Elizabeth Chadwick - The Leopard Unleashed

He rested his hands on his belt. ‘Because a quarter of a mark is an irresistible sum? Because there is something you want of me?’

Olwen smiled and began slowly unhooking the neck fastening of her gown. ‘Or that you want of me, my lord?’

Renard opened his mouth to say that the thought had not occurred to him, that she was mistaken if she believed she could manipulate him, but the words went unspoken and his eyes drifted to the throat of her gown and travelled down the shadowed declivity between her breasts. She rose and came to him, twining her arms around his neck and half nipping, half kissing his jaw and throat, seeking his lips, her body rubbing.

Renard ceased thinking at all.

It was release and oblivion, an indulgence of the senses that temporarily obliterated the mind, and he did not realise how much he had needed it until he surfaced from the exquisite sensations to become aware of the breeze playing over his sweat-coated muscles.

He propped himself up. ‘How did you know before I knew myself?’

Olwen tilted him a smile. ‘It is my profession to know, and I learn very quickly.’

Renard rolled over and sat up, frowning. ‘A profession demands payment. What is your price this time?’

‘It wasn’t just for gain.’

Gorvenal lipped experimentally at a clump of rosemary and shook his mane irritably at the flies. Renard touched her face. ‘I know it wasn’t,’ he said sombrely. ‘But I am not sure that it is something to be continued. It is too hot, too wild to be safe, and it will break one of us, I am certain of it.’

‘But you are leaving soon, are you not?’ She sat up beside him and placed her lips against his throat. ‘Where is the harm in a few weeks? You do not have to pay me. I need somewhere to sleep.’

‘Surely you have money enough for a roof over your head.’ He gave her a disbelieving look.

Olwen made a face. ‘Until today, I lived with my sister and my uncle — that drunk who accosted me in the courtyard of the Scimitar. I’ve quarrelled badly with both of them and I’m not going back. Yes, I could afford to rent a room, but I would rather stay with you.’ Her lips travelled persuasively over his skin.

Renard moved away from her, and scraping his hands through his hair, tried to assemble his scattered wits. In little more than a month he would be on board a pilgrim ship bound for Brindisi. Surely there was no harm in playing with fire for so short a time. It would suit them both well.

Standing up, he extended his hand to her. ‘You can stay for tonight,’ he temporised. ‘After that, well, we’ll see.’ And knew that he was deceiving himself as Olwen gave him a melting smile.

The Welsh Borders, Summer 1139

The fields of the demesne were like an expanse of green-coloured sky clumped with creamy bleating clouds — the sheep that were, as the name of the village suggested, Woolcot’s main source of wealth. Gold upon the cloven hoof.

On top of the knoll, Elene drew rein and gazed out over both land and flocks with a proprietorial eye. ‘It will be a good clip this year,’ she informed her female riding companion. ‘There were a lot of twin lambs born too. I’m glad I bought that new ram.’

‘You know almost as much as your bailiffs and shepherds, don’t you?’ laughed Heulwen de Lacey, her future sister-in-law.

Elene returned the laughter. ‘I suppose I do. Papa was always telling me how much the sheep were worth and now he’s gone it’s a sacred trust, an honour to his memory.’ The curve of her lips became wry. ‘Besides, they are the better part of my dowry, the main reason the arrangement was made. A castle to defend the land between Ravenstow and Caermoel, and the sheep to pay for its upkeep.’ She plucked at a burr in Bramble’s mane. ‘I sometimes have the ridiculous daydream that Renard will want me for myself. Stupid, isn’t it?’

Heulwen considered Elene’s fine, almost sharp features. Beneath silky black brows, her eyes were the green-flecked gold of turning leaves and quite beautiful in a face that was otherwise ordinary. ‘Renard is fond of you,’ she said awkwardly.

‘Oh yes, I know that.’ Elene turned her gaze from contemplation of her wealth and rested it on Heulwen. ‘Before he left with Prince Raymond, he gave me a bridle hung with bells for my new pony, and ruffled my hair. He’s fond of me the way he would be fond of a pet animal. Do you know what I gave him?’

Heulwen shook her head.

‘A bracelet of my plaited hair woven with gold thread.’ She smiled bitterly. ‘You should have seen his face!’

‘Elene …’ Heulwen laid her hand on the girl’s sleeve, unsure whether to comfort or reason.

‘Oh, it’s all right.’ Elene shook her head. ‘I was still a child then. I didn’t understand.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I could not think of anything to say to him when Adam set out. I just wrote down the first things that came into my head. He probably thinks he is going to get a sheep for a wife, as well as in payment of my marriage portion!’

‘He will discover differently when he sees you,’ Heulwen soothed. Her eyes clouded. ‘The situation being what it is, I expect you’ll be wed as soon as he sets foot in England. I only hope my father will be well enough to see you married.’

Elene shook the reins and started the mare down the slope. ‘He has been very ill, hasn’t he? Even with the coming of the warmer weather his cough has little improved.’ She was fond of Lord Guyon, and had come to regard him as a father in the years since her own father’s death.

‘He doesn’t have the time or opportunity to rest it. No sooner does Mama get him settled by the fire than someone wants him, or a problem arises, and even if he cannot ride out with the patrols he has to brief them and listen to their reports. It eats at him that he’s so confined when before he lived such a vigorous life.’

‘He is not the best of patients,’ Elene agreed wryly, having assisted at his sickbed during the crisis time immediately after his near drowning.

Side by side they rode towards the flocks and did not speak again, each burdened by heavy thoughts.

Elene was questioning a shepherd about an outbreak of sheep fly among the herd and absently fondling his good-natured dog when Heulwen exclaimed and pointed. Riders were splashing across the shallow ford of the river beyond the flocks and advancing purposefully towards them. Elene quickly gestured her groom to boost her back into the saddle, for she knew it was not one of her own Woolcot patrols.

Heulwen stared hard for a moment, then slackened her grip on the reins as she recognised the red chevrons adorning the leading rider’s shield. ‘Rest easy,’ she said. ‘It’s Henry.’

Elene’s shoulders relaxed. Kicking Bramble’s flanks, she cantered through the herds to meet the approaching men.

Henry, one of Renard’s brothers and four years the younger, slowed his destrier and brought him round. The shield by which Heulwen had recognised him was dinted and Elene saw that his horse was cut about the chest and fore quarters.

‘My lady!’ he saluted her in a light voice, quite at odds with his stolid, powerful appearance. ‘May we beg a night’s hospitality at Woolcot?’

‘You do not need to ask, you know you are welcome whenever you choose to visit!’ Elene responded. ‘But what in the name of all the saints have you been doing to yourself?’

He followed the direction of her worried gaze and screwed up his face. ‘We skirmished with a band of Earl Ranulf ’s mercenaries. They were helping themselves to some cattle from the Caermoel herds.’

‘What!’

‘Oh, it’s nothing new.’ He removed his helm and used the cuff of his gambeson to wipe sweat from his eyes. They were a round, tawny-grey, quite unlike Renard’s. His hair was straight and ginger-brown, as was his sparse moustache. ‘It saves de Gernons feeding them if they can steal their food from someone against whom he has a grudge.’ He nodded a greeting to his half-sister as she rode up to join them, and gave her a preoccupied smile.

She had heard the tail end of the conversation and asked, ‘Did Chester’s men escape then?’

He shrugged. ‘The bastards doubled back on us. I’m no good on a trail. They had to leave the cows, though. I thought I’d ride down this way and make sure your flocks weren’t being molested.’

Elene shook her head. ‘All’s been peaceful here.’

Henry rested one square, strong hand on his thigh, guiding his stallion with the other. ‘Renard has always been much better at this sort of thing than I am,’ he said glancing wistfully at Elene. ‘If he and I were dogs, I’d be short and pot-bellied, tripping over my ears while I followed a stale scent, and Renard would be hot and graceful on the trail like a lean gazehound.’

‘Henry, you shouldn’t—’

‘It’s true!’ he said.

‘At least you come when whistled for,’ Heulwen patted her brother’s shoulder. ‘No, that’s not really fair,’ she temporised. ‘Renard was going to return home two years ago and Papa stopped him because he didn’t want him used as a lever on his loyalty.’

‘But now there is no choice,’ Elene said as they turned towards the comforting solidity of Woolcot’s walls, her young face tight with resolution.

Feeling Henry watching her, she looked round at him, but he immediately dropped his gaze and made himself busy with his stirrup leather. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There isn’t.’

The Principality of Antioch

‘I said I am with child,’ Olwen repeated. ‘And it is yours.’

Renard carefully stoppered the bottle of oil and put down his sword and the rag with which he had been cleaning the blade. ‘You can’t be.’

Olwen set her hands on her hips and tossed her hair. ‘My flux is more than two weeks late. It is never late. I feel fat and sick.’ She spoke with calm finality. ‘I know.’

Renard swore and rising to his feet paced to the end of the room and stared at the crucifix nailed there. ‘You can’t be,’ he said again.

Olwen glared at his turned back and contemplated thrusting a dagger between his shoulder blades. It went no further than the mind. You did not murder your promise of wealth and security. ‘I assure you that I am,’ she said. ‘What am I to do? Soon I shall be unable to dance, or take men into my body to slake their lust and earn my living.’ She felt a twinge of triumph as she saw him flinch. ‘In two days’ time you are leaving for ever. How will I make my living when I have a huge belly? Will it disturb your conscience to know that while you lie in your marriage bed with your new wife, I am begging in the gutters of Antioch? Will it prey on your soul when you look at your heir swaddled in fine linen and rocked in a carved cradle that somewhere else a child of your siring is starving in the gutter?’

Renard seized her wrist and dragged her against him. His grip pressed the edges of her bangles painfully into her flesh. She did not fight him, but drew in close to his body instead.

‘You use words like you use a knife too!’ he snarled.

She saw the anger in his eyes, felt the tension shuddering in his body and was excited by it. She was playing with fire, caressing it, shaping it to the dreams she desired, aware that if she made a mistake she woud be burned to death. ‘Take me back to England with you,’ she whispered, stroking him gently with the downward pressure of the heel of her free hand. ‘I am carrying your child … your son.’

Renard closed his eyes and swallowed, struggling for the control he no longer seemed to possess. Her skin and hair smelt like a lemon grove in the midday sun. He was aware of the expert persuasion of her fingers and his eager response. ‘Olwen, I am not just going home to take responsibility for my father’s lands. I’ll be getting married as fast as the priest can utter the vows!’

‘But it is a business arrangement, yes?’ Her lips brushed his throat. ‘Your wife doesn’t have to know.’

‘She would soon find out,’ Renard said wryly and retained enough sense to break away before it was too late. ‘Women always do.’

‘It would be none of her concern.’

‘I could arrange to give you money now if you stayed in Antioch.’

‘I don’t want to stay here.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Here, I am a dancing girl, a high-class whore. In England I can invent my own past — a crusader’s widow, a wealthy pilgrim travelling with an armed group for safety. Why,’ she added mockingly, ‘you could even find me a rich husband if we both tell the right kind of lies.’