Chapter 2

Although a fire blazed in the hearth the solar felt cold, dank. Winter had almost reached the La Mont stronghold and, having lived within its walls for most of her life, Melinda had faced many such days and nights over her years on the Borders, the disputed lands.

She shivered, her shoulders twisting, as if that would shift the ice-coated snake slithering up her spine, and pulled the bairn at her breast closer for comfort. The cold had naught to do with how she felt. Fear had everything. Her ears caught the moans, the twists of noise sounding frae a hunting horn. Deer and boar might prick up their ears and flee from the dread echo weaving through the forest, but today they were safe. The prey her father and De Mowbray’s horsemen and archers sought to kill this day were Scots—a fact she grasped not from her father confiding his plans but by indisputable instinct. She had lived through this afore.

She almost felt sorry for those being pursued. Melinda was certain her father would give no quarter, show no mercy—not after the last time. Melinda curved her palm over the neat quilted cap that covered her firstborn son’s dark brown hair and kept his ears warm on the coldest of days. He stopped suckling to stare at her, his usually bright, laughing eyes, so like her own green ones, serious, as if her tension had seeped into the lad through her milk.

Her son Henry—her darling wee Harry—held her heart the way no man ever would.

Another horn blast tore through the cold, rain-filled afternoon, closer this time. Close enough to draw a shudder out of Melinda. Lightning flashed frae the cloud-filled sky, and in its wake, the solar appeared to grow darker.

Standing, she lifted Harry, drawing around them the knitted wool wrapper her mother had used when she was a babe. She had no memory of Ester La Mont; her mother had died soon after they arrived at Wolfsdale from London. King William had rewarded her father with the barony for his services to the crown. Sometimes she wished those services had been greater, deserved something better than this cold square tower atop a windy hill. Her father had built it to replace an ancient wooden manor house surrounded by an equally old palisade—both gone.

“Light more candles,” she instructed Jess, her maid—a dour woman who did not bother to hide her disapproval of her mistress. As a result Melinda felt nae shame over the tasks she set her, and lighting candles was naught compared to emptying the chamber pot.

Even here in the solar, the light struggled to slip through the slits in the stone walls shaped by masons to allow an archer to rain arrows down on an enemy below—something that hadn’t happened in Melinda’s lifetime. The curtain wall was too high and strong.

She had almost reached the opening with Harry in her arms when Ralf, her younger son whined and, though the annoyance didn’t earn a turn of her head, his cries could still pull at her motherly instincts and create a tight pain in her breasts, even though she knew he had nae need of her. Ralf had his own wet-nurse, Becky, and why not, she had told her father. She couldn’t be expected to feed both lads.

Harry was smaller and had needed her more. Ralf had been huge, his birth life-threatening, difficult. Ralf, intent on arriving feet first until the midwife had managed to turn him and save both their lives; it was a miracle they had both survived—a truth she would never forget. Ralf had taken hours and hours to be born, whereas Harry had slipped between her thighs as if he couldn’t wait to meet his mother. She didn’t know why her feelings felt different, but from that day to this she had loved him with everything that was in her.

As Melinda turned her head, Ralf pulled away from Becky’s teat and gave her such a look frae his green eyes. As if he saw right through to heart of her and didn’t think much of what lay there.

Apart frae the eye colour the lad was the image of his father—a reminder of days she wanted to forget.

He was Rob all over: big, strong, bigger than Harry, as if Becky’s milk was better than his mother’s. Melinda hated being reminded of her erstwhile lover and ignored the look frae the younger of her twins as she stepped in front of the narrow arrow-slit in the tower wall and looked down into the Bailey.

Disregarding Ralf made nae difference. Her son’s green eyes dragged an emotion frae the depths of her soul that she hated to admit and would prefer stayed hidden there. She swallowed, but the sensation nagging at her conscience didn’t fill her throat. No, it dwelt deep in her womb—a pained clenching of her flesh—a yearning for what had been but could never be hers again. She hated Rob for the longings he had wrought inside her body and her mind, longings that would never again be satisfied by any man if her father had his way. She drew in a deep breath and released it in a long, aching sigh. She hadn’t quite surrendered her life to weeping and wailing, yet she could understand women who did. Men were superior beings; at least Norman knights appeared to bow to that line of thought. As a daughter of one, Melinda was well acquainted with the notion that in her father’s opinion women were blessed with little in the way of brains. That like as not, at eighteen years old his daughter’s time was best spent consulting with the seneschal, making sure her father’s comforts came first, and tending to her sons’ needs as befitted the heirs of a Norman Baron. As well as keeping busy, she was expected to avoid situations that might lead to her getting more children. In her father’s opinion, an heir and a spare were enough for any man.

Sometimes she wondered if his dealings with her were all bluster. Her father had fallen into the habit of calling in to the solar to study his grandsons’ progress, to narrowing his gaze as he sized them up, particularly Ralf. He would say naught, merely giving her and Becky a nod afore turning on his heel and leaving them to continue with what women did to fill their days. Of late he had stared harder at Ralf while his nose narrowed and his hard mouth turned down at the corners. A sight that made her conscience pinch, knowing he recognised Rob’s features in the wee face, whereas blue-eyed Harry looked more and more like her father every day—a fact that almost produced a smile amongst his stern features.

More and more, as she thought of his reaction, she edged closer to the conclusion that Henry La Mont had got his wish. He just didn’t want to be reminded of how he had got the result she now believed he had hoped for. She had been too young to hide the delight that sprang up inside her heart the first time she laid eyes on Rob but had tried to hide it frae her father, acting confused and nervous at the sight of a tall broad-shouldered young man inside Wolfsdale’s manor house.

Had her obvious attraction put the notion to leave them alone in her father’s head?

She would probably never know, she thought, standing by the narrow opening to the outside. The air she breathed in felt cool and damp on her face and tasted like smoke as she stared outside, ignoring those in the chamber behind her, ignoring everyone in it bar Harry resting in her arms, forcing her mind a to become blank, resistant to recall of the events of two years ago—as if she had any choice.

Even back then, she’d had enough nous to realise what was meant by the dearth of her father’s fighting men inside the Bailey, combined with her father’s absence.

War: it was all men lived for.

Experience had taught her that Henry La Mont, Baron Wolfsdale, would once more survive the struggle, her father always did, yet that expectation didn’t quite account for the tension in the chamber. The atmosphere had everyone including herself on edge—aye even her sons: Harry who clung and Ralf who whined. Melinda pressed her teeth into the soft fullness of her bottom lip hard enough to leave it red and puffy. Her father wasn’t here to growl at her, yet she felt the echo of his last reproach, his observation that she practically ignored Ralf. Certainly, she would never run to dandle him on her knee, but she was getting better. In the beginning, every time she heard Ralf crying she had wanted to run and hide.

Her breath quickened, caught in her throat as she remembered.

Distressed now, she pressed her palm against her chest, breathing in the cold damp air as if that would calm the rush of her heartbeat. Guilt was a hard taskmaster—at first when Ralf’s cries reached a pitch that would have made any mother run to his side, her limbs had turned leaden. She knew well that it wasn’t the bairn’s fault and had occasionally smiled while watching Harry and Ralf playing together. Harry, quick on his feet, ran around fetching playthings for Ralf who sat and pointed—but it took their maid and the wet-nurse and one other to make Ralf smile . He had never yet managed to produce one for his mother.

Lately she had found herself wishing it were otherwise. Wishing she could watch him without feeling as if an invisible wall separated her from the greedy little son she could hear still suckling Becky.

Ralf was exactly like his father in the way that he latched onto his wet-nurse’s breast. Rob had been just as keen to claim hers, pulling her nipple deep into his mouth.

Sometimes it was as if her younger son could read her feelings. Saving his serious questioning looks for only her, Ralf’s little brows would draw together in a frown, as if his father were making his displeasure clear through his son.

Rob—alive or dead she hadn’t the slightest notion.

Thunder rumbled outside, and as her maid rushed about lighting candles, she went to pull the leather curtains across to hide the rising storm. She was at the second arrow slit, laughing at Harry as he reached out to tug at the sturdy leather covering. Small he might be, but it didn’t prevent his attempts to carry out tasks impossible for a lad so young.

That was when she heard the horn sound again and her breath caught in her throat.

“What’s amiss, m’lady?” Becky asked and Melinda turned to face her. Ralf’s hand was pressed against his wet-nurse’s breast as he stood up on her, both looking toward the grey world outside the window.

“Naught for us to worry about, just hunters in the forest,” she explained—a lie to make Becky feel safe and quieten the maid bustling about the chamber cleaning up after the twins, who had stopped to watch and listen. A white lie, she told herself, what harm in it if she were the only one to worry that the pursuit was closing in on Wolfsdale and that those running to escape death would be caught.

Two years since, Melinda had conducted a pursuit of her own and chased Rob until she caught him—a hunt she once remembered with regret—but time and her darling Harry had softened the hard edges of memories sharpened by pain. Life went on. Now snippets of remembered pleasure had begun pushing aside recollections of the agony she had endured to give birth to Ralf. She let out a feather-light sound she recognised as half-hearted laughter, and Harry reached up as if to capture the sound. She smiled down at him.

Aye, she had been young and eager, had taken life’s pleasure betwixt both hands and called it love—and why not? Rob had been a grand lover, seeing to her pleasure before his own, something that if her father had his way she would never experience again—though he never called her whore, not even when she refused him the father’s name. He had simply looked at her, his eyes narrowed and his gaze piercing as if he could read her mind.

It had been months after Rob’s ransom was paid that Henry La Mont returned to Wolfsdale. She had expected him to shun her, lock her away in a nunnery—and he might yet. For the moment, though, she had the protection of her sons.

An heir and a spare, something her mother hadn’t succeeded in giving him.

Her latest ambition was to keep her father’s mind distracted by both his leman and his barony, and well away from her and her sons, now she was certain that the reality of the lads being bastards mattered little to Henry La Mont. “William, Duke of Normandy, was born out of wedlock and became King of the English,” her father was wont to jest, or pretend to.

Melinda couldn’t be certain when she first became aware of her father’s burning ambitions, aware Henry La Mont would never be satisfied with a barony in Northumbria; he went about crushing his smaller neighbours, setting about adding extensive amounts of land to the original Wolfsdale grant from the King.

Aye, though her father acted like De Mowbray’s good right arm, Melinda was certain it was all a sham. Only his higher authority and strength of numbers safeguarded De Mowbray frae her father’s burgeoning ambition—a determination fostered by the leman he had brought back frae the south.

Strange to think of anyone fooling Henry La Mont, yet Melinda had a suspicion that was Brodwyn’s aim—she of the red hair and voluptuous body. From her observations, the woman was her father’s ideal. Apparently her mother Ester had had none of those attributes, only her royal connections, though the truth of that had never been explained.

This woman was different. Even her accent had a lilt Melinda couldn’t place.

Not even thick stone walls could disguise the persuasive tones the woman used on Henry La Mont while inside the master chamber. Simply put, Melinda was well versed in the sounds, the moans, the roar of male pleasure Brodwyn coaxed from Henry La Mont long into the night—pleasures that Melinda was certain tied her father to that woman, that red-haired temptress.

Combined, their aspirations could create a considerable force. It mattered little that toward Melinda and both her sons, Brodwyn was cloying sweet. What could she say, who could she tell without having them believe she was touched in the head, that jealousy had coloured her imagination with evil thoughts? Truth to tell, Melinda was positive she was the only person at Wolfsdale who had watched Brodwyn dandle one of the lads on her knee and seen a light in her eye that made Melinda fear for Harry and Ralf’s lives … leaving Melinda with the thought that, without her sons what use would there be for their mother?

As chatelaine of Wolfsdale, her duties extended beyond caring for her sons; breastfeeding Harry gave her some time away from yon chores, time to think. She had taken measures to ensure the lads were never left on their own. As for herself, she had taken to carrying a small dagger amongst her keys to the cupboards and storerooms. Melinda had no notion from where her imagination had dragged such ill-founded fears. No matter that she had grown up in the far north of Northumbria; she came from Norman stock—pragmatic, not superstitious and plagued with fears of goblins and faeries or old gods the way the local populace were. Over the last few centuries her people had abandoned the gods of the Norse lands and turned their faces toward Rome, for wasn’t that where the power emanated—Rome and the Pope?

If Normans worshiped anything it was power.

Rob had proudly claimed Scotland as home and dressed as they did, though she’d had hints that his birth had taken place farther south; but the moment she had questioned him, he had shrugged off such a suggestion. Why he needed to keep the truth secret was beyond her power to see. Her first refusals to betray Rob had wrought an ice-cold anger in Henry La Mont—an emotion far worse than he had shown when she gave birth to twin lads. His eyes had lit up while he carried the twins out of her chamber to announce their birth to the men in the hall as if she’d had naught to do with their delivery.

Her father liked to be obeyed, yet she was intent on riling him again by ignoring his wishes.

Becky had spoken to her of a small winter camp and whispered the name gypsies, a word as different and strange as Melinda understood the travelling folk to be.

On another cold, wet afternoon at the end of last winter, the wet-nurse had explained the truth of the matter. “I heard tell they are frae a far land called Egypt. They say ’tis a country set on the far edge of the Mediterranean sea, near to them so-called Holy lands where Jesus was born, yet different. There are some as call them thieves, but my mother worked for auld Farquhar, the auld Wolf that was. She said they’d been around a while—years and years. They had been slaves. The Vikings had captured them.”

Becky gave Melinda a look as if she commiserated with the folk hiding in the forest. “’Tis said they escaped long years ago, during a Viking raid on Lindisfarne, where the monks live out on the coast. They keep themselves by travelling around the country to fairs and the like. And don’t take me wrong, I’m not saying they’re witches, but for a coin they’ll read yer fortune in yer palm.”

Becky meant they could read the future and Melinda desperately wanted to know hers.

Finally dragging her mind away from her father, Melinda cast a glance around the solar—the stone walls, the tapestry her mother had helped to stitch—wondering if there would ever be more to her world than three women and two lads sitting in the flickering candlelight.

If she had her choice, had had her future read two years ago, would she have taken the same road? Taken Rob? Or would she have had naught to do with him and saved them all from this grey life that seemed to have no end?