Bond of Blood (24 page)

Leah had been almost frantic with desire to keep him with her. What she wanted, she did not know, but the feeling that possessed her could not keep mounting and mounting. At some point the tension and passion had to burst. The bursting might kill her, Leah thought, so intense was the sensation becoming, but at the moment that death would have been welcome compared with being left as she was. Forbidden to touch Cain lest she disturb him, afraid to weep for the same reason, Leah had crept softly out of bed to work off her nervous energy by finishing her packing for the next day's trip.

Now her husband was restless, moving uneasily back and forth across the bed. Leah blew out the candle and returned to him. She was tired and quiet now and could sleep the few remaining hours until morning. A groping hand seized her and drew her close.

"Lord," Cain's voice was thick with sleep, "what a nightmare. I dreamt you were lost and I could not find you."

Leah pulled Radnor's heavy head on to her shoulder. His beard, thickly grown, scraped her tender skin, but the sleepy words had assuaged some indefinable hurt and Leah was happy again.

"Get up, you little slut," said a husky, friendly voice, and Leah sat up with a start, pushing her hair out of her face. Her husband was smiling broadly. "I never saw such a lazy, naughty chit. You mauled me worse than a bear last night. And now I have called you three times and all you do is bury your head deeper in the pillow." Awkward with tenderness, he sat down beside her to play with her hair and touch her sleepy face with his fingertips. "If you are not up, washed, and dressed quicker than a lamb can shake its tail, I will leave you behind." Unfortunately for his husbandly discipline he immediately destroyed any effect his statement might have had by kissing her.

"Oh, Cain," Leah said, disengaging her lips, "do you have needles and thread?"

"What?"

"Needles and thread, my lord. If we stay above a few days in London, I must have the wherewithal to sew."

"Now what would I do with needles and thread?" He laughed. "Ask your mother."

Leah blushed and Cain was diverted by watching the colour dye her throat just stopping short of her white breasts. "I—I cannot. Needles are so expensive and my father— It would be so hard for her to replace them."

"Oh." Cain's face had become carefully expressionless. "Very well. I will see what can be done. Get up now." He turned to the maids who had slept in a little separate area just outside the door and had come into the room when they heard the sound of his stirring. Leah had made it plain to them that their duties had begun and if either she or his lordship had to send for them she would skin them alive. They had been waiting quietly in a corner since they had finished attending to Radnor's needs.

"Get your mistress dressed, and quickly too." He started to walk away, looked at the maids again, and turned back to Leah. "What ails those girls of yours that they leap like scared rabbits every time I look at them or speak to them?"

Leah smothered a giggle. "They are afraid of you, my lord."

"That is plain enough, but why? What have I done to them?"

Could she tell her husband that her maids feared he was the devil incarnate? Leah dropped her eyes to hide her own sudden resurgence of fear and said slowly, "A woman does not need a particular reason to be wary of a man in this house."

"Well, tell them to stop it," Cain replied crossly. "It makes me feel like jumping myself when they jerk about so." Leah's fleeting terror vanished but the poor maids' terror increased manyfold.

By the time he reached the great hall, however, he was smiling faintly once more. The room was relatively empty, for he had chosen to leave earlier than the remaining guests, but his father was waiting for him as arranged on the previous evening. As they walked aside to be as private as possible, the Earl covertly studied his son. Radnor was still dreadfully thin, but there was a relaxation in his expression that changed his face.

Gaunt saw that the large dark eyes with a lingering smile in them were hers, now nearly thirty years dead, and Radnor's mouth, softened by some inner joy and security where it was not marred by battle scars, was also his mother's. In the harsh, angular planes of the face, Gaunt saw his own heritage to his son. Why did he torment this man, flesh of his flesh? His legs went weak with a sudden memory of his own father and a pang of regret for that relationship not repeated with his child. Cain caught his arm.

"Father!"

"The lame are now supporting the old rather than leading the blind?" The bitter words were habit. Gaunt himself was surprised by them.

Radnor's fingers tightened brutally on his father's elbow and then relaxed. "Ay, I am lame and you are old, and yet it may be that the well-doing of our country rests upon us. Let's do it, father, and spare me today your tongue—nay, spare yourself. Today your tongue touches me not. First, you had my letter about Sir Robert of Radnor?"

"Ay. I am glad you had sense enough not to drive him out at once. He holds an important place and many plans must have been opened to him before he agreed to betray us. I will squeeze what he knows out of him, never fear."

"I do not fear for that. Spare his lady, she is—"

"How you grow soft! Nay, do not fear for that either. I do not make war upon women unless it be needful."

"You have heard Chester, father? Have you tried to reason with him? The matter—"

"Neither heard nor tried the impossible, but I heard Hereford at great length. Cain, I can see no way to stop them. They must fall into the pit of their own digging."

"No, they must not. Hereford I will save because I love him, but with Chester, Fitz Richard falls—and the Welsh rumor that his lands will go to Pembroke. How they know of these things is a mystery to me, but they are too often right to doubt."

"I bid you stand clear. Do you think me a fool? I have been listening. Pembroke has, I can guess, a promise—mayhap even written—from Stephen to cede him the lands, but Maud will not let Stephen do it. Philip says …" Gaunt's voice hesitated as a spasm crossed his son's face, spoiling for a moment the repose that had made the eyes beautiful. "I have no intent to fret you, my son, but I must speak of him."

Cain nodded and leaned his massive shoulders against the rough-hewn stones of the huge, empty fireplace. If Philip were dead, he could have borne it better; it was the hopeless slipping away that tore his heart. Then his eyes took on a softer expression. The last time his father had called him son was when his face had been laid open a few years before and the pain, which would not let him eat or sleep, had finally set wide the door to madness. It had been then that his father, struggling to hold him whom no one else dared touch for fear of his strength, had said over and over. "Be quiet, my son," and once, perhaps, "my dear son."

"Philip says," Gaunt was continuing, "that Maud has been turning her eyes toward Wales. What I fear is that she seeks to trap Pembroke and, through him, us, into this treason of Chester's. If we all fall she thinks, not knowing the Welsh, that she may set whom she wills in our places, surround and destroy Gloucester, and destroy all hopes of the Angevin succeeding. That is why I say if it comes to open treason you must stand clear. If you can stop Hereford privately, suit yourself. Nothing will stop Chester. I know his foolhardiness, but if we remain safe mayhap we can save him later. It can do neither Hereford nor Chester any good if their last powerful friends fall too."

"Very well. Your will falls with mine in all matters except that of Hereford. To the limit of my ableness, I will do as you say."

"Cain, Pembroke must be kept out of this. What smirches him, smirches our name too. If it were not for the dower … We have won our way up from nothing on great dowers, but he is worse than I thought." Anxiety filled the old man's eyes, but he turned them to the ground so that his son might not see. "The more I think on it, the more I wonder why he offered so much."

Again Cain's lips parted to tell what he was coming to believe was really true, that Pembroke intended to seize the Gaunt estates through Leah. A new consideration held him silent.

His father's father had been the holder of a small barony in William the Bastard's time. He had taken to wife a Welshwoman and, through a set of fortuitous circumstances, which had robbed her of every male relative, had inherited the entire property of the family. So much had been chance, but the first Gaunt, not yet an earl, had not needed a second lesson. In turn he arranged that his son too be married to a Welshwoman, and this time there was no need for fortuitous circumstances. With great deliberation, that first Gaunt had murdered his son's father-  and brothers-by-marriage. Thus Radnor Forest and the adjoining properties had come undivided and uncontested into the family. Moreover for his great work in subduing the Welsh, he had been made an earl.

Cain assumed that his father knew what had been done, although he had never spoken of it. If he had connived at it, perhaps he had already been punished or perhaps his punishment was yet to come. In any case, Cain would not torment the man who had just called him son by recalling that old shame.

"One thing more," Gaunt said.

"Yes?"

"Let not that pretty piece of a wife distract you from this affair. Her head hangs on it as much as yours."

Radnor lowered his voice and fixed his father's eyes with his. "Do you too advise me to leave her here?"

"Certainly not! If I were going to Painscastle as was first intended, I would take her and set her there, but I cannot now spare the time. Watch her close, very close."

"It must be as you say, I am besotted." Tension crept back into Radnor's eyes, changing their shape. "I cannot help it, I believe her to have no part in her father's plans—be they what they are."

"For the love of heaven," Gaunt said in a disgusted voice, "how I ever came to have a son so soft-headed and softhearted, I will never know. Only an idiot like yourself could think of employing such a simple babe for any purpose beyond warming a bed and breeding an heir. He did not offer that dower for nothing, I say, and somehow he looks to make a profit of her. Perhaps the bride price you paid for her has whetted his taste and he thinks to have another or even to have back the dower by keeping her from you. It needs no great mind to see that you would sell your soul to have her near. Cain, you are a greater fool about money than about friendship, and that is saying enough. I tried to tell you that you should not make yourself look so soft a mark when you came to his terms for the sake of the girl's bright eyes."

Lord Radnor scowled, furious with himself for being a gullible fool and listening to Llwellyn's tales. Of course that was what Pembroke wanted. He knew that neither Cain nor Gaunt really cared much about money, so it was safe to bleed them. Surely Pembroke was too lily-livered to plan Radnor's death, especially while his father still lived. Perhaps he believed that there was little love between Gaunt and his son, but the loss of his only heir would be reason enough for Gaunt to tear Pembroke and his property to little pieces, and in no quick or merciful way.

"Well, Cain, that is all. Have you money enough for your purposes? There may be some buying of men and voices to be done to bail Chester out of his trouble or if the question of promising the succession to Henry comes up."

"Yes, and I can draw on the moneylenders if I need more. You have reminded me, though, have you a box of silver?"

"Silver, yes, to pay for field forage. What is your need for silver?"

Radnor looked a little shamefaced. "My wife would have needles and thread. These she asks for from me as if I were used to carry them or conjure them from the air. She is young. Let her have the pleasure of buying them for herself."

Gaunt burst out laughing. "You are ten times a great fool, but this I will let you learn for yourself, you can afford it. Oh, madman, to give money to a woman! How much do you want?"

"About two pounds. For more I can break gold at a moneylender's."

Gaunt laughed again and nodded, dismissing his son with a friendly blow on the shoulder. Why he was presently in charity with Cain, he did not know. Usually his son's pleasure aroused him to protective brutality. He should have reminded him that about half of all young brides, his own mother included, died in childbearing. Well, let him learn that the hard way too, if learn it he must.

Leah had come into the great hall flushed and flustered. Her delay had been caused by Edwina who had come to say goodbye in a more private spot than the hall or courtyard. Leah loved her mother deeply, in spite of their recent differences, and was greatly moved by Edwina's obvious distress, but the back of her mind kept urging her to hurry because Lord Radnor wanted her. She was not yet of an age that would permit her to mask her feelings from her intimates, although she was rapidly perfecting her ability to do so in public, and her mother read the divided attention in her transparent face.

Tears rose to Edwina's eyes. Nothing she had said or Radnor had done seemed able to alter Leah's love. Plainly the girl doted on her husband; plainly she would suffer when he was killed. Edwina was coming to a desperate decision because her love for her daughter was stronger than her pride or her fear, but she wished to test Leah's bond to Radnor. Perhaps a hint of permanent separation from her mother would show where her real affections lay.

"How can you be so unfeeling?" Edwina asked. "How many blows have I taken for you? Who has loved you so long and so well? Child, we may never see each other again."

"Oh, Mama," Leah cried, startled into giving her mother the name she had used most tenderly in childhood, "never say so." Now she ran to Edwina to be hugged and kissed. "Mama, mama, that cannot be true. Not even father could be so cruel, and my lord is so kind. He would never forbid me to visit you. Painscastle is so very near, not more than a day's ride. I am sure we will be together again soon. I could not bear it." And Leah was also in tears.

For a long moment Edwina held her daughter in her arms, silently struggling with her fears. She had not heard from Leah what she wanted to hear. She could not bear to see Leah hurt without having tried to help her, yet if Pembroke discovered that she had divulged his plans her punishment would be terrible. And if she told Leah and Pembroke was foiled through her, there was truly little chance she would ever see her again. Her decision wrenched her very being awry, and in the final moment her courage failed so that she compromised.