Yes, today had been a good day. ‘A remarkable day.’
Her head turned questioningly towards him and he was presented with a moonlit view of her profile. It was delicate, heart-achingly beautiful. Rosamund. Her lips were slightly parted, and her teeth were white as pearls in the starlight. His loins throbbed, insistent, demanding. Lord, they’d better hurry, else he’d be changing his mind about the need for reaching their bedchamber.
‘Remarkable?’
‘You, my sweet,’ he said, surprising himself with his candour. ‘I find your beauty remarkable.’
Luminous eyes smiled back at him and something shifted inside him, an emotion he couldn’t name. Longing. Desire. God, but he wanted her. No other woman had ever made him feel like this. He forced himself to concentrate on the road ahead. He must keep his thoughts shielded. She must never know the extent to which she affected him. The person did not live whom he would trust with his soul’s secrets. A man must be self-reliant.
This was lust, pure and simple, it should be easy to keep it in its place.
She’d agreed to stay, that was enough. He’d take her back to their chamber and they’d take their joy of each other. This time it would be even better, because this time he’d know he wasn’t going to lose her. She was his to keep. His enjoyment wouldn’t be marred by the thought that soon she would be lying in another’s arms.
Oliver hadn’t lied when he’d told Rosamund that there were pretty girls in the castle. A couple of serving girls had sent bold looks his way and he’d known that were he to press his attentions on them, he wouldn’t be rejected.
A delicately scented strand of hair fluttered across his cheek, he made no move to brush it aside. This was the woman he wanted.
‘Oliver, look!’
A slender arm pointed towards the castle gate. The braziers had been fired on top of the towers.
At first glance it looked as though the castle was ablaze, light was streaming through the open portcullis from a score of torches, bright splashes lit up the road. His warrior’s instincts flared into life.
‘Hold on,’ he said, and spurred forward. Lance’s rocking canter made short work of what remained of the cliff path, and a couple of heartbeats later he was reining in before the gatehouse.
‘Holà!’ He hailed the guards. ‘What’s amiss? Why was the portcullis raised?’ He reached into his purse and a silver coin described a shining arc in the air.
A guard snatched it. ‘Rebels. Lord Gilbert of Hewitt found them on his land. He caught some, killed others, and he’s tracked the rest into Baron Geoffrey’s territory.’
The bailey was thronging with soldiers and horses. Helmets flashed in the torchlight; horse harness glittered; dogs yelped. Oliver frowned at the guard. ‘Rebels? I thought Angevin activity was confined to the south?’
‘Eh?’
‘Never mind. My thanks, man.’ Oliver swung off Lance and led him past the stable boys struggling with Lord Gilbert’s herd of horses. ‘Mon Dieu, what a mêlée.’
Rosamund’s eyes were round as she took in the chaos. She had never seen so many warhorses before, and all fighting for space in the overcrowded castle yard. Her heart jumped. The noise was deafening. Knights were swearing at grooms struggling to find quarters for the extra horseflesh. Huge hooves threw up clods of mud from the ground of the inner bailey and trampled them back into the earth. Yellow teeth flashed. She watched as one ill-tempered brute of a horse took a chunk out of the haunches of another. A scream of pain and rage trumpeted out. Harnesses jingled.
These horses would scare off the devil. Rosamund was more used to thinking of horses as beasts of burden. But these great hulks were bred to battle. They were instruments of war, trained to do violence. To kill. Like the men who rode them. She shuddered.
‘I’ll stable Lance myself,’ Oliver was saying to a flustered groom.
Rosamund gripped the coarse white mane and kept her eyes fixed on Oliver’s back as he shouldered through the sea of horses. He was one of them. A warrior. The gentle lover who had covered her in kisses was blown away like thistledown on the breeze and Lance was suddenly an island of safety, the only thing that would stop her falling into that wild threshing of legs and hooves.
At last they gained the sanctuary of Lance’s stall. Oliver reached for her and briefly clasped her body to his. A strong hand touched her cheek. ‘You’re white as milk. Did you think I’d let you fall?’
‘No, but warhorses frighten me.’ She couldn’t admit that he frightened her too – that his easy competence in the face of such an army had raised a barrier between them.