hands and felt disturbingly ambivalent. A manor, servants, money — distant stars longed for from the gutters of Antioch, but now that she held them in her hands, she felt more desolate than triumphant and did not know why.

‘It still needs witnessing,’ Renard said when she did not speak. ‘Your cross or thumbprint and mine and my father’s signatures. It can be done tomorrow and I can take you to Hawkfield as soon as you’re ready.’

‘In haste to be rid of me?’

‘You know I cannot keep you here at Ravenstow.’

‘And what is to be my payment for all this generosity? Accommodating your needs whenever you choose to take a diversion while out hunting or on patrol?’

‘By mutual consent.’ He smiled. ‘I won’t constrain you to anything you don’t desire of your own free will.’

Her colour was high. ‘Stabling for a mare, occasionally to be ridden?’ she demanded. ‘Do you expect me to hang over the paddock fence quivering for your approach?’

‘Knowing you,’ he said drily, ‘I’m more likely to find myself bucked off in the midden.’

Olwen gave a half-smile, as she remembered their first meeting in Antioch and how he had said they would never get any further than the stable yard until they had decided who was the horse and who was the rider. He had yet to learn that a parameter set for one occasion, unlike a charter, was not binding for a lifetime.

As the first light of dawn greyed Hawkfield’s courtyard, William dismounted from his spotted stallion and stared round at the few yawning servants shambling about their first duties. ‘Where’s Lord Renard?’ he demanded of the scratching, gummy-eyed groom who came to tend the horse.

‘Dunno, sir,’ he mumbled. ‘Still abed, I think.’

‘Still abed?’ William repeated flatly. His jaw tightened and he signalled his men to dismount. The hall door was barred. William thumped on it with the hilt of his sword until a serving woman opened it. He barged past her into the darkness which was dimly lit by the fire from the central hearth, the former only just being resurrected to day time use by a puffy-faced maid.

In the bedchamber located behind screens at the end of the hall, Renard sat bolt upright and cursed.

Olwen caressed his thigh. An hour ago her hand had been on a part of him even more intimate.

Withdrawing brusquely from her touch, he began scrambling into his clothes.

‘It’s not my fault if you go back to sleep instead of getting up.’ She rolled over, half raised her lids, and extended fingers and toes in a replete feline stretch.

Renard scowled at her but omitted to retort. The blame was his, he acknowledged, but she had meant it to happen. The way she had lain against him afterwards, soothing and stroking him into sleep, knowing full well that he was supposed to be meeting his brother at the crossroads north of Hawkfield before the crack of dawn. He knew he should have spent the night at Ravenstow, not arranged to set out to meet his betrothed straight from the warm bed of his mistress. And now he was going to be late.

Outside there was a squawk of protest from one of the maids, and the curtain separating bedchamber from hall was rudely clashed aside. ‘Are you going to malinger there all day?’ William demanded. ‘We’re supposed to be meeting Elene before noon.’

Renard fastened his hose and hunted out a leg binding. ‘Stop being so damned righteous and fetch me a drink!’ he growled.

Olwen slowly sat up, not bothering to draw the sheet around her body. William stared at her silken shoulders and arms, at the seductive curve of her breasts stranded by her tousled hair, at the look she gave him, provocative and mocking.

‘Fetch it yourself!’ he snapped and stalked out into the hall.

Olwen murmured sweetly, ‘He is in a temper, isn’t he?’

‘Can’t you sheathe that tongue of yours for once?’ Renard snarled. Having scrambled into the rest of his clothes, he began to struggle with his hauberk.

She made no effort to help him, but watched him with amusement. ‘That was not your wish earlier,’ she said.

Renard finally succeeded in donning the garment. The awareness of her silent laughter mortified him. Mouth compressed, he latched his swordbelt, and made to leave the room.

‘What, no fond parting kiss?’ she said.

On the threshold he paused, knuckles clenched upon the wall. ‘Stop playing with me, Olwen. I’m not a tame hound to jump through hoops at your bidding.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘And that is what makes you interesting.’

He struck his fist once against the wall and, without looking round, walked out.

Olwen rolled on to her belly, and smiling, closed her eyes.

The first few miles of the journey up the march to greet the bridal party travelling down towards them were loaded with tension and brooding temper. Renard set a vicious pace, and Gorvenal, half Arabian and lighter boned than a full destrier, flew over the ground and left the escort lumbering. William had to spur Smotyn hard to keep level, and after one particularly bad stumble, shouted at Renard to slow down.

‘You’re going to founder us all!’ he complained.

‘Don’t blame me if you can’t keep up!’ Renard retorted, but he drew rein and looked round at the men strung out behind, and knew that the blame was indeed his. It was not horses or men he was riding into the ground but his own foul temper. If any serjeant or knight of his had led the troop in such a sloppy formation as he now saw, he would have blistered that man’s ears from his skull and docked his pay.

‘Christ, Renard, take a grip on yourself!’ William’s voice cracked with anxiety. ‘The whole future of our family is in your hands. You can’t throw it away because of a … because of a …’

‘… Half-breed dancing girl?’ Renard finished for him, with a mirthless laugh. ‘Jesu, if you knew how easy it just might be.’

William eyed him. Renard’s features were now schooled to impassivity. William’s gut ceased to lurch with fear and the tightness across his shoulders eased. Just before the leading knight reached them, Renard slapped William’s mail-clad arm. ‘My wits had gone wool-gathering and left my temper in command,’ he said with forced lightness. ‘I’m all right now, you can stop fretting.’

Which meant, thought William, that the temper was of a necessity locked up, not that it had magically evaporated. He watched Renard muster the men, jest with them about his haste to greet his bride, watched him organise them into a tight escort, van, centre and rearguard to his liking, and then settle companionably among them to ride at a sensible, disciplined pace. It was more than just the girl, he thought. It was the responsibility for Ravenstow. It was the sight of their father dying by fractions before his eyes. It was the constant living on a blade’s edge. What wonder that he should seek oblivion in the arms of a woman who was a reminder of the lost freedom of Outremer. What wonder that he should object to being roused and thrust face to face with duty.

William was suddenly thankful that as his father’s youngest son, and unlikely to succeed to the earldom, he still had the freedom that Renard was being forced to forfeit.

* * *

The wind surged like an ocean, roaring through the trees and leaching them bare in trailing swirls of copper, gold and brown through which the horses waded and crunched as though they were treading shingle.

Elene shivered in her squirrel-lined cloak as the wind spattered rain into her face so hard that the droplets hurt her. She gripped her hood tightly and fidgeted in the saddle, her thighs chafed by the long day astride.