Merline Lovelace - Crusader Captive

Jocelyn stepped back to allow them entry to her chamber. The captive entered first. His matted, filthy beard had been cut off and the bristles pumiced away. His equally foul hair had been washed until it glinted a dull gold. He wore clean breeks and a coarse wool tunic, Jocelyn saw.

Standing this close to her, he loomed as tall as the cedars from the forests of Lebanon. Her airy chamber seemed to shrink in size as he took a stance before her, his feet planted wide and his gaze intent on her face. Now that she could see his features clearly, she found him more daunting than she would admit, even to herself. His nose was flattened at the bridge, as though someone had taken a mailed fist to it. His mouth was set, his chin square.

And those eyes. Sweet heaven, those eyes! Fierce and unblinking and as deep a blue as the sea, they regarded Jocelyn with both suspicion and disdain.

“Have you told him what I require of him?” she asked Sir Hugh.

“No. But I have told him that he will not live to see the dawn if he does ill by you.” Her faithful castellan hesitated a moment. “He’s been hard used, lady. I had a man-at-arms spread unguent on his cuts but Lady Constance should physik them afore they—”

“I thank you, Sir Hugh, but my hurts can be tended to later.” Those blue eyes speared into Jocelyn. “First I would know why a Frankish lady must needs purchase a captive to do her bidding. What is this urgent task you require of me?”

“It’s a simple matter.” Her fists balled inside her long sleeves. “Once it’s done, you may leave Fortemur a free man, well horsed and supplied with sword, lance and shield from the castle armory.”

He did not leap at the offer. Jocelyn would not have trusted him if he had. She’d developed keen instincts over many years of judging the men and women who served her and her grandfather before her. This one, she’d sensed from the moment he’d stood tall and defiant on the auction block, would break before he’d bend.

Pray God that held true for his oath once given!

“If this matter is as simple as you say,” he asked with an inbred wariness she could not but credit, “why don’t you set one of your own men to it?”

“I’ll explain in a moment. But first I must have your oath that you will never speak of what happens here tonight.”

“You would trust the oath of a man you bought for a few pieces of gold?”

“Yes.” Only because she had no choice. “Do you so swear?”

His answer came slowly and with great reluctance, but it came. “I do.”

A great weight seemed to press on Jocelyn’s chest. Her glance shifted to Sir Hugh. He pleaded with her.

“You need not do this,” he growled.

“I have no choice.” She gathered her courage and her dignity. “Leave us, please.”

“My lady…”

“Leave us.”

For a moment she thought he would refuse. But he’d served both her and her grandfather for so many years that he finally acquiesced. Not without a final word of warning for the captive, however.

“I’ll wait in the guardroom below. One scream, one shout from Lady Jocelyn will signal your death.”

She stood silent until the thud of his footsteps on the stairs faded before she closed the tower door. Sir Hugh would see none came up to disturb them, so she didn’t turn the key in the lock. When she faced the captive again, she had to struggle to keep the nervousness from her voice.

“How are you called?”

“Simon de Rhys.”

“Are you knight or mercenary?”

“Knight. What do you want of me?”

Jocelyn took both her temper and her decisiveness from the grandsire who’d raised her. She’d ordered women flogged and men branded for a variety of crimes without hesitation. Thus she bristled at his tone, yet found herself dancing around his brusque question.

A small, mocking corner of her mind called her a coward. She’d planned this night down to the veriest detail. Had risked her life and those of her escort to set her plan in motion. Yet now that she’d reached the crucial point in her scheme, she found herself hesitating.

“Would you have wine?” she asked, gesturing to the table set close to the stone hearth. “Or dates?”

“No. What do you want of me?”

Very well. He wished it without bard or barding. So be it.

“I want you to lie with me.”

He reared back. “What say you?”

“I want you in my bed this night, and this night only. Then you will leave Fortemur with all I promised you.”

Brows bleached by the sun to the color of sanded oak snapped together. Suspicion warred with incredulity in his face. “Why?”

“The reason is not your concern,” she said haughtily. “Only that I wish to be rid of my maidenhead.”

He looked her up and down with an insolence that brought the blood rushing to her cheeks.

“You don’t need to purchase a stud for that. One of your men-at-arms could do the deed for you. Or any crone with a broomstick, for that matter.”

The crude suggestion brought her chin up. Crows would peck out her eyes before she would admit she’d considered both such desperate courses! But if asked—when asked by the king—she must be able to swear by all she held holy that she’d lain with a man and was no longer virgin.

When that happened, she fully expected Baldwin to unleash the full fury of his wrath. Although he was but a few years older than Jocelyn herself, the king clung as tenaciously to his birthright as she did to hers. Whoever thwarted his plans for an alliance with the emir by taking his ward’s maidenhead would suffer mightily for it. She would not allow any of the men who served her so loyally to take the blame. That would be hers and hers alone to bear.

“The why and how of this are not your concern, de Rhys. Only the deed itself.”

His lip curled. “So you would barter a man’s freedom for a rut?”

“You’ll have your freedom, whether we rut or not,” Jocelyn returned stiffly. “But it will take you at least a year to earn back the price I paid for you. So the choice is yours, de Rhys. One night in my bed, or twelve months as my vassal?”

Twelve months! Simon’s gut twisted. Twelve months, and his father would most like be dead of the wasting sickness that had laid him low.

If Gervase de Rhys went to his Maker, would Simon then be free of the pledge binding him to the Knights Templar? Free to win lands of his own? Free to wed, or at least bed for more than a single night, a female such as this one?

It had been months since he’d had a woman. Although he hadn’t yet been formally inducted into the ranks of the Knights Templar, he’d prepared himself both mentally and physically for the demands so unique to their order.

The great keeps that the Templars held here and in the West served as both monasteries and cavalry barracks. Within them, the members of the order lived as pious monks shed of all but the humblest robes and sandals. When called to war, however, they took up sword and shield and faced death with indifference. They were the first to attack, the last to retreat. And whether at prayer or at war, they sought at all times to rise above the sins of the flesh.

Simon knew he would have to struggle mightily with that. He was a man, after all. One with strong appetites.

And the lady of Fortemur was much a woman, he acknowledged. That silken hair. Those ripe lips. The strong, firm chin now raised to such a stubborn angle.

Lust for her rose in him, so fast and fierce it seared his veins. Or mayhap it was pain that licked at his back like tongues of flame. The source of the heat didn’t matter. Whatever the reason for it, Simon wanted to give this pale-haired witch what she asked from him.

The man in him ached to tear her laces and strip away her gown. To bare her breasts and belly and flanks to the firelight. Drag her down to the carpet and thrust into her with all the fury that had built in him since his capture.