The Wild Hunt Read Online Free PDF Page B

life.'
    Alicia cast a glance over her shoulder to where Guyon was giving the dog into the temporary care of one of his knights, then returned her attention to Miles. 'You are laughing at me, my lord.'
    'I may be.'
    Her mouth began to curve. She straightened it.
    'Judith is anxious,' she said. 'Tonight she will be a wife, when this morning she was a child.'
    Miles sobered. 'Guyon has a sister and nieces and is by no means green about women.'
    'So we hear,' Alicia replied waspishly, and then shook her head. 'No surprise when you consider his looks and the ways of the court.'
    'I am not at court now, my lady,' Guyon said, joining them.
    Alicia jumped. He moved as softly as Judith's cat.
    'You need not fear,' Guyon continued. 'I promise I will treat your daughter with every respect and courtesy.'
    'Judith is young, but she is quick to learn and quite capable of managing a household,' Alicia replied, recovering herself. 'If she appeared in a bad light just now, it is because she has been unsettled by her father's death and this sudden change in her situation.'
    In other words, Guyon thought wryly, she was a resentful, frightened little girl who would take a deal of delicate handling if anything was to be salvaged from the morass.
    The wine arrived, and with it Hugh d'Avrenches, Earl of Chester, thus sparing Guyon the need to make Alicia a reply.
    'It is bound to be difficult at first,' Miles said to Alicia as Guyon lent a relieved ear to what his neighbour had to say concerning the Welsh alliances of the region. 'Given different circumstances, there would have been the time we all need.'
    'Given different circumstances,' Alicia said with a side-long look at Guyon, 'there would have been no arrangement at all , would there?'
    Lost for a reply, Miles lifted his cup and drank.
    Guyon looked at the girl to whom he had just bound himself in Ravenstow's freezing chapel, his vows committing him to her protection for the rest of his life, no matter how short that might now be.
    Her own voice making the responses had been tremulous and more than once swallowed in tears.
    He had felt the daggers in men's eyes as they witnessed his marriage. Arnulf of Pembroke had barely been civil in greeting and Walter de Lacey was sneeringly hostile. Judith's face was turned towards him, awaiting the sacrificial kiss of tradition. The high cheekbones gave a distinctly feline expression to her eyes, which were a peculiar mingling of brown upon grey like water in spate.
    Dear Christ, what had he sold himself into?
    Probably an early grave, he thought as he slipped his arm around her waist. She was rigid and trembling beneath the glowing green damask. It was a grown woman's gown cladding the thin frame of a child and he knew that he could no more bed with her tonight than he could with one of his nieces. He kissed her cheek as he would a vassal, the touch brief and impersonal. Her skin smelled faintly of rosewater, and her hair of the rosemary and camomile in which it had been washed for the wedding.
    Judith shuddered at the contact and Guyon immediately released her. Together they turned to receive the congratulations of the guests and witnesses; few in number because of the hasty arrangements, to Judith they seemed a claustrophobic throng.
    The entire occasion for her was a nightmare endured through a fog. Sporadically the mist would lift to reveal a sharply coloured tableau with herself bound victim at its centre. The awful moment when the dog had sent her flying, her arrival at the chapel, the faces turned towards her, their expressions stamped with speculation, with pity, with predatory greed. Now, clearly, she could see her hand resting upon her husband's dark sleeve, her wedding ring of Welsh gold proclaiming his ownership. She was as much his property now as his horse or that dog, to be used and abused as he chose.
    The guests mingled in the great hall . Below the dais they danced in honour of the bride and groom. Guyon watched his new wife perform