Chosen for the Marriage Bed (18 page)

‘You have to promise me, Elizabeth.’

‘Very well.’

‘Say it.’

‘I promise that I will do nothing to endanger Sir John’s life.’

‘Even if you will do nothing to save it.’

A soft huff answered him, which might have been agreement. ‘And I promise to do nothing to compromise your honour. Will that do it?’

‘It’s enough. What a problem you are to me!’

‘Mmm. And I borrowed your clothes.’

He turned her round with careful hands, but did not release her. ‘You are a brave woman, Penthesilea. A true Amazon, with or without your clothes. But next time leave the longbow at home.’ Then on a sudden thought, his knuckles brushing along her cheek bone. ‘Did I hurt you? It was the only thing I could think to do.’

Elizabeth sighed, turning her face into his palm that cupped her cheek so perfectly. It healed her heart that he should remember, and care. He might not love her, but this softness was more than she could ever have dreamed of and she was grateful.

‘No. Nothing but a bruise or two. Perhaps I deserve that you had,’ she replied with bitter acceptance.

‘Never that.’ And Richard kissed her, softly, lingeringly.

At Talgarth, Nicholas Capel breathed deep, donned his black robe and trained his concentration on to the matter at hand.

The cards before him were Italian in origin, their colours bright with power. The Fool. The Empress. The Hanged Man. The Wheel of Fortune. Now, under his hands, they would work for Nicholas Capel. He scanned the chart at his right hand. Knowing the exact moment of Elizabeth’s birth, there had been no difficulty in his drawing up of her horoscope. Now he would look more closely into her destiny. Into his mind he brought the image he had seen in his crystal. Richard Malinder and Elizabeth de Lacy standing face to face, hands entwined, a kiss a breath away. Sharp edged, their bodies melded, as their lips met, as he had bound the wax figures. Satisfied, Capel considered his question.

‘Does she carry the Malinder heir?’

A brief pause. His breath barely disturbed the candle at his elbow.

‘Will the child be a son?’

One by one he reversed the cards, revealing their message. His eyes widened, scanning from one to the other.

‘Yes, and yes!’

He allowed his fingers to stroke delicately over the surface of each one as if to draw the power from them for himself. The time was right to act. If Elizabeth was fertile, if she already carried a male child as the cards foretold, then all was in place for Malinder to die. Capel blew out the candle. So would Malinder’s life be snuffed out.

Nicholas Capel smiled.

Chapter Fourteen

C
oins were exchanging hands between Richard and a cattle drover as Robert walked into the Great Hall at Ledenshall. ‘Who was that?’

‘A drover from Pembridge,’ Richard replied thoughtfully. ‘A large party of Welsh raiders on the move, he thinks. I suppose I should go and look. A show of force will not come amiss.’

And if nothing else, it would take his mind off the vicious catastrophe. At Northampton, there had been a battle, a desperate clash of arms in which York’s army had emerged victorious. King Henry, outmanoeuvred and outnumbered, was now a prisoner in Yorkist hands, his wife and son on the run for their lives. The prospect of the Duke of York becoming King of England haunted Richard’s every sleeping and waking moment.

They traversed the local roads with a tight, well-disciplined escort. Nothing. All quiet.

‘A figment of our drover’s drunken imagination, I suppose,’ Richard remarked finally. Rain was beginning to fall and the banked clouds in the west threatened more to come. ‘Home, I think. Nothing to be gained by staying out in this. The Welsh are probably long gone if they were here at all.’ Yet Richard frowned as uneasy suspicion, almost a premonition, played along his spine. Perhaps it was just too quiet. At a signal the escort pushed their horses into a steady trot along the road.

Ahead, moving slowly towards them, a party of travellers emerged from the murk with supply wagons, a small herd of cattle, a motley array of dogs. It was not the best of places for the two converging bodies to pass as the road narrowed where trees had been allowed to encroach and overhang, bushes thickening the under growth. Richard signalled his force to halt and pull aside, urging their horses into the thickets on either side to allow the travellers to pass.

The cattle plodded on with lowered heads and frustrating slowness. Until a fierce barking broke out from the undergrowth to their left. Then a sharp yelp of pain, followed immediately by a deluge of noise, as deafening as hounds on the scent, as the rest of the motley pack abandoned their guard duties and rushed to support their suffering fellow.

‘Beware! Ambush! Watch the trees!’ Richard raised his voice above the mayhem as recognition blasted through his mind. Why had it taken him so long to see what was happening? Figures on horse back emerged through the trees on both sides of the road whilst arrows from short bows began to fall amongst them as softly as the rain.

There was no room for either attackers or attacked to take up positions on the road as the cattle surged and pushed amongst them. Seeing this, at a silent signal, those who had placed the ambush abandoned any formal plan and withdrew back into the trees. ‘That way.’ Richard waved his cousin to the right as he drew his sword and plunged into the trees on the left. The soldiers divided into two parties and followed behind, crashing into the dense under growth with shouts and the thud of hooves.

And then it was over as quickly as it began. Agile and light of foot, impossible to catch in the over grown thickets, the ponies and their riders melted away through the dense woodland, leaving Richard no choice but to signal his men back to the road. One of the drovers had taken an arrow through his arm, one of the men-at-arms in the shoulder above his leather jack, neither serious.

‘Your Welsh raiders, I suppose. Well, we managed to stop one of them at least.’ As they re grouped to push on home, Robert pulled aside into the under brush, then dismounted to turn over a body, so far over looked. ‘No livery or emblem, so must be Welsh.’ Richard joined him, to kneel by the body.

Dark haired, eyes dulled and half-closed in death, the raider was tall and well formed, unlike the usual wiry build of the Welsh.

‘I don’t know him,’ Richard stated.

He would have pushed to his feet when his attention was snagged by a glint of gold. The man’s poignard, still attached to his sword belt in a tooled leather scabbard, the hilt highly decorative and chased, set with semi-precious stones, Italian, perhaps, with finely wrought hand guards. Richard bent again, unfastened the fine blade. A memorable piece and valuable far beyond the dagger of any minor knight. Or a Welsh raider.

‘What do you think, Rob?’ The Malinder troop was once more under way as Richard let the series of events trickle through his mind.

‘I don’t know.’ Robert’s grimace expressed his suspicions. ‘A chance attack by opportunist thieves?’

‘I think not.’ Richard’s face was grim as he bent to avoid another over hanging branch. He looked at the dagger, tossed it in his hand, the jewels glowing in the wet. Definitely not one of a common thief. ‘It was a large force, care fully hidden in a most advantageous place. A true ambush rather than a chance en counter. But whether we or a herd of cattle were the main target…’

‘I know where I’d put my money!’

‘I wouldn’t take the bet. Now, if I were to discover the identity of the owner of this fine weapon…’ Richard tucked it into his boot.

‘I’d say someone meant you harm, cousin.’

‘So would I.’

Richard kicked his stallion into a canter. He would consider it later. When he had time to think. But the unease that this was no chance attack grew. Someone sought his death. Not by chance, but with deliberate intent.

Elizabeth, too, was unsettled.

Richard was uncommunicative, his temper on a knife edge, his patience sparse. It nagged at Elizabeth. Something had happened that he wasn’t telling her. She knew of the defeat of the King at Northampton, of course, and of his subsequent. That was enough to put a scowl on Richard’s face, having York in the ascendant. And perhaps the tensions between them had not quite gone away since her attempt to put an arrow through the black heart of her uncle. But there was some thing else. Richard was ferociously preoccupied, so much so that it was like living with a permanent thunder-cloud.

So Elizabeth was unhappy.

It had come to her of late that there was one possibility within her domain that could jolt her lord out of his edgy mood—if he had an heir to fight for, a future to consider not just for himself, but for a son to carry on the Malinder name. It was time she quickened, hence the little bag of walnuts tucked into her belt, since all clever women knew that to carry a walnut in its shell would aid her fertility. It also explained the sprinkle of poppy seeds in her wine. It was simply a matter of time.

As for Richard’s part in this plan, she could not fault him. He showed no reluctance to come to her bed. He wanted her. His virility was clear enough. But some thing was missing, a warmth, an attentiveness. There was a lack of involvement despite his in variable politeness. And that was the problem. Where he had once taken her with searing passion, some times with humour, always with consideration for her own pleasure, now he was…well, distant. He would kiss her and hold her and take her in physical union—but it was as if he held his thoughts and re actions in check. As if he feared laying himself open to her by saying too much or showing too much emotion. And from his thoughts and concerns, from the dreams that troubled his sleep and the worries that dug a line between his brows, he blocked her out entirely. Sometimes when his physical needs were sated, he left her, without explanation, to go to his own bedchamber.

Which might not have mattered to the Elizabeth de Lacy who had come from Llanwardine as an unwanted bride. That Elizabeth had entertained no illusion over the marriage other than as a pragmatic arrangement. But it mattered now. Filling a bowl of fragrant herbs to aid calmness of mind, Elizabeth crushed the lavender stalks between her palms as she separated them from their dried flower-heads. Stealthily, on silent feet, unsought and unwanted, love had crept up on her and ambushed her, much as the pungent scent now filled her senses. She remembered admitting it, reluctantly, the day Richard had paid his debt on her victory at the archery butts. Since then love for him, strong and dominant, had imperceptibly stolen in, to fill every little space in her heart and mind so that she could not escape it. It was not just his handsome face or his magnificent body. Not just his care of her, his endless support when she had been grief-stricken over Lewis’s death or driven to mindless stupidity against his murderer. Not just his honesty, his sense of justice. Nor his ability to grasp a crisis and turn it to his own advantage. She recalled the near-disaster at the Midsummer Fair with a shudder of horror. Nor even his amazing willingness to let her cry out her grief, soaking his tunic, without a thoroughly masculine with drawal into embarrassment.

So what was it? She did not know. All she knew was that she loved him. His hard-muscled body combined with his gentle touch. Or the fast race of hands and mouth that set her aflame. He did not love her, of course. Elizabeth’s fists tightened further around the bruised stems. But she missed the man who had talked to her. Laughed with her. Awoken her body to a pleasure she could never have guessed at.

‘Damn the man!’ Elizabeth muttered. She missed the close intimacy that she had begun to take for granted. And her heart ached that Richard should be unhappy whilst she was unable to do anything to help him. How could she when he would not talk to her? Elizabeth ached for her failure to break through the shell of his introspection. Gwladys, lady of all virtues and all talents, would have soothed him with soft words and elegant kisses!

Even now Richard was away from home. He had taken to riding round the Malinder lands, not bothering to tell her where he was going or why. She missed him. She was lonely without him. And desperately restless, for some reason she could not fathom.

Which drove her to make a decision. She would go to Bishop’s Pyon. How could Richard object to that? For some reason—again that restlessness—she had a need to return to the place where she had spent her childhood years.

‘I shall go to Bishop’s Pyon,’ she informed Mistress Bringsty. ‘And don’t tell me that Richard would not approve. Richard is not here to approve or disapprove. I shall go.’ And Elizabeth felt a guilty pleasure in her disobedience.

As Ledenshall finally came into view, Richard found it difficult to found it difficult to extricate himself from the dark cloud that seemed to have en gulfed him for days. If only it were simply the imprisonment and mental state of the King. True, Henry was past knowing his own name, and his son had yet to reach ten years. There seemed to be nothing to bar the path between the Duke of York and the throne. Could he ever give his allegiance to the Duke of York as King of England? Never! Not this side of the grave or beyond! But for now that was not his main concern. The repercussions of the conflict in the March were far more immediate, where law and order had disintegrated alarmingly. Where, in his own lands, safety and security could no longer be guar an teed.

His gut clenched and he was forced to bite down on the nausea that rose, bitter as bile, as he recalled the scene he and his men had just left. That he had been unable to prevent. The tumbled bodies of a party of innocent travellers, cast into the ditch beside the road. The blood and tangled limbs, women and children as well as their menfolk. Robbed, stripped. Slaughtered. The worthless waste of it all. He had not been there this time when the robbers had struck, so the travellers had paid with their lives. Responsibility pressed heavily on his shoulders.

What if Elizabeth had fallen prey to such vicious de spoilers? Richard quickly thrust the vile thought away.

As for the attack by the Welsh raiders… Was it a chance en counter? Or was it a well-laid ambush where the undergrowth encroached on the narrow track, an ambush inadvertently spoiled by the arrival of a herd of cattle? Had he been the target, and if so, whose gold had paid the raiders?

One name persisted in his mind.

But there was no way of knowing, so what purpose in allowing it to sour his mood? Richard cursed himself for a fool. He should have put it all aside days ago. There was Ledenshall before him, familiar, welcoming, and Richard felt a lightening of his spirit, acknowledging that he had allowed himself to be distracted for too long. Better to put aside his fears for the future, hold firm to his authority in the March, and simply wait for events in London to unfold. His own deep reservations over the future king would not affect the clash between York and Lancaster one jot.

First, before anything, he must talk to Elizabeth. As he should have done weeks ago.

A gaudy pheasant rose to wing from the grass verge, causing his stallion to snort and sidestep. As if the russet colouring of the bird had triggered a memory, Richard’s mind slid to Gwladys. He could think of no two women more different from each other than Elizabeth and Gwladys. One so beautiful as to steal his breath. The other…

But what a disaster his marriage to Gwladys had turned out to be. Racked by inexplicable fears and nerves that had nothing to do with reality, Gwladys had watched him as a rabbit watched a circling buzzard. Feared him, feared all men perhaps. Had certainly feared and rejected intimate relations between a man and his wife. Bedding her had been a nightmare of an experience for both of them. No matter how gentle, how slow and considerate he had been, despite his own youth and in experience, Gwladys could hardly bear to have him touch her hand without shivering in distaste, shutting herself away in her own rooms with need le work and music and her prayers. Her connection with his people at Ledenshall was reduced to a minimum. She was as lovely as the gilded statue of the Virgin in the chapel, and just as lacking in animation with her empty smile and blank eyes. Gwladys remained cold and unresponsive. It had been much like bedding a stone statue, Richard recalled, Gwladys cowering against the pillows, the linen clutched to her throat. It would have been laughable if not so painful a memory.

Now Elizabeth was neither cold nor unresponsive. Elizabeth did not shrink from his touch, even when it was only fingertip to fingertip. What a complex woman she had proved to be. Strong-minded, out spoken to an alarming degree, but so vulnerable, touched by the sadness of her past and the cruel ties of the present. Gwladys had been beautiful, but Elizabeth… Before his mind rose a sharp image of her elegant cheek bones, those magnificent night-dark eyes now offset by silken hair in which he could wind his fingers, the softened outline of jaw and chin. Elizabeth was far from unattractive. The picture made him shiver with desire. Suddenly the need to see her, to touch her, was almost overwhelming.