"Elizabeth—and Hereford? There was talk of a dispensation once so that she could be proposed to me, but—" Suddenly Radnor started to laugh. "Oh, they will make a merry pair. I can hear the crash of the crockery now."
Leah's hand, pleading, touched her husband's. "Do not let him, above all, hear of this. I think she has a lust to him and he to her, but he says to all the world that he will not marry, and she, for all her light tongue, will have him no other way. I think it is to torment her that he has taken a mistress at court, and a stupid slut at that."
Radnor was still laughing at the thought of those two living together. "Very well, I swear I will say nothing, but I would love to warn him. Nonetheless it would do no good. If Elizabeth says she will have him, I have no doubt she will. God, she is beautiful.” Cain's eyes lit suddenly with the sensual fires never far from the surface, but the interest died out in a flash. "I would not have a hellcat like that in my house for anything you could name,” he murmured, smiling. “There are beauties other than that type. I think I should tire quickly of that opulence always displayed. Nay, I have what is better in this unfolding, petal by petal!”
He turned and bent over Leah, gazing avidly at the way her loose hair made a transparent golden screen between his eyes and her body. It was late and he should rise, but their quarrel the night before still hung heavily on his spirits and Leah's appearance behind that shimmering screen was irresistible. Cain slid his fingers through the shining mesh of hair, watching for a sign of renewed anger or reluctance. Leah lay still, paralyzed by his caress, her mind going blank, her eyes closing slowly, every sense concentrating on her feeling. Cain's fear that he had destroyed her love made his own passion slow to rise. By the time he drew his wife to him, Leah was nearly insensible with a pleasure terribly akin to pain.
It was nearly breakfast time when Bess entered the room to open the shutters and wake her master and mistress. She cast a quick, alarmed look at the bed. Both occupants were soundly asleep, but she could see nothing of her mistress except a blanket of golden hair which hid her back and strayed over Lord Radnor's shoulders. Why had her mistress cried out in that dreadful way? There had been no sound of argument or blows. Perhaps this one had other ways of hurting a woman—ways that did not show. Bess shuddered as she realized that she had made a sound that had disturbed Lord Radnor. His right hand reached down automatically, even before he wakened, to the long sword by the bed. Let them wake of their own accord, Bess thought, and with a little gasp, she was out of the door.
The feminine gasp reassured some unconscious mechanism in Radnor, and he sank again into sleep; it had, however, the opposite effect on Leah who sat up cautiously and stared at her husband. The room smelled faintly of burnt wax, for they had allowed the candles to gutter out, and a fresh breeze blew in at the open window. Feeling slightly chilled herself, Leah drew the coverlet higher over Cain's shoulders. The sensation disturbed him, and he turned flat on his back and pushed the covers all the way off with an impatient gesture, Leah smiled at her sleeping lord. He was always much warmer than she, and she could never remember it. Her eyes ran over him affectionately; then their expression grew fixed and she began to study his body with an awareness of it that she had not had before.
"Have I turned green of a sudden?"
"No, oh no. I was only looking at you."
"So I see, and I at you. But why?"
"I do not know. Because you are, all of a sudden, so—" she paused seeking for words, looking into his face and then down at his body again, "So—beautiful."
It was the wrong word, singularly inappropriate for that powerful masculine frame so marred with the scars of war, and yet no other word could describe her feeling. Cain stared in amazement, thinking it an unkind joke, but it was so unlike Leah to taunt him that he could almost believe she meant it. Could it be true that for her, just now anyway, he was beautiful?
"Before," he began hesitantly, and watched Leah blush, "what did I do?"
She dropped her head so that her face was hidden by her falling hair. "I do not know."
"Were you hurt or pleased—or unwilling? I heard you cry out, but I could do nothing then."
"I do not know," she repeated stubbornly.
"Look at me."
Her eyes were strange under heavy lids, filled with a sort of wondering recollection. Cain's tension began to dissolve although she did not return his questioning look for long. Her eyes returned to his body, irresistibly drawn, and he felt drained by that gaze, as if he would turn all to fluid.
"I wish … " Leah murmured dreamily, slowly lifting her hand, "may I touch you?"
Cain released a shuddering sigh. "As you will, so do with me."
It was a complete novelty for him to lie still under her exploring hands, a novelty and a revelation to them both, for he learned something from her surprise and she learned much from his reactions. In the end his reticence was broken, and he groaned and writhed. Leah did not smile, for her face was rigid with her own rising passion, but a deep sense of power grew within her. So might a man be tamed. So. And so. She had pushed him too far, however, and he was finished almost before he started, leaving her, for she now knew what culmination was, dissatisfied.
"You did not wait for me," she cried, and he heard her through the numbness of his satisfaction.
Leah's protest was unintentional; she hardly knew she uttered it. Indeed, had she thought about what that instinctive cry should teach her husband, she would have bitten out her tongue before she gave vent to it. In the first instant of hearing, the words had no meaning to Radnor, but as he lifted himself, he caught a glance at his wife's face. Her fleeting expression of frustration recalled to him others, and her words suddenly gained significance.
Cain's relationships with women had always been largely unsatisfactory, and he had a secret envy of men like Hereford who seemed to be able to hold the most avaricious women in thrall with nothing but their persons. He had blamed the women for dishonesty of purpose and dismissed the matter with the belief that none of them had ever cared for him. It had needed a woman with an innocence equal to his ignorance in this matter to put into plain words the explanation for his repeated failures as a lover. Cain blinked, drew in his breath sharply, and allowed himself to sink down on Leah's breast. He would not make that mistake again, and he could rectify it this time, but how did Leah know a man could wait? Had she looked abroad for someone else to fill her craving?
Leah understood very quickly what she had gained and what she had lost. She would not again need to suffer the misery of unfulfilled desire; she had learned ways to tempt Cain and increase his pleasure, and that would help her hold him, but she had taught him what a woman desired. Would he now be tempted himself to try his power upon others?
Not yet, certainly not while he still desired to breed with her. For the present, at least, all his attention would be bent upon providing himself with an heir. Leah sighed and shifted her husband's heavy head on her shoulder.
Leah's plan to establish Hereford's innocence functioned as if charmed. Hereford walked into the trap all unaware, and amidst the ravings of Lady Gertrude, the icy-eyed affront of Elizabeth, the ill-concealed amusement of the watching ladies and gentlemen, and his own inability to explain or deny, he gave as genuine an exhibition of chagrin and embarrassment as could be desired. Leah went home from the White Tower, where she had stayed to see the outcome of her plotting, to relate the whole graphically to Lord Radnor. She was rewarded by his smile and nod of satisfaction.
"You were right," he said. "It is better this way than for Hereford to make the excuse."
Suddenly he began to laugh, realizing that Hereford, who was so often guilty of seduction and infidelity and so clever at soothing women and wriggling out of situations, was finally being brought to account. It was only just that he should be found guilty on the one occasion when he was actually innocent.
"I will roast him,” he gasped. “My God, how I will roast him."
"No, you cannot, my lord," Leah protested. "How could you hear about it? Remember he did not see me for fear he should guess."
"It does not matter. I will seek out someone at court who will tell me the story anew. I could not meet his eye now without—" Then he collapsed, bent double in his chair, laughing until he hiccupped. "But the cream of the jest is still coming. I am sorry you will miss it, Leah, for you certainly deserve to see the flowering of the seed you sowed. Briefly, it is this. At council they will ask him to name the woman so as to give witness, and he will refuse—nobly risking his life to shield her honor. Then the eyes of those lords will turn inward and from side to side. 'My wife?' they will think, 'his?' Every man living within a day's ride who was not in his own bed that night—and with the feast, how many were?—will burn with the torments of the damned, and not a few will look cross-eyed at blonde children born nine moons from now. Oh, merrily we go along—merrily, merrily. By the time this is done there will be as many knives out for Hereford's ribs as for mine." Cain glanced at his wife and added hastily, "For a different reason, Leah."
He bent again, still chuckling occasionally, over the task that had occupied him all that afternoon. He was setting the edge on his long-sword. Technically this was a task for the armorer, but Cain loved the weapon, a remarkably fine one which had been his father's gift to him upon his knighting, and he allowed no one else to touch it. The room was warm and he sat in the full light of the window, naked to the waist. Sunlight flickered through now and again as the June breeze moved the leaves of the shade trees outside. It gleamed in little flashes on the sweat-shining skin covering biceps knotting and relaxing in the regular rhythm of drawing stone against steel. Head bowed, thickening the strong column of the neck, shoulders hunched a little, Cain was the living image of quiescent power. With his scarred face hidden, he was a sight to stir any woman's blood, and his wife was no exception.
Made restless by her steadfast stare, Cain looked up. "For the. tourney," he said, pointing the sharpening stone at the sword. "I will do you proud, Leah. I have ordered a new hauberk and helm to he beautiful as well as successful, and my shield is to be all new-painted. Thus will I grace the new surcoat you were kind enough to prepare."
A mixture of pride and fear, liberally salted with desire, shook her. Leah came up behind Radnor and laid her hands on his back to feel the play of the muscles under her fingers. "You look forward to the tournament, my lord?"
"Yes and no. Mayhap I will learn more of the queen's purposes, but taking that necessity away, sometimes I think that a man who fights in earnest as much as I should have a lighter sport. All we do for pleasure means killing—hunting, hawking— The jousting is but practice for the same with man." He sat up and leaned back against his wife; her hands slid down over his shoulders to comb through the hair on his chest. "But what else can a man do? To sit too long over the chess board or draughts makes the muscles twitch to be up and doing. At Painscastle I read. The monks of the abbey are kind enough to lend me their books and some I have had copied myself, but that too is restless work for a strong young man."
"But my father and the queen … Are you not like to be hurt in this rough play?"
Cain stared ahead. Was Leah trying to warn him? Did she know and wish to speak openly but fear to do so? "No doubt I will be bruised and banged about. The more I think on it the more I cannot believe that anyone does more than hope for an accident." Perhaps his seeming carelessness would make her speak out. "I only pray I have not forgot my skill with the lance. It is long and long, nigh on a year, since I have truly used one. You are, I suppose, in better favor up Above than I, being more innocent. Send up a few prayers that I may not be ignominiously laid in the dust on the first course."
"I wish I were as sure you would come to no harm as I am that your skill is unimpaired. Oh, Cain," her hands tightened, the sharp nails scratching his bare breast a little, "for all you say, my heart misgives me about this tourney."
"You are too fearful, Leah. Such are life's chances. Where would be the sport if there were no danger? Would you rather I were like William of Gloucester, scented and oiled with hands as soft and white as a woman's?"
"No, oh no. I must be proud of my lord. Only … is it needful to go beyond the jousts for which you are champion and fight in the melee?"
Cain laughed. "Not needful, no. I doubt my ability to stop, though, once the heat of fighting is upon me. It is like drink, Leah. The more you take the more you want, until at last a sickness overcomes you." He paused, but she still said nothing. Suddenly Cain did not want her to speak. "In any case it is not something I could give over because of your fears. Next you would be afraid for me to go into battle to guard my lands. What would become of us then?"
"I would be afraid. Indeed, I am afraid of everything you do, of every minute you are out of my sight, but I would not say a word against your duty. I would rather urge you to it, in spite of my fear, than keep you from it. But is this tourney your duty?"
Why would she not leave the subject? Would she be so insistent if she did not know there was a plot to kill him? It was natural for a woman to be timid, and Leah was afraid of her father. Did the warnings mean that she knew but was not party to the plot?
"Ay," Cain said, "I can just see you with the stern expression of Athena—a pagan goddess of whom you know nothing urging me, I the meanwhile all trembling with fear, out to fall upon my enemies."
The words were totally unrelated to his thoughts, spoken because he had planned to say them as a further diversion. In another revulsion of feeling he grasped her hands to pull her further forward and turned his head over his shoulder to ask outright what she knew. There were tears sparkling on Leah's lashes, and all Cain could do was kiss her. Now he would never ask because he did not want to know. Leah was a little surprised at the tightness of his grip. She was not at all reluctant; Cain had no need to hold her to make her mouth cling to his.