The Leopard Unleashed by Elizabeth Chadwick

smiling, closed her eyes.
    The first few miles of the journey up the march to greet the bridal party travelling down towards them were loaded with tension and brooding temper. Renard set a vicious pace, and Gorvenal, half Arabian and lighter boned than a full destrier, flew over the ground and left the escort lumbering. William had to spur Smotyn hard to keep level, and after one particularly bad stumble, shouted at Renard to slow down.
    ‘You’re going to founder us all!’ he complained.
    ‘Don’t blame me if you can’t keep up!’ Renard retorted, but he drew rein and looked round at the men strung out behind, and knew that the blame was indeed his. It was not horses or men he was riding into the ground but his own foul temper. If any serjeant or knight of his had led the troop in such a sloppy formation as he now saw, he would have blistered that man’s ears from his skull and docked his pay.
    ‘Christ, Renard, take a grip on yourself !’ William’s voice cracked with anxiety. ‘The whole future of our family is in your hands. You can’t throw it away because of a … because of a …’
    ‘… Half-breed dancing girl?’ Renard finished for him, with a mirthless laugh. ‘Jesu, if you knew how easy it just might be.’
    William eyed him. Renard’s features were now schooled to impassivity. William’s gut ceased to lurch with fear and the tightness across his shoulders eased. Just before the leading knight reached them, Renard slapped William’s mail-clad arm. ‘My wits had gone wool-gathering and left my temper in command,’ he said with forced lightness. ‘I’m all right now, you can stop fretting.’
    Which meant, thought William, that the temper was of a necessity locked up, not that it had magically evaporated. He watched Renard muster the men, jest with them about his haste to greet his bride, watched him organise them into a tight escort, van, centre and rearguard to his liking, and then settle companionably among them to ride at a sensible, disciplined pace. It was more than just the girl, he thought. It was the responsibility for Ravenstow. It was the sight of their father dying by fractions before his eyes. It was the constant living on a blade’s edge. What wonder that he should seek oblivion in the arms of a woman who was a reminder of the lost freedom of Outremer. What wonder that he should object to being roused and thrust face to face with duty.
    William was suddenly thankful that as his father’s youngest son, and unlikely to succeed to the earldom, he still had the freedom that Renard was being forced to forfeit.
    * * *
    The wind surged like an ocean, roaring through the trees and leaching them bare in trailing swirls of copper, gold and brown through which the horses waded and crunched as though they were treading shingle.
    Elene shivered in her squirrel-lined cloak as the wind spattered rain into her face so hard that the droplets hurt her. She gripped her hood tightly and fidgeted in the saddle, her thighs chafed by the long day astride.
    ‘Not far now,’ Adam de Lacey said to her with a sympathetic smile. ‘Are you anxious?’
    Elene explored the hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. ‘A little,’ she admitted. ‘It seems so long ago. We’ll be strangers – married strangers within a week.’ She tried to smile at him and failed.
    Adam leaned over and clasped his hand over hers on the reins. ‘It will be all right, Nell,’ he said with compassion. ‘I know it will be difficult at first, but you’ll adjust, you’ll see.’
    She nodded stiffly and wished she was marrying Adam. He was tolerant and seldom out of humour. He would have the time for her that she already sensed Renard would not.
    Elene bit her lip, and looked down at Bramble’s dark mane. She had sewn all her dreams into her wedding garments, but was beginning to wish that she had been less obvious. There was a tunic for Renard too, the rich embroidery a play on his name. Renard, taken from his Norman