The Devil Claims a Wife (17 page)

‘Her guests might not want to come if they know I am to be there.’

‘They will all attend,’ he promised, ‘out of curiosity, if for no other reason, and they will find the new Countess of Sinnington enchanting and welcome you into the ranks with open arms.’

Jane had her doubts about that, but she wasn’t going to argue.

Reaching the meadow, they dismounted once more. John handed Jane her merlin. Cedric was first to raise a hare and fly his hawk. The kill was swift and clean. Jane followed the falconer’s careful instructions and removed Melody’s hood. Her eyes were wild and cunning, and for a moment Jane could not breathe, as if the bird had ordered her immobile while she considered her. By some miracle Jane managed not to blink during the long examination. When the falconer called out that they were ready, she must have moved, for Melody flapped her wings irately, but calmed the moment she drew her closer.

Guy showed her how to loosen the jesses and she had hardly done so when Melody took off after a small bird. Jane gave little thought to the prey. What held her transfixed was Melody’s graceful flight, her fierce attack, her return to
her glove when she tapped it as Guy had shown her, dangling a gobbet of meat from her gloved fingers as a lure.

Laughing with pure joy, she looked at Guy. He nodded his approval, regarding her with a tender smile filled with admiration. Her heart swelled.

Listening to her laughter, filled with admiration, Guy looked at her astride her mare, with the merlin hooded on her arm, her mantle thrown back, her eyes alight and her cheeks glowing with youth and good health. ‘You have done well, Jane. Already you look as though you are seasoned falconer. Were I a king and you a soldier, I would have knighted you right there on the field. Your father would be proud of your prowess.’

‘My father would not be quite so enthusiastic,’ she said without rancour as they rode to join the others. ‘My brother’s skill at hawking was the pride of my family—something that was denied me, being a girl, you understand. Instead of knighting me on the field, my father would chastise me for daring to interfere in what he considers to be a male sport.’

‘And would you have liked to go hunting?’

‘Oh, yes, but I couldn’t.’

‘Didn’t your brother support you in your ambit ion?’

‘Not really …’ As if loyalty prevented her from painting an unflattering image of her dead brother, she smiled brightly and said in a determinedly reassuring voice, ‘He didn’t know, of course, as brothers often don’t know things about their younger sisters, and he was always too busy being a soldier to notice.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Guy said, his voice filled with gruff gentleness.

Jane stared at him across the short distance separating them, while a startling discovery slowly revealed itself to her. At that moment, the man who people called a ruthless, brutal barbarian appeared to be something quite different—he was, instead, a man who was capable of showing immense gentleness when taking care of an injured dog, and of feeling acute sympathy for a disappointed young girl—it was there in the soft lines of his face. Mesmerised, she rode beside him without awareness, seeing nothing but him and scenting the smell of his horse, the leather of his saddle and the smell of him, spices and sweat. She felt her smile turn up her lips and she looked into his face.

‘I am beginning to think,’ she murmured, her
eyes captured by his when he turned his head to her, ‘that legend plays you false.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I think that all the things people say you’ve done—they aren’t true.’ Her lovely eyes searched his face as if she wanted to see into his soul. His face became shuttered.

‘They’re true,’ Guy contradicted her shortly, as visions of countless bloody battles he’d fought paraded across his mind in all their lurid ugliness, complete with battlefields littered with corpses of his own men and those of his enemies. He had never discouraged his reputation as a brutal warrior. It was his way of deterring his enemies.

Jane knew nothing of his bleak memories and her soft heart rejected his self-proclaimed guilt. She knew only that for the first time she’d had an insight into the man standing before her who had just now shown sympathy at the silly young girl who’d told him she had wanted to hawk.

‘I don’t believe it,’ she whispered.

‘Believe it!’ he warned. Part of the reason he wanted her was that she did not cast him in the role of bestial conqueror when he touched her, but he was equally unwilling to let her deceive herself by casting him in another role—

that of her knight in shining armour. ‘Most of it is true,’ he said flatly.

Jane moved closer until they were knee to knee. Then she placed her hand upon his own and looked into his eyes. ‘We will not speak of it now. See, Cedric beckons you. Come, there is more hunting to be done.’

He moved at that, his chin lifting, the cold passing from his eyes.

The hunting over, Cedric rode with Jane back to the castle.

Wrapped up in her thoughts of the day and the confusion Guy wrought on her mind, as they rode through the dappled gloom of the woods Jane was content to ride in silence. After a while she turned her head and looked at her big and brawny blond-haired escort. ‘I understand you’ve been with Guy for many years, Cedric.’

He nodded. ‘Ever since he became a soldier.’

‘Then you will know him better than anyone.’

He grinned at her. ‘I like to think so, but then, I don’t think anyone knows what goes on inside that head of his.’

‘Will you tell me about him?’

‘That depends what you want to know.’

‘Most of what I know of him is mainly hearsay. I don’t know what is true and what is false. By the time I was ten he was already a legend in Cherriot. It was said he never lost so much as a skirmish. People said he was a ruthless, brutal warrior who gave no quarter to his prisoners. They also said he was the spawn of Satan.’

Cedric rolled his eyes and his laughter was a rumble that came from deep within his barrel chest. ‘Spawn of Satan! Aye, there is that about him. But his reputation is much a matter of gossip and wishful dreaming. He acquired his reputation by being a tough soldier, skilled in warfare and brave on the field.’

‘That I can believe.’

‘Not every man would care to be accused by those who know no better of the wholesale slaughter of men. This is what they whisper of the earl, even though in other ways he is held up as the type itself of a nobleman. Sadly it is harder to kill a whisper than a shouted defamation. Besides, in the minds of the ordinary soldier, to whom their leader is the ruler of their lives in battle and the dispenser of all fates, he would be held accountable for all that happens on the field—evil and good alike, from resounding victory to defeat.’

‘So, would you say his reputation has been exaggerated out of all proportion?’

‘It would be good to declare that the tales you’ve heard are a lie. But it is not quite that. It’s a lie that he slaughtered prisoners with indiscriminate brutality. On the whole he did not decide their fate. They were taken before their king’s ministers and their fate decided there. In that Sinnington was fair and just, purposeful and never cruel—but he is gentle with women,’ he said, casting her a sideways glance, his lips stretched wide with teasing amusement.

‘And you are unswervingly loyal to speak so highly of him, Cedric—but then, were you the enemy you would have a different tale to tell.’

‘Aye, that I would.’

‘Clearly Guy must be a great leader to inspire dedication from so many men.’

‘I told you. We’ve been together a long time.’

‘He’s fortunate to have you.’

‘It is my service.’

‘I think it’s more than that.’ It was clear to Jane that Cedric was valued for his devotion.

Guy chose that moment to join them. He was staring ahead of him, his gaze fixed intently on a small party of horsemen riding towards them. Suddenly his body became taut and alert.

‘Guy? What is it? Is something wrong?’ Jane
asked, peering anxiously in the direction of his gaze, but seeing nothing untoward.

‘I believe,’ he said coldly, ‘that we are about to be confronted by Aniston.’

S
omething cold gripped Jane’s stomach. ‘Richard? Oh well, I suppose we had to meet some time. I pray there is no trouble. Please don’t let him provoke you, Guy.’

‘The only thing that galls me is the wound to my pride if I have to step aside.’

She shot him an irate glance. ‘You cared little for
his
pride when I was promised to him. How do you think that made
him
feel—and his parents? I know they are suffering very badly over it and I do not wish to inflict on them any further distress. For my sake, I beg you to set aside your pride for a moment and don’t allow him to provoke you. It will be all right. He—he will ride on by.’

‘If you believe that, then you are a fool, Jane,’
Guy growled without taking his eyes off the oncoming riders, ‘and if he tries anything, then he is an even greater fool.’

‘If we meet peaceably, then I will happily be a fool,’ she replied tartly. ‘But I ask you not to harm him. Please give me your word that you won’t.’

Meeting her eyes, he nodded. ‘I give it,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I will not harm him.’

‘Thank you.’

Having seen Sinnington and Jane from a distance, on the point of leaving Cherriot Vale with his companions to join John Neville in the north, Richard rode towards them with the arrogance and self-assurance of a man oblivious to anyone but himself.

Pulling his horse to a halt in a cloud of dust, his full lips were stretched in a lewd smile, but the eyes that rested on Jane’s face were hard as stone. ‘Permit me,’ he said, lightly mocking, with a slight inclination of his head, ‘to pay my respects to the Countess of Sinnington.’ His eyes flicked insolently to the darkly glowering earl holding his horse in check beside her, but he did not accord him the deference of his rank, which only served to increase Guy’s wrath.

Jane read the mockery on the faces of Richard
and his companions. For a moment she studied this man, whom she had once thought she would marry, as dispassionately as if he had been a stranger. It was the first time that she had set eyes on him since she had told him she would not marry him. So many things had changed. Then, she had been someone to be sacrificed, a helpless victim in the hands of this heartless and unscrupulous man. Today she had Guy for strength and protection.

‘You may.’ Considering the turmoil within her, her voice was curiously calm. Her proud, disdainful eyes met and held Richard’s without flinching. She was discovering, agreeably, that now that she was face to face with him, in fact, the vague terrors which had haunted her ever since their last encounter had melted away.

‘Or perhaps you have no wish to speak to me,’ Richard went on, ‘that as a humble soldier I am an embarrassment to be brushed away like you would an annoying fly. Although it is not so long ago when you were quite devoted to me, as I recall.’

Guy had heard enough. ‘That will do,’ he said sharply. ‘You are amazingly impertinent, Aniston. Have your forgotten the circumstances of our last encounter—when you had the audacity to forcibly try to take what a lady
should only give to her husband on their wedding night?’

Richard shrugged contemptuously, but his eyes shifted to avoid the earl’s hard gaze. ‘If she had not been such a naïve fool, that’s all it would have been. It was she who turned it into high tragedy.’

‘I think you will recall that it had more to do with my arrival than my wife’s objections,’ Guy stated coldly.

Richard’s companions held back, their horses shifting restlessly. The atmosphere was suddenly filled with tension and hostility.

‘Interference, I would say,’ Richard grumbled.

‘My wife’s conscience may trouble her on the odd occasion about refusing your suit, Aniston, and believe you might put it behind you with no ill feeling, but my own nature is less trusting—and for good reason, as well you know, since you appear to make a practice of deflowering innocent maids. Now if you would stand aside, we will be on our way.’

Richard laughed, its mirthless sound like a dagger chipping into ice. ‘I see you cherish some prejudice against me, sir,’ he said, feeling unaccustomedly brave now he had taken on a new role in life. He shrugged. ‘For the life of
me I cannot think why—unless a mutual acquaintance has been feeding you with lies and put it into your head that I am some kind of blackguard.’

‘What I think is neither here nor there,’ Guy said stiffly. ‘However, I have seen nothing in your behaviour to cause me to change my mind.’

‘As you so rightly say, sir,’ Richard agreed easily, ‘that is neither here nor there.’

‘You said you are a soldier, Richard,’ Jane said. ‘What did you mean by that? I—thought you were to go to Italy.’

He gave her a sneering look. ‘Unlike my father and brother I am not a cloth merchant and never will be. Along with my companions here, I am to take up arms. The Lancastrian cause may have been badly wounded at Towton, but there are still pockets of fierce resistance in the north-east. I am on my way to join John Neville. Another battle is highly likely.’

‘Best thing for you,’ Guy remarked. ‘Better by far that your aggression is channelled into fighting rather than ravishing maids. The mutual acquaintance you spoke of is deceased, as well you know, but before that he had a score to settle with you, a heavy score, one he had every intention of making you pay in full.’

‘Then I thank God that he is dead, rendering his threat harmless.’

Guy’s eyes, as hard as flint, narrowed dangerously. ‘Have a care what you say, Aniston. Lord Lambert has two sons with Neville. They have long memories and never forget a slight.’

Feeling the full impact of the earl’s underlying threat and unwilling and unable to challenge it since it would bring to the surface an issue best left buried, seething with incandescent rage that the earl had thought to taunt him with it now, Richard blanched and looked back at his companions. ‘Come. Let us ride on.’

Jane glanced at Guy curiously, disturbed by his words. Not for the first time she thought there was something in Richard’s past that Guy knew about, something dark, that remained hidden from her and had something to do with the time Richard had spent as a squire in Lord Lambert’s household. However, since she was now another man’s wife, it had nothing to do with her any more. But his decision to take up soldiering again went a long way to explaining Richard’s arrogant, cocksure manner and the excitement she saw in his eyes. For Richard to be offered the chance to distinguish himself in battle, to become a knight, was worth much more to him than all the gold in London.