Defy Not the Heart by Johanna Lindsey Page A

unfortunately, that was the one thing she could not offer him, thanks to her father having emptied their coffers for King Richard’s Crusade.

Chapter Twelve
    T he march that day seemed longer than usual to Ranulf, though actually they made good progress considering the slow pace they kept to accommodate Rothwell’s men, none of whom had been supplied with horses, and the supply carts. Ranulf’s own thirty men, who had been with him now for four years, some longer, had mounts he had bargained for long ago, not the best or the youngest in horseflesh, and not nearly as expensive as the destriers he had supplied for Searle and Eric when they were knighted, but adequate to their needs. The thirty horses had not come cheap; had cost him four months’ service to a northern horse breeder beset by Scottish reivers, but having his men all mounted made the difference in getting certain jobs where speed was a necessity.
    Usually, the time in the saddle sped by quickly for Ranulf, spent in planning the current job or even the next one, or on thoughts of the future when he would finally achieve his goal and have his own keep, rich fields to support it, his own villeins to care for. He had learned where he could about farming and animal husbandry, and about baronial court laws, for he had not received a proper education.
    He had spent the first nine years of his life with the village smith, the brutish man his grandfather had given his mother to wed when she claimed the lord’s grandson had been planted in her belly. She died theyear after he was born, so the smith got no bargain, only a babe to raise who was no use to him until he could learn the craft. This was sooner than he was ready, which accounted for Ranulf’s overdeveloped muscles at a tender age.
    Known to be the future lord’s bastard had made his lot harder, not easier, for the village youths shunned him, the smith resented him and worked him until he was ready to drop each night, and his father, a youth himself at six years and ten when Ranulf was born, cared not what happened to him. His lordly grandfather came around from time to time to check on his development but never offered a kind word or a hint of kinship, and his father was seen rarely, and only at a distance.
    He did not even meet his father until the day he was told he was being sent to Montfort to become a knight, and that likely came about only because his father had been wed five years by then, yet had produced no legitimate child in all that time. He had another bastard, one he had already made his heir in case a true heir was never born, which had indeed come to pass, for his wife was barren and yet still lived. But Ranulf did not know that at the time. For many a year he had thought he was being groomed to inherit, which was why he never complained about the hardships of being trained by a man like Montfort, and why it had been such a bitter blow to him when he did learn his bastard brother would inherit all instead.
    His education at Montfort was only in the use of arms, with a bare smattering of knightly courtesies thrown in, for Lord Montfort was nowise a chivalrous knight himself. But Ranulf was knighted, had in factearned his spurs on the battlefield when he was only six years and ten, during one of Montfort’s petty wars. That he stayed on to serve Montfort for another year was only because Walter, a year older than Ranulf, had to wait that extra year before he was knighted, too, and they had already vowed to seek their fortunes together.
    If his manner bespoke his baseborn heritage, as she claimed, it was partly a result of his particular “education,” but partly deliberate, too, his dislike and distrust of ladies in general coloring his attitude toward any he must deal with. And it was his dealings so far with the Lady of Clydon that made this day drag out, for instead of pleasant thoughts of the future to occupy him as he rode along, he was plagued by anger, bewilderment, and horror over