He was holding up a hand to silence her. ‘Lady, I do not mean that. Believe me, I shall do everything within my power. What I meant was …’ he looked about the room as if the mislaid words had rolled beneath a cupboard, ‘what I need to know is, are you a virgin?’
Her cheeks burned. ‘What if I say no?’ A spontaneous verbal thrust, revenge for his earlier insults! The reckless reply snuffed out the good will in him. His gaze coldly apprised her of his response and she felt her breathing grow uneven.
‘Then we shall grow old together in mutual hate.’
‘I might be lying.’
‘You might be lying, yes, either way.’ Then he added, ‘Mistress, I have said some very hateful things in your presence. You are intelligent enough to understand why. Can we at least be honest with each other for a little space?’
Of course, Miles decided, he could put her to the test, hold her wrists against the pillow above her head and discover the answer. What, and come near ravishing her? No, touching must be avoided at all costs and he meant her no harm. As if she read his thoughts, the girl slid a hand beneath the sheet and withdrew a rondel dagger which she must have hidden earlier beneath the mattress or bribed a servant to do so.
‘Lay a hand upon me and I will make a eunuch of you,’ she snarled, then spoilt the effect by adding in astonishment, ‘Why do you laugh at me?’
Knotting the wretched blanket tighter, he walked across to the spy hole in the wall and languidly leaned into the tiny embrasure that squinted down upon his feasting enemies. ‘Not drunk enough, I fear.’ He looked back at her across his shoulder, his mouth still twisting in amusement at the weapon in her slender fist. At least she held it properly. ‘What if you had lain on my side of the bed?’
The lady’s lower lip quivered but her grip tightened. ‘I-I should have thought of some way to obtain it. Rolled on top of you and seized it that way.’
Her innocence had Miles doubled with laughter. ‘You are a virgin,’ he asserted cheerfully, relieved that no one had defiled her, and watched her lips part in pretty indignation. ‘Yes, Mistress Ballaster?’
Heloise nodded sulkily, wondering how he had deduced it.
‘Well, that is a relief. We shall obtain our annulment after all. You could have spared me the bother of guessing.’ He kicked aside his ridiculous train and tried to lecture her as if she were a company of the duke’s soldiers. ‘Now attend me, mistress. For the future, we must ensure we neither meet again nor compromise each other in any way until an annulment is received.’
‘And for the present?’ She lifted an impertinent eyebrow. Tightening the sheet about her only emphasised her breasts as she reached out for another savoury. ‘My father says that you will not—’
‘—be given my clothes back until I have pleasured you.’ He served her up a roguish smile that had thieved hearts. ‘Yes, how do I avoid that dilemma?’
‘Geld you?’ teased Heloise, waving the dagger like a fan.
‘Ravishing you is a sweeter prospect.’ A delectable proposition if only the wench was daughter to a Welsh baron, not Ballaster’s spawn. ‘Do you think you could put that thing back beneath your pillow? I know you enjoy the weapon in your hand, but it unmans me.’
‘Good.’ Heloise grinned at Rushden as if he were a friend, but it was most unseemly behaviour to speak so – especially to a man. Or could one do that with a husband? Was this what marriage could be like? If so, she rather liked the prospect. The wine must be addling her common sense, she decided, knowing that if she seduced Miles Rushden, he would probably strangle her before morning. ‘I think the wine is getting the better of me,’ she admitted, spiking a piece of cheese with the blade. ‘I have eaten nothing these last three days. I-I was locked in my chamber.’
‘I am sorry to hear it.’ Rushden was running his hand along the casement sill, noting the lock of the door, the thickness of the panels, eyeing the ceiling. ‘There has to be a way.’
‘Try the chest.’
He threw back the lid. ‘I was hoping. Pah, it is all sheets and coverlets. Some of them laundered by you, judging by the blush of them!’
Heloise ignored the taunt. ‘We might knot them to make a rope and anchor it to the chest. I should not trust this.’ She shook the nearest bedpost. ‘We had to replace these because of woodworm and I doubt the joints would hold. Knowing my father, he will post a half dozen sentries. Could you make a skirt of sorts and pass for a woman?’ The look she received was not happy.
‘Upon my soul, woman, are you crazed?’ Miles had forgotten her unworldliness. The solemn almond gaze questioned innocently, and he clenched his jaw and turned away. His covering was loosening and he retrieved it hastily with a curse and tucked it methodically about his waist so he looked less like a younger version of Elijah and more like a villein competing in a summer sackrace. The folds threatened to trip him. ‘Oh, the Devil take the thing!’ he yelled and sat down heavily on the bed feeling as sulky as the brother of the Prodigal Son. And then the bed threatened to heave him off.
‘Mistress, what in –?’
Taking advantage of his distraction, Heloise had burrowed beneath the sheet, trying to free its ends so she might not be confined to the bed. It was no use, especially with him anchoring half of it. She struggled to turn beneath the cover and emerged bedraggled and red-faced from her exertions.
‘If it is not too much trouble, sir, would you kindly loosen the sheet so I too may have some freedom?’ He had an unholy grin, she discovered.
‘Of course. Try now.’
Glowering at him, she eased up the sheet, still trying to keep herself modestly covered. She sternly gestured him to turn his back.
‘Is there likely to be needle and thread in the chest?’ Miles asked, once her manoeuvres had been completed. ‘You could sew me something.’ Now the rustling had ceased, he glanced over his shoulder to see how she had taken the suggestion. He needed her compliance and of a surety she had been trained in such skills.
‘What are you expecting? A houppelande with lined sleeves?’
‘A tunic?’ It was his most cajoling expression and had earned him a few exquisite adventures in haylofts.
‘You jest. And, no, there is no needle here.’ She had managed to stand, but the sheet was so tight about her that it hardly rendered her mobile, and the dagger had not been sheathed. It took him a swift stride and a sharp, painful twist to seize it.
‘Now, mayhap, we can put it to less bloody use.’ He tossed it on the bed, jerked the blanket from his waist and spread it like a cloth upon the floor. ‘Stand on it!’
His bride was rubbing her wrist. No doubt she would have been eyeing him sourly if she had not been so inhibited by his nakedness, for her face and pretty shoulders were blushing rosily.
Trying not to imagine what the rest of her skin was doing, he grabbed her forearms, jerking her forward. ‘Stand there! I need it taut. Godsakes, you are married now.’ Then with an oath, he grabbed her pillow, shook free its covering and slit half the seams. ‘Keep your eyes closed if you must, but hold up your arms.’ She yelped as he dragged her hand from her sheet and tugged the fine linen over her head. It would have been tempting to enjoy her nakedness as the sheet tumbled round her ankles. Heloise Ballaster squeaked, opening her eyes. With a fumbling hand, she swiftly pulled the pillow cover over her thighs. He spared her modesty, turning to hack at the silk cord that held back her father’s expensive bedcurtains. For a moment he fingered the heavy fabric, and then he turned. ‘Here!’ He dumped the fistful of cord into her astonished fingers.
She looked up into his appraising eyes and felt no less naked; the fabric was tight upon her breasts and strained across her thighs. ‘Thank you,’ she said huskily. This man was now her master; a man who wanted her and loathed her. She held her breath, knowing that, like two serpents, his destiny coiled with hers.
‘A perfect Delilah,’ Miles mocked and then regretted his cruelty. No, this was no sultry, worldly whore. For an instant, he let the memory of his first
wedding night stir from the recesses of his mind; his bride, innocent Sioned, sweetly blowing the candle out and expecting to sleep. ‘Oh, God!’ he whispered, grinding his fists into his eyesockets. But this virgin was not Sioned. This was squat Ballaster’s daughter, even if she was a willowy, faery maiden. ‘Devil take you, would you … would you mind standing where I put you!’ It was beyond his strength of will to ignore her slim ankles and alluring legs as he tidied the fabric.
‘You are doing it wrong.’ To his surprise, she knelt beside him, careful to keep her gaze upon the task, and they discussed the business as diligently as two tailors. Then she told him how to hold the wool cloth tight against the bias while she drew the dagger blade through it. It was not easy and the cut edge looked as though it had been attacked by giant moths. The man made no complaint, but took the blade back from her and made a crescent rip in the centre of the rectangle.
‘Excellent,’ he muttered, sawing the blade down at a right angle while she held it taut, ‘all we need are a couple of sheep and we can go to Bethlehem.’
At least he had a sense of humour. She could have been locked in with a dour, choleric lout. Heloise shut her eyes as he rose. A pat on the cheek made them snap open. He was laughing at her and he did look like a model for a Nativity painting. The tunic reached to his calves and belted with the emerald cord. ‘It tickles damnably. I hate to imagine what a hair shirt must be like. No, I think I know.’
Miles’s hair shirt was Heloise Ballaster, staring at him now with her fawn’s eyes. For an instant, he forgot the unearthly hair.
‘Is Lord Rushden still at Monkton Bramley? Shall you go there?’ she was asking.
He remembered her warning to his father and his expression tightened defensively. Behind his back, he crossed his fingers against her. ‘My father has gone home. My mother … needed him. I shall be attending his grace of Buckingham.’ He must have read surprise in her face for he added, ‘Oh, were you expecting me to return with a small army at my heels? No, I shall not embroil my father, though he shall hear of this.’
‘I am glad of it,’ Heloise answered gravely. ‘There has been enough blooding. Two of our men were injured and one of yours died for this folly.’
The fierce intake of breath frightened her. Rushden strode to the window and slammed his hand against the wall so violently that the whole room trembled. His strong shoulders had become rigid.
‘I thought that maybe … Christ! Poor Dobbe. God save him. He had served me since I was a child,’ he murmured, and his fingers found her dagger. It was like treading on a layer of ice to wait on his uncertain temper; say the wrong words and the man’s hatred might crack his fragile courtesy. She held her tongue, hardly daring to breathe. The minutes dragged before he raised his head and swung about. ‘There must be some way out.’
She jumped as he violently thrust aside the curtain that hid the garderobe.
‘Jesu forbid, s-sir, you cannot go down that!’
‘True, lady, it would be like staffing a badger down a rabbit hole and I would lief as not be mired further by your family. Mind out!’ Grabbing the handle of the oak chest, he heaved it across to the casement. Before she could protest, he sprang onto it and drove his heel through the window.
The chatelaine in her winced at the bent spikes of ruined leading. Cold air rushed in to quiver the candles and pucker her arms. ‘Would it not have been simpler to open it?’
‘Not when your father padlocked the handles, Mistress Goose.’ Half of him disappeared to inspect the roof. ‘A marvel! The dogs are barking, but no one is willing to investigate. Brrr!’ He sprang back lightly onto the floor. ‘This is the hard part.’ He grabbed her discarded sheet, anchored it with his foot and ripped off a small strip. Then his sable head lifted, his eyes glittering with menace, like the serpents of his house.
‘W-what do you mean?’
‘This!’ It took less than a blink to bowl her back across the bed. Miles turned her, an elbow muffling her face into a dimple of the featherbed while he dragged one thrashing arm behind her back and knotted the rag about her wrist. Then, letting her breathe, he hauled the gasping, dishevelled girl up against the closest bedpost and tethered her like a witch to a stake. ‘Scream if it helps.’
‘You hellspawn!’ Heloise twisted, trying to free herself but it only tightened her bonds. The candle in the glass lamp, suspended in chains from the upper bedrails, wobbled precariously and she stilled in panic.
‘I think we need a fire to entertain your father while I escape.’ Rushden laughed as he bundled bedding from the chest into the remainder of her sheet and set it upon the windowsill. ‘Now if this was a troubadour ballad I might whistle up my horse and spring down upon his back, but I think that would ruin my chance of fatherhood and snap my spine.’ He came across to her and lifted the candlestick from the small table. The sputtering flame menaced her. ‘I could set fire to the bedclothes, Heloise, my witch wife.’ Playfully tossing the dagger, he caught it deftly by the handle. ‘Your father cannot feed you to the dogs if you are bound, be thankful for that. Adieu, lady. And never come near me again, if you value your life.’ Yet as he reached the chest, he turned, all mockery gone. ‘I doubt I can free my horse. Look after him, lady, his name is Traveller.’
An instant later, he set alight the bundle and hurled it flaming from the casement – dear God, he meant it for the kindling stacked outside the kitchen! Then he hauled himself out onto the roof.
Heloise was hoarse when the key finally turned. Old Hubert, three sheets in the wind, staggered in with Dionysia at his heels. As tipsy and useless as windfallen apples, the Ballaster servants, shooed from the feast, rolled into the courtyard. Heloise – once they cut her free – ran out barefoot, shouting for fire brooms. The kitchen was in flames.
Chapter 7
Her father threw aside the rod and stood arms akimbo, glaring at his weeping daughter.
‘If you had done your duty, Rushden would be eating out your hand. Pah, you do naught but cost me money, girl, and for what? Your reputation rent beyond repair, the kitchen burnt to ashes, us cooking in the open air like heathens, the man beyond our reach, and his devil of a horse kicking everyone who goes near it.’ He paced and turned. ‘And the whoreson thinks he’s won, I’ll wager. Well, I shall write to the king’s grace and my lord of Gloucester this very day.’ He beat his palm into his fist resolutely. ‘Aye, and you shall confront Rushden in the common gaze and make him acknowledge you.’
‘And he will deny it,’ Heloise whispered, knuckling away her tears. ‘I will not crawl to such a man like Rushden. He says I must never come near him again.’
‘So he can annul the marriage, you daft fool. Oh, stop your snivelling. Listen to me!’ He grabbed her chin. ‘We saw him examining the goods. He fancied you and so he might again,’ She tried to pull away detesting the flared nostrils, the angry broken veins that ran beneath his skin. ‘What choice do you have, girl? If the Rushdens will not have you, you are little worth to me.’ Letting go of her, he strutted to the window. ‘To be plain, Heloise, it is your choice whether you starve. Obey me and you leave for Wales with servants. Disobey and you leave alone and penniless.’
‘You would disinherit me?’ Her body hurt as she struggled to her feet, staring at him in horror. ‘For my sweet mother’s sake, you cannot—’ Be so cruel? Oh, he could, she did not doubt it. What argument would move him to be merciful? ‘God’s truth, sir, can you not see that Miles Rushden is hungry for far more than Bramley? It was not my looks last night that he rejected, but my blood. We are beneath him, sir, can you not understand that? The Rushdens want nothing to do with the likes of us.’
His fists hit the sill and he turned abruptly. ‘Never, never let me hear you talk that way, babbling like a loser! You grab what you can, girl. You drive your fist in the teeth of the world and you win. He has his price.’
‘Money does not buy respect or love,’ she exclaimed defiantly, and held her breath. He had never given her either and nor would Rushden.
<
br /> ‘Love,’ he sneered. ‘Love is silk, love is velvet, love is extra. You have too much of your mother in you. Dionysia would see this matter differently. She would hunt Rushden down.’ Reaching the door, his hand paused at the ring handle. ‘Martin shall see you to Brecknock. You may take a maidservant, your mare and a packass, and the young cur’s stallion can go on market day to meet my losses.’
Rushden’s horse? What had he called it? Traveller?
‘Give it to me.’
‘Not on your life, girl. That beast is worth a small fortune. Now, pack! For by my life, I wash my hands of you.’
*
Must she grovel before Rushden like a heathen concubine and beg him to bed her? Never! She had some courage left.
After her father had gone, Heloise sat miserably, her fingers clasping her forearms, cursing him for his heartlessness, then she bestirred herself and bathed her tear-swollen eyes. Her hands were clumsy with cold for she had been denied coals for her chamber as punishment.
This was hard – to struggle against the despair dragging at her like weights. No, she would not sink into a deep well of self-loathing. Beggars and lepers have worse lives, she told herself, and what of the damned souls facing the Devil’s pincers in Hell for the next millennium? There had to be a safer path for her to follow, one that led her from her father’s hatred. If only she could return to Middleham. Facing the chaplain would be easier than pleading with Rushden.
‘Which path must I take?’ she sighed to the faery folk and unfastened the window to let them through. Only the piping of a winter robin, busy in the hedgerow, answered her. Swallows might leave like summer traitors but old Rob endured the cruel rains of winter and kept Yuletide in England. Surely she had as much courage as such a tiny bird?
At least the key was not turned upon her now. Trying to keep her poor bruised back straight as a battle standard, Heloise walked stiffly down the stairs, drawn in loneliness to the stable, to seek the other creature that was the scapegoat for her father’s wrath.
The Silver Bride Page 9
