Crusader Captive (5 page)

“I know of him.” The steward’s lip curled. “If half the tales told of the man are true, he would trade his honor for the price of a goat.” He pointed his eating knife at Jocelyn. “Have a care, lady. Rotten fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

The warning made her chest squeeze so tight she couldn’t breathe. Heaven help her! Had she misread de Rhys’s character when she’d assessed him on the auction block? Would he ignore his vow to keep silent and brag to any who would listen about bedding the lady of Fortemur? Mayhap try to make some claim on her or her estate?

As quickly as the panic leaped from her chest to grab her by the throat, she thrust it back down again. Simon de Rhys had shown his true stripes last night. She might have been an untried virgin when he’d entered her chamber, but she was no fool. She knew well he could have used her far more roughly than he had.

True, he’d demeaned her by insisting she remove her robes and his. Also true, he’d looked her up and down in a manner that even now sent heat into her cheeks. Yet his touch had been… Had been…

Tantalizing. Exciting. Inflaming. Especially when he’d stroked her where no other ever had.

Without the least warning, Jocelyn’s womb clenched. So hard and tight that her hand fisted around her eating knife. Shocked to her core by the pulsing sensation, she shoved back her chair and rose.

“I must let Lady Constance come down and break her fast. I’ll be in my chamber, tending to de Rhys, should you need me.”

Simon was sure he dreamed. Those quiet voices. Those soft hands and cool, soothing cloths on his neck and aching back. They couldn’t belong to the horror that had been his life since pirates had stormed aboard the ship transporting him to Outremer.

He shifted, rubbing a bristly cheek against linen smelling faintly of musk and lavender. The scent stirred something buried deep in his mind. He had a vague memory of skin imbued with this same costly musk. Warm, silken skin that heated under his hands.

An answering heat rose in him. Hot. Searing. Far closer to pain than pleasure. The voices faded. Darkness claimed him.

“You must drink.”

Dragged from the enveloping mists, Simon tried to shut out the nagging voice. It wouldn’t be stilled.

“Do not scowl so at me.”

A firm hand gripped his neck and tilted his head. Something pressed against his lips.

“Drink.”

Irritated, he opened his mouth and near gagged when a noxious brew slid down his throat. When he tried to spit it out, a hand clapped over his lips.

“Drink it, I say!”

He got it down and pried up gritty eyelids to find he was lying on his side, face-to-face with a woman seated on a low stool. She had stern gray eyes and a face that showed lines of age beneath her elegant wimple.

“Who…?”

Lord! Had that hoarse croak come from him? He dragged his tongue over dry, cracked lips and tried again.

“Who are you?”

“I am Constance, wife to Sir Guy.”

That told him nothing.

Where in the name of all the saints was he? Who was this woman, and this Sir Guy she spoke of?

“Swallow the rest of this draught and I will fetch Lady Jocelyn. She wished to know the moment you came to your senses.”

Jocelyn. The name pierced Simon’s confused haze. His mind formed an instant vision of pink-tipped breasts and soft, creamy skin. His body stirred in response.

Luckily, the woman seated mere inches from him didn’t note his involuntary stiffening. She poured the rest of the foul-tasting brew down his throat, set aside the drinking horn, gathered her skirts and rose.

“I’ll send for Lady Jocelyn.”

“Wait! First tell me…” He scraped his furry tongue across his lips again. “Tell me how long I’ve slept.”

“You’ve been abed for nigh onto two days and two nights.”

When she departed, Simon rolled over. Or tried to. The effort seemed to tear strips of skin from his back. When the waves of pain subsided, he moved more cautiously, inch by slow inch, until he lay on his back.

Frowning, he stared up at the heavy bed curtains hung from a frame above his head. Of a sudden he could remember them rattling on their iron links as a certain stiff-backed lady tugged them open. Remember, too, the curve of her waist and buttocks below the fall of her hair.

So she wasn’t a dream. Lady Jocelyn. Mistress of Fortemur. He’d really bedded her. Not just bedded, he remembered suddenly, but pierced her maiden’s shield.

A fierce satisfaction thrust through his whirling thoughts. He’d bedded only one other virgin. He’d been a callow youth of ten or eleven at the time, completely bewitched by a buxom drover’s daughter some years older. They’d fumbled in the straw and he’d almost spilled himself before she’d given an impatient huff and straddled his hips.

As best he could recall, the drover’s daughter had been a rough and blowzy wench. The woman he’d bedded last night was anything but. As his mind cleared, the details flooded back: of a lady haughty and stubborn and proud. Trim flanks girded by a linen band. Rounded buttocks that had near driven him mad with desire.

To know he was the first man Lady Jocelyn had wrapped her legs around tugged at something deep and fierce and primal in Simon. He might not have a groat to call his own, but she was his. She would be, henceforth, in a way she could never be for another man.

Not that Simon could claim her. Aside from the fact that her station was far above his, he’d sworn never to reveal what had transpired between them last night. More to the point, his thrice-damned father had sentenced him to a life that forbade any further concourse with all women, including the Lady of Fortemur.

The tread of footsteps in the hall wrenched him from his grim thoughts. Teeth gritted, Simon turned his head to the door as two people swept in. His first thought was that the Lady Jocelyn was both more and less beauteous than he remembered. Linen banded her forehead and chin and confined her hair. Her mouth was set, her chin angled to a stubborn and most unbecoming tilt. Yet her gown’s square-cut bodice emphasized the swell of her breasts, and the belt clasped loosely around her hips drew his gaze to their graceful curve.

But it was her eyes that caught and held his. The warning in their brown depths was unmistakable. He was to say naught, reveal naught, of what had passed between them.

The unspoken warning rubbed his feathers exactly the wrong way. He’d given his word. Did the woman think he wouldn’t keep to it? The thought that she might hold him in as little esteem as the rest of the world held his father made Simon’s jaw lock.

“So you are awake at last.”

“As you see,” he got out in a voice that rustled like dry corn husks.

His gaze went from her to the richly attired lord who’d entered with her. Red-bearded and broad of shoulder, the man regarded Simon with a supercilious air.

“I am Sir Thomas of Beaumont,” he announced. “Cousin to King Baldwin and steward of Fortemur until Lady Jocelyn is given in marriage.”

Ah! That explained the fierce warning in the lady’s eyes. This man was her keeper. He would not be best pleased to know the king’s ward had devalued her bride price by rutting with a lowly knight.

The why of it still nagged at Simon. Why had she given herself to him? And why in the name of all the saints was he still in her bed?

Sir Thomas provided the answer. “You took the fever,” he announced. “Lady Jocelyn, in the graciousness of her heart, gave you the use of her own bed so she and her ladies might tend to you.”

His glance swung to the woman he referred to.

“It was no more than my duty,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes. “I would do the same for any who fell in a dead faint at my feet.”

By the saints! Was that what had happened? She must think him the veriest weakling to let a few stripes and a touch of fever bring him down.

“I thank you, lady. Now, if you will send a page to aid me, I will dress and rid you of my presence.”

He could tell by her expression that she wished him gone with all speed. She could barely disguise her reluctance as she shook her head.

“Lady Constance says you must stay abed another day, mayhap two.”

“With all respect to the lady, I will dress and be on my way.”

Huffing, Sir Thomas interrupted with a stern rebuke. “For shame, de Rhys! Would you gainsay the one who bought you out of captivity and now offers you such gracious charity? If Lady Jocelyn says you must remain abed, you will do so until she gives you leave to rise.”

Chapter Five

W
hatever balms the women had spread on Simon’s back worked miracles. By the time the cocks crowed at dawn the following morning, his hurts had lessened to a dull ache and the raw cuts had closed enough for Lady Constance to bind them with a soft, clean cloth. The fever coming on top of weeks of deprivation and brutal beatings had left him pitifully weak, however.

A noontide meal of hearty fish stew brimming with onions, carrots and turnips sopped up with thick crusts of bread went far to restoring his strength. Even then the stern-eyed Lady Constance would not allow him to rise. He lay abed, grateful for her ministrations but beginning to feel the itch of restlessness while she and several other women clustered near the window to embroider an altar cloth with costly gold thread.

The other ladies gave him curious, sideways glances. Particularly a thin female with a pinched, ferretlike face. Wife to the steward, Simon gathered from her comments.

“When do you think the king will summon Jocelyn?” she mused as she plied her needle.

“I know not,” Simon’s nurse returned.

“It must needs be soon,” Lady Ferret Face said, answering her own question. “From all accounts, my husband’s cousin is most desirous of the alliance she will cement.”

Lady Constance flicked a glance in Simon’s direction and responded in a quelling tone. “Such matters are not for us to speculate on.”

The admonishment stilled the gossip but not his whirling thoughts. The king intended to use the Lady of Fortemur to cement an alliance? With whom? And when? By all that was holy, what coil had she enmeshed him in?

He got no chance to ask her. Her duties, Lady Constance informed him, kept her busy without. Aside from brief appearances to inquire stiffly how he did, he saw little sign of her.

Yet despite his best efforts to direct his thoughts in other directions, the hours of enforced idleness brought Lady Jocelyn constantly to his mind. It didn’t help that he was in her bed. Still breathing in the faint scent of her musk. The knight who’d pledged himself to the Church, the same knight who’d promised to forgo all concourse with females wrestled mightily with the man who could think of nothing but the woman he’d fornicated with.

Memories of their brief coupling bedeviled him. The mere thought of her taste, the feel of her skin and hair under his callused hands, made his rod grow hard and caused him to shift restlessly. So restlessly that Lady Constance looked up from her sewing and gave him a sharp glance.

“Do you hurt?”

He did. He most assuredly did. Yet he could hardly confess the source of his pain.

“No, lady. I am but discomforted to put you to the burden of caring for me.”

“It’s no burden.” Her shrewd eyes assessed him. “Another day, mayhap two, and you will be strong enough to sit a horse again.”

“I’ve sustained worse wounds than these,” Simon protested, “and stayed in the saddle.”

“I doubt it not. Let’s see how you do at eventide. If you have the strength, you may come down to the great hall to sup and sleep this night.”

His attentive nurse relayed this opinion to Lady Jocelyn when she returned to her bower late in that afternoon. Simon had been half dozing, but her entry brought him full awake. Every part of him, he acknowledged to his profound disgust. She had but to stride through the door and his groin went tight.

Undeniably, she was much a woman. Even with her cheeks flushed and errant strands of pale blond hair escaping its linen band. She wore a plain, unadorned gown of blue showing mud stains at the hem. He understood the reason for her disorder when Lady Constance asked if she’d just come from the mews.

“I have, indeed.”

“How goes the progress with your peregrine? Is he used to his bells yet?”

“He didn’t so much as flinch when I tied them to his leg this time. I’ll take him out tomorrow afternoon to test his wings.”

“You should have de Rhys accompany you. He frets to be back on his feet. If he’s as ready to be up and about as he says he is, a short ride would be a good test of his strength before he attempts the journey to Jerusalem.”

Simon could tell from the startled glance Jocelyn aimed at him that she’d hoped to be rid of him before tomorrow afternoon.

“I’ve told him that he might dress and come down to the great hall to sup,” Lady Constance continued. “I’ll have a pallet made up for him there.”

Once again Jocelyn’s eyes met Simon’s. He saw consternation in their brown depths, and something more. Relief? Desperation to be rid of him?

“I doubt not you will be happy to have the use of your bed again,” he said gruffly.

Her bosom rose as she sucked in a swift breath. Did she think he mocked her or made some sly reference to what had occurred within these curtains? It was obvious she did from the way her chin lifted.

“Aye,” she said coolly, “I will. Until the supper hour, then.”

Scowling, Jocelyn navigated the narrow passageway cut into the walls. A hundred tasks awaited her attention but she craved some moments to herself. Even more, she craved the feel of the stiff breeze coming off the sea on her face.

Still frowning, she pushed through the door that gave onto the ramparts. The guard serving as lookout in the south tower scrambled off his stool.

“M-milady,” he stammered, surprised and alarmed by her unexpected presence in this remote corner of the keep. “Is aught amiss?”

“No.” She waved him back to his post. “I merely wish a breath of air to clear my head.”

She got that and more. The wind whipped her hair and tugged at her sleeves as she leaned her elbows on a square-cut embrasure. Waves crashed and curled against the rock seawall far below, echoing the turbulence in Jocelyn’s breast.

What in the name of all the saints ailed her?

She wanted de Rhys gone. Needed him gone. Were it not for his wounds, she would have sent him on his way long before now. Yet the fact that he would soon leave her bed rekindled the vague dissatisfaction that had bedeviled her almost since his arrival.

It had taken her some time to trace its cause. She understood the irritating sensation now, though. It had hit again, just moments ago, when her gaze roamed the expanse of naked chest showing above his linen sheets.

What she felt was unsatiated desire, pure and simple. She knew there was more to this business of coupling than she’d experienced. Her women wouldn’t make jokes about it elsewise. Nor would the maidservants giggle and compare this one’s skill at lancing to that one’s. Moreover, Lady Constance, as the most senior ranking of Jocelyn’s ladies-in-waiting, had explained in blunt terms the rapture that could seize a wife were she so fortunate as to have a husband who would take the time to stroke and fondle her breasts, belly and nether parts.

De Rhys had most certainly done that! Jocelyn’s breath shortened as she recalled how he’d stroked her intimately. She’d felt the most urgent gathering in her breasts and lower belly. No rapture, though. Only this continual, most annoying sense that she might no longer be a maid, but she was not yet a woman.

Even more maddening was the knowledge that time was fast running out. The king would summon her to Jerusalem any day now. Or come to escort her to her prospective groom. She must needs inform him of her altered state before the marriage contracts were signed and the emir’s vassals arrived to take possession of Fortemur.

The very prospect made her stomach roil. Her grandsire had wrested this keep from the infidels during the First Crusade. The idea of bringing it as dower to an unbeliever, even one who proclaimed himself friendly to the Latins, put a sour taste in her mouth.

As her gaze swept the thick walls and high ramparts, resentment teetered perilously close to outright rebellion. She wouldn’t be the first great landholder to defy the king and look to her own best interests. Many a lord and baron warred with each other as much as they did with the enemy. And hadn’t Baldwin been forced to besiege his own mother in Jerusalem before Melisande had agreed, most reluctantly, to a division of power?

Jocelyn could hold out here. After taking Fortemur so many years ago, her grandsire had added mightily to its defenses. He’d made sure the keep’s residents had planted bountiful gardens, built cisterns and dug enough wells to withstand a lengthy siege. She could order the outer gates closed. Flood the inner yard. Keep all comers at bay for a year or more.

And then what? Sooner or later, she would have to either negotiate a truce or surrender unconditionally. If it was the former, she would have caused her people to suffer the deprivation of a siege for naught. If it was the latter, her men would be put to the sword and her women given as booty to whoever the king sent to subdue his rebellious ward.

She could not do that to the people who’d served her and her grandfather so loyally. She had no choice but to bend to the king’s will in the matter of a husband. Just not this one. Pray God, not this one.

Sighing, Jocelyn leaned heavily on her elbows and stared down at the sea rolling against the rocks.

When she went to her chamber an hour later she found de Rhys already gone.

“He insisted he was strong enough to leave your chamber,” Lady Constance informed her. “I will tell my husband to keep an eye to him this night, and you may judge his fitness to sit a horse when you ride out tomorrow.”

Jocelyn nodded, but she felt oddly bereft when she glanced at her now-empty bed. She’d struck a bargain with de Rhys, she told herself sternly. She would hold to it. Yet she could not help wishing… Wondering…

No! She would not imagine his hard, muscled flanks between her thighs again. She would not grow flushed at the memory of his fierce thrusts, nor gasp at this sudden spasm low in her belly. She would not!

Dragging off her muddied gown, she told herself the morrow could not come quickly enough.

It dawned bright and cool, but a disagreement with Sir Thomas over a tax he wanted to levy on the next Assizes Day delayed Jocelyn’s proposed expedition. As a consequence, her temper hung by a thread when she strode outside and descended into the bailey.

Her barb was saddled and waiting, its reins held by the stable master. Her falconer was already mounted with the hooded peregrine perched on his leather-shielded forearm. Her escort was similarly prepared to ride. Although she would remain within sight of Fortemur’s towers, she was too rich a prize to go anywhere without suitable protection. The only one not ahorse, she saw with a frown, was Simon de Rhys.

A quick glance told her Sir Guy had provided him a sword, buckler and embossed leather shield from the castle armory. They weren’t the finest, nor yet the meanest, she noted. Guy had also assured her that he’d set the castle blacksmith to altering a hooded mail hauberk to fit de Rhys’s broad shoulders. The faint chinking sound of a hammer coming from the farrier’s shed told Jocelyn the smith was even now adding the necessary links. All that de Rhys lacked, apparently, was a mount.

“Why are you not horsed?” she asked him.

“It appears the dun-colored barb that carried me to Fortemur has gone lame.”

“The dun is not the only mount in my stables up to your weight.” Her frown deepening, she turned to her stable master. “What of the courser Sir Hugh rides betimes? The sorrel with the white blaze?”

“She’s near to foaling, lady.”

“Then saddle one of the palfreys. Surely there is one… No, wait.”

She took her lower lip between her teeth. She’d promised de Rhys a warhorse. There were a goodly number of well-trained destriers in the stables, but her knights laid claim to all but one. “Saddle Avenger.”

“My lady! You know he’ll let no one mount him.” His glance cut to de Rhys. “And I’m told Sir Simon is but recently risen from the sickbed. He has not the strength to manage Avenger.”

The knight in question stepped forward. “Is Avenger the well-muscled bay in the last stall?”

“He is,” Jocelyn replied.

“He looks to be most powerful.”

“Not just powerful, but most diligently trained. He was my grandfather’s first choice to ride in battle. He’ll lead a charge or block it with equal purpose.”

It went much against her grain to gift this ragtag knight with the destrier that had carried her grandsire in and out of battle. Such well-trained warhorses were worth their weight in gold. But Avenger sorely needed the hand of one who could control him, and she’d promised de Rhys she would outfit him.

“If you can ride him,” she said stiffly, “he’s yours.”

Satisfaction leaped into his face. “Don’t fear, lady. I can ride him.”

His utter confidence overrode her doubts. That and the wry glint that crept into his blue eyes.

“In truth, Lady Constance forced so many draughts down my throat that I must needs do something with the energy they’ve stirred. Even if it means getting tossed on my head a time or two.”

Jocelyn barely heard him. Caught by that ghost of a smile, she near gawked at the man. By all the saints! How could something that simple transform him so?

She’d seen him now wearing a half-dozen or more faces. Defiant slave. Distrustful captive. Harsh conspirator who ordered her so coldly to remove her clothes. Wan and pale and drenched in sweat as he thrashed with fever.

This smiling man was a stranger to her. One who caused her heart to flutter inside her rib cage as she nodded to the stable master.

“Saddle Avenger and bring him forth.”

The men of her escort dismounted, eager to watch the show. Her falconer kept his seat but nudged his steed some distance away so the snorting and stamping he knew was about to occur didn’t fluster the nervous peregrine.

When word spread quickly of what was to take place, other residents of the keep came out to watch as well. Kitchen maids, the lads who slept in the kennels to keep the dogs quiet, the keeper of the bees. Even the laundresses straightened from the great wooden tubs, wiped the suds from their arms and joined the crowd. They knew well that many a man had tried to mount the heavily muscled bay. Many a man had failed.

By the time the stable master led the warhorse from its stall and positioned him next to the mounting block, Jocelyn was near to regretting her impulsive decision. Despite de Rhys’s assertions that he was strong enough to mount the destrier, he’d risen from the sickbed only yesterday afternoon.