the horse’s neck, she could not help the shiver of unwilling pride that, after that degrading scene of a few moments ago, she was riding high behind a man with some sense of how she must be feeling, even if his way of responding to it was less than gentle.
Over the knight’s broad shoulder she saw that Els was similarly seated behind the squire on a chestnut gelding and that her arms had already encircled the young man’s waist. As Rhoese felt the horse move away, she clung with one hand to the cantle until the knight’s hand came round to find it and take it to the belt at his waist. ‘Hold on to that,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘and stay close.’
‘Why would I want to stay close to you?’ she said under her breath.
‘Because it’s easier on the horse,’ he replied, as if she should have known.
It had not taken the knight, Judhael de Brionne, long to reach a conclusion about how best to win this woman, though it had already begun to look as if bets could be lost to those who had put money on his success. The matter that Ranulf Flambard had mentioned yesterday had accelerated far more suddenly than any of them had anticipated, and now she was almost out of bounds before the game had begun. And yes, she had been correct in her assessment: it was a game to take from the English whatever was available, both a game and a business at which he had already benefited. It had been all the more satisfactory for being quite difficult, English laws having been designed to cover every small point regarding possession of property and women. Nevertheless, since the first William’s death, his son had shown himself to be less particular about keeping the English laws intact. This afternoon’s fiasco was an example of how happy he was to bend any rule that would put more money into his treasury, whether it was fairly done or not. Like his father, William Rufus had no qualms about going back on his word if another bidder made him a better offer. Ralph de Lessay must be displaced.
Jude felt the touch of Rhoese’s shoulder on his back and her little thumb stuck into his belt. The king had been his usual unpredictable self, dragging de Lessay out of the crowd in the excitement of the moment as one more spontaneous and bountiful gesture of the day. As if the woman had not been embarrassed enough. It had not been well done. He had felt her sway with consternation. Her body was soft, and though she was showing the world her indomitable spirit by spitting fire at every man in sight, he had seen the pain behind her eyes and felt the shockwaves as the king’s demands had shaken her. Man or woman, it made no difference to William Rufus. He used them both the same.
Ranulf Flambard had been eager to hear how Jude would go about winning the body, if not the heart, of York’s unassailable beauty. Ranulf had offered what he believed were helpful suggestions, none of them particularly original and most of them quite missing the point that she was obviously immune to that kind of approach. Jude knew better than that; any woman with such a chip on her shoulder for whatever reason required a different kind of handling. She was not for the faint-hearted, and certainly not for a seasoned hard-bitten campaigner like de Lessay who hauled on his reins as if he was pulling a boat in.
But things had moved ahead with unsettling haste, and what had started out as a game meant to last a week or two, as such games usually did, had now grown into something more serious. Not just that she was to be married at the king’s discretion: that happened all the time. Not because she was wealthy, either, or because she had made an enemy of that weasel-faced stepmother. No, there was something more to it than that, something that had disturbed Jude since he had first seen her counting her rents. She was vulnerable, exquisitely beautiful, tempestuous yet with a hint of scaredness, and not quite as ice cold as she would like to be thought. He had seen the look used on him that men used on women, and though it had been quite unconscious, he was experienced enough to recognise it. Until now, he had only toyed with thoughts of marriage, laughing at his father’s urgings to find himself a wife and enjoying his reputation as a breaker of women’s hearts, both married and single. The possibility of taking an Englishwoman to his bed permanently had never been more than a passing thought during his eight years here in England. Until now.
But this one presented more than a challenge; more like a crusade to discover the cause of all that anger, to channel it into the positive energy of loving. Too bad that oaf had tried to kiss her with that great broken-toothed mouth of his. Now he, Jude, would have to show her how it ought to have been while she was still weakened, and then he would have to find the best way of removing de Lessay from the position into which he had just been hurled by the king.
The ride through York’s crowded streets would have taken only minutes if there had been more than one bridge across the river, for the minster garth and Toft Green, not so far distant as the crow flies, were on opposite banks. To Rhoese, with her mind in complete turmoil once more, the journey was a total blank. Normally, she would have enjoyed seeing the traffic of pilgrims and merchants, foreign faces and strange dress, traders and their stalls, women calling greetings; but not on this day and not from a seat behind a Norman, of all people, those most feared and hated of all strangers, as foreigners were known. Even after twenty-two years, they were nowhere near being accepted, nor did it appear that they were making any effort to be. And now, it looked as if she would be tied to one for ever, bought and sold, betrayed by the stepmother who not only wanted to possess her home, but also wanted her to disappear.
They crossed the wooden bridge over the River Ouse where her late father’s ships were tied up along the wharves, giving up their precious cargoes from the northern ports. Few merchants would set sail this late in the year; fewer still could understand why Gamal had chosen to do so, to his cost. Rhoese wondered if Warin would be there and whether he might look up and see her riding behind this taciturn Norman knight. There was no sign of him, however, and then they were on Micklegate, literally ‘the big street’ in Old Norse, and almost home. Then she would have to tell them how all their worst fears had materialised in the time it took to say a Pater Noster.
Dismounting, the squire opened the gate at Toft Green and let them through into the deserted courtyard where only a dignified line of geese waddled away from the hooves. ‘Take the girl in,’ said Jude to his squire. ‘Tell them we’re coming.’
Rhoese would have preferred not to rely on this man’s say-so, but it was a long way for her to drop without assistance and she was left sitting alone on the horse’s rump as the knight led both horses across to the stable and tied the reins to the ring on the wall. Then he came to her to place his hands upon her waist, and she had no option but to lean forward and be caught in his arms like a child. Without a word, he carried her straight into the dark stable where the warm aroma of dung, hay and horseflesh mingled sweetly and where he stood her carefully upright against the timber wall with the bulk of his body closing her in.
She wanted to remonstrate, but this confrontation seemed as unreal to her as the previous one and nothing made sense any more; nothing and no one. In one quick pull he removed his helm and placed it on a sack of oats, pulling back the mailed leather-lined coif from his head to reveal a layer of thick dark hair that stuck like silk to his skull. Once again, he was the man with whom she had had words yesterday, and now she knew for sure that this was a continuation of that, where he was about to settle the score with the last word.
She placed her hands flat on his steel-linked chest, but he pushed them away with one quick flick of his wrists and, picking up the hem of her long sleeve, used it to wipe her chin of de Lessay’s odour that still clung there. He held her face, watching her eyes show confusion and anger before they clouded with defence. And a warning. ‘Oh, no, Norman,’ she whispered, pushing at him again. ‘Oh, no, you’re out of your depth here. I do not owe your kind any thanks for this day’s work, nor am I ready for another mauling. There is no man I want near me—’
He did not wait to hear the rest, for none of it was relevant to him and there was no time to explain. Catching her wrists, he held them behind her back as he pressed her against the wall, and though her intention had been to writhe, to scratch at his eyes, kick and scream, the invasion of his mouth held her completely immobile, draining the energy from every limb. Concentrating all her awareness into that moment of tantalising sweetness, she was suspended like a star in space and time, forgetting to fight or to think about objections or the futility of it all. Something at the back of her mind flared like a dying flame in a draught of pure air,