He gaped at her.
‘There is no blood!’ she almost shrieked at him.
Enlightenment tardily dawned and with it a glint of amusement. ‘Ah.’ He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I don’t make a habit of deflowering virgins.’ He shot her a sour grin. ‘I wonder which choice they would settle upon.’ Pushing Melyn gently to one side, he drew his short eating knife from the sheath at his belt and, forcing up his left sleeve, made a shallow cut upon the inside of his forearm. As the blood welled in a thin, bright line, he smeared it over the centre of the sheet.
‘Self-inflicted,’ he remarked with wry humour as he stanched the bleeding on his shirt sleeve. ‘I beg a cup of valerian to mend my disordered wits, and a pot of honey to smear this slit in my hide.’
Judith handed him the jar of nettle salve. ‘This will serve just as well for the nonce.’
His tone was self-mocking. ‘And have all the women condemn me for a clumsy oaf and risk your mother’s censure? I have a reputation to keep up, you know.’
Judith blushed, for she had not thought of how others would misconstrue the finger marks in the ointment.
‘It’s a scratch, don’t concern yourself.’ He rolled down his sleeve and grinned at her. ‘I dare say it is not the last wound I’ll take defending a lady’s honour.’
Before Judith could decide how to reply, Cadi began to bark outside the entrance curtain and a woman cried out in anxiety.On the bed Melyn became a stiff horseshoe of growling orange fur.
Guyon tugged a strand of Judith’s hair, gave her an encouraging wink and went to draw aside the curtain and wish good morning to his mother-by-marriage, the small entourage of female wedding guests in her wake and the plump maid bearing a ewer of warm, scented water and a towel.
Cadi greeted her master boisterously. He commanded her down, but although she obeyed him, her forepaws danced on the floor and her whole body quivered with precariously subdued enthusiasm. Alicia returned Guyon’s courtesy with a tepid nod and entered the room. At her side an older woman, a second cousin or some such as he remembered, fastidiously brushed white dog hairs from her dark blue gown.
Alicia’s gaze went from the bloodied sheet to Judith who was clutching the salve pot in her hand. Judith flashed a dismayed glance at Guyon, caught her under-lip in her teeth and quickly put the salve down, but the damage was already done. Alicia’s mouth tightened.
Frightened by the crowd and the dog, Melyn leaped off the bed to make her escape and was immediately spotted by Cadi. Barking excitedly, the hound took a flying lunge at the cat. As Cadi flung past Agnes, the ewer flew out of the maid’s hands and a warm deluge christened the two women immediately in front of her. Screams and squawks rent the air, intermingled with a cat’s snarls and the hysterical barking of the dog. Melyn streaked for the door and with Cadi hot on her heels, scorched up the thick curtain to cling yowling at the top, claws fiercely dug in.
Guyon seized Cadi’s collar, drew breath to speak, saw from the basilisk glares turned his way that it would be a waste of time and beat a hasty retreat with the bitch to the haven of male company breaking their fast in the hall.
Judith, tears of laughter brimming in her eyes, went to coax Melyn down from her precarious refuge.
The breaking of fast was an uncomfortable affair, fortunately not prolonged because the men were eager to be out on the trail of the boar that Ravenstow’s chief huntsman assured them lurked in the forests on the western edge.
The bride put in a tardy appearance as the men were preparing to leave, her manner much subdued, the glances she cast at her husband swift and furtive. When the bloodied bridal sheet was displayed by the women, she almost lost control. Her narrow shoulders heaved and she covered her face briefly with her veil while she mastered herself. Alicia’s arm went protectively around her daughter’s shoulders and she threw Guyon a look boiling with murder.
‘Why was Judith weeping, were you clumsy with her?’ Miles demanded of his son as they slowed their mounts to enter a patch of bramble-tangled woodland. Ahead of them the dogs could be heard barking as they trailed the rank scent of boar.
Guyon drew himself up. ‘Credit me with a little more experience than that. The blasted wench was laughing. I ought to drown that cat of hers!’
Miles raised his brows, justifiably baffled and more than a little worried, remembering Alicia’s fear of the previous evening, his own reassurances and then the look on her face this morning. If looks could kill, his son would have been a dead man and himself frozen to stone.
Guyon regaled him with the details of the morning’s disaster and Miles’s eyebrows disappeared into his hair.
‘So there we were,’ Guyon said ruefully, ‘Judith with the pot of salve in her hand, not daring to look at me lest she laugh, and the sheet all bloody and my mother-in-law itching to geld me …’ Hepaused on a breath and turned in the saddle as the constable de Bec rode up to join them on his sturdy dun.
His manner was tangibly cool, his mouth tight within its neat grey bracket of beard. He too had witnessed Judith’s struggle for composure in the hall and had been filled with a protective anger, at first so hot that he had almost enquired of Lady Alicia whether she desired to be rid of her new son-by-marriage. Almost, but not quite, for as he had been gulping down his bread and wine and preparing to leave, he could have sworn Judith had smiled at him, a sparkle of mischief in her eyes. Girls distraught to the point of tears did not do such things. Besides, he had reasoned, if Guyon died, the King would only select another man to fill the position, probably of far worse moral fibre and, when he thought about it rationally, the new lord had only had his right and seemed in public gently disposed towards the child.
‘Judith tells me that you have been teaching her to hone a blade and use it,’ Guyon remarked pleasantly to the constable.
De Bec rubbed his fist over his beard. ‘She asked me so I showed her, my lord. Nothing wrong in knowing a bit about weapons, especially here in the marches.’
‘No,’ Guyon agreed, hiding a smile at de Bec’s stony expression and his father’s sudden wide stare. ‘Did her parents share your opinion?’
‘Lord Maurice never knew. Lady Alicia wasn’t keen, but she knew when to give a little and when to rein in.’
‘So you have been a nursemaid as well as constable,’ Guyon needled gently. ‘Devotion to duty indeed.’
De Bec glinted him a look. ‘Mistress Judith is the daughter I never had the opportunity to settle down and sire. Don’t be deceived by what you saw yesterday. She is one of a kind.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Have a care, my lord, or you may wake up one morning to find yourself gelded.’
‘She is maiden still,’ Guyon replied. ‘I have no taste for rape. The blood on the sheets is my own and freely given.’
