The Novice Bride. Carol Townend

as Cloud’s had been.

      ‘Warm velvet,’ she murmured.

      ‘That’s it—let him know you’re not afraid,’ said the man at her side. He still had a firm grip on her wrist.

      ‘I’m not afraid,’ Cecily said, pulling away from the fingers on her wrist.

      A brief smile lit those disturbing eyes and he released her, turning away to reach something down from behind the saddle—a saddle which was not the chevalier’s saddle she had noticed the day before. Somehow he had contrived to find one suitable for carrying a lady pillion.

      She frowned. ‘You planned to have me behind you all along…’

      Ignoring her remark, he handed a blue bundle to her. ‘Here—you’d best borrow this.’

      His cloak, and the finest Cecily had held in an age. Of rich blue worsted, lined with fur. Carefully, so as not to startle the chestnut, Cecily unfolded it. So heavy, so warm, so sinfully sensual. You could bury your face in it and….

      Momentarily speechless at such thoughtfulness, she blinked up at him, confused by the contradictions he presented. A foreign knight who had come to take her father’s lands and yet who considered her comfort.

      He shrugged and turned away to pull something else from his pack, the faintest colour staining his cheekbones. ‘My mother would have had that thing you’re wearing for dish-clouts years ago,’ he said gruffly. ‘You’d best borrow these too. They’ll be overlarge for you, but better than the nothing that the convent has seen fit to provide you with.’

      Gloves. A warrior’s pair, to be sure, but again of the best quality, carefully cut, the stitching perfect, lined with sheepskin.

      ‘B-but, sir—what of you?’

      ‘My gambeson is padded, Lady Cecily. Your need is greater.’

      Cecily draped the cloak about her, almost moaning in delight as its warmth settled about her shoulders. The fabric held within its folds an elusive fragrance: sandalwood, mixed with a scent particular to the man to whom it belonged. Tentatively, Cecily inhaled. Her cheeks grew warm, and under cover of tugging on his gloves she ducked her head to escape his gaze.

      He clapped on his helm and with a clinking of harness and chainmail, and a creaking of leather, mounted. ‘Help Lady Cecily, will you, Maurice?’ With the reins in one hand, he held out the other towards her.

      Maurice—the lad was clearly his squire—bent and cupped his hands. Cecily stepped up, took Sir Adam’s hand, and a moment later was seated behind him. Astride.

      Too high. It was far too high. And her legs were showing almost to her knees, revealing her pathetically over-darned grey stockings. Wondering if one could die of mortification, Cecily clutched at Sir Adam’s pack, at her own meagre bundle which was strapped next to his, at the side of the saddle—anywhere but at the mailed knight who shared the saddle with her. With one hand she snatched at the skirts of her habit, trying to pull it down over her legs.

      He nudged the horse with his heels and they turned towards the gate. Almost unseated, she squeaked a protest.

      The helmed head twisted round. ‘My lady, it will not kill you to hold onto me, but it may well kill you if you don’t. You must get proper purchase.’

      He was right. But Cecily had never in her life sat so close to a man who was not related to her. Thanking God for the chainmail that would surely keep him from feeling the press of her body against him, and thankful that his men seemed to be ignoring the shocking sight of her legs, she surrendered to the inevitable and gripped his sword belt firmly—a shocking intimacy that would have had Mother Aethelflaeda in a swoon.

      ‘That’s it, my lady.’ He waved his troop on and they trotted through the gate and onto the high road, just as the chapel bell began summoning the nuns to Prime.

      Jostled and juddering on the back of Adam Wymark’s destrier, Cecily looked down at the ground passing beneath them and hung on desperately. Craning her neck to look through the troop of horse-soldiers following them, she could make out Maude, waving by the gate. Cecily had no hand spare to wave back, but she found a smile and hoped that Maude would see it.

      ‘Fare thee well, Maude.’

      The convent bell rang out. Maude glanced over her shoulder, spoke briefly to someone behind her in the convent yard, leaned her weight into the great doors and pushed them shut, nipping inside herself at the last moment.

      Cecily did not know why, but she kept her eyes fixed on those closed gates for as long as she could, finally losing sight of them when they clattered over the bridge and took the road that led into the forest.

      The ride to Winchester from St Anne’s could have been accomplished in two hours at full stretch, but Adam, conscious of the tension in the girl perched behind him on the saddle, didn’t push it. True, he wanted his despatches to reach Duke William in London as soon as possible, but wording them would not be easy, and he could use the time to compose his thoughts and justify the decision he had made.

      The horses forged on through a dense, largely leafless woodland. Overhead, twisted branches formed a black latticework against the grey backcloth of the sky. The rain held off. On the ground, leaf-litter muffled their hoofbeats; briars curled like coiled springs by the wayside. Glossy rosehips and stale blackberries hung from spindly twigs.

      Keeping a wary eye out for Saxon rebels, they passed a series of holly bushes, bright with red berries. They had dark leaves in abundance—good cover for those preparing an ambush. Glancing at Le Blanc, Adam saw he was already alert to the dangers as he waved two men out of line—one to watch the right hand, one the left.

      They rode on.

      Aware that ahead of them lay a barren stretch of downland before they gained the city, Adam found himself wondering not about how Tihell, his captain, was faring on his mission to find the missing Lady Emma, not about rebellious Saxons, not even about the wording of the letters he intended to send from Winchester, but about Cecily Fulford herself. What was going through her mind?

      He couldn’t begin to imagine what her life had been like in the convent, but of one thing he was certain: it would have been restricted in the extreme. She might once have been a horsewoman, but it did not appear that the Prioress gave leave for any of the novices to exercise the pony in the stable. Any riding skills that Cecily Fulford had once possessed had to be rusty. For the first mile or so through the forest her demeanour confirmed this. She held herself stiffly, jouncing up and down behind him like a sack of wheat.