yard. Surely he couldn't have found out? But what if one of the other
servants had seen her and reported it? There were always those who sought to
ingratiate themselves or divert attention from their own crimes by reporting
someone else's.
She
saw the brown shoes turn as if the wearer was about to walk away. In her relief
she must have relaxed her grip on her flail. It slipped from her sweaty fingers
and fell with a dull thump. The shoes turned back.
'You,
come with me.'
He
was addressing someone else, he had to be. She dared not look up.
'Did
you hear what I said?'
His
voice was as high-pitched as a little girl's, but booming from his great barrel
chest, it echoed off the barn walls.
She
felt the hand of the woman next to her pushing her in the back.
'Do
as he says, Elena,' she whispered. 'Don't bait him. He's a bear with a
toothache today.'
The
field hands and servants might mimic the steward behind his back, but few dared
do so in his hearing. Men knew from bitter experience that if he so much as
caught them grinning, they'd be lucky to escape with their faces smashed to a
pulp. He might sound like a small boy, but Master Raffaele had the temper of a
charging bull and the bulk and strength to match.
The
steward waited long enough to be certain Elena was following, then he strode
from the barn. Elena stumbled after him. Her legs felt as if they were chained
to the threshing floor, but somehow she pushed her feet forward. Every woman in
the threshing circle was watching her, some anxiously, others winking at each
other as if they thought he had called her out because he wanted a tumble.
Surely
he wouldn't have taken her so publicly if that was his intention. Old Walter,
the gatekeeper at the manor, had tried to drag most of the girls into the
stables at one time or other, mostly when he was sheep-drunk after a night in
the tavern. A knee in the groin and a threat to scream were always enough to
send him reeling off to find other company. But she was pretty sure it would
take more than that to drive Master Raffaele away.
The
sun beat down hard on Elena's bent head, scorching her skin despite the cloth
she had wrapped around her hair to keep out the dust. Master Raffaele lumbered
across the courtyard ahead of her.
Even
for a man he was unusually tall, with great long limbs out of all proportion to
his body. Elena's mother, Cecily, had said that when he'd first returned from
the Holy Land with Sir Gerard, Raffaele had been by far the best-looking man in
the shire. There wasn't a woman in Gastmere, young or old, who hadn't dreamed
of being bedded by him. With his heart- shaped face, delicate beardless chin
and head of luxuriant blue-black curls, he seemed to have stepped straight out
of the painting of the Annunciation on the church wall, a living, breathing
Archangel Gabriel, clothed in flesh as soft and fragrant as a virgin maid's.
'Who
wouldn't want to feel that between your legs?' Elena's mother had sighed
wistfully.
And
Master Raffaele was better than any heavenly messenger for he was, as everyone
knew, a gelding, so unlike the Archangel Gabriel there was no danger of him
leaving you with a bastard in your belly.
It
was not uncommon for men to lose their testicles through getting injured in a
boar hunt or having them cut off to relieve the agony of a hernia, and there
were many whispered speculations about just how Raffaele had come to mislay
his. Nevertheless, all the women were agreed on one thing: no other geldings of
their acquaintance were blessed with such a wickedly tempting body as Master
Raffaele possessed.
But
it is impossible for the young to imagine their parents' generation could ever
have been the objects of desire, for Master Raffaele was now approaching forty
summers, so rumour had it, and old enough to be Elena's father — not that he
could have fathered any brat.