An uncomfortable silence seized the room. Joscelin knew he had stepped upon forbidden territory but sometimes it was the only way of fighting back. The subject of his mother was seldom raised in conversation. For all that Ironheart believed in plain speaking and honesty, she was one subject that he kept locked away in his own personal hell. He blamed himself for her death and his guilt was a wound so deep that it was still bleeding.
Joscelin inhaled to speak, and thus break the stifling silence, but a draught from the door-curtain made him stop and glance round. His eyes widened in dismay for Linnet de Montsorrel was standing on the threshold. From the look on her face, it was plain she had heard every word of their discussion and was fully prepared to be as unwilling as a heifer smelling a slaughter shed.
Ironheart, a superb general, went straight into the attack. ‘Is it your habit to eavesdrop?’ he demanded with a glare that made it obvious what he thought of a woman’s interruption of a man’s domain.
Her face blanched of colour but she stood her ground. ‘No, my lord,’ she answered with dignity, a slight tremble in her voice. ‘I came to fetch the coneys. My son had a nightmare about them being killed and I wanted him to see that they are safe. I heard you talking and, since it concerned me most intimately, I had no qualms about listening.’
Ironheart spluttered.
Linnet faced Joscelin. ‘You want me to consent to be your wife?’
‘I ask of you that honour, my lady,’ he answered with a bow.
‘Honour,’ she said with weary scorn. ‘What an over-used word that is.’
Ironheart clenched one fist upon his belt buckle as if he were contemplating unlatching it to use upon her. De Luci’s face wore an expression of shock, as if a butterfly had just bitten him.
‘My son has need of me,’ she said and, taking the coney cage from the bench beside the justiciar, she raked the men with a look of utter contempt and walked out.
‘By Christ, she needs her hide lifted with a whip!’ Ironheart snarled.
‘I don’t want a wife like the lady Agnes who cowers every time you raise your voice,’ Joscelin answered, staring at the swaying door-curtain.
‘That is precisely the kind of wife you do want!’ Ironheart retorted. Striding across the room to the nearest flagon, he sloshed a measure of wine into a cup and, raising it on high, toasted his son. ‘To the lady’s willingness! ’ he mocked, eyes bright with cruelty.
‘William, enough!’ de Luci admonished.
‘I will gain her willingness.’ Joscelin clung to his temper. ‘And I won’t have to beat her to do it.’
Ironheart grimaced. ‘No, I know you. You will flay your own hide and offer it to her for a saddle blanket.’
‘Perhaps I’ll offer her yours instead,’ Joscelin snapped. ‘You don’t know me at all!’ And he stalked from the room before he committed patricide.
Reassured that no one had butchered his coneys, Robert had fallen asleep, one small hand lightly touching the cage. A lump grew in Linnet’s throat. Quietly she rose from his bedside and went to the laver. Tilting the reservoir, she poured water into the pink-and-cream marble basin beneath and splashed her hot face. De Gael’s words had been courtly, but they were dross. He was as calculating and ambitious as any other landless wolf. A castle, a comfortingly heavy strongbox, someone to mend his clothes, see to his food and pleasure his bed. Servants, herself included, to call him ‘my lord’ and fetch and carry at his whim. And she was supposed to be honoured? Say no, and the soft words would be replaced by a bludgeon. Feeling dizzy and sick she held her wrists in the cold water and tried to breathe more slowly.
‘Whatever’s the matter?’ Maude advanced on Linnet from the other end of the room where a maid had been preparing her for bed. She wore a chemise and her grey hair lay in a frizzy plait on her bosom.
Linnet laughed bitterly. ‘Giles is barely in his coffin and already I’ve been given a new “protector.”’ Her mouth twisted on the final word.
Maude’s expression grew concerned. ‘You mean de Luci has appointed a permanent ward to look after Robert’s inheritance? What about Joscelin? Is he still taking you north tomorrow?’
Linnet stared through waterlogged lashes into the older woman’s bemused, homely face. ‘Joscelin,’ she said stiffly, ‘has been given full custody of everything by right of marriage. My son, myself and our lands. All he requires is my consent and even that can be obtained by a handful of silver to the right priest.’
Maude looked astonished. ‘Richard de Luci has offered you in marriage to Joscelin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, well, well.’ Maude folded her arms and assimilated the fact with pursed lips. ‘What did Joscelin say?’
‘That wedding me was an honour, that he desired my willingness,’ Linnet said in a scornful voice. ‘Of course, it’s an excuse for him to take what he wants without a bleat from his conscience. He was paying lip service to honour, and I told him so.’
‘You said that to Joscelin?’ Maude’s expression became guarded.
‘I said it to all three of them,’ Linnet answered, drying her hands on the rectangle of bleached linen hanging at the side of the laver. ‘Giles believed in honour, too.’ She yanked her gown and chemise to one side and showed Maude the livid mark of the bite on her neck, the yellow smudges encircling her throat, the friction graze of the leather key-cord. ‘Here’s the proof.’
Maude unfolded her arms and put them around Linnet in a warm embrace. ‘Oh my love, not all men are so tainted,’ she said in a voice tender with compassion. ‘My husband never took his fist to me, nor did he reproach me because I was barren. We were very fond of each other. I still miss him terribly.’
Linnet refused to be diverted from her course. Such paragons might exist but they were a minority. ‘And your nephew, how does he treat women?’
‘Joscelin would not abuse you, I know he would not.’
‘With his father for an example?’
Maude squeezed Linnet’s shoulder. ‘Once you know William, he’s more bark than bite. I’m not saying he’s an easy man; sometimes he can be so vile you want to murder him, but his bad temper is a shield to prevent him from being wounded. Joscelin has always had the strength of will to go his own way. That’s one of the reasons he and William sometimes quarrel fit to fly the doors off their hinges.’
‘Madam my aunt, I would be grateful for a moment alone with Lady Linnet,’ said Joscelin.
Linnet pulled away from Maude’s embrace. ‘I have nothing to say to you,’ she said curtly to him.
Maude stepped protectively in front of her. ‘I think tomorrow would be better for us all,’ she said.
‘No, now.’ The quiet determination in the words informed her that while she might badger him and win on trivial issues such as shopping trips, she would have no success on this matter. He sat down on the coffer where he had earlier eaten his pasty and leaned his back against the wall, indicating that he was not leaving.
Maude held her ground for a moment longer then capitulated with a deep shrug and an apologetic glance for Linnet. She retired to the far end of the room and would have left the partitioning curtain open but Joscelin signalled her to draw it across. After a silent battle of wills, she yielded with an exasperated twitch of her hand.
Feeling sick with apprehension, Linnet faced Joscelin.
He came straight to the point. ‘If not me,’ he said, ‘it will be someone else and soon. You cannot remain a widow, you must know that.’
His tone was reasonable but she was not deceived. He was as tense as herself and filled with anger. She had seen the signs often enough in Giles.
‘My husband has yet to be buried and you speak to me of marriage? Mother of God, you even pursue me here to my chamber to press your claim? You must be eager indeed!’
He looked wry. ‘I would have discussed it in the hall but you showed no inclination to stay.’
‘With the three of you staring at me like hucksters deliberating over a choice piece of ware?’
‘I suppose it must have appeared like that to you,’ he admitted, ‘but the justiciar has not made me this offer out of pure generosity for services rendered in the past. He sees me as a choice piece of ware, too.’
‘So he uses me and my son to buy your loyalty.’
‘In Christ’s name, woman, use your wits for a moment!’ he snapped with exasperation. Then he slumped on the coffer and rubbed his eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I’m tired and sore and my temper’s frayed. I don’t mean to frighten you. Look, de Luci has offered me something that will never come within my grasp again. Most mercenaries die in the ditch. Those who don’t might rise as high as the post of seneschal in a modest keep if they are fortunate. It’s a glittering prize and I would be mad not to desire it with all my being. Surely you can see that?’
Linnet had flinched when he snapped at her but his apology gave her the courage to fight back. ‘Rushcliffe is my son’s by right. You make it sound like a choice morsel that has landed on your trencher for you to devour.’
Joscelin gave a judicious nod. ‘It is true,’ he said, ‘that being the warden of a small child who is heir to wide estates is a lucrative post. I pay de Luci for the privilege and then make good my loss and hopefully a profit out of the estate’s revenues. It would be dishonest of me to claim otherwise but unless I’m a competent steward those profits are going to be negligible, and in the end they will dry up.’
His words held the ring of common sense but Linnet was not yet ready to be mollified. And certainly she had no intention of trusting him. ‘Giles was not averse to selling his own child’s inheritance to the French,’ she said coldly. ‘Why should you as a stepfather be any more tender?’
‘Because . . .’ he began but stopped, the words unspoken. A haunted look filled his eyes. He indicated the right portion of the coffer and eased along slightly so that there was room enough for her to be seated without having to touch him. ‘Please, sit down.’
Linnet did so, not for his asking but because she no longer trusted her legs to support her. She perched right on the edge, her hands clenched together in her lap.
‘When your son comes of age and I have to yield the lands, there will still be your dower estates in Derbyshire and rights to a lead mine,’ he resumed. ‘If I serve the justiciar well, other rewards will come my way. Why jeopardize a comfortable future for the sake of a few years of extravagance?’
Yes, she thought, my lands, my rights, myself. Most surely Giles was turning in his coffin. ‘And a life on the tourney circuits qualifies you for such a post?’
‘I’ve lived on crumbs and I’ve lived on largesse, depending on my fortunes, but I have never been reduced to begging in the gutter. Early on I learned to pace my income and not live beyond it. You will find me well qualified to govern.’
The weight of his gaze was almost tangible. ‘What advantage is there to me in becoming any man’s wife when I can remain Giles’s widow?’
‘De Luci will still have to appoint a warden for your son. And your dower lands will cause men to seek you in marriage, perhaps by force.’
‘Richard de Luci would never permit that to happen!’
He shook his head. ‘Possession is nine-points of the law and money the other. If the justiciar decides you are difficult because you rejected my suit, he’ll be far less inclined to sympathy on the next occasion - he might well choose to levy a fine and turn a blind eye.’
She stared at her hands, forcing them to be still so that her agitation would not be displayed to his miss-nothing stare. She studied the walls of her trap for a means of escape. There were doors in her cage but, as she examined them, she saw that they only led into other cages, smaller and meaner, without even the room to turn and chase her own tail.
She studied Joscelin from beneath her lashes. He had been kind to Robert and he had twice the patience of Giles but that by no means made him a saint. Like Giles, he was strong-willed, determined and ambitious; she had no reason to associate those traits with her own personal good, yet what was the alternative? The thought of men such as Hubert de Beaumont made her shudder.
‘What would you have done had I not overheard you talking downstairs?’ she asked curiously.
‘Approached you in the morning.’ A self-deprecating smile lifted his features and took her completely by surprise. ‘Probably on the turf seat in the orchard after Mass with Stephen playing his lute behind the wall and me on my bended knees.’
She had to swallow a treacherous answering smile. ‘Then I would have refused you indeed.’
‘And do you refuse me now?’
Linnet glanced around the current setting - a bedchamber at night in shadowy rushlight, with a curious audience a mere curtain away, and the bed itself, the satin coverlet gleaming like horsehide, inviting the wild ride and the nightmare. How she hated it. Throughout her life it had been a symbol of betrayal, pain and death. She inhaled deeply. ‘I do not refuse you,’ she said.
A spark leaped in his eyes. ‘And you are willing?’
‘I give my consent.’ Which was not the same thing. ‘And I want to observe three months of mourning for Giles in the proper manner. I owe him that duty at least.’ She uttered the last sentence softly, more than half to herself.
She saw him stiffen as he registered the tone and content of her reply. His own gaze on the bed, he said quietly, ‘I doubt you owe him any kind of duty at all.’ Then he looked at her and shrugged. ‘It’s as close as I’m going to get for the moment and the prize is worth the compromise. ’ He rose to his feet. ‘Will you agree to plight troth in front of witnesses tomorrow before we leave the city?’
Linnet hesitated then mutely nodded assent.
‘You’ll have no cause for regret, I swear,’ he said earnestly.
Her father-by-marriage Raymond de Montsorrel, had whispered those same words to her once and he had lied. Christ on the cross, how he had lied as he destroyed her.
Joscelin waited but when she did not respond and kept her face averted, he sighed and went to the door. On the threshold he stopped and turned round. ‘You were going to suggest something about the security of the strongbox earlier, before all this cropped up?’
Linnet rose unsteadily from the coffer. She had been silently praying for him to leave but obviously she was not a good enough Christian. It would be easy to put him off by saying that it was nothing, that it could wait until the morning. She knew he would not argue, for there were tired shadows beneath his eyes and he still had his vigil to keep at the bier of the soldier who had died. But by the morning there would be too many other considerations to snatch at her time.