Free The Winter Crown by Elizabeth Chadwick Page B

hold now, I can work for the good of the family and be rewarded for it. I am an important part of Henry’s web, but I do not have to spin the thread of policy and worry about catching flies.’
    Alienor smiled at the comparison and kissed his cheek. ‘You have given me things to think about,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’ But she still intended Jeoffrey for the Church.
    Alienor watched Henry raise his foot on to the bed and unwind his leg binding. They were alone – finally. She had feared he might find somewhere else to sleep in order to avoid her, but he had come willingly enough to her chamber.
    Removing her rings and dropping them into her enamelled jewel casket she said: ‘You have so many plans and you are not still for a moment, but you have not told me how you are faring yourself.’
    He kept his focus on his task. ‘I do not know what you mean. I am well; you can see I am. You do not need to ask.’
    ‘Henry, I do. You refuse to speak of Will, as if he never existed, and the more you do not speak of him, the deeper the wound cuts. It will never heal, no matter how many bandages you wrap over it.’ She came and stood in front of him, forcing him to look up.
    He put the leg binding down with a sigh. ‘Speaking of it is pointless; it will not bring him back,’ he said in a rough voice and pulled her into his arms. ‘Rather look to the future, and the new lives we shall create.’
    ‘Henry…’
    ‘No more.’ He set his forefinger against her lips. ‘It is over now, I have told you.’ He kissed her, silencing her with his mouth over hers and the probe of his tongue.
    He took her to bed and made love to her with long slow thoroughness. Alienor gasped and sobbed beneath him as the languorous sensations grew into exquisite torture. She dug her nails into his upper arms and opened herself to him. He pinned her down as he thrust into her for the final moments of giving her his seed and she welcomed his forcefulness and the tight throb within her body because she wanted to conceive another son, and for that to happen, the man’s seed had to dominate the woman’s.
    Henry took her twice more that night and then, drained, slept curled into her, his arm across her body, the last thing he murmured as he fell asleep, ‘I meant it. It is done. We shall not talk about it – ever.’
    She curled on her side, feeling wretched. Henry might think he was smoothing the path between them by refusing to discuss the death of their son, but he was just burying stones under the surface. If he would not allow her to speak of it to him, then how was she to shed the burden of her grief and remorse and how was he to bear his? They would just stumble along that stony path bent under the weight of their baggage, until eventually it brought them down.

7
Bordeaux, Christmas 1156
    It had snowed earlier in the day, a scant dusting that lay like crushed sugar over rooftops and turrets. Dark footprints patterned the courtyard of the Ombrière Palace and left an ephemeral record of activity across the open ground to and from the buildings.
    ‘This was always my summer home when I was a child,’ Alienor told Isabel as they walked side by side in the gathering dusk, bundled in thick, fur-lined cloaks. ‘We spent our time in the gardens and sometimes we had our lessons there in the shade of the trees.’
    ‘My lessons were held at our castle at Acre in Norfolk,’ Isabel reciprocated. ‘I never imagined then what fate had in store for me.’
    ‘Nor me,’ Alienor said ruefully. ‘I would have told my younger self to run for her life had I known. Perhaps that is why God keeps us in ignorance.’ She glanced fondly at Isabel. Had her husband been more robust and chosen to dispute the throne, they would have been rivals for a crown. Instead they were companions, cut from different cloth but still with a pattern in common. ‘You must have heard tales of Aquitaine though.’
    Isabel smiled. ‘Oh yes, we often heard stories and songs about