Shattered Vows (4 page)

Oliver offered her his hand to help her to her place. His eyes danced. ‘Tell me, does washing in May-dew mean you don’t need to wash for the rest of the year?’

She scowled and said nothing. He had cut several neat slices of meat, and laid them out on the muslin cloth. It was yet another reminder of the gulf that existed between them. Her father would have shredded the meat, he would never have arranged slices so daintily on the muslin...

Courteously, he gestured at the meat. And Rosamund’s stomach let her down a second time, it growled like a wolf. She ground her teeth together and turned her head so she didn’t have to look at him.

‘Rosamund, eat.’ Something stroked the back of her hand. A caress? Angrily, she shrugged it away.

‘Rosamund,’ he said, softly. He took her fingers lightly between his – it was a delicate, courtly gesture, more fitted for a lady than a miller’s daughter.

She steeled herself to try and meet his eyes but it was impossible. ‘I’m surprised you want to eat with a peasant like me,’ she muttered. ‘We’ve nothing in common. We speak differently and watching me eat will probably put you in mind of a pig at a trough.’

A firm hand took hers, he pressed bread into it. ‘Your speech is as clear as a lady’s when you put your mind to it. Eat.’ Then to her intense relief, he turned his attention to the food and cut into the cheese.

Rosamund was acutely conscious of the gulf which yawned between them. Socially they were miles apart. She didn’t want to disgust him. She ate the bread and meat more slowly than she had ever eaten in her life. She copied the way he took small bites, and the way he chewed his food for longer. It was hard, for she was hungry and it seemed to take an age before she had blunted the edge of her appetite.

‘Better?’ His deep voice startled her.

Reluctantly, she put the heel of the loaf back into the saddlebag. ‘My thanks, yes. I was very hungry.’

‘So I saw.’

She shot him a sharp look, but his eyes were friendly and she relaxed. ‘I thought, for a moment, that our dream was to be shattered.’

He smiled. ‘I know you did, but it wasn’t.’

‘No.’ Returning his smile, she leaned back in the grass. He stretched out beside her and picked up a strand of her hair, idly twirling it round his forefinger. A distant bell tolled and a bee buzzed past them, lost and heading for the sea.

His lips twisted. ‘It cannot last.’

Rosamund frowned. She would have touched his face but, recalling his reaction the last time she reached out to him, she let her hand fall back.

‘We cannot live out our dream, you must know that.’ His voice was husky.

‘We have until sunset.’

‘That would be a great folly.’ His voice was kind, but firm. ‘I want to...but no.’

There was a light in his eyes that belied the firmness in his voice. Rosamund’s lips curved. ‘Want to...what, Oliver?’ Reaching up, she touched his cheek. He had high cheekbones. Beneath her fingertips she felt the slight abrasion of a growing beard. This time, he made no move to reject her, but lay quite still.

‘Oliver? What do you want? Is it this?’ Boldly, her hand slipped up and round his neck and then his mouth was on hers. It would have been impossible to say which one of them had moved to close the gap and she didn’t care. His mouth felt welcoming. Warm. His lips moved slowly and gently across hers.

Rosamund had tried to imagine this kiss. Some deep, primitive instinct had known Oliver’s kiss wouldn’t be like anyone else’s. She had known she wouldn’t shrink from the touch of Oliver’s hands on her body. But her wildest imaginings hadn’t prepared her for reality. She hadn’t had the experience to know a kiss could be like this. Purest pleasure. She had never felt anything like it.

A tingling tide – delight – was flooding her veins, and at the same time a hungry yearning sensation was centred somewhere in her stomach. She wanted to press her body closer to his, much closer. He could ease that yearning inside, it was sharp, so sharp. It felt very much like hunger...

She ran a thumb over a high cheekbone and heard him murmur something she couldn’t quite catch. She felt the weight of his long, lean body shift in the sweet spring grass. But he was drawing away. No! She wanted to feel him pushing her deep into the turf. She wanted to prolong this wondrous feeling of enchantment. She tugged at his shoulder. ‘Come back.’

‘Rosamund,’ he whispered, shaking his head. But again his eyes betrayed him. He was no longer moving away.

She smiled mistily up at him. He returned her smile and his palm cupped her face.

If she kissed his hand now, he wouldn’t reject her. She turned her head and the caress fell on his wrist. The sense of wonder increased when she saw the effect it had on his eyes.

‘They’ve gone almost blue, like the sky.’

His brow wrinkled. ‘Blue?’

‘Your eyes, I can’t tell whether they’re blue or grey.’

He held her gaze a moment longer and sat up.

‘Oliver?’ She squeezed his shoulder.

‘No more.’ He combed his fingers through his hair.

There was a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. ‘No more?’

‘You understand me. No more. I knew it would be folly to live out this dream.’ He huffed out a breath and she saw that his eyes were the colour of flint. How could she have thought them touched with blue?

She twisted a strand of hair round her finger. ‘You dislike me, I am too bold.’

‘No,’ he said, pushing to his feet and going towards the destrier.

‘What then?’

He must have enjoyed their kiss. It wouldn’t felt so moving if he hadn’t enjoyed it too.

He didn’t answer, he was glaring at the remnants of their meal, strewn about the grass. Flinging what was left into his saddlebag, he jerked on the strap to secure it.

‘You’re ashamed to have kissed a peasant maid,’ she said, getting up and going over to him.

Oliver frowned. ‘No.’

Stomach churning, she had to clench her fists to stop herself from reaching out to him. She must assume some pride. Oliver would expect it – pride meant something to those in his class. They lived on it. Rosamund had never been able to understand it, let alone afford it.

Pride was a luxury for the rich. Wasn’t it also a deadly sin? She sighed. Life was so complicated.

What mattered was that Oliver was about to leave. It seemed that for the next few moments, she would have to pretend that she had some pride.

‘Farewell, my Rosamund.’

She stared at him in silence, drinking in the sight of him. His height...the width of his shoulders...the strong, lithe body. He was so handsome with his dark hair ruffled by the wind. Her heart squeezed.

‘You’ve had a lucky escape,’ he said, vaulting into the saddle. ‘You should be pleased.’

She cleared her throat. ‘How so?’ Her voice was hollow with regret.

‘I’m baseborn. Rosamund, even a peasant maid couldn’t relish the thought of being kissed by one such as me.’

‘I...I don’t understand.’

‘I’m illegitimate,’ he said bluntly. ‘A bastard. How looks your dream now? Shattered, I’ll warrant.’

‘How little faith you have in dreams. Nothing can damage a dream. Oliver, I care not for your birth.’

He stared and an expression – pain? regret? – washed over his face. It was gone so swiftly she thought she must have imagined it. ‘Farewell,’ he repeated, in the soft voice he’d used when he’d kissed her.

‘Farewell.’

He clapped his heels into Lance’s sides and the horse leaped away.

Rosamund took one or two faltering steps and found herself on the sands staring after them. And then they were gone and all she could hear was the cry of the gulls, and the slow beat of sea against sand. A line of hoof prints led away from her.

A wave ran up the beach and frothed about her feet. The tide was coming in – the tracks wouldn’t last long. As the next wave seethed its way towards her, a blob of blue caught her eyes. Her May Day circlet. The next wave moved inexorably towards it and neatly, tidily, picked it up and carried it away. The sea would take it into the deep ocean where the dragons lived. Eyes smarting, Rosamund watched it go and the thought that she had managed to keep at the back of her mind for most of the day, finally broke free.

I am going to marry Alfwold.

She stood motionless at the water’s edge as the shadows lengthened. Her eyes strained out to sea and the tide crept up the shore, until at last she stood thigh-high in the cold water. The pink robe was drenched, heavy with salt, and she didn’t care. As the lowering sun dipped behind the cliffs, the rocks made weird, spiky shadows. When at length a dusky shadow fell over her, she shook herself. She felt as though she had been asleep for a thousand years and had awoken in a foreign land.

The sea had filled the bay, the hoof prints had been washed away. Slowly, she waded up the sloping shore. She shivered and headed for home.

Chapter Two

‘M
ove, you lazy wench!’ It was barely dawn, and in the mill Rosamund’s father Osric was already at work. He was in a dark mood. He had locked the gears into position and was watching with careful, if bleary, eyes as the mill wheels began to turn. The mill was made entirely of wood. It had two floors and Osric was on the lower level, ensuring that the mechanism ran smoothly.

Rosamund was on the higher level, the ‘stone floor’, frantically sieving grain. The grain belonged to widow Eva. Eva’s strength was waning and as a result the grain had been poorly winnowed. It was full of chaff and grit. If it wasn’t sifted properly, both her father’s grindstone and Eva’s flour could be spoiled.

Set in the middle of the boarded floor on this upper level were the two pairs of grindstones. They were almost worth their weight in gold. Rosamund sent some grain pouring down the shoe and watched as one of the top stones – the runner – began to rotate over the stationary bedstone. She and her father would only be working with one pair of millstones today. The other pair was ground out and awaiting Alfwold’s return.

At the top of the mill, a raised platform was used for both storage and sleeping. The sacks of milled flour were hoisted up at the end of each day. They were safe high up, well out of the way of thieves, be they rodent or man. The miller slept next to the grain sacks alongside his wife and daughter.

Aeffe, Rosamund’s stepmother, was yet to come down. Aeffe was rarely up when the mill began the daily grind and, of the three members of the family, she was the only one who could sleep through the clattering it made.

‘Rosamund!’

Osric’s voice was almost drowned out by the rising chatter of wooden cogs and turning wheels, but Rosamund had learned to jump at his slightest whisper. She dropped the sieve, cursing softly as a fistful of grains rattled like hail onto the wooden boards. She hoped her father hadn’t heard, surely the wooden cogs made more noise than a few specks of grain... If he hadn’t barked like that, she wouldn’t have spilt it.

Today her hair was bound into a thick braid. Flicking it over her shoulder, she poked her head through the trapdoor.

‘Father?’

He was staring morosely into an empty meal bin. His shoulders were hunched, he was angry again. Lord, was he going to be moody all day? A couple of loose grains tumbled through the trapdoor and Rosamund grimaced as they fell onto his bald head and bounced into the empty meal bin.

A pair of bloodshot brown eyes turned up to her. ‘Wastrel!’ Thin lips twisted. ‘Do we have so much grain that you must toss it about?’

‘I’m sorry, Father, it won’t go to waste. I’ll sweep it up. Did you want me to balance the grindstone?’

‘Aye. And if you want to keep the birch off your hide, you’d better make a better job of it than you did last time.’

She stifled a sigh. Given the state her father and Aeffe had been in when they had returned from the evening’s revels at the hostelry, she wasn’t surprised at his ill temper. It was not uncommon and she’d learnt that the best way to avoid a birching was to rush to do her father’s bidding.

Once she had tried defiance – about two years ago, she had run away. Osric had caught her and hauled her back, and he’d beaten her so hard she hadn’t slept for a week. Rosamund had little love for the man who’d sired her and if a real chance of escape had presented itself, she’d have flown the coop years ago. Her fists clenched as she recalled that beating. Aeffe’s barbed remarks had stung as much as her chastised body. However hard Rosamund tried to please – and she did try – it would seem she could do no right.

‘The devil finds work for idle hands,’ Aeffe had sneered, her eyes bright with malice. ‘Laziness, my Osric, has twisted your daughter’s mind. She’s a wicked, wicked girl. Keep her busy, Osric, my love, and she won’t have time for foolish fancies. I’ll teach her where her duty lies. And think how our profits will rise...’

Aeffe had smiled winningly at Osric. Osric, who denied Aeffe nothing, and his daughter everything. Osric, who never asked his wife to lift a finger if she didn’t want to, but who only had to look at Rosamund to set her racing hither and yon. She frowned, wishing it could be otherwise.

Naturally, her father noticed the frown. ‘I’ll have none of your lip, girl, get to work.’

Rosamund scurried to obey. The plain truth was that her father didn’t love her. She had to make the best of it. She might have been born the daughter of a freewoman, but that didn’t mean she could really run off and leave. Where should she go? What should she do? She held in a sigh. What use was freedom if you could do nothing with it? She was tied to Ingerthorpe and the mill in much the same way as the peasant farmers were tied to the land.

At least her father never starved her. He needed her strong to work. I expect if I could work on nothing, he would give me nothing, she thought bitterly. Notwithstanding, she kept trying to please him. She worked hard, hoping that if she was good, if she pleased him, he’d learn to love her.

She tilted her head to one side and with an expert eye examined the level of the grindstones. She shifted one of the weights. No, that was no better. She shifted another. Nor that. ‘Father?’

‘What?’ Her father was clutching his forehead, his expression pained. He was nursing a monumental hangover and it looked as though Rosamund was going to suffer the consequences of his excesses. His usually florid face was the colour of flour paste. His head probably felt as though a warhorse had done a dance on it. An image took shape in Rosamund’s mind – she could see a great grey stallion called Lance and his handsome rider, tall and straight and...she could feel a smile forming. Quickly, she concealed it.