The Stone Rose (66 page)

If Gwenn had not consented, he would have kept his distance till she was safely at Sword Point, but her consent made that impossible. He would go mad if he didn’t have her. He was barely managing to keep his hands off her tonight, and that was only because they were not alone. Odd that, he had never felt the need for privacy before. Privacy was such a luxury that most men must take their pleasures where and when they could.

Gwenn gave a moan of distress in her sleep, and involuntarily his arms tightened round her. She was so slight, just a skinny wand of a girl, with too-small breasts rather like the beggar-woman, not at all the sort of woman he usually took to his bed.

Alan calculated that if they rode between thirty or forty miles a day, it would take them a week to reach Richmond. He had kept the patched tent that the Duke, God rest him, had issued him with. He had avoided pitching it for fear of what he might do, but now... They could make love in glorious privacy in the tent.

I
t was harvest time, and the peasants of England laboured in the fields on their lords’ behalf.

Often they would turn anxious eyes to the heavens, hoping and praying that the weather would hold fair until the harvest was gathered and they would be released from their duty. All over the realm, peasants were united in a single desire – that they should be free to give their womenfolk a hand with the crops they had planted on their own narrow strips. Their strips were what counted. The crops that grew on them would ensure their families were well fed in the coming winter. Every day the farmers worked for their lords was a day lost, for they would not gain so much as a mouthful of the bread milled from the lords’ grain. That disappeared into the storehouses of the manors and castles of England. An early storm, coming while the peasants were bound to the lords’ fields, could wreck the fruits of a year’s labour. If their lord was generous, their families might not starve in the winter months, but an early storm would certainly cause belts to be tightened and faces to grow pinched. It demeaned a man to go begging to his lord, especially when he had slaved all year, and it was not his fault if God sent foul weather. It made him beholden. But then, despite what it said in the Gospels, everyone knew that God usually came down on the side of the rich and the powerful.

The old Roman road Gwenn and Alan rode along was covered in a fine, dry dust; their horse’s hoofs kicked it into drifting swirls which hung in their wake, ready to choke anyone travelling behind them. The air was hot and windless. There was nothing to be gained by cantering, though they tried it from time to time – the air that rushed at their faces was no cooler, and cantering only made the poor, toiling beasts beneath them hotter than ever, and in the end the horses transferred their heat to their riders.

No, Alan decided, it was better to proceed slowly. Better to walk north as it was so warm. He didn’t want a horse to founder. Even Firebrand was drooping. In any case, Alan found he was no longer inclined to gallop home.

Scarlet poppies studded the hedgerows and strips. The wheat wilted in the heat, its ears fat and heavy, ripe for the reaper. God’s gold. The sky was a glorious, even blue.

They stopped at a village for an evening meal, bought freshly picked apples, bread, and mead from the tavern while the sun was yet up. Everything was tinged with rich, vibrant, harvest colours.

‘You’ll want beds, I expect?’ the alewife asked, eyeing Alan’s purse and indicating the stairs at the back of the inn. ‘We’ve proper mattresses,’ she went on with a touch of pride, ‘stuffed with fresh grasses.’

‘My thanks, but no,’ Alan said, quickly. ‘We must press on.’ Gwenn blushed.

Outside, he squired her onto Dancer, and she gave him a smile of thanks so warm he felt it in his toes. Marvelling at the power this slip of a girl had over him, he trotted onto the sun-warmed road.

He chose a sheltered spot between some bramble bushes and a stream, and when they had seen their horses were content, Gwenn walked upstream to see to her toilet. Alan pitched the tent. He spread his cloak over the meadow grasses and reached into Gwenn’s saddlebag, which she had left open after removing her comb and her soap. He drew out her cloak and a bundle fell out with a thud. Alan picked it up. His hand was already moving to return the bundle unopened to Gwenn’s pack, when something about the size of it struck a faint chord. Heart pounding, he unwrapped it.

The statue was cold to his touch and looked much the same as he remembered. He puzzled over the walnut plinth but then, recalling how Otto Malait had smashed the original, his brow cleared. Did this base have a secret compartment too? Idly, he gave it a gentle twist...

***

Gwenn took a long time. When Alan had bathed himself further downstream so as not to disturb her, she had not returned. He built a fire between the tent and the muttering stream, but still she did not come. Hoping she had not gone coy on him, he went to look for her.

He found her sitting behind a ripening blackberry bush in one of the last patches of sunlight, a cloth round her shoulders while she combed out her hair. Rooted to the spot, he watched her. He’d never seen her with it loose before, and it hung about her like a dark cloak, shining in the waning sunlight. It was even longer and more luxuriant than he had imagined.

He must have moved, for she glanced up and berry-bright colour stained her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry, Alan, if I’ve kept you waiting. But I felt so dusty, I had to wash all of me, and my hair gets very tangled.’

‘Here, let me.’ Kneeling on the grass at her side, he relieved her of the comb.

‘You start at the ends and work up,’ Gwenn began to instruct him, but she broke off when she saw that he was as competent as any lady’s maid. Her flush deepened. ‘You’ve done this before, I see.’

‘No.’

She shot him a look of disbelief.

Alan grinned, and deftly finishing one section of her hair, began on another. ‘I had a mother, once, and when I was a boy, I used to watch her.’

Gwenn tried to imagine Alan as a little boy. ‘Tell me about your mother.’

He shrugged, and spoke in a distant voice. ‘There’s not much to tell. She was tall and when she was young she had dark hair like yours, but it faded to grey. She married the Breton sergeant at Richmond Castle, and for years she let me think that he was my father.’ Alan moved behind her, working on her hair. The sun sank below the top of the brambles, and as dusk gathered over the river, the fire that Alan had lit began to glow. The evening stars dotted the heavens.

After a space, Gwenn concluded softly, ‘So Alan le Bret is not a Breton after all.’

‘No.’ He gave a strained laugh. ‘Christ knows what I am. A mongrel by all accounts.’

‘It only matters if you let it. You kept the sergeant’s name, so you must love and respect him as your true father.’

Alan gave her a sharp look, and silently went on with his combing. Now that the sun had gone, he could no longer see very well and he was finding the tangles by touch. Somehow she had managed to rinse her hair with rosemary. He wondered if her skin was scented too.

‘Does your father – your stepfather – live at Richmond?’ She tilted her head to look at him, and her hair rippled out over his hands. As his fingers fumbled with the comb, he rested then for a moment on the nape of her neck.

‘Will I...’ Gwenn went very still for the touch of Alan’s fingers disturbed her in a way that Ned’s had never done. She swallowed. ‘Will I meet him?’

‘Gwenn,’ Alan muttered, in a suffocated voice, and she half-turned towards him. Slowly, he lifted a heavy swathe of hair aside and pressed his lips to her neck. ‘Gwenn.’ He kissed her again, and when he realised that her breathing was as ragged as his, his hands were on her shoulders, impatiently turning her towards him. The comb fell into the grass. ‘Gwenn.’

And then they were kneeling breast to breast, while the stream chuckled over the stones. His arms went round her, and he was holding her as close as he could, and though he pressed his head into her neck and she pressed hers into his, it seemed they could not get close enough. He heard a groan, his own, and gave a shaky laugh. ‘I think that I had better finish your hair later, don’t you?’

She answered with a nod. He drew her to her feet and somehow they reached the tent and stumbled inside.

He released her hand while he wrenched off his belt and shrugged himself out of his tunic. Gwenn sat on her cloak, biting her lips. He dropped down beside her. ‘You’re not afraid, my Blanche?’ Forcing the wild passion inside him to subside, Alan cupped her face with his hands, and placed a brotherly kiss on her brow. She was wearing her green bliaud, the one with laces at the sides, and while he wanted to tear it from her and push her onto her mantle, he told himself to go gently. She would be used to gentleness having had Ned as her husband.

‘Afraid? Why should I be afraid? Are you so terrible a lover, Alan le Bret, that I should quake before you?’ She answered with bold words, but her eyes gave a different reply. She
was
afraid.

He smiled, attempting lightness. ‘Aye, you should tremble indeed. Look,’ he displayed his own shaking hands, ‘look what you do to me. Are you so terrible a lover, sweet Blanche?’

‘I...I do that to you?’ Her hands embraced his, holding them firmly between them so the trembling stopped. It was a tender, innocent gesture that managed to fuel the fire in his loins.

Her eyes were dark as sloes. They were inviting. He let her keep his hands, and cautiously dipped his head so his mouth found hers. It was the first time they had kissed as lovers, and it was very sweet. Her lips were warm. They trembled beneath his, and while she did not fling herself at him, she did not draw back either. Her eyes were huge, watching him, and something in them made his insides melt. And then because the sight of her was threatening to make him lose control, Alan shut his eyes, fought down the desire to snatch her into his arms, and made his mouth explore hers slowly.

Her fingers tightened on his. She leaned towards him.

Alan’s tongue traced the contours of her lips. She released his hands and he tensed, half expecting this to be the moment when she would pull away and announce that she had changed her mind. But her fingers slid up his face and into his hair, and her other arm curled round his waist.

He groaned, and opened his eyes. She lay relaxed against his chest, dark lashes fanned out across glowing cheeks. She gave an inarticulate murmur and pressed closer. She was kissing him, raining hot, blind kisses against his throat. His breathing was uneven. So was hers. She pulled at the opening of his chainse and pressed more wild kisses to his neck, which burned at the contact. Her dark head was moving feverishly across his chest. Alan rested his hand on her rosemary-scented hair. Astonishingly, his palm tingled. Everywhere her lips went, he tingled. When she kissed him through the stuff of his shirt, he tingled. Helpless, he marvelled at the depths of emotion she stirred in him.

This was not the seduction he had planned. He had thought to lead her gently. He should be in control, but he was beginning to realise that he was in her hands as much as she was in his, and he was not sure he liked it. He wanted to be able to crush her to him, he wanted to stay in command of his senses, he wanted...

Gwenn’s lips found his, and clung.

I must remain detached, Alan told himself, I must... But she opened her mouth to give entry to his tongue, and then he was drowning in need. Her hands were lifting the hem of his shirt, sliding up his chest, disturbing his pulses. Clumsy with lust, he tried to caress her breasts, but her bliaud was between them.

‘Oh, the devil with this gown,’ he gasped, tearing his mouth from hers. He was scarcely able to draw breath. ‘Gwenn?’ He pushed her onto her back.

‘Mmm?’

Her sloe-dark eyes looked drugged. Her hair was spread over their cloaks like a fan of black silk. She was adorable, she twisted his heart. He kissed her freckled nose, and tugged at the complicated lacings. ‘This has to come off.’ He kissed her shoulder. ‘Gwenn, help me. Show me how this blasted ribbon unfastens.’ He was not so far gone that he did not notice that his request seemed to have startled her, for her eyes opened wide, and the wanton woman that a moment ago had heated his blood seemed suddenly to have reverted into an innocent, blushing child.

‘You...you want my dress off?’

‘Damn right I do.’

She looked away, cheekbones bright with colour, but she gave a curt little nod, and Alan decided that he must have been mistaken about her confusion, for her fingers went to the bows, and she unfastened her bliaud. She sat up and pulled it over her head, leaving her clad in a light undergown. Alan stripped off his shirt. She averted her eyes from his naked chest. He frowned. ‘Gwenn?’

She swallowed, and forced her eyes to meet his. Half naked, Alan looked frighteningly...male. She was no virgin, but Ned had never lain naked with her, and the thought that Alan might want her naked had only just occurred to her. She found it disturbing. A covert glance informed her that a light sprinkling of dark hair covered his chest, and arrowed into his breeches. Her mouth was dry, and suddenly fearful of what she might have unleashed in her companion, she tried not to moisten her lips, sensing he would take it as an invitation.

‘Don’t look at me as though you fear I’ll eat you.’ Alan’s sinful mouth curved.

‘W...won’t you?’

‘Not unless you want me to.’ His hand reached across to feel the texture of a long tress. ‘Black silk,’ he murmured.

Gwenn’s scalp warmed. Alan’s thumb found an earlobe. He caressed it. That warmed too. She leaned towards him, wanting him to hold her tightly, but too shy too look at him, too shy to tell him with words. Her hand crept to his chest and ran over the dark hairs. She reached for his neck and pulled his head towards her.

‘Do you insist in keeping this on?’ he muttered, plucking the neck of her undergown.

She managed to look at him. ‘N...not if you don’t you want me to.’

Alan smiled with his eyes and cleared his throat to make his voice soft. ‘No, I don’t. But never mind.’ He brought his lips closer. ‘Come here, my Blanche.’