‘If you can sharpen a sword and dagger-fight your way out of a corner, you are wholly capable of handling anything else I ask of you!’
She looked doubtful. True, she could manage Ravenstow efficiently. It had been drilled into her without surcease ever since she could remember, but to venture further, tackle people and situations she did not know, that was daunting. It was easy for him to speak. He was a marcher lord with access to the royal ear, his experience far beyond hers.
‘Trust me,’ he said and kissed her cheek lightly as he might have done to a child. The gesture magically bolstered her flagging resolve and she sat up straight.
Her chemise gaped open at the neck affording Guyon a glimpse of her breasts, scarcely raised from her narrow ribcage. Judith saw the direction of his gaze, and hastily fastened the ties, colour scorching her face.
There was an uncomfortable silence. Guyon bit his tongue to avoid being unkind. He would need to be desperate to take advantage, and he was far from that. Tonight was probably the least amorous he had ever felt when alone with an available young woman.
‘Do you have a mistress, my lord?’
‘What!’ Once more he found himself utterly thrown off balance. ‘What kind of question is that!’
‘Do not be angry with me, my lord!’ She held out a supplicating hand. The fingers were long and elegant and not at all the hands of a child. ‘It is only that I do not want to make mistakes. Mama once threw out one of my father’s women for insolence and my father beat both of them when he found out.’
Guyon looted disgusted. ‘Your father was a fool and a tyrant. I am surprised that with all your knowledge of simples, one of you did not seek to spice his food with monkshood.’
‘And have Uncle Robert assure our welfare? How long do you think we would live?’
He grimaced and finished the wine. ‘No, Cath fach, since you ask, I do not have a mistress. I did have but we parted last month. The borders are no longer safe for her to travel in her father’s wool train and, being Welsh, she would not be constrained within one of my keeps.’ He shrugged and looked down at his hands, remembering them lost in the black waterfall of Rhosyn’s hair. ‘A marcher lord and a girl from the Welsh hills. Such matches are fleeting at the most.’
Judith swallowed, wishing that she had not asked the question.
‘Even if Rhosyn had agreed to live a Norman life, there are still such things as courtesy and discretion,’ he said after a moment. ‘It is neither considerate nor far-sighted to have a mistress and a wife beneath the same roof. Grief is bound to come of it.’
Judith nodded sensibly. It never occurred to her that Guyon would be faithful. Her father had been lecherous and indiscriminate in his ruttings and the friends and vassals who dined at his board, the same. Discretion was not a word they knew. Gratitude was an emotion Judith seldom felt.
‘You are kind, my lord.’
He shrugged. ‘Not necessarily, but I have had no choice but to learn the ways of women. My sister rules her roost and she has three daughters, all of them lively, and Rhosyn has a daughter too, Eluned. One learns to tread with care.’
He spoke with such obvious affection for his womenfolk that another shard of fear broke from the frozen lump at Judith’s core and dissolved away. ‘Will you tell me about your family, my lord? The marriage was arranged so quickly that I know very little.’
Guyon obliged. It was safer ground than talk of mistresses, or so in his ignorance he thought. Indeed, all went sweetly until he spoke of his half-sister Emma and her marriage to a royal official. From there, the conversation drifted into the murkier waters surrounding life at court.
‘De Bec says that the King is a …’ Judith caught herself just in time from committing anotherfaux pas. ‘A mincing ferblet’ was not a safe remark.
Guyon had not missed her sudden dismayed check. He could well guess the reason. Rufus’s tendencies were common guardroom scandal and one did not learn how to sharpen a sword and fight with knife without ingesting gossip.
It was not really amusing, not when the King, who was short, portly and red complexioned, preferred his partners to be tall, honed and possessed of dark good looks. On several occasions the royal groin had stood in imminent danger of damage from Guyon’s knee. That had been in the early days before he discovered the amicable company of the ambitious Prince Henry and that the occasional night spent carousing with him amid women of doubtful character, and wine of opposite excellence, was sufficient to dampen Rufus’s ardour and send him in pursuit of more co-operative game.
‘… De Bec says that the King spends more money on clothes in one week than mama would be allowed to spend in an entire year,’ Judith amended, regarding him anxiously.
Guyon chuckled. ‘Rufus likes to think that he spends more on his wardrobe than other men, but he is outwitted by his own vanity. Last time I was at court my brother-inlaw, who was dressing him, fetched him a pair of gilded leather boots. Rufus asked how much they cost, so Richard told him. Rufus was furious and demanded that he go away and find a pair that were worth a full mark of silver, claiming that those he had been offered were fit only for shovelling dung.’ His laughter deepened. ‘I do not tell a tale like Richard; he had the alehouse in uproar!’
‘What happened?’
‘Richard went away, found a hideous red pair with green fringing that cost less than the first pair and took them to Rufus, telling him they were the most expensive boots he could lay hands on.’
‘And Rufus swallowed the bait?’
‘Well, he paraded round all day in them, thinking himself a peacock and looking like a Southwark pimp and Richard pocketed the profit. God knows if the tale has got back to Rufus yet. I’d hate to be in Richard’s boots when it does!’
Judith made a face at his weak pun and then laughed, the sound a delicious feminine tumble of notes, as surprising to Guyon as the fine strength of her hands.
‘Tell me about de Bec,’ he said when they had ceased laughing at the royal vanity. ‘How long has he been here at Ravenstow?’
‘He arrived soon after the main keep began to go up, the year before I was born, I think. My father was away fighting the Welsh and it was my mother who employed him.’
