Free The Running Vixen by Elizabeth Chadwick Page B

to his squire. ‘Go within, Austin, and deliver it to Lady Heulwen. Tell her that the other twenty are her wedding present. She will know what you mean.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    Adam watched him lope off, then turned back to the horse, and unslinging his helmet from the pommel, put it on. ‘You’ll need armour,’ he said to Renard. ‘Do you have a hauberk?’
    ‘I have the one that was my brother’s before he drowned. It fits me better than it used to fit him. Will you wait for me?’
    Adam nodded at the dun stallion resting slack-hipped beside Vaillantif. ‘You can use my remount instead of your own horse if you like. I noticed you were outgrowing that grey when you came to Thornford.’
    Renard’s dark eyes kindled. ‘Adam, you’re a friend!’ He embraced Adam in a fervent hug that almost squeezed the breath from the latter’s body.
    ‘What do you do to your enemies?’ Adam asked weakly.
     
    ‘What’s this for?’ Warrin de Mortimer lifted one of the bags of silver just delivered to Heulwen by the snub-nosed squire, and jinked it back down on the trestle.
    Despite the offhand tone of his asking, Heulwen could tell he was irritated. ‘I sold him Vaillantif.’
    Warrin flicked his forefinger against the side of the bag. ‘For a goodly sum, by the looks of things.’
    ‘He insisted on giving me more than was due. He was very stubborn. I didn’t want it.’
    ‘So stiff-necked that one day someone is going to snap it for him,’ Warrin muttered.
    ‘You?’
    He laughed and shook his head. ‘Is it so obvious?’
    ‘You were like a pair of dogs circling each other, waiting for the right moment to leap at one another’s throat.’
    ‘I don’t like the bastard, I’ll admit that outright.’ He extended his hands to the brazier. ‘Never knew his place as a junior squire, and I doubt he does yet.’
    Heulwen watched him, her stomach a mass of tiny butterflies. His hands were steady over the heat. Broad and powerful, they did not suit the various rings with which he had bedecked them. Her father very seldom wore jewellery and neither did Adam.
    ‘What was the other matter of which he spoke?’ he asked into her silence.
    She shook her head, knowing a grievous mistake when she saw one. ‘It was trifling,’ she dissembled. ‘Ralf sold a horse and I want to buy him back.’
    ‘You could have asked me to do that.’ He looked at her reproachfully. ‘There was no need to involve Adam de Lacey.’
    ‘You were in Normandy, and besides, Adam knows the owner.’ His jaw tightened, but so did hers in determined response. ‘Warrin, don’t scowl at me like that. Adam has been my foster brother since I was two years old. If you cannot tolerate his occasional presence on mutual ground like Ravenstow, then you might as well seek a different woman to wife!’
    Immediately he was contrite, turning from the brazier to take her hands in his. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that I arrived here eager to greet you, and I did not expect to find Adam de Lacey sprawled in your father’s chair . . .’
    ‘And you are accustomed to having your own way in all things,’ she agreed with an arched brow.
    ‘Yes, I am!’ Before she could rebel, his hands had slipped around her waist again and his breath was warm on her cheek as his head descended and he claimed her lips, imprinting them with the will of which he spoke. His arms tightened and his tongue probed. Heulwen stood passively within the embrace, neither welcoming nor resisting it, but it was sufficient for him that she was warm and pliant in his arms, and he persisted, driven by the anxiety to possess, and a more basic need.
    The smell of spikenard was too powerful to be pleasant. It irritated her nose and made her want to sneeze. He was wearing his hauberk and the links began to bruise her arms where they were trapped by his. A small, inner voice asked her if she would have noticed such discomforts if Adam had been holding her. She tried to respond to Warrin, but the