‘Right! That’s it!’ William shouted triumphantly as the last grain of corn slipped into the earth and the corn dolly was tucked into her warm, soil bed by Nona. ‘Well done, everyone. That was a hard day’s work well done.’
‘And now you can all come back for a good meal,’ Hester added.
They tramped towards the house, weary but pleased, with the night closing in quickly around them. They had worked a long day, urged on by the prediction of rain, so that by the time they reached the gates it was almost dark.
As soon as she entered the courtyard, Hester realised something was wrong. Something in the air sent warning signals shooting through her brain. Her eyes sped rapidly from wall to wall, her senses sharpened by some instinct deep inside her which whispered danger.
Two of the stable-lads emerged from the darkness, carrying torches, which they stuck into brackets on the wall to light their way. Their flames sent flickering orange light dancing through the shadows all around the courtyard. It was then that Hester saw the horses standing at the trough. Strange horses. Six of them. And then she saw him, his broad, strong back, dark like a shadow, turned towards her, his black, matted hair trailing onto his shoulders.
Just the sight of his back sent her heart leaping into her mouth and all the rage and fury of the afternoon filled every vein in her body, blotting out all around her as she stared at him through the half-light. His leather-clad shoulders looked even broader and more threatening than they had in the field. And he had an infuriatingly arrogant air as he stood there, oblivious to her, without so much as a by-your-leave, his long, leather-clad legs astride, his boots firmly planted in her courtyard, with such nonchalance they seemed to suggest that the very ground belonged to him.
Somewhere, as if from a long way off, she could hear her old maid, Maud, calling to her, ‘My lady! My lady!’ Hester dragged her eyes away from the intruder and saw that Maud was trotting towards her across the courtyard, as fast as her fat, old body would move. ‘My lady Hester!’
At the sound of her name, the dark rider wheeled round with a speed and agility which signalled the power of his body. Once again she was looking into his loathsome, churlish face. In the shadowy gloom, he appeared darker and craggier than before, the stubble of his beard seeming to veil his face in darkness.
His eyes flashed out of the shadows, and Hester felt herself flinch as they stirred in her some deep, best-forgotten memory. In an instant it was gone, as those eyes skimmed over her without pausing for recognition, as he scanned the group of workers returning from the field, passing from face to face, as if he were searching for someone in particular, for a set of familiar features.
‘Oh, my lady, you’ll never guess!’ Maud was panting as she reached Hester and began tugging at her sleeve. But at that moment Hester’s eyes locked with the eyes of the dark rider as he fixed her with a stare of disbelief, his lips parted and his face ablaze.
‘You!’ he breathed. The word was meant for himself. But time suddenly seemed to have stopped in the courtyard, as if everyone there sensed the tension between the two of them, and his deep whisper echoed in the silence.
Hester stared back, hostility furrowing her brow. She had nothing to fear now, surrounded by her own people in the courtyard of her own manor house. Now he would be taught to regret having treated the Lady of Abbascombe with such disrespect. All around her she could feel the stillness, as if every person there were waiting for her to give the order to attack.
She held the caitiff in her sight, meaning to give him a sense of her power this time.
‘You are the lady Hester?’ he demanded, splitting the silence with his commanding voice, his eyes searching her up and down in a most insulting manner.
‘How dare you come here?’ Hester retorted. ‘Isn’t it enough that you have insulted me on my own land, without coming into my house to insult me here too? Your very presence is intolerable to me, sir.’
‘But, my lady—’ Maud tried to interrupt.
‘No, Maud. I will not have this miscreant or his accomplices in my house. There is no hospitality here for such as he.’
‘But he is—’ Maud tried to continue.
‘I wouldn’t care if he were the king himself,’ Hester interrupted. ‘After the way he treated me this afternoon, only an imbecile or an oaf would expect me to offer him hospitality. Which, sir, are you?’
His eyes locked with hers and seemed to pierce into her, but she was determined to see him off.
‘Well, sir?’
The whole courtyard seemed to hold its breath as the stranger opened his lips to reply.
‘I am Guy, Lord of Abbascombe,’ he said. ‘And you are my wife.’
Chapter Two
F or a moment the world was frozen as they stared at each other. Behind her, Hester could feel the stunned silence of William and the men.
‘My husband’s dead,’ she managed to say at last, her words falling like stones into the stillness of the courtyard.
‘Who told you that?’ he challenged, fixing her with his dark stare.
Hester hesitated, her eyes mesmerised by his face, scanning its contours for clues, searching for some resemblance between this dirty, scarred stranger and the handsome youth who had stood beside her ten years earlier, making his vows to the priest. ‘I—no one. I thought…’ she trailed off.
‘You hoped,’ he said, finishing her sentence for her. He tossed back his hair with a sardonic, humourless smile that shaped his lips but did not touch the rest of his face. ‘I’ve been away protecting the Holy Land from the Saracen and you’ve been wishing me dead.’
Hester tried to measure him with her eyes. Was he her husband? All those years ago she had spent only minutes in his presence, and even then, timid and bewildered, she had hardly dared to look her bridegroom in the face. He had seemed so tall, so fine, so grownup, but she had been only a small, frightened girl, newly orphaned, who had been passed from pillar to post for the sake of the fortune she had inherited.
The memories of those terrible days came storming back. The fever which had killed her parents within two days of each other. The arrival of the king’s men to wrench her away from everything she knew. The news that the king had accepted the Lord of Abbascombe’s offer to stake finances for the crusades in return for Lady Hester Rainald, whose fortune made her a fitting bride for his son, even though Hester was only twelve and his son, Guy, was twenty. The memories charged through her head until she thought it would explode.
‘How do I know you’re who you say you are?’ Hester said out loud, her voice bold and challenging, hoping to break the spell of the past. Maybe he was just a chancer trying his luck, a vagabond who had happened to hear the story of the missing lord of Abbascombe. Perhaps he would have no proof at all.
‘Don’t you know your own husband, lady?’ leered one of the five cronies, who had gathered in the gloom behind the dark rider. ‘My God, you have been away a long time, Guy.’
The name shot through her. Guy. But, of course, his accomplice would call him that. It was just part of the plot. It proved nothing.
‘Prove that you’re Guy Beauvoisin,’ she demanded.
‘Prove it!’ he repeated, fixing her with a menacing glint. ‘I come back to my own home, my land, and you ask me to prove that I am Guy Beauvoisin. You take an awful lot upon yourself, my lady.’