Adam looked at his ally and found a brief smile. ‘He was somewhat over-endowed.’

‘He’s wearing spikenard too. I could smell it on him a mile away!’ Renard wrinkled his nose. ‘There’s not going to be much room for Heulwen in his heart. He’s madly in love with himself!’

Without comment, Adam went to Vaillantif and unlatched a saddlebag. Withdrawing a leather money pouch, he handed it to his squire. ‘Go within, Austin, and deliver it to Lady Heulwen. Tell her that the other twenty are her wedding present. She will know what you mean.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Adam watched him lope off, then turned back to the horse, and unslinging his helmet from the pommel, put it on. ‘You’ll need armour,’ he said to Renard. ‘Do you have a hauberk?’

‘I have the one that was my brother’s before he drowned. It fits me better than it used to fit him. Will you wait for me?’

Adam nodded at the dun stallion resting slack-hipped beside Vaillantif. ‘You can use my remount instead of your own horse if you like. I noticed you were outgrowing that grey when you came to Thornford.’

Renard’s dark eyes kindled. ‘Adam, you’re a friend!’ He embraced Adam in a fervent hug that almost squeezed the breath from the latter’s body.

‘What do you do to your enemies?’ Adam asked weakly.


‘What’s this for?’ Warrin de Mortimer lifted one of the bags of silver just delivered to Heulwen by the snub-nosed squire, and jinked it back down on the trestle.

Despite the offhand tone of his asking, Heulwen could tell he was irritated. ‘I sold him Vaillantif.’

Warrin flicked his forefinger against the side of the bag. ‘For a goodly sum, by the looks of things.’

‘He insisted on giving me more than was due. He was very stubborn. I didn’t want it.’

‘So stiff-necked that one day someone is going to snap it for him,’ Warrin muttered.

‘You?’

He laughed and shook his head. ‘Is it so obvious?’

‘You were like a pair of dogs circling each other, waiting for the right moment to leap at one another’s throat.’

‘I don’t like the bastard, I’ll admit that outright.’ He extended his hands to the brazier. ‘Never knew his place as a junior squire, and I doubt he does yet.’

Heulwen watched him, her stomach a mass of tiny butterflies. His hands were steady over the heat. Broad and powerful, they did not suit the various rings with which he had bedecked them. Her father very seldom wore jewellery and neither did Adam.

‘What was the other matter of which he spoke?’ he asked into her silence.

She shook her head, knowing a grievous mistake when she saw one. ‘It was trifling,’ she dissembled. ‘Ralf sold a horse and I want to buy him back.’

‘You could have asked me to do that.’ He looked at her reproachfully. ‘There was no need to involve Adam de Lacey.’

‘You were in Normandy, and besides, Adam knows the owner.’ His jaw tightened, but so did hers in determined response. ‘Warrin, don’t scowl at me like that. Adam has been my foster brother since I was two years old. If you cannot tolerate his occasional presence on mutual ground like Ravenstow, then you might as well seek a different woman to wife!’

Immediately he was contrite, turning from the brazier to take her hands in his. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that I arrived here eager to greet you, and I did not expect to find Adam de Lacey sprawled in your father’s chair. ’

‘And you are accustomed to having your own way in all things,’ she agreed with an arched brow.

‘Yes, I am!’ Before she could rebel, his hands had slipped around her waist again and his breath was warm on her cheek as his head descended and he claimed her lips, imprinting them with the will of which he spoke. His arms tightened and his tongue probed. Heulwen stood passively within the embrace, neither welcoming nor resisting it, but it was sufficient for him that she was warm and pliant in his arms, and he persisted, driven by the anxiety to possess, and a more basic need.

The smell of spikenard was too powerful to be pleasant. It irritated her nose and made her want to sneeze. He was wearing his hauberk and the links began to bruise her arms where they were trapped by his. A small, inner voice asked her if she would have noticed such discomforts if Adam had been holding her. She tried to respond to Warrin, but the heaviness of his jaw grinding on hers made it impossible and she broke the kiss. ‘Warrin, you’re crushing me.’

He was breathing hard and his eyes were opaque with lust, but he had sense enough to realise where he was and what was at stake. Taking a grip on himself he released her and folded his long body into the chair that Adam had previously been occupying. ‘In Christ’s name, Heulwen, let us soon be wed,’ he said roughly. ‘I know you’re still mourning Ralf, but time doesn’t stand still — well, not unless I’m abroad talking cheeses with some stuff-witted steward on my father’s Norman lands and counting the hours until I can come home and gladden my heart with a sight such as you.’

‘Flatterer,’ she said lightly, sitting down beside him.

‘It’s true though. Heulwen, you’re driving me mad.’

His arm was resting on the trestle and she rubbed her index finger upon his wrist, stroking the wiry golden hairs the wrong way. ‘Once you and Papa have formally agreed the terms and you have asked the King for Ralf ’s lands, we can be married without further delay,’ she said.

‘It cannot come quickly enough for me,’ he said, thinking of her ripe body beneath his in the marriage bed, and of a chest full of recently minted silver.

‘Nor me,’ she said, her own tone more grim than eager, her mind upon Adam and the lessons learned from her time with Ralf.

‘No chance of a hot bath?’ he asked hopefully, his glance becoming decidedly lustful.

Heulwen stopped stroking his wrist and stood up. ‘A cold one might suit your need better,’ she laughed. ‘I’ll see what the maids can do.’

It was only when she reached the haven of the tower stairs and stood alone in the cold, musty silence, that she realised how much she was shaking.

Chapter 7

‘Snow,’ grumbled Sweyn, twitching his powerful shoulders and glowering at the massing banks of greyish-yellow cloud piling in from the direction of the Welsh mountain ranges.

Adam’s troop had emerged from the forest and on to the drovers track that would lead them in a few miles to the Thornford crossroads. Behind them the trees swayed like dancers striving to shake off the last vestments of parchment-dry leaves. The grass at the edge of the road was pale and limp, the road itself a ploughed morass of hoofprints and deeply gouged cartwheel tracks. Come full winter, it would qualify for the title of bog.

Vaillantif snorted and dipped his head to explore the unappetising fare at his hooves. Adam let the reins slide and turned in the saddle to look at Renard. ‘Do you still want to come with us?’

Renard contemplated the threatening clouds with wind-stung eyes. He was wearing a thick tunic, topped by a heavily padded gambeson and mail hauberk, all overlaid by a fur-lined cloak, and was thus, despite the wind, warm enough. The stallion beneath him was a pure joy to ride after the shortcomings of poor Starlight.

‘I’d far rather be snowed in with you than Warrin de Mortimer.’ He smiled and, shaking the bridle, urged the dun on to the road.

‘It’s only November. It won’t come to that.’

The smile became a mocking grin. ‘Why take that chance? I notice you didn’t linger.’

‘If you’re coming, shut up,’ Adam snapped.

Renard shrugged, but let the grin fade as he rode forwards.

‘He’s still a boy,’ murmured Jerold, joining his lord as they headed into the sharp wind.

‘For which I’m making allowances.’

‘I’d noticed,’ Jerold said, ‘but then he’s like his sister, isn’t he? Likes to season a stew just for the mischief of seeing others grimace when they taste it. I know how you were, and still are over the Lady Heulwen. And it’s no use looking like that. It’s the truth and you know it. I was there at her wedding, remember? Who do you think fetched Lady Judith when you sank all that wine? Who do you think sat by your pallet while you recovered your wits, or what was left of them? And now she’s free to wed and she’s done it again. How far will you go when it’s Warrin de Mortimer who takes her to bed?’

Adam’s fingers jerked on the reins. ‘Jerold, let me be, you’re worse than the boy,’ he growled, while beneath him Vaillantif danced and tossed his head, rolling his eyes to show their whites.

‘Sweyn and I were only saying to each other last night that you need to take a wife. There are bound to be barons at court this Christmastide with daughters for sale, and it’s time you thought about settling to the yoke and breeding up heirs instead of living on dreams.’

Adam’s temper snapped. He rounded on the knight to snarl his displeasure but got no further than, ‘When I want your opinion I’ll—’ And then his breath locked in his throat and his eyes widened in horrified astonishment as an arrow sang through the narrow triangle of space between his hand on Vaillantif’s reins and Vaillantif ’s neck, burying itself in the horsehair pad of Jerold’s saddle flap. The heavy sky began to precipitate not snow, but death-tipped arrows. Welshmen, either afoot and armed with bows or astride their small, tough mountain ponies, were pounding in the wake of their missiles, mouths agape to yell their war cries.

‘God’s bleeding eyes!’ Jerold blasphemed and, trying to control his plunging stallion, groped for his sword.

Adam wrestled his shield on to his left arm. ‘Close formation!’ he bellowed. ‘And don’t give them a chance to hamstring the horses! Sweyn, get to Renard and guard him with your life!’ It was all he had time to say, for the battle closed its gaping jaws and swallowed them whole.

The first Renard knew of the rapid Welsh assault was the arrow that ripped a hole in his cloak and slammed into his stallion’s belly. The animal screamed and reared, forehooves tearing at the clouds, then came down stiff-legged and bucked. The high saddle and Renard’s own swift reflexes kept him astride, but that was all that could be said. Of controlling a gut-shot horse there was not a hope in hell. If the dun went down, he would be crushed to death; and if it threw him in its frenzy he faced being trampled or killed by the force of the fall.

There was no time to think, only to act on instinct. He released the reins, kicked his feet free of the stirrups, and as the dun came down on all fours between twisting bucks, he used the high pommel to vault down from its back. He stumbled and felt his ankle wrench, but was able to duck away from the destrier’s pain-filled madness and draw his sword. His shield still hung from the saddle and there was not the remotest possibility of reaching it without being brained by the plunging shod hooves.

Battle clashed around him. A burly, black-eyed Welshman who looked as though he ate horseshoes for breakfast came at him with an iron-studded oak mace. Renard dodged the first vicious swing of the weapon. His enemy was laughing. Battle took some men that way, and obviously this one saw his opponent as a mockery of opposition. ‘Cenau! ’ he said contemptuously. A whelp indeed Renard might be, but of a warrior breed, trained from the cradle to fight. As the Welshman swung his mace for the kill, Renard ran under the blow and slashed at his enemy’s bare thighs. Blood sprayed, spattering Renard’s face as the honed edge sliced muscle, tendon and artery. The mace caught him glancingly on the shoulder, but it was the off-balanced blow of a mortally wounded man going down.

‘Yr cenau gan dant! ’ Renard gasped, breathing hard as he finished it. ‘A puppy with teeth!’

‘Renard, ware behind!’ roared Sweyn.

He spun quickly, but was not fast enough to avoid the thrust of a spear. Frantically he twisted as he felt his hauberk rings give and splay, and a vicious iron point tear his gambeson and score his ribs. He was caught like a fish on a spit and in a moment he was going to die, the last thing he saw the snow-bound sky and the frightened, triumphant young face of his killer.

The thrust home was never executed because Sweyn reached him, and cursing, rose in his stirrups to bring the full weight of his axe down upon the young Welshman’s skull, which was only protected by a cap of stiffened leather and thus split open like a carelessly dropped egg. Violently jerking, the body fell, tearing the lance head free as it went.