Текст книги "The Stone Rose"

Автор книги: Carol Townend

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‘Gwenn...’ confused by the force of his feelings for her, Ned put her at arms’ length and regarded her with a kind of desperation. She had such power over him. It was wrong that a woman should have such a hold on a man, quite wrong. He wanted to fling her to the ground and take her regardless of her wishes, he who loved her above all things.

She stepped towards him. ‘Ned.’

‘Don’t, Gwenn,’ he blurted, tormented. ‘I...I think you’d best stand back.’

Her lips curved in a sad, knowing smile, and she came a step closer. ‘It’s alright, Ned. I understand.’

Ned had a lump in his throat. He swallowed it down. ‘You do?’

She nodded, and placed a hand over one of his grazed ones. ‘Dear Ned,’ she said, gently kissing his battle-scarred fingers. ‘Dear, kind, considerate Ned.’

His fingers tingled. The tightness in his loins was unbearable. Manfully, he closed his eyes and tried not to moan. He heard her move, felt her take his hand and place it over a firm, sweet breast. His eyes snapped open. ‘G...Gwenn?’

‘Make love to me, Ned. Make me yours. Teach me to...’ Gwenn hesitated, she had been going to say ‘teach me to forget’, but instead she said, ‘teach me to love you, as you love me. I need your love, Ned.’

‘But...but...Alan? He might be back.’

‘He won’t return for an hour or so.’ And remembering how swift their union had been on their wedding night, she added innocently, ‘And it doesn’t take long, does it?’

Ned winced.

‘Ned? What’s the matter?’

‘N...nothing.’

She stood directly in front of him, rested her head against his chest and folded her slight arms about his waist. ‘It’s alright for you to love me, Ned. I’m your wife.’

‘Aye. But you...you didn’t... You...disliked it.’

She looked up, and he saw with surprise that her cheeks were darkly flushed. ‘Disliked it? No, Ned, I didn’t dislike it. I liked you liking it.’ And it took my mind off my hurts, she thought. ‘Is there more to it than that?’

Again Ned winced. She was offering herself to him, unaware that she stabbed at his pride with almost every word. She felt no passion for him. One day, he vowed, one day, he would make her feel...

‘Love me, Ned,’ she said, as delicate fingers slipped to his belt fastening.

Ned’s hand rose to her neck. His fingers burrowed deep into the scented softness of her hair. Lowering his head, he murmured, ‘God, Gwenn, I do love you. So very much.’

‘Then love me now, Ned. Love me now.’

Their lips met. Ned’s knees buckled, and they tumbled, a tangle of limbs, onto Jean St Clair’s cloak. Gwenn gave a shaky laugh and planting a kiss on her husband’s chin, pushed his tunic up so she could stroke his chest. Ned gave a shuddering gasp, and dragged Gwenn’s mantle over them.

His mouth searched for hers, while his trembling hand ran down her hips to find her skirt-hem. ‘Love you...’

Afterwards, Gwenn lay on her back listening to the sighing, whispering leaves that gave the forest its name, Bois de Soupirs. Ned’s head was lost in the crook of her arm, and she assumed he had fallen asleep. Fondly, she stroked his light hair. This lovemaking was a mystifying business. Like the first time, it had not taken long; and, as before, Ned’s cry of delight had been mixed with anguish. Gwenn’s conscience smote her. Ned longed for her feelings to match his. She would have to have been fashioned from ice to remain unmoved by his undisguised need for her love. She felt profound affection for him, and it gave her pleasure to give him ease, but she knew that a deeper emotion eluded her. If only her mind was not misted with sorrow.

Absently twirling a strand of Ned’s wavy hair round her forefinger, she sighed. She loved her husband and was pleased her body gave him joy. She felt loving affection for him, but not passion. Would passion grow? Alan managed to wring responses from her simply by talking to her. He had kissed her once... No. No. That was wrong. She must not permit herself to consider how she would feel if Alan were her lover. She was married. Besides, how he would mock her if he knew. Firmly suppressing the thought that it was a shame she did not react to her husband’s kisses as she did to Alan le Bret’s taunts, Gwenn’s mind came round to her husband again.

Dear Ned. Her dear, dear friend. In case he was awake, and because she did care for him, and did not like to think of him hurting, she whispered, ‘I love you, Ned.’ He murmured a response, and a warm kiss was pressed against her neck. He was awake. He lifted his head and his eyes glittered in the lamplight.

‘Gwenn,’ he said softly, and the despair in his voice caught at her heart, ‘one day, you will love me.’

‘But, Ned, I do.’

The flaxen head shifted in a negative gesture. ‘I don’t make your heart beat fast,’ he said, sadly. ‘The love you bear me is not enough. I fear...’

She smoothed a wrinkle from his brow. ‘What do you fear?’

‘One day you will meet someone who makes your heart knock against your breast. The blood will sing in your veins, and I will have lost you.’

She laughed. His cousin made her feel like that, but she was not fond of Alan in the way that she was of Ned.

‘I’m serious, Gwenn.’ His voice was sober, thoughtful. ‘You rouse me so that I can think of nothing but you. And when we make love, I want so much for you to be there with me.’

Another husky laugh. ‘But I am with you.’

‘No. No, my sweet Gwenn, you are not. My greatest fear is that one day you will meet someone who has the same effect on you as you do on me. And then you will forget Ned Fletcher, and you will leave.’

‘No, Ned! Never.’ She touched gentle fingers to his lips. ‘I have promised to stand by you, and I will honour that promise. I do love you. I trust you more than anyone on earth. Trust is a great bond, Ned. Don’t undervalue it.’

He looked doubtfully at her, misery in his every line, and she cast about for something that would prove how much she did trust him. Pushing down her skirts, she climbed from their makeshift couch and dragged Ned’s saddlebag towards her. ‘Look, Ned. I want to show you something before Alan gets back.’

Mystified, Ned rested up on one elbow and watched as she pulled out the bundle of wrappings that hid her statue.

‘Do you remember my asking you not to mention to Alan that I had the Stone Rose with me?’ He grunted assent, and shifted over on the cloak to make room for her as she came back with her effigy. ‘Open the door of the lantern, will you? Look.’ She made a slight twisting movement. As the base fell away from the Virgin, a small pouch shot out. Gwenn picked it up, opened it, and held her bunched fist under Ned’s nose.

Her fingers uncurled.

Ned’s mouth fell open, and he reached the gemstone. It was cold and hard, and heavier than it appeared, and it caught the feeble lantern light, transmuting it into the clear sparkle of a fall of water on a sunny day. ‘Is it real?’ he breathed. ‘Did you have this all along?’

‘It’s real. Grandmama gave it to me. The women of our family have held onto it for generations, as a secret security. To my knowledge you are the first of our menfolk ever to have been told about it.’

‘A man could set himself up for life with this,’ he said. Over the gem, their eyes met. Ned smiled, and dropped the jewel into her palm. ‘Your trust honours me.’

‘Now I’m wed to you, Ned, everything I have is yours. In law, this gem belongs to you. You could buy yourself a warhorse, a farm, anything.’

‘No. I...I couldn’t. It’s yours.’

‘It’s ours, Ned,’ she answered softly, ‘ours. We are going to share it.’

Ned leaned towards her and kissed her shoulder. ‘My loyal Gwenn.’

‘All I’m saying is that I won’t desert you. I trust you. No woman in my family has ever trusted their man with this secret. You are the first, the very first. Ned?’

‘Mmm?’ Brow cleared of wrinkles, Ned idly weighed a dishevelled braid in his hand. His eyes lingered on the gentle swell of his wife’s breasts.

‘I’m telling you about the gem, but I don’t want Alan to know.’

‘Alan wouldn’t steal your jewel,’ Ned said, as he put a hand round her neck and drew her towards him.

‘You’re too trusting,’ Gwenn spoke into his mouth. Surprised by her husband’s ardour, she allowed herself to be pushed back onto the cloak. She had not thought that Ned’s need would return so soon, but she supposed she ought to feel glad that she had reassured him. While Ned’s hand groped for her skirt, she tried not to sigh, and fixed her unseeing gaze on the black, soughing canopy.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The hospital portal opened again after the tenth hour, and Alan led Firebrand out, laden with the goods he had bought. Brother Raoul, the hospitaller who had admitted him, had made it clear that Alan was being permitted entry at this late hour purely on account of his connection with Duke Geoffrey. Brother Raoul had been happy to supply Alan with foodstuffs – bread, cheese, apples, roast beef wrapped in muslin, and milk and oats for the infant; but more than this he would not do. There would be no physician to look at Katarin until they reached Gwenn’s kin at Ploumanach. Gwenn would be disappointed, but God willing they would reach Ploumanach in a couple of days.

A stoneware bottle hanging from the saddlebow caught Alan’s eyes. Brother Raoul had put it there for him; it contained the baby’s precious milk, which Gwenn had insisted must be boiled, and it was swinging on a lengthy leather strap by his horse’s neck. Concerned that Firebrand might be irritated by the bottle and that the milk might be churned to butter by the time he got back to camp – would boiled milk make butter? – Alan paused to pack the bottle more securely in the bag behind his saddle. It was difficult to credit that the Captain of the Duke’s guard was worrying over a baby’s milk...

Behind him, the iron bolt of the hospital grated home. The moon had risen, bleaching the stones of the wall and the bridge across the river. Tightening the strap of his saddlebag, Alan’s ears picked up a furtive movement in the shadows beneath the bridge. Every nerve pricked into alertness.

He ran his gaze over the road and riverbank. There was no one on the wide highway save himself, and he could see nothing in that dark place under the bridge. Thinking it must be a vole or a rat scuffling to its home in the bank, Alan had one foot in his stirrup when he heard the noise again. ‘Who’s there?’ he called.

There was a splash, and someone caught their breath. Alan could not ignore it. It might be Malait, or another of de Roncier’s company, and for his own peace of mind he must investigate. Swinging himself up into Duke Geoffrey’s high, knight’s saddle, and feeling less vulnerable on horseback, he rode towards the bridge.

He drew rein by a clump of dock whose leaves gleamed like large white tongues in the moonlight. He could hear his own measured breathing; the creak of Firebrand’s harness; the wind playing in the trees along the edge of the Blavet; and another barely perceptible flurry which brought the hairs on his neck standing to attention. Without doubt, someone was skulking about under the bridge. He could think of no good reason for them to be there.

Where road and bridge joined, a reed-lined path curled left along the riverbank. Alan urged Firebrand down it. Slender rushes brushed his boots. In the shady coverts to the west, a fox barked. Fast on the heels of the bark, another stealthy scuffle came from beneath the bridge, together with more flustered, frightened breathing. Whoever was down there, it was not the Viking. Otto Malait didn’t have a timid bone in his body.

Easing his sword out, Alan dismounted. His sword flashed in the starlight. ‘Who’s there?’ Someone whimpered. He moved closer. ‘Who’s there? Come out, damn you, and show me your face.’

Another whimper.

Alan moved his sword, and as the moonlight bounced off the steel, its reflection lit up an indistinct blur of a figure not three yards away. The figure was pressed against the moss-clad bulwarks of the bridge. ‘If you don’t come out, I’m coming in.’

The figure looked to left and right, as if to decide which way to fly. Alan lunged forward and the dark form was held at swordpoint. It had been so easy that he suspected a trick. ‘Come out slowly.’ He made an impatient gesture with his sword, and obediently the figure, who was cloaked, shuffled out. Lifting the point of his sword, Alan flicked back the captive’s hood, and gasped.

He had seen that pale face before. It was the woman who had emerged from the hospital. She was very young. Alan lowered his sword and sheathed it. ‘What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be abed?’

She bit her lip. ‘I wasn’t doing anything. Honestly, sir, I was only...’ a brief hesitation ‘...watching the river flow by.’

She was lying. She had something clutched in her hands, Alan saw her drop it behind her and kick it out of the way. ‘What was that you threw down?’

‘Threw down? Why, nothing, sir.’ Straight dark brows defined shifting black eyes.

Encircling the woman’s wrist with his fingers, Alan stooped to examine the ground behind her. He came up holding a scallop shell, such as were on sale to pilgrims at almost every shrine in Christendom. And a wilted bunch of flowers. She had probably stolen the shell from St Ivy’s shrine. Alan glanced at the flaccid plant, and his brows snapped together. ‘Spearwort, if I guess it aright,’ he said. He felt absurdly relieved, for the plant and the scallop shell told him what the woman had been doing under the bridge in the dead of night. It was so far removed from the quarrel between Count François de Roncier and the late Jean St Clair that he would have laughed, had it not been so pitiful.

The woman had a consumptive’s face. Her cheeks were fleshless and wan, the bones clearly visible even in the weak starlight. Alan regarded the limp plants and the shell for a moment, and then tossed them aside. Keeping a firm grasp of a skeletal arm, he pushed up the woman’s sleeve, and saw the telltale sores as dim blotches on her skin.

His prisoner made a moaning sound in her throat, and struggled weakly to free herself. ‘I wasn’t doing anything,’ she wailed. ‘I wasn’t stealing, honestly, I wasn’t.’

‘I’m well aware of what you were doing,’ Alan said, quietly. ‘Show me your legs.’

She went rigid. ‘I will not! I’m not that sort of a woman.’

Deaf to his captive’s protestations, Alan caught both her wrists in one hand and went down on his knees to examine legs that were as thin as lathes. There were sores there too, angry ones. He knew that in the morning they would be weeping and red. He climbed to his feet.

‘Let me go!’ The woman’s voice trembled, for she understood that this stranger had seen through her deception. He knew that she had been scratching the acid juices from the plants into her skin with the scallop shell in order to raise those ugly, blistering sores. She was a beggar and the trick with the spearwort, though painful, was her favourite stock-in-trade. She could attract more sympathy and consequently more alms from passers-by if she was covered in sores. She usually began begging at the hospital gate, after dawn. Brother Raoul knew her ploy and named it a sin, but Brother Raoul did not betray her to the townsfolk. Would this stranger betray her?

‘You fool,’ Alan said. ‘You could give yourself blood poisoning with that trick.’

‘You...you won’t cry it about the town?’ the beggar-woman asked. When he shook his dark head, she breathed more easily. ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said, and her voice was not quite so defensive. ‘You can let me go, if you’ve finished manhandling me.’ She risked a direct glance, trying to make him out. ‘Who are you?’

‘A traveller,’ came the cryptic response. He tugged at the frayed rope girdle which barely held her ragged clothing together and started hauling her towards the river.

‘Hey! What are doing?’ Her tone sharpened as a different suspicion chilled her. She tried to fight him off, but in her feeble, half-starved state she was no match for him. ‘I told you I’m not a wh–’

He whipped the girdle from her too-thin waist and a heartbeat later she was stripped of her shift. Naked and shivering, she crossed her arms in front of her breasts. So this was to be his price, was it? He wanted to use her. ‘No! Please, sir. No!

‘Into the water,’ Alan said, harshly.

The woman stared in blank incomprehension.

‘Into the water.’ Alan nudged her shin with a booted foot, but gently. ‘I want you to rinse that stuff off you.’

‘You mean...you’re not going to...’

‘Rape you?’ Cold, quicksilver eyes ran dismissively up and down the length of her body until the beggar-woman felt a blush cloak her throat and cheeks. ‘No. I want you to wash that poison off your skin.’

She gaped, hugging her arms about her. ‘Wash it off, sir?’

Alan moved a step closer. The woman’s body was ivory in the half-light. She was more fragile than Gwenn, and so thin as to be almost all bone, but she would be attractive if she carried more weight. Her eyes were sharp as daggers, and hostile.

‘You want me to keep your secret?’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘Then scrub that poison off.’

The sharp eyes widened.

‘Move, damn you! Else I’ll do it for you.’

His tone was such that the woman believed him, and when he took a threatening pace towards her, she gave in to the inevitable and waded into the river. ‘It’s cold,’ she said peevishly.

‘If you hurry,’ Alan offered gruffly, not knowing why he should care if this waif starved or not, ‘I’ll stand you a meal at the inn.’ The pale, thin limbs gleaming in the starlight must have uncovered a store of compassion in him.

The woman in the water shot him a look which was a heart-wrenching blend of hope and disbelief, and hurried.

The Green Man was all but closed when they got there, and the landlord, a pot-bellied, pigeon-toed fellow with a shiny bald pate, was clearing the boards with economical efficiency. To judge by the way the beggar-woman slunk in after Alan, she had never been allowed past the door before. The landlord threw her a disdainful look, and half-raised a fist. The woman shrank closer to Alan, unable to prevent hungry eyes lingering on the cured hams hanging in the glow of a beaming fire.

Hands on his hips, Alan intercepted the landlord’s sneer. ‘She’s with me.’

Noting the newcomer had a fine cloak, stout leather boots, and a good-quality sword, the landlord shrugged. He made it a rule never to query likely customers, however odd their companions. He motioned the newcomer and the beggar-woman to a table by the fire.

‘Have you anyone to watch my horse?’ Alan asked, noting with approval the military orderliness of the tavern. Serried ranks of hams and sausages dangled from blackened beams close to the fire. The beams away from the smoke and heat were in use too, hung with long pendants of shiny, golden onions and bunches of dried herbs. Alan felt a sudden surge of longing to see his home, for his mother had always kept a good larder. He wondered how his father was faring without her. If it were not for his duty to the Duke, he would go and visit his father when he had Ned and Gwenn safe. But he was sworn to the Duke till after the tournament. After that, however, he would take his leave.

The landlord nodded. ‘Mathieu!’

‘Father?’ A spindly, weed of a lad popped up at the innkeeper’s elbow.

‘See to this man’s mount, will you?’

‘Aye, Father.’ The boy slipped like an eel through the door.

While they ate, Alan studied the beggar-woman. The inn-keeper knew her, and it was all too easy for Alan to conjure up a vision of her loitering by the tavern door, scavenging for discarded scraps like a stray. She would be pretty if she filled out a little, and now that her face was not twisted with that acute, feral mislike of all mankind that was common to most beggars, he glimpsed a hint of sweetness in the wasted features. Her injudicious use of the spearwort had not done much for her complexion, and her skin was marred with unsightly blotches. The lamplight revealed her to be even younger than Alan had thought, and he found himself wondering what had reduced her to beggary. Her eyes, like Gwenn’s, were brown.

‘Have you no family?’ Gwenn had lost her family... Thank God for Cousin Ned.

The girl, for that was all she was, paused in the act of biting into a chicken leg, and as she lifted her head to look at Alan, her face took on a cunning, shiftless look. ‘I’m a widow,’ she said, employing the whine of the professional beggar. ‘When my husband died, he left me destitute.’

Alan estimated her to be sixteen – about Gwenn’s age. ‘Isn’t there something else you could do, apart from begging?’

‘Like what?’ she asked, strong teeth worrying at her chicken bone.

His wave took in the orderly tavern. ‘Work here, for instance?’

‘Ha!’ Hurling an acid glance at the landlord, the girl spoke through a mouthful of meat. ‘Work for that mean old wind-bladder? You must be touched if you think he’d employ me.’

Alan dropped the subject. He had neither the time nor the inclination to root into her past, and he wondered at himself for showing even this much interest in her. It felt good to have seen her eat a decent meal, though. Thank God Gwenn had Ned.

While he waved for another pot of ale, it occurred to him that he had not purchased liquor from the hospital, and wine would be welcome on the road. ‘Landlord?’

The man shuffled over, almost tripping over his feet. ‘Sir?’ The cloth he had tucked into his belt was snowy white and spotless.

‘I’d like to buy some ale to take with me, and perhaps some wine. I’ve a couple of leather bottles you could fill. What have you got?’

While the landlord scratched his polished pate and began listing his stock, the girl studied her benefactor. This rare consideration from a complete stranger had won her interest. He was tall for a Breton and sounded vaguely foreign. Her guess was that he was a soldier, probably a mercenary. She eyed his sword – he’d been quick to draw it when he’d prised her out from under the bridge. Black brows arched over alert, grey eyes. His nose was straight; his mouth full and sensuous. The man was handsome, if one went for those strong, dark, pirate looks. She knew his type, his creed was bound to be love them and leave them, just like her Eujen’s had been. And just like her Eujen, she found him dangerously, devilishly attractive.

While giving his order, Alan glanced briefly across at her. Feeling her cheeks glow, she dropped her eyes to her trencher in case he misunderstood her look, and thought she was making eyes at him. She never looked at men these days, not since Eujen had gone. She never looked at anyone, only glancing at people’s purses to see how plump they were, or at their hands to see if they were giving her anything. The only face she had looked at properly in months was Brother Raoul’s, and that was because he saw her fed, and asked how she was, and seemed to care.

She listened to her companion’s deep voice asking the landlord how much he was owed, and wondered where he came from. She tore a chunk off her trencher. She could not for the life of her work out why a man like him should have taken it into his head to buy her a meal. If only she could find a man to protect her, and care for her, and not run off like Eujen had done when he had discovered she was pregnant. The girl sighed. It was easier to catch a rainbow than catch a man.

She cast her mind back to the unhappy time after Eujen had abandoned her and she had been forced to tell her parents that she was to have a child. Her parents, deeply religious, had been horrified by her pregnancy. They had thrown her out of her home in a nearby village, and she had trudged to Pontivy, thinking she could find work. But no one wanted to employ a pregnant girl who might become a burden on them, and she had soon been reduced to begging for scraps. Her baby had died, and the old crone who had helped her through the birth had told her that she was unlikely to bear another child. She remembered weeping at the time, not only for the loss of her Eujen’s child, but also because she was become barren. What man would take a barren woman to wife?

But the old woman had taken her by the shoulders and had shaken her. ‘You fool!’ she had hissed. ‘You should count it a blessing that you are barren.’

‘A b...blessing?’ Tears had streamed down her cheeks.

‘Aye. For now you can follow the oldest profession in the world, but unlike most of the other poor sluts, you need never worry about the consequences. You need never beg.’

But she had not been able to bring herself to look at a man in that way, for none of them were Eujen. Unable to become a whore, in the end she had been driven to begging.

And now, for the first time since Eujen had gone, she had stopped to look at a man. Her heart warned her that this one was not the sort to let himself be pinned down by the likes of her. He was Eujen all over again. He had not told her his name when she had asked, only replying that he was a traveller. A traveller. What the foreigner meant was that, like Eujen, he had the wanderlust. He wanted no ties. Nonetheless, she warmed to him. He had made her wash the poison off. He had fed her. He had cared for her, if only for a few hours. Why was it that she was only attracted to men who’d run a thousand miles to escape commitment? This man’s eyes were not green like Eujen’s had been. This man had grey eyes which were as cold as a December frost. But by the saints, he was comely.

‘There’s no need to devour your trencher.’ The foreigner sounded amused. Pulling her hand from her trencher, he loosed a ripple of sensation up her arms such as she had not felt since Eujen.

Determined not to blush, she thrust her hands under the table. Her companion smiled at her with his mouth, but his eyes still carried December in their depths.

‘You’re not a beggar tonight. If you’re hungry, I’ll order more meat. Landlord!’

Half an hour later, they left the tavern. With her belly full for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime, the girl waited till they reached the stranger’s princely horse. ‘My thanks, sir, for your hospitality. I wish you God speed.’ She wished he was not leaving. She wished he would stay.

Alan took Firebrand’s bridle, and pressed a coin into the girl’s palm.

‘My thanks,’ she acknowledged, in a small voice, blinking at the bright disc. ‘You are very generous, sir.’ She wished she could give him something in return.

‘No, I’m not.’ Gathering his reins, he swung up into the high saddle.

‘A knight errant,’ she murmured, head tilted to look at him.

He heard her, and his lips curled in amusement. ‘I’m no knight,’ he said, raising his hand in a gesture of farewell, ‘though there might be some truth in the errant part.’

‘I know,’ she said, wishing he would stay. A black brow lifted, he was waiting for her to continue. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she finished. He would be gone in a second or two. She drew as close to his horse as she dared, for she had no familiarity with horses and was a little afraid of them. She heard herself say, ‘I...I’d like to repay your generosity.’

‘Oh?’

Drawing in a breath, she nodded and, mimicking the women who hung about the Rohan garrison, smoothed her shabby gown about her hips. She even moistened her lips and looked into his December eyes with the bold, direct stare she had seen those women use. ‘I could give you my body.’

‘No,’ he said curtly. Once Alan would have taken her up on her offer without hesitation, but not now, not any more. He could not so abuse her. He had put all thoughts of finding a bedfellow out of his mind when he had run across this half-starved waif. Her suggestion almost shocked him.

‘You find me ugly,’ she murmured, head drooping.

Alan’s mind stirred with the memory of the beggar-girl’s long, slender limbs, gleaming white as a lily in the moonglow. ‘No,’ he repeated, and then, guessing at her misery and what it had cost her to make her astounding offer, he lowered his voice and sought to soften his rejection of her. ‘You are fair when you forget to hate the world.’

Now that she had taken her courage into her hands and offered herself to this foreign soldier, she discovered that she had not done so purely to repay a debt. She wanted some loving herself, and she did not think this man would use her roughly, as others might. This man would take his pleasure slow and gently...

She looked at the capable hands holding the horse’s reins. She was a beggar and the town pariah, and she had not been touched by anyone in a loving manner since Eujen. Apart from Brother Raoul’s vague enquiries, all she ever got from anyone was a clout about the ears or a choice curse. Now, tonight, she yearned for closer contact. She wanted to kiss the stranger. She wanted to be held by him, even if just for one night, even if it was a lie and in the morning he would ride into the forest and forget he’d ever lain with her. ‘Please, sir.’ It was easy for a beggar to beg; any pride she had ever possessed had long been bludgeoned out of her.

‘No, you told me yourself you were no whore.’

She tossed her head, dark hair rippling out over her threadbare cloak, and looked straight into his eyes. ‘By St Ivy, I am no whore.’

‘Then why?’

‘I want some loving.’

Moved by the girl’s simple admission, Alan made a strange noise in his throat. He spoke bluntly. ‘We shared a meal, that’s all. You can’t offer yourself to a chance-met stranger and hope it will turn into love.’

‘I know that. But I want...need...’

Alan dismounted and took her hand. He needed it too, but not if this girl-woman was to be left to pay the price. ‘Look,’ he said quietly, ‘I am honoured by your offer, but I see you are not a harlot. You are forgetting the consequences.’

‘Consequences?’ The pale, oval face was strangely vacant. ‘There can be no consequences. I’m barren.’

He searched her eyes. ‘Barren? A young girl like you? How do you know?’

‘I know it, sir. I’m a tree that will never bear fruit.’

She said it with such conviction that Alan believed her. He rested a hand on her shoulder. ‘My thanks, but no,’ he repeated, but in the manner of someone trying to convince himself.

The girl had glimpsed eagerness in the foreigner’s eyes, swiftly banked down, and knew he was tempted. Heartened, she pressed him. ‘I won’t try and make you stay, or say that you love me. There will be no commitment, beyond tonight.’ He was listening to her.