The Bought Bride. Juliet Landon

no good me going to speak to anyone,’ he snapped. ‘I’m not the owner. You are. You go.’

      ‘What good will it do for me to go?’ said Ketti, spreading her hands so that the tips of her wide sleeves skimmed the floor. She was not minded to do her own dirty work if someone else could be found to do it for her. ‘So what are you doing here?’ She waved a hand with some drama. ‘If you want a home with me, go and fight for it. You wrestle with your mates like a prize bull; go and wrestle with the sheriff for a change.’ She turned away, glaring at the smirking face of her twelve-year-old son Thorn. ‘Get out!’ she snapped. ‘This is private.’

      ‘Ketti.’ Warin’s voice dropped to a wheedling pitch, warming her back. ‘Ketti, my love. We shouldn’t quarrel over this.’ He took her by the shoulders and pulled her back against him, sliding his great working hands over her breasts and kneading gently, knowing how that was guaranteed to soften her.

      Her hands came up to cover his. ‘Get off,’ she whispered, pressing herself backwards into him.

      Warin was careful to conceal his smile. It had worked already. ‘No,’ he said, bending to her veil-covered ear. ‘You’re so lovely, Ketti.’ Her breasts were, in fact, the only lovely part of her, and not even the self-seeking Warin could pretend that she had either a face or a nature to match. ‘There’s no problem,’ he whispered. ‘We’ll go and move in with Rhoese. She’s still your ward. She’s obliged to help.’

      Her hands snatched his away and threw them aside as she whirled to look at him, her face suddenly hard with jealousy. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ she said. ‘To live with her. My stepdaughter. Still hankering after her, aren’t you?’

      Still puzzled by his faulty timing, Warin’s blue eyes opened like a child’s, though behind his façade of innocence was a frantic attempt to backtrack. He caught at her hands, holding her still. ‘No, sweetheart. Not to live with her, of course not,’ he blustered.

      ‘What, then?’

      ‘Look, she’s got her own place at Toft Green. She moved out of your home, didn’t she? Well, what d’ye think she’d do if we said we had to move into hers because we have nowhere else? Eh?’ He shook her hands to make her reply.

      But Ketti’s face was still hard. ‘You think she’d move out of Toft Green, don’t you? Rubbish. She won’t. She’s still crazy for you. She only moved away because she couldn’t bear the sight of you with me. She’d let you into her bed every time my back was turned. No, my lad. I’m not having that.’ There was a finality in her voice that Warin knew better than to challenge.

      ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘we’ll try sending her to the king to see if she can negotiate another patch of land for this one. Once she sees the threat of us moving into her house, she’ll fall over herself to be helpful.’

      In that one respect, he was a better judge of the situation than Ketti, though the flutter of pride and excitement he felt at her jealous suppositions was sadly misplaced. Rhoese would not have let him into her bed if he’d been the last man alive in England.

      By dawn next morning, the news had been delivered to Rhoese at Toft Green that her stepmother had been deprived of everything she had inherited from the Lord Gamal. The steward who delivered the message had been with the family for as long as Rhoese could recall and was almost in tears. ‘Go and collect your things,’ she told him. ‘You can live here with us.’

      The man knelt and kissed her hand. ‘My lady,’ he stammered. ‘My wife…may I…?’

      ‘Of course. Bring your wife.’

      After he had gone, Eric voiced his doubts. ‘Was that wise?’ he said. ‘To take him so soon? Him alone?’

      ‘After that woman took what was mine?’ she replied. ‘It may not have been too subtle, but it was vengeful. And if they think they’re going to come and move in here, they’re mistaken. They’re not.’

      Eric sought her hand and took her from the end of the hall out into the croft that was fenced with a wattle hurdle to contain pot-herbs and medicinal plants. The greenery dripped with diamonds and rustled with the sounds of recovery after the heavy rain. ‘Rosie,’ he said. ‘Whatever you think of her, she’s our kins-woman and we cannot refuse to help. You know that. She’s also your legal guardian.’

      Together, they leaned on the whitewashed wall of the house beneath the steaming overhang, and Rhoese knew a sense of despair yet again at the constant negativity of the Danish woman’s influence upon her life. Ketti had been married to Lord Gamal for only five years with no apparent advantage to anyone except herself and her family. Her son Thorn was well named, and the old hag who was Ketti’s mother rivalled the yard cockerel with her cackling. They could not be allowed to disturb the peace of Toft Green.

      ‘Yes, I know it. And she knows it too. That’s what she’s trading on. But the problem is hers, Eric. Why doesn’t she get her Danish kin to help?’

      ‘She knows that you know the archbishop, love. She’s hoping you’ll go and speak to him, I suppose. You could, if you wanted to.’

      ‘I don’t want to. Let her go and live with the cows.’

      ‘Rosie!’ he laughed. ‘That’s wicked! Go and see Archbishop Thomas. He and Father were friends. He’ll be able to help, somehow.’

      ‘Today’s the stone-laying ceremony with the king. He’ll be busy.’

      ‘Afterwards, then. When the king’s gone off hunting.’

      She sighed. ‘I really don’t see why I should.’

      ‘Yes, you do, love. I shall probably be safe at the abbey in a week or two, but you don’t want to be landed with her, of all people. Or Warin.’

      ‘He’ll not put a foot in my house,’ she said, angrily. ‘I’ll go.’

      ‘When?’

      ‘Later on, after the stone-laying. I may see Abbot Stephen, too.’ She linked an arm through his and snuggled against him. ‘I wish you would not leave me, love,’ she said. ‘I know you want to, but I shall miss you so sorely.’

      ‘I think it’s for the best. I can do no good here. I can’t inherit. I can’t protect you. I can’t seek a wife. I can’t fight for the king. I’m a liability. Best if I go and play my harp to the monks and do a bit of praying for souls. I can do that.’

      ‘But you’re my adviser. My counsellor. Who will I turn to?’

      ‘We’ve had all this out before, love. It’s been decided.’

      ‘Abbot Stephen may not want you, after all.’

      He smiled at her teasing. ‘Then I’ll have to stay with you, won’t I? But don’t you dare go and tell him of all my bad habits, just to put him off.’

      ‘I will,’ she said, kissing his cheek. ‘I will. That’s what I’ll do. But this business worries me, Eric. The last thing I wanted to do while the new king was up here in York was to show myself. You know what he thinks about women who hold land. His reputation is every bit as bad as his father’s.’

      ‘Then find the archbishop, love. He’s a Norman, but at least he knows you and our family. He’ll listen to you.’

      The crowds that packed into the city’s narrow streets were thicker than ever that day, and as Rhoese and Els pressed forward against the flow, a seething mass of bodies surged through the arch in the wall, back towards the minster. The former king, William the Bastard, had visited York only to demolish it; his son had decided to give something, for a change, and those who had come to watch this phenomenon supposed that he must therefore be of a different mould from his brutal parent.

      With a growing panic at the possible consequences of any delay, Rhoese had dressed in her best linen kirtle, dyed with damsons, over which a wide-sleeved gown reached to her knees, its borders decorated with