Chosen for the Marriage Bed (17 page)

Richard kept his fingers tightly around her wrist and watched the surge of people, forcing his brain into icy calm. It would require more luck than skill to get them out of this without blood shed.

‘Sir John lives. But is injured—his arm or shoulder, I think,’ Robert reported as he joined them. ‘At least he’s on his feet.’

‘Right. Then there’s hope for us.’ Richard picked up the cloak and cast it round Elizabeth’s shoulders. It fell to cover her from shoulder to ankle, to cover her unconventional appearance. He pulled the hat firmer on to her head. Then pushed her to stand behind Robert, as a young squire might wait behind his lord.

‘Don’t say a word. Don’t move until I tell you. Try to be in visible.’ He snarled the words, hoping that the venom might encourage his wife to obey him. ‘If you value your life or your freedom, you’ll do as I say. Or even if you value mine.’ He ignored the quick reaction, the stiffening under his hands as she absorbed his words. There was no time for niceties. ‘You are Robert’s squire and will wait behind him in silent service. Keep your eyes down, your face in shadow, your mouth closed.’

Not waiting to see if she would comply, he spun around. A group of soldiers in de Lacy livery were covering the ground at a run, some with drawn swords. They had accurately judged the direction of the arrow. Praying their luck would hold, Richard plucked up the longbow, the arrow, and thrust them both into David’s hand.

‘What…?’

‘Play the role as if you life depended on it. Which it might very well do. A foolish boy, lacking discipline, judgement and ability with a bow. A lad who deserves a harsh beating for his stupidity this day.’ Which was enough of a hint. David immediately fell into an arrogant posture and a suitably sullen expression. ‘Let’s pray your uncle is un willing to push the matter beyond the obvious when he sees who’s involved. If you ever had ambitions to be a mummer, now’s the time.’

Richard brushed the dust from his own tunic, ran a hand through disordered hair and snatched at the veneer of confidence and authority that threatened to be overcome by the whole ridiculous situation. Praying that Elizabeth, his superbly unpredictable wife with a commendable passion for vengeance, however ill timed it might be, would remain silent, he turned with a stern expression to face de Lacy wrath.

‘Malinder!’ Sir John himself approached the little group on the hill, breathing heavily from his exertions. Blood stained the sleeve of his tunic and dripped from his fingers. ‘What in God’s name? Would you endanger another de Lacy life in so public a manner? When all the world and his wife is here to stand witness?’ He raised a hand to signal his men-at-arms to move forwards and surround the culprit.

‘Sir John… What can I say?’ Richard also groped for any latent talent for acting. A heart felt apology, a touch of wry humour, a dash of anger. ‘Thank God you’re not harmed.’

‘No thanks to you.’ Sir John’s fist clenched on his sword hilt.

‘Not guilty, my lord.’ Lord Richard spread his hands in uneasy regret. ‘Here’s your culprit.’ He grasped David none too gently by the arm and yanked him forwards to face his uncle.

‘David!’ Sir John’s face reddened under a surge of blood as he found himself facing his sulky nephew. ‘David?’ His voice harsh with disbelief.

Sullen, full of misplaced confidence, David cocked his head, a youthful braggart. ‘I was only practising. I would take my turn at the butts and not disgrace the de Lacy name against the Glamorgan archers.’

‘You fired into the crowd?’

An insolent shrug.

‘You fool! You put an arrow through me!’

‘It was an accident. As I said, I was practising.’ He cast a careless eye over his uncle’s bloody garments. ‘I think you’re not badly hurt, sir.’

There was an intake of breath at such defiance and Sir John looked ready to explode. Richard stepped in with perfect timing. ‘Practising? In a crowd of people? Aiming at a buzzard flying overhead, I suppose. Where did you expect the arrow to fall? You could have killed anyone.’

‘I didn’t think.’ The sullen cloud thickened. David hunched a shoulder. ‘I am a de Lacy. I am not answerable to you, Malinder, for my actions!’

‘You appear not to be answerable to anyone.’ Richard took on the mantle of strict guardian. He stared down his fine nose with superb and splendid disgust at the unrepentant young man and sliced at him with all the sharp precision of a boning knife. ‘As you are living under my roof, at the request of your sister, whose wishes and happiness are my first priority, you’ll accept my authority and my judgement. I’ll brook no such disobedience or in discipline.’ Without warning he lifted his hand and dealt the lad a brisk cuff to the side of the head. It knocked David to the floor, more out of surprise than force, but with the desired effect. ‘I’ve rarely seen such a display of thoughtless stupidity from one who would aspire to a knighthood. You should have been disciplined long ago. You could have had blood on your hands this day.’

‘But I didn’t.’ David sat in the dust, managing a curl of his lip.

‘No, you didn’t. Fortune smiled on you, a situation you did not deserve. Sir John is only wounded. Get up.’

David did so, in undignified discomfiture, yet still as un gracious and unreasoning as before.

‘Sir John could have you beaten to within an inch of your life. As it is, you’ve made us the object of speculation. We’ll be the talk of every family the length and breadth of the March.’ Richard spared him one final contemptuous glance, then turned to de Lacy. ‘My apologies again, Sir John. Perhaps you wish to take him to task yourself.’ Hoping he had done enough to allay all suspicions.

‘Yes…well.’ Sir John had remained a silent witness of the scene. Now he ad dressed himself curtly to Richard, but without the previous edge of aggression. ‘There’s no need, I think. He’s young and will learn his lesson.’ He eyed his nephew dispassionately enough.

Richard exhaled slowly, carefully, conscious as he had been through out of Elizabeth’s simmering fury behind him, barely contained. He could sense it in the air, taste it, as he could sense and taste the passion in her when he took her in his arms and kissed her into shivering compliance. How could John de Lacy not be aware of so much emotion around him? Yet Sir John had taken no account of the apparently in significant figure, cloaked and eyes downcast, behind Robert Malinder’s large figure. ‘You need care, my lord.’ Richard gestured. ‘Your arm still bleeds.’

‘A flesh wound,’ Sir John answered curtly as he eyed David. ‘It is high time you returned to Talgarth. Some self-discipline and good manners are required as well as training before you step into my shoes.’ Then he inclined his head in final recognition of the Malinders and strode off back down the hill to where the archery contest had at last got under way, his retainers following.

David hung his head, scuffing his feet in the dust until his uncle had vanished into the crowd. ‘Well? Did we do it?’ he murmured, not yet looking up, but his grin wide.

‘I think we did. You were magnificently disreputable through out!’ Richard managed a smile as he picked up the of fending long bow and arrows again. ‘You missed your calling. I owe you much and stand in your debt. Thankfully, you have a hard head!’

David laughed aloud, relieving the tension.

And that, Richard thought, as he disguised a sigh of relief, was that. Or at least until he took Elizabeth home and faced her wrath.

At Ledenshall, Elizabeth abandoned the cloak, suffocating in its folds, and the velvet hat, but she still wore Richard’s tunic and hose. As the few short miles had passed on their silent and edgy return journey, she had begun to review her actions. Not that she regretted them. She could not! But the dangers attached to such public and provocative behaviour had been made very obvious. Without the intercession of her husband and brother, things might have gone very differently. Particularly for Richard, in spite of all her careful planning. Yet she was still not of a mind to repent.

‘I can’t think what to say to you.’ Richard’s voice held no condemnation, she realised, just a weary acceptance that served to increase her guilt.

‘There’s nothing that you can say. I know what you are all thinking.’ She raised her chin. ‘But if you had not stopped me, Lewis would have been avenged.’

‘And you would have been hauled off in chains with the prospect of a rope around your neck. I think we shall not come off scot free, as it is. Too many people saw the situation. No one intervened or was willing to point the finger as Sir John was apparently fooled by our charade, but we shall hear talk. That the archer was not David de Lacy, but the Lady of Ledenshall in disguise.’

‘Sybil de Lacy got her revenge with a knife to the heart of her enemy!’

‘You
are not Sybil de Lacy! And she, by God—whoever Sybil de Lacy might be—’ Richard thundered his fist against the table in utter frustration ‘—should have known better! I suppose she became the talk of the March as well.’

It was true. She had been wrong. She had allowed raw emotion to rule her actions. The guilt intensified, but she would not retreat. ‘Let them talk,’ she announced. ‘I have nothing more to say. I’ll leave you to your destruction of my morals, my family and my character. To your squeamish morality. I’m not in a mood for repentance.’ And, then on a final thought, ‘No one has bothered to enquire about my state of health, after being dragged to the floor!’

‘You deserved it.’ Sympathy was entirely absent from her husband’s reply.

If it was possible to flounce in tunic, hose and boots, Elizabeth did.

It could not be put off longer. Giving her temper time to cool, and his, Richard braced his shoulders and followed Elizabeth. She had exchanged her borrowed attire, as if suddenly finding it unseemly, an uncomfortable memory of the day, to cast it carelessly on the bed. Standing by the window of her chamber in a loose robe, she was now clearly waiting for him. Richard could read her resistance in every taut line of shoulder and spine, of raised chin.

Although she chose not to face him, Elizabeth spoke before he had even closed the door. ‘Don’t say it. I know I should not. I know I should have weighed the personal sat is faction against the consequences—and I did not.’ Her voice hesitated on what might have been evidence of regret. ‘But still I wish I had succeeded.’

Richard remained at a distance, his back against the door, his voice remarkably cool and at odds with the temper that still snapped at him. ‘Then we should all have been in the mire. Did you actually consider the political repercussions of your assassination? With so many lords present with their retainers, with war on their lips and in their hearts, the death of de Lacy with an arrow through his heart could have been the flame to light the conflagration. Bishop’s Pyon could have been recorded as the only Midsummer Fair ever to disintegrate into a total blood bath—with de Lacys and Malinders at the centre of it. My blood runs cold to think of it.’

Elizabeth kept her back to him. ‘All I could think of was Lewis. I was wrong.’

Which confession was momentous in itself. Richard allowed his thoughts to drift a little. She looked alone and so sad. So his wife had borrowed Lewis’s clothes, had she, when she had wished to run wild as a girl? Until Philip had persuaded her otherwise with the strength of his arm, as Richard could well believe. The anger that had simmered all afternoon re treated a little and he felt a need to lift some of the weight from her shoulders. She had been wrong—almost disastrously so—but he under stood her motivation and the pain that drove her.

Quietly he came up behind her. Put his arms around her to draw her back against him as she stared out into the twilight. After an initial tensing of her muscles, she leaned back against him with a little sigh.

‘I thought you would be so angry.’ Her voice was tight from mortification.

‘I am angry. But it seems that there is no more I can say that you do not already know. What point in my lashing you with words if you can do the job quite well yourself? Nor is there anything I can do other than rely on the return of your good sense—except lock you up or not take my eyes off you for a second.’ He rested his chin against her hair, noticing in consequentially as he did so that it was growing, thick and dark. It took no effort to turn to rub his cheek against it with an un wit ting little murmur of pleasure. ‘Do you realise that some at the Fair have already named you Malinder’s Black Vixen?’ he asked. He did not know whether to be amused or appalled at his wife’s sudden notoriety.

‘What?’ Elizabeth angled her head to look up and back.

‘Some, it would seem, saw the truth of the incident—and your dark tunic and hose… I heard the whispers as we came away.’

‘Oh.’ Elizabeth was silent, her mind turning over the day. ‘I put David in danger, didn’t I? When he took the blame.’

‘You put us all in danger. Your uncle is probably at this very minute back at Talgarth, re playing the events in his head, rearranging all the details that don’t quite fit the overall impression. Why we should all have been standing on the hill, watching David loose an arrow at his uncle, I have no idea! Sir John will doubtless come to the conclusion that I put David up to it. A family conspiracy, if you will, a de Lacy to kill a de Lacy. Now there would be a fine thing.’ Then he remembered. Tightened his arms around her as he felt her strain against his hold. ‘Except that such an eventuality has already happened with Lewis. Forgive me, Elizabeth. I did not intend to be crass.’

She sighed against him, relaxing again.

‘I am sorry.’ It was the barest whisper, but heart felt for all that.

‘I know. I knew that you would be, as soon as you allowed your hard head to rule your heart.’

When she accepted this in silence he murmured against her ear, ‘You must not do it again—or anything to harm Sir John or compromise our position. A spark is all that is needed to engulf the March in flames.’

‘I just wanted to do some thing… To make him suffer as Lewis had suffered. And you would not…’

Richard chose not to resurrect all the old hurt, but remained silent for some time, his arms around her, wrapping her in warmth and comfort. Her head rested on his shoulder as he felt the tensions of the day ebb from her.