‘I thought you would elude me,’ she said reproachfully. ‘And you know how I enjoy the hunt.’
‘Nay, my lady,’ he said. ‘I give you good welcome.’
‘Most gracious Hugh,’ she answered softly. ‘I thought I might not have pleased you.’
‘You know how well you please me.’
Joan listened to their conversation. There was a note in her mother’s voice which told the little girl she was pleased. In fact, Joan had never known her quite so pleased before. Perhaps it was because he was home and very soon now she would be able to go to England.
How beautiful it was in the pine forest – the lovely pungent smell, the glistening green and the excitement of the chase. Joan rode forward eager to show Hugh that she could keep up with the best of them. She was a little way ahead of him; on she went and the sound of pounding horses’ hoofs went with her.
She caught a glimpse of the deer; she always felt a little sorry for them and did not greatly care to be in at the kill, though she told no one of this for fear she should be thought foolish. Once she thought that Hugh guessed, for he stayed with her and they rode back to the castle while the bearers brought in the deer. He had smiled at her very tenderly and she had loved him more than ever, because it suddenly occurred to her that he understood her thoughts without her having to express them and that he would keep her secrets, for he was going to protect her from the whole world.
She looked around for him, but he was not there. She could not see her mother either.
Isabella had whispered: Hugh, I must speak to you.’
She turned her horse and rode off while he followed. In the distance they could hear the baying of the dogs, and she rode on fast; he was close behind.
She pulled up and flashed her brilliant smile at him, holding out her hand. He took it and kissed it eagerly.
‘We will dismount and tether the horses; ’tis easier to talk that way.’
‘Isabella, I think we should return to the party … or to the castle.’
She laughed – it was the way in which she had laughed in the darkness of his bedchamber. She had already dismounted.
‘Come, Hugh,’ she said, ‘or are your afraid of me?’
He leaped down and tethering his horse beside hers, turned to her eagerly. He held her fast.
‘There is no doubt, is there,’ she asked, ‘no doubt at all. You and I belong together.’
‘There is no doubt that we should have married years ago.’
‘What is done is done. We are together now.’
She took his hand and they went into the thicket.
‘You must never let me go again, Hugh,’ she said. ‘If you did, you would never have another moment’s peace. I promise you that.’
‘I know it.’
She slipped her arm through his and he kept a tight grip on her hand.
‘We will walk through the trees and talk, Hugh. There is much we have to say.’
‘There is only this, Isabella,’ he said. ‘I am betrothed to Joan.’
‘A child … little more than a baby. And my daughter at that. It was a sad sick joke of John’s to betroth you. It was the sort of thing he enjoyed. He wanted to distress me … for he knew that I loved you. He always knew I loved you. It was the greatest emotion of my life and I could not hide it. You must not think that I shall ever let you go, Hugh. You do not know me if you think that.’
‘My dearest Isabella, it is not for us to follow our inclinations.’
‘You are wrong. How else should people live? Love should not be denied. Why should it? If you had a wife and I a husband, still I should stay with you. I would defy the world to do so. But you have no wife. I have no husband. You are betrothed to a child who knows nothing of the world … nothing of marriage … nothing of love …’
‘She has learned a great deal. She has lived ten winters and is old for her years. She cannot be sent back.’
‘Then she shall stay here. She is my daughter. Oh Hugh, I have thought of last night. To be with you thus … it was a wonderful dream come true and so shall it be throughout our lives, for I shall never give you up. There is only one thing for us to do.’
‘Nay …’
‘Yea, my lord. You shall have your bride. It is no child for whom you have to wait; it is your eager mistress who refuses to wait any longer for you. All these weary years have I yearned for you. I have caught you now, Hugh, and you are mine.’ She stopped and drawing his face down to hers kissed him wildly. ‘You shall never escape me. Never. Never.’
She watched him. He wanted her. He had never known such love-making. She laughed to herself. Cruel, wicked, ruthless, insatiable John had been a good tutor. Not that she had needed tutoring. Women such as she was were born with such knowledge. She could reduce him to such desire that he would be willing to promise anything. There was an innocence about him which had been completely lacking in John; she loved him for it. For if she was capable of love, she loved Hugh le Brun. There was no self-sacrifice in her kind of loving; a little tenderness now and then, a desire to give pleasure – but perhaps that was because she wanted to be thought supreme; there was a need to satisfy her own desires, a need to be loved and admired as no woman had ever been loved and admired before. In the first months of marriage with John she had believed she had brought him to a state of slavery, for he had given her all she asked in those days when he had shocked his ministers because he stayed in bed with her throughout the day. How wrong she had been! John could love no one but himself and she had quickly learned that it was an overwhelming sensuality in her which matched something similar in him which had made her imagine he was hers to command. It had waned as such feelings must – although he had never entirely escaped from it. Hugh was different. There was innocence and idealism in Hugh. Hugh would be her slave now and for ever.
Assuredly she was not going to allow him to escape her.
‘It is not possible,’ he said desperately.
‘My dear Hugh, it is possible if we wish it to be. If you refuse me, I shall know that I was mistaken. All these years when I have thought of you have been a mockery. You did not love me after all. Perhaps it was as well I went to John.’
‘You know that to be untrue.’
‘I had hoped it, but now you spurn me …’
‘Spurn you!’ He had taken her in his arms. And she thought: Yes, here in the forest … where some riders might come upon us at any moment. It will show him how great is his need of me, how his need and his desire takes from him the inherent inclination to conventional conduct.
‘Nay, you do not spurn me,’ she whispered. ‘You need me, Hugh … just as I need you. You could never let me go …’
He gave a cry of despair and thought of the innocent eyes of his young betrothed before he forgot everything but Isabella.
He had asked that he should first break the news to her.
‘My dearest,’ Isabella had cried, ‘but why? She will hear of it in time.’
‘Nay,’ he had said, ‘I wish this.’
She was a little put out but it seemed advisable at that time to give way.
He said he would ride out into the forest with his little betrothed because he thought it would be easier that way.
She was grave on that morning; it was almost as though she sensed some disaster. He found it difficult to tell her; he wanted to choose the right words, to explain that it was no deficiency in her.
She herself began it by saying: ‘My lord, are you displeased with me?’
‘My dear little Joan, how could I be?’
‘If I had done something that you thought was wrong.’