Aubert raised his brows, inviting confidences.
Rolf drank from his cup and let out a deep sigh. 'I love Ailith, but sometimes she is so impossible that I cannot bear to be in her company. It is like being caged.'
'And of course your own nature is so perfect that you are never the cause of her contrariness,' Aubert said neutrally.
'I know I have my faults, but of late, whatever I do or say is wrong in her eyes.' Rolf scowled at his cup, and then at Aubert. 'You said you wanted a word in private. If it's about myself and Ailith, I might as well take myself off to bed.'
Aubert just looked at Rolf and beneath the sharp, hazel stare, Rolf's indignation crumbled to be replaced by embarrassment. 'Very well,' he said with a grudging smile, 'I have no redeeming features and the fault is all mine.'
'Just have a care, Rolf. Some broken hearts mend, but I doubt that Ailith's would, or yours for that matter. And there endeth my sermon. I'm not here to preach what you already know. Besides, I need you in a listening humour and not out of sorts with me.'
'Indeed?' Rolf raised an eyebrow and felt a pleasant curiosity. Conversations with Aubert, whatever else, were never boring. Although Aubert had mostly given up the more questionable activities attached to his wine trade, he still dabbled here and there at the request of the King. But what Aubert said next took Rolf completely by surprise.
'I have been deliberating upon approaching you for no small time; I would not have you think this is lightly suggested out of a moment's folly. I have a business proposition to put to you concerning Benedict's future.'
'Oh?' Rolf folded his arms.
'What would you say if I offered for your daughter Gisele in marriage on his behalf?'
At first Rolf could only gape at Aubert in astonishment. He did not know what to say; then several things, all contradictory, crowded onto his tongue at once and rendered him incoherent, which was just as well since some of the comments would have irrevocably sundered the friendship between himself and Aubert.
'Gisele and Benedict,' he finally managed to croak out. 'You aim high indeed.'
'My son is never going to be more than a mediocre wine merchant; he has no interest in the trade, but it is as if he was born knowing horses. You have seen it yourself.'
Rolf rose to replenish his cup and remained standing, for Aubert's words had kindled his restlessness. His friend was wily; he would not have broached the subject without first considering it from all angles and weighing up the risks of rejection. 'I have noticed that Ben does have a talent that way,' Rolf said cautiously, 'but how far it will develop is a point of chance, nor is it a recommendation I can give to my wife. I have always promised Arlette that our daughter will make a great marriage. I cannot go to her and say that for the sake of friendship I have accepted the offer of a Rouen wine merchant.'
Aubert drew himself up. 'I do not ask you as a boon for friendship's sake. I know full well that you have the wealth and position to make a high marriage for Gisele. While I cannot match your rank, I can easily match your wealth, so I count the scales even. You were never one to stand on ceremony, Rolf.'
Rolf's eyes became dry with staring and he blinked rapidly several times.
Aubert hunched forward in his seat and eyed Rolf intently, his own gaze unwavering. 'You know that I have risked my neck for William both as Duke and King. After the great battle at Hastings, he rewarded me in coin and English booty and I bought land and houses in London and Rouen. People pay me rent and my wealth increases. I have two wine galleys, one trading out of London, the other out of Rouen, and a merchant vessel, the Draca, to be ready in the spring. Benedict will be very rich one day, but I would like him to be content too.' Aubert shrugged, and spread his hands. 'That is why I made you the offer. If you do not think that our differences are negotiable, I'll look elsewhere and take no offence.'
Rolf shook his head, totally bemused. 'God's nails, Aubert, I need time to think, and for that I have to gather my wits, which you have scattered to the four winds.'
Aubert smiled, a decided gleam in his hooded hazel eyes. 'I knew that one day, I'd see you at a loss for words.'
Ailith felt Rolf raise the covers and slide into the bed. One sinewy arm came across her body, and he pressed close, touching the tip of his tongue to the tiny hairs on her spine. Ailith had been pretending to be asleep, but a small, sensuous shiver gave her away and with a sigh, she rolled over to face him.
He nuzzled her throat. 'We shouldn't have parted in anger earlier,' he murmured.
Only moments before Rolf had come to bed, she had been imagining a scene where she necked Inga's cursed gander herself, and perhaps Inga too into the bargain, but she grasped Rolf's olive branch eagerly. 'I'm sorry I was a shrew. I was worried about Julitta.'
'I was too thin-skinned myself. Call it even. I promise I will speak to Inga and make her do something about those geese.'
Ailith snuggled against him, breathing in his familiar scent. He stroked her hair, her spine, her breasts, and she felt his erection strain against her belly.
'Aubert desires a marriage between Benedict and Gisele.' His words came muffled as he buried his lips in her cleavage. 'I do not know whether I should accept or not. What do you think?'
'Benedict and Gisele?' she said, as surprised as Rolf had been. 'Are they suited?
'As well suited as any couple are when their parents arrange a marriage. Aubert, as it turns out, is a very wealthy man, and I like the boy's spirit. Gisele is like her mother — biddable, pious, and very pretty.'
'Perhaps you should let them meet and see how they respond to one another.'
'That would not be so bad an idea, and in the meantime, I could give the proposition due consideration.' He moved lower, softly pinching her skin with his lips.
She touched his hair, feeling beneath her fingertips the springy curls that he had passed on to Julitta, making her longer tresses such a bane to comb. 'But they will meet on Norman ground, you will not bring your wife to Ulverton?' she said, suddenly anxious.
He ceased what he was doing, and the muscles tensed across the back of his neck. 'I am not a complete fool,' he murmured against her flesh.
'I could not bear it if you did bring her,' Ailith whispered.
He sighed, and for a moment she thought that he was going to turn away as they trammelled the same old ground whose ruts they both knew because they had worn the path so often and so painfully before. 'I won't,' he said. 'On my soul I swear I won't.'
'It is forever.' Her hands remained in his hair, gripping him. 'Say it is forever.'
He hesitated again. 'It is forever,' he repeated, and broke her hold, pinning her beneath him, assaulting her senses until she sobbed aloud, half with pleasure and half with pain.
CHAPTER 32
Two days later, Rolf gave Mauger instructions to spruce up a young grey stallion which was to be inspected for the royal stables by a representative of King William, and rode out in the misty, gleaming dawn to keep his promise to Ailith.
Smoke twirled from village cooking fires and the people were already up and about their daily business. He was greeted according to each individual's adjustment to the fact of a Norman lord, but mostly with respect. Curious stares followed his progress down the village street to the house at the end where dwelt Inga, the woman from the north, and eyebrows were raised when he dismounted and tethered his horse to the low palisade surrounding her property.
Inga herself was just emerging from her house. She had a knobbed walking stick in one hand, although she had no need of it, the item was just a matter of habit, a prop to make people keep their distance. Over her other arm was draped a fine, dark blue cloak. Her small terrier growled at Rolf, but she commanded it to silence. Her cool hazel stare assessed him.
'How may I help you, my lord?' Her voice was cool too, but like Scots usquebaugh, it possessed an afterburn that set his nerves tingling.
'I want to talk to you about your geese… about your gander in particular.'
Inga p
ursed her lips. Her gaze flickered beyond him to the interest being generated in the village street and turning back, she reopened her door. 'Then you had best enter,' she said and commanded the dog away to his kennel in the yard.
Feeling uncomfortable, Rolf followed her into the house. The beaten earth floor had been stamped solid and covered with a layer of rushes. There was a bedding bench along one wall, piled with goatskins, and shelves upon the wall boasted an array of jars and pitchers. It was far from poor, but much less than that which had been her due in the north.
'They don't like me, your villagers,' she said, depositing the cloak, and gesturing him to be seated on the bedding bench. 'I don't fit in with their customs or their ways.'
'You don't try to like them,' he answered. 'Your son Sweyn has been accepted easily enough.'
'He's a man now, and they're short of men. I'm a rival for the few available — my own house, an income of sorts. They're jealous.' She reached down a flask of mead and poured a measure into a round wooden cup, then held it out to him. 'What about my gander? I suppose Widow Alfric's been complaining again.'
Their fingers touched as Rolf took the cup from her hands. Cool, with an afterburn. He was playing with fire and he knew it. 'Widow Alfric would have taken her complaint to my reeve first,' he said. 'This comes closer to my own threshold. Two days ago, your bird attacked my daughter Julitta, and she has the marks on her body to prove it. If my Godson Benedict had not happened along on his pony, she might have been killed. As it was, the gander attacked him too, and he had to throw his cloak over the thing to save himself.
Inga's face became ivory pale, but she maintained her composure. 'I am sorry to hear that,' she said in her clear, astringent voice. 'It is in the bird's nature to protect his territory. Belike the children came too close. Was there no-one there with them?'
He saw through her attempt to turn the tables and his lips tightened. 'It is not his territory, Inga. And what you say wanders from the point. It could have been anyone crossing that land – Widow Alfric for example. You know as well as I, that this is not the first time your gander has made an attack. If you value him as much as you say, then you had best keep him penned up and make sure he causes no more trouble. If he does, I will come here and neck him myself.'
Inga eyed him stonily. 'It will not happen again,' she said. He gave her his empty cup, but instead of setting it aside, she poured it full again from the mead pitcher and fetched another cup for herself. 'And if the gander is to be necked, I will do the deed. He is mine, not yours to destroy.'
Rolf knew that he should refuse the drink and escape, but his body would not obey his conscience, preferring to remain and play her game, whatever it was. And he thought he knew.
She drank her mead swiftly, like a man, tilting, swallowing, setting down. 'But then you're a Norman, aren't you?' she added when he did not speak. 'You do not care what you destroy.'
'Is that what you truly think?'
'Why should you care?'
Rolf shrugged. 'It might explain why you are so hostile. I do not believe I have ever seen you smile or utter a glad word.'
'What reason do I have?' She eyed him scornfully. 'You come here to complain of my geese, my livelihood, and expect me to smile you fair.'
'No,' he answered dryly. 'I did not expect you to "smile me fair". I expected you to behave exactly as you are.'
Colour tinted her creamy skin and her eyelids narrowed. 'So then, my lord Rolf, do you truly desire to know what I think?' She moved closer as she spoke, and now she unpinned the two brooches securing her overgarment in place. It puddled in the rushes at her feet, plain brown fabric enlivened by a braided border of scarlet, green and gold. She pulled off her kerchief and shook down her long, flaxen hair, and her eyes held his, golden-green, clear as mead and set beneath finely sketched tawny brows.
The attraction had always been there, as dangerously beautiful as the blade of a well-honed knife. Once her flaxen hair had reminded him of his ache for Ailith when he was in a strange country. Now it made him ache for the freedom to tumble a woman out of lust with no thought beyond the present. Off came tunic and shift, hose and shoes. Her figure was firm and lithe, her shape sleeker than Ailith's. She took his hands, placed them over her breasts, drew them down to her waist, and held them there while she straddled him upon the bed of piled skins. Uttering a soft groan, Rolf yielded to her demands, and was soon making demands of his own, his conscience cast aside with the same rapid urgency as his clothes. And as they thrust against each other with the fierce greed of lust, he discovered that she was right. For the moment he did not care what he destroyed.
'Where's Ben?' Julitta demanded. She could not pronounce his full name and so had shortened it to the one which only his immediate family were privileged to use.
Ailith was kneading enriched dough to make a spiced fruit bun, but now she stopped and regarded the small curly red head at her side with exasperation. Felice's son had become Julitta's talisman. She followed him everywhere, demanding his attention, wanting him to play with her. The boy had excellent manners, and despite a slightly martyred air, also possessed exceptional patience. Rolf's instinct was right; Benedict de Remy would make an admirable son-in-law. The pity was that he was going to marry him to the wrong daughter.
'He's gone with your papa and uncle Aubert to look at the horses,' Ailith replied and scattered some more flour on the trestle. The large, spiced fruit bun was a tradition that had been handed down in her family from the time of her great-grandmother, each woman teaching her daughter so that the fragrant, wheaten delicacy should gladden the table at every feast and holy day. Julitta, however, was a less than apt pupil. It was not that the child was incapable — she had nimble fingers and an equally nimble brain – it was just that, to Ailith's chagrin, she was not in the least interested.
'Will he be back soon?' Julitta prodded her finger into her own small lump of dough and watched it slowly spring back into shape.
'I expect so.'
'Can I go and look for him when I've done this?'
Ailith pummelled the main batch of dough. 'You know what happened the other day with Inga's geese. I want you to stay here with me,'
'But I don't want to stay!' Julitta's hyssop-blue eyes darkened stormily and she stamped her small foot. 'I hate making bread.'
'You cannot always have the world for the asking,' Ailith retorted with asperity. 'The sooner you learn it, the better.'
Julitta scowled ferociously at her mother. Her bottom lip pouted and she attacked the spiced dough with a clenched fist. 'Hate it, hate it,' she repeated with each smack.
Ailith sighed. 'What am I going to do with you?' she asked, her voice a mingling of love and exasperation.
Her daughter continued to thump the dough. Each punch sent a small ripple down the cascade of dark auburn curls. Ailith wondered guiltily if she was clipping Julitta's wings for her own peace of mind rather than for the child's good. As always she was torn both ways. She should seek to control rather than confine – but how to yield a little without letting Julitta think that she had won? Knowing Rolf only too well, she also knew his daughter.
'That looks about right.' She nodded at Julitta's lump of dough. 'Leave it to rise now, I want you to go and give these scraps to the hens. It will help them to keep on laying now that the days are growing shorter.' She took a shallow wooden dish of chopped-up cabbage leaves, stale bread and old, stiff pease pudding, and gave it to Julitta.
The child wrinkled her nose at the sight of the leavings, but after the merest hesitation to consider rebellion, took the dish with suspicious meekness. Ailith was not ignorant of the swift, calculating glance that was flashed in her direction before Julitta turned carefully away.
'And mind you don't take too long,' Ailith warned. 'Don't go outside the bailey, or I shall have to tie you to my apron with a rope.'
'I won't, Mama.' Julitta half-turned and gave her mother a smile that was as bright as a May morning — a blinding smile to dazzle the uni
nitiated.
Watching Julitta go out of the door, Ailith gnawed a pensive lower lip. It was going to be a such a fine line between how many hearts her daughter broke, and how many times her heart was broken.
Julitta emerged from the chrysalis of the kitchens and stood in the open air, blinking and absorbing her surroundings while her crumpled wings grew dry and strong, preparing her for flight.
The hens came running greedily at her first call. For a brief instant Julitta panicked, remembering the gander, but she held her ground and the moment passed. These were her mother's birds, and she had watched some of them grow from damp, warm eggs into self-important speckled hens. She gripped the edges of the wooden bowl and gave a vigorous toss. The scraps of food flew into the air and scattered far and wide, the hens scattering with them, squabbling vociferously.
She ventured further into the bailey. A playful breeze snagged at her curls and gently pushed her in the back as if urging her on. She glanced over her shoulder towards the kitchen. It had taken her no time at all to feed the hens; her mother would not expect her back inside yet. She could see Mauger grooming Apollo, a handsome grey colt which she had often fed pieces of apple, turnip, and crusts of bread.
She approached Mauger and stood watching him until he became aware of her scrutiny and raised his head.
'Shouldn't you be inside with your mother?' he asked in a voice that had overcome the trauma of early adolescence and settled into a stolid baritone.
'She said I could come outside for a while.' Julitta had already learned the advantage of telling as much of the truth as suited the circumstances without actually lying. 'Can I have a ride on him?'
'No, your father wants him prepared for someone to look at, someone important.'
'Is Apollo going away then?'
'Probably.' Mauger stepped back from his labour and blotted his brow on his forearm. His cheeks were red with exertion, making his grey eyes seem very bright. His hair was blonder than barley straw and cropped above his ears.
'Let me ride him.' Julitta gazed up at him beseechingly. 'If my papa does sell him, I'll never be able to sit on him again. Just for a minute.' She glanced over her shoulder toward the kitchens, then back to Mauger. 'Mama said I wasn't to be long.'
The Conquest Page 26
