LordoftheHunt (11 page)

Garlands of vines looped the stone archway of the bridge
over the river, marking the way to the village. Their leaves were glossy green
in the autumn sunlight. Torches were set at intervals along the road, though
they would not be lighted until night. Music and laughter drew one to the
colorful stalls even if one was feeling as morose and heavy-headed as Hugh was.

The air was balmy, the sky bright blue as carts carried
ladies and men from the keep to the fair—but not Mathilda.

She rode at his side, her yellow gown slapping his legs.
Every time he edged away, she maneuvered her horse closer.

A groom ran to take their reins when they reached the fair
grounds, on the outskirts of the village. Mathilda immediately looped her arm
in his and smiled up at him.

He glared at her. “Do not ask my opinion on anything.”

“What of my gown?” She smoothed a wrinkle only she could
see.

“Yellow makes you look…yellowish.”

She frowned. “Then I shall look for material fit to make a
better one. Have you a color you prefer?”

Hugh pursed his lips. “I like brown. Mud brown.”

Two hours later, they had two servants trailing them with armloads
of fabric and trim. None of it was brown.

“What do you think of—” she asked for the twelfth time.

“I have no opinion on thread, my lady.” Hugh yawned,
scratched his chin, and studied the stalls of the Ravenswood fair. There were
far too many, all stuffed with goods to appeal to ladies or wealthy suitors.

Mathilda held a small wooden stick with thread wrapped
around it against her breast. “I think this one will look well on this
gown—perhaps some trim will make me look less jaundiced. Send all of it to the
keep.” She made a sign to the woman who managed the stall, and tugged Hugh
along. “You need to be more conversant of a woman’s needs.”

“Adam Quintin would know about such matters.”

“Would he? I shall have to remember to invite
him
next time.” She looked up at him. “Tell me, Hugh, why aren’t you a candidate
for my hand?”

“Good lord, a man can only have so many castles. The de
Colevilles have an even dozen. One more would be excessive, wouldn’t it? Like
taking more deer than one needs to stave off hunger. Anything beyond that is
gluttony.”

“I see. Is that your opinion or the king’s?”

“The king’s. I believe William Marshal said to steer clear
of you the last time I saw him.” It was always nice to have someone on whom to
blame your actions, Hugh thought.

“And you agreed without a fight?”

“Fight? Why would I fight over something with which I am in
complete agreement. A man, if he is canny, knows how far he can extend himself.
The de Colevilles are on the verge of overextending themselves.”

“I see.”

She smiled and for a moment, he could only stare. Then he
frowned. She was naught but a combination of pleasing features. A gift from her
ancestors.

Their progress through the fair was interrupted often by men
who vied for her attention. They gave her gifts. They offered her sweetmeats,
spices, drinks.

More servants trailed them with useless fripperies.

Hugh steered her toward their horses. “May I suggest a short
rest? You must be exhausted as am I.”

To his utter surprise, she made no demur. He helped her up
into the saddle and would have turned away, but she extended her foot and
prodded him on the shoulder. “I’m not done with you, Hugh de Coleville, man
with too many castles.”

“Not done with me?” He rubbed the spot she’d tapped.

“Follow, please.” She kicked her palfrey and in a swirl of
flowing yellow skirts, cantered up the path.

Hugh mounted up and followed at a more leisurely pace, his
stomach unsettled. “I must have eaten something that disagreed with me,” he
said to his horse, patting his neck. “I’ll be in the privy as much as Adam if I
don’t watch it.”

Near the stable, Hugh dismounted and tossed the reins to a
groom. He jerked his gloves off; his hands were suddenly sweaty.

Mathilda stood on the bottom step of the keep, a smile on
her face. “Come, Hugh.” She clapped her hands and then turned away.

He followed. She dashed up the steps, across the hall, and
through an arch. No suitors turned to watch her progress, for most were still
in the village, unaware the quarry had escaped.

The arch led to the lower levels. They were dark, chilly,
and silent. They smelled of harvest, sacks of grain, racks of apples, and
bunches of hanging herbs.

Where had she gone? His mouth was dry. He licked his lips.
“My lady?” he said softly.

“Hugh.” He heard her whisper from his right.

He entered a storage room filled with sacks of grain. She
was a swirl of sunlight in the dim chamber. He feigned a yawn.

“You are bored, my lord?” She pulled off her headcovering
and slowly shook out her hair. The gauzy veil drifted to the ground. She put
her hands to her laces.

“What are you doing?” He took a step back, suddenly feeling
as if he were a stag being forced down a path to his doom.

Her laces made a hissing sound as she whipped them open.
“I’m seducing you.”

“Why?” He licked his lips again as she peeled her overgown
off her shoulders, then down her hips to pool at her feet. She stepped daintily
out of the golden pile as if stepping from her bath. The vision caused his
whole body to clench. His palms were sweaty again. “Why?” he repeated.

She sighed and bent down. She lifted her hem and drew her
loose linen gown up her body, revealing her legs, hips, belly, and breasts in a
slow journey that boiled his blood.

“You are very stupid, Hugh, if you cannot figure it out.
Think of me as one of your clever riddles.”

He clenched and unclenched his fists. She dropped the gown
to the floor.

“Do you like what you see?” she asked, hands at her side.

He shrugged. “You’re a bit plump in the middle.”

She skimmed her fingers across her smooth belly and laughed.
It was a sound that ran like a whip across his senses. “Yellowish and fat?”

“This is madness,” he said. But in three strides he was on
her. He scooped her into his arms and thrust her back onto the feed sacks. “No
one seduces me.”

He covered her face with kisses, finally claimed her mouth,
while he held her captive against the rough grain sacks. She held his head and
moaned, arching against him.

He kissed down the center of her body, learned the valley of
her breasts, the mound of her belly, the silky hair and skin between her
thighs. She gripped his hair and cried out as he kissed her most intimate
places. Then she planted her feet on his shoulders and arched again and again
to his ministrations, finally crying out in ecstasy.

Just as suddenly, she fell still. Her arms dropped away, her
eyes closed. Hugh backed up, gently placing her legs down over the edge of the
sacks. He ran a hand over his face and took several deep breaths. She was a
golden angel.

“What have I done?” he said.

Her eyes opened. She smiled at him. “You have granted my
second deepest desire.”

A blade of hot lust twisted his insides. “Second?”

Then she sat up and put out her arms. “Come to me, Hugh.”

His legs seemed to belong to someone else as he granted her
wish. She embraced him, stroking her hands up and down his back. Then she
tugged up his tunic and reached beneath the cloth for the lacings at his waist.
Her fingertips skimmed his hard cock. “This is the first,” she whispered.

He gripped her wrists and shook his head. “We cannot do
this. I’m Adam Quintin’s friend. I’ll have trouble enough facing him with what
little—”

“Little?” She flexed her wrists and tried to jerk from his
hold.

“Aye. We cannot compound what has surely been naught but a
momentary madness.”

She stared at him, her eyes great, luminous pools in the
half-light. “It is madness to think we can forget this moment. I have wanted
this since last we met at court. It is madness to think we can go back to what
was.”

He pulled away from her and adjusted his clothing. “I can go
back. When I walk away. It is forgotten.
You
are forgotten.”

She slipped off the grain sacks. She walked past him to her
clothing. “Then walk away, Hugh de Coleville, walk away.”

The air seemed heavy and close as he strode back through the
storerooms toward the steps up to the hall. With some luck, no one had seen
them descend here. With any luck he could put these moments from his mind.

He hadn’t really cheated his friend of anything. After all,
they’d not had intercourse. What they’d done didn’t really count.

* * * * *

Adam did as the other suitors did, watched Mathilda wander
the fair with Hugh. When she rode off with him, Adam heaved a sigh of relief
that he need not worry another would woo her away.

He circled the fair grounds. At one wooden board, several of
his men drank with Roger’s. They looked reasonably companionable. He passed a
string of horses.

Francis de Coucy was leaving the temporary stable, but did
not ride for the castle. He wheeled his horse and in moments, had entered the
forest by a deer path.

“Now where the devil is he going?” Adam grabbed his reins
and tossed a coin to the man who watched the beasts.

He followed Francis along the cool, leafy path. He knew it
from boyhood. Francis proved easy to follow.

Eventually, to Adam’s consternation, Francis circled back to
an old verderer’s cottage, now rebuilt into a more substantial building. The
lodge was within the trees, not a stone’s throw from the village. Francis could
have walked here in but a few minutes. Why the evasion?

Adam pulled up his horse and looped the reins over a low
branch. He continued to the cottage on foot. He circled the building, keeping
to the trees. Francis’ mount stood tethered behind the lodge. Adam dropped to a
crouch and used a deadfall to move to a shuttered window in the front.

A murmur of voices told him Francis had met someone. Adam
searched around for cover so he could get close enough to hear the
conversation.

There was nothing.

* * * * *

Joan folded the rich bronze gown into a small bundle and
took it to Edwina at the wash house. She saw her friend laboring under a great
armload of wood. “Edwina! You’ll hurt yourself. Let me.” She cast her bundle to
the floor and took the wood. “Where’s Del?”

Edwina puffed out a long breath and dusted off her hands. “I
cannot find the man. He must be at the fair and the devil take him for leaving
me with this.” She shot out a hand to the mounds of linens to be washed. Many
women stirred boiling pots and the shed was thick with steam, but there was
only one other man to keep the fires burning. “I’ll not ask the women to carry
wood if I’m not willin’ to do so myself.”

Without a word, Joan fed the fires beneath several pots
nodding to each of the laundresses. When the fuel pile was exhausted, she went
with Edwina to the mountain of wood behind the shed. As she picked up a piece
of wood it slipped from her fingers, scraping the skin and leaving a sliver
protruding from her palm.

Edwina pulled her to the wood pile and propped her ample
buttocks on a stump, while Joan sat on another beside her. They had often sat
thusly on a fine evening, enjoying the ambient warmth of the laundry shed, and
talking of the day. As Edwina worked at the sliver, Joan’s eyes welled with
tears.

One dropped on her skirt.

“Joan! Ye’re crying! What ails ye?” Edwina hugged her hard
to her soft bosom.

“I’m not crying.” Joan dashed away a tear. “My hand hurts.”

“Ye’ve been bitten by dogs, fallen out of trees, skinned yer
knees on yonder bailey cobbles, and ne’er shed a tear. Now, what is it?”

Joan watched her friend probe the remaining specks from her
palm. Had she come to this place to ask Edwina’s advice? Or had she come for
the comfort of Edwina’s simple presence whilst the more complicated personages
roamed the fair?

“It seems I’ve made a confusion of my life,” Joan finally
said. “And if I weep, it is in wont of a friend.”

Edwina picked out the last speck of the sliver and patted
Joan’s hand. “Ye’ll always have a friend here. There’s those who love ye right
under yer nose. They’re not in the keep, I fear, only here.”

Joan looked up at the great towers of Ravenswood. “She was
my friend at one time, was she not?”

“She was only eight when ye arrived. She followed ye
ever’where like a pup. ‘Twas she who worshipped ye then. She’s just grown
enamored of her own importance. And it may be she is a touch jealous of ye.”

“Jealous?”

“Aye.” Edwina stood up and plucked her sweat-dampened gown
from her breasts, fanning herself in the mild autumn air. “Ye took the young
lord’s attentions. Ye drew that other one…the one that wrestled Quintin.”

“De Harcourt,” Joan said softly.

“Aye. And spineless she was to let her father banish ye from
the hall. We all expected she would make Lord Guy see reason, but she dint.”

The hurt of Mathilda’s rejection felt like a sliver in her
heart. “I cannot sit here wallowing in self-pity. Let me fetch some more wood
for you.”

“I’ll see to it,” said the man who worked with Del.

“Aye, be off and buy yerself a few ribbons at the fair.”

“I’ve no desire for ribbons. I have one.”

“One! Our lady must ‘ave a dozen, a score, even.” Edwina dug
in her bosom and pulled out a small purse suspended about her neck. She shook
out a penny. “Buy yerself a scarlet ribbon.”

Joan smiled. “I’ll buy us each a scarlet ribbon.” She kissed
the laundress on her round cheeks. “And I’ll see if Ivo has aught he needs
whilst I’m about it.”

* * * * *

Adam waited less than a quarter hour before the lodge door
banged open. He flattened himself in the grass. The red-haired Oswald strode
out of the cottage, trailed by Francis. For one brief moment, Adam thought
Oswald’s gaze drifted over him, and he sucked in his breath and willed himself
as still as a hare gone to ground.