Yet she had betrayed him with Athan. He could imagine every detail of it. He had done so many times, some furtive sweaty groping in a stinking byre or stable. And if she spread her legs for that gormless youth, who's to say there hadn't been others? Even that, he persuaded himself, he could have forgiven her, if she had only trusted him. Why couldn't she have brought the baby to him if she wanted to be rid of it? He had offered her, stupid little girl, a base-born villein, his love and protection and she wouldn't even condescend to take that much from him.
He knew he only had to toss Ma a few coins and Elena would be his to do with as he pleased, for as long as he pleased. That was all the old hag wanted - money. But even now, even after all he'd risked for Elena, he couldn't do it. He couldn't bear to see her mouth curl in disgust when she saw him naked, the ridicule in her eyes, the mockery pouring from those full lips. He could not force himself on her, knowing how much she would hate him for it.
A smile of satisfaction hovered around Ma's mouth. She pushed the wine flagon invitingly towards him. 'Now, Master Raffe, let me tell you what I have in mind for the girl.'
Few gentlemen came to Ma's house in the early afternoon, for most were seeing to their own businesses. The women took advantage of the quiet time to sleep, wash and mend their linen, or primp in readiness for the early evening customers. But Elena, once her cleaning tasks were done, always spent the afternoon in the courtyard garden. Mostly she just wandered among the vervain and germander, lavender and bergamot, letting her skirts brush the bushes to release the scents. Often she would pull a weed or clip off a dying bloom to encourage more to blossom. It wasn't part of her duties, but she missed the fields and the forests of her village in a way she had never dreamed possible.
When she had been a field hand, back before that day when Master Raffaele had summoned her from threshing, she'd done her fair share of complaining about the back- breaking work of hoeing and planting, reaping and gathering. But she had not understood until now how much freedom she'd had to stop and stare up at the wide open skies, the ships of white clouds drifting through the blue sea above and the ragged flocks of rooks wheeling around the swaying trees. In all directions the land had rolled out away from her, shaded with every hue of brown and green growing paler and paler in the far distance until finally the colours dissolved into the ocean of sky. But in here she could see no further than the high walls of the courtyard and the square of blue cut out above her head, like a piece of cloth laid ready to be crimped and sewn and bound.
Back in Gastmere, she had been able to escape on solitary walks to pick blackberries or gather firewood, and find the space to be silent, listening to the piping of a blackbird or the wind creeping through the rushes. But here she was surrounded by women day and night, chattering, laughing, snoring. For all that she missed the land, there was one thing she longed for more than any of that. It was Athan. It was those precious moments when they'd walked hand in hand under the great dome of glittering stars, when there seemed no one else in the whole world save the two of them. Who was he walking under the stars with now? Tears pricked her eyes. Why hadn't Athan tried to find her? Did he even care what had happened to her?
She must have been muttering aloud, because a frightened little face peered round from behind a raised turf seat that was covered over with fragrant purple flowering thyme and wild marjoram. Then it disappeared at once. Elena tiptoed around to the back of the seat and saw a small boy sitting on the grass behind it, his knees drawn up to his chin, his arms wrapped tightly around himself.
He glanced up briefly, then lowered his head again, as if by not looking at her he could make himself invisible.
'Hiding?' Elena asked with a smile, but the boy didn't answer.