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Authors: Lord of the Dragon

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BOOK: Suzanne Robinson
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Chapter 5

WATCHING JULIANA WELLES MARCH BETWEEN the campfires and tents in front of the castle, Gray de Valence found himself unable to look away from the sway of her hips. She’d forgotten her cloak in her haste to get away from him. He noticed that she’d worn another of those old gowns that made her look like a peasant. It hung loosely over a plain undertunic, and a leather girdle clung low on her hips. He watched the band of leather undulate as she walked and suddenly felt himself rouse at the sight. Just God! How had she captured his desire so easily?

He deliberately turned his back and went to Imad. He ran his hand through his hair, impatiently thrusting the heavy locks back from his face as he studied the boy. Saladin had given Imad to him when he left Egypt, and he felt responsible for the youth, troublesome as he was. Imad had insisted upon jumping into that icy stream to help him bathe this morning even though he was already sickening, and this was the result.

Gray listened to Imad’s breathing as the maid Alice moved a steaming pot closer to the patient. He took the cup of herbal brew from her and fed it to the boy himself. Imad coughed a little, but not as violently as before Juliana had treated him. The churning anxiety that had sent him rushing from the hall faded as Imad began to breathe more easily.

“Master, you should be abed.” Imad was looking at him through heavy jet eyelashes.

“You’ve worried us all, you stubborn whelp.”

“It’s this cursed chilly land of yours, master. The noble Saladin has condemned me to suffer great tribulations by sending me to this kingdom of ice and barbarity.”

Gray looked down at his servant through half-closed eyes and smiled.  “You’re free to leave.”

“I’m a true believer, master, and I’ll not be free until I’ve repaid my debt to you. Please, take to your bed. I know how important this tournament is to you.” Imad paused to cough again. “How will you—”

Gray held up a hand to silence the boy. He waved the maid out of the tent, then came to sit on a stool beside Imad.

“How will you practice your vengeance, master?”

“I’m going to make him wait for it,” Gray said.

Imad coughed and smiled at the same time. When the spasm was over, he said, “You mean you’re going to make him watch you destroy man after man until he near pisses himself with fear.”

“It’s the only way I can draw out his suffering.”

Gray held the cup full of herbed wine to Imad’s lips. Imad finished the drink and sighed. He closed his eyes. “The lady works great magic with her herbs, praise be to Allah.” He opened his eyes to slits and looked at Gray. “A most spirited woman.”

“Go to sleep, Imad.”

“Allah is merciful to bring such a healer to me in this land of savagery.”

Gray slanted a distrustful look at his servant. “I’ll have none of your meddling. Mistress Juliana isn’t—she plays no part in my plans. Do you hear?”

“I hear, master.”

“But do you obey?”

“Is it not the will of Allah that I obey my master?”

Leaning over the boy, Gray fixed him with a viper’s stare. “Don’t give me that Eastern answer that is no answer, you little catamite. If you interfere I’ll send you back to Saladin. I swear it.”

He got no answer, and his attempt at intimidation failed, for Imad had fallen asleep, either from exhaustion, the medicine, or guile. Leaving the tent, Gray signaled for Alice to return to her vigil. He went to his pavilion where he lay on the folding bed one of his squires, Simon, had prepared. As Simon put away clothing and extinguished candles, he threw an arm over his eyes and tried to rest.

He was so impatient for dawn. With it would come his opportunity to torment Richard Welles. At the same time he was going to win the regard of Yolande de Say. Once he’d gained victory in the tournament, to him would fall the honor of choosing the Queen of Love and Beauty. And he’d choose Yolande of course. A simple way to win her regard and persuade her to a betrothal. She was a sweet innocent; winning her would be effortless. Not at all the challenge that seducing the willful Juliana would be.

Gray shifted uneasily as the thought called up the image of Juliana Welles. Her hair had been unbound this time. Long, softly curling black skeins had fallen down her shoulders and wound over her breast. He’d turned to see her enter the tent, and a vision had flashed in his mind of her standing there with her hair unbound, but without clothing. The picture teased him, as those curls teased his imagination by concealing the tips of her bare breasts. The vision had taunted him the whole time she’d been in the tent.

What was he thinking? He couldn’t distract himself with lust for this girl. He was close to bringing to fruition
the plan that had kept him alive since he was nineteen. But those damascened eyes … And he couldn’t keep that vision out of his mind—black curls winding around white breasts. He groaned and turned on his stomach. Bending one leg, he pressed his swelling flesh into the mattress and clenched his teeth.

He couldn’t continue like this, or he’d get no sleep. Ruthlessly he forced himself to think of the only thing he was sure would banish Mistress Juliana from his mind. He called forth the memory of the branding.

The Muslim pirates had attacked the ship on which he’d been a prisoner of Welles and the other knights Baron Etienne had set upon him. He’d been freed and given a sword to fight with, and soon had pursued the leader of the pirates across the deck, only to run into a group of the thieves jumping from the pirate ship to his. Surrounded, he stabbed and slashed desperately but was felled by a blow from behind. When he regained his senses, the Christian ship was gone, and he was a prisoner.

He spent countless days in the foul, dank hold of that ship, chained, beaten, starved. Then, without warning he was hauled up to the deck, across a gangplank to a dock swarming with people. Two sailors threw him to the ground at the sandaled feet of a man in a turban and greasy robe. Before he could summon the strength to lift his head, he’d been sold. Nearly delirious, the next memory he conjured up was of being forced to eat and drink, and the next of burning heat, high limestone cliffs, and a quarry.

After that, the next clear remembrance was burned into his soul. He woke because they shook him and cuffed him. Four guards grabbed him and propelled him from darkness into the glaring heat and sunlight. They threw him down before a fire where another guard stood
holding a long rod with a white-hot tip. Before he could get up, two of them pressed their knees into his back. He struggled, but they shoved his face in the dirt while two more sat on his legs.

He saw dusty boots as the fifth guard knelt. Then he saw the brand. He shouted and bucked, but they held him down. The brand darted at him. It pressed into his shoulder, high on his biceps, and withdrew. In that first instant, he felt little, only a vague heat. Then his flesh burst into agony.

His body jerked, and he screamed. Pain clawed its way through his arm to the rest of his body. His back arched, and he went stiff with the effort to escape his own body and the pain. Then he fainted.

He woke later to pain and the shame of having been defiled and treated like an animal. As days passed, the brand faded from bright red to white, and revealed itself to be a stylized symbol he later learned was a reed leaf used to distinguish slaves belonging to the quarry.

He didn’t know how long he spent in the quarry among other condemned men and guards with scimitars and whips. He didn’t even know where it was, except that there was nothing around it, no towns, no rivers, nothing. Then one day he’d been hauling waste stone in a cart. A wealthy visitor had come to the quarry to choose stone for his house. Gray had seen the man at a distance, noted without interest the azure silk of his robes.

He was hauling his cart along the base of a cliff when the visitor and his entourage walked past. He heard a shout from above where a block of limestone was being cut from the cliff, and saw the block shift. A piece of the cliff dislodged and fell. The man in the azure robe walked into its path. Gray cried out, but he spoke in English. Lunging over the cart, he sprang at the visitor.
His body smashed into the man, and they plunged down a small incline a moment before the boulder landed.

Gray ended up on top of the visitor. He was still breathless from the jolt of the landing when the guards set upon him, throwing him from the visitor, kicking him. He doubled over, then lost his temper and kicked back. A foot jammed into his back and a fist cracked into his jaw. He collapsed on his stomach, and heard the crack of a whip.

The lash bit into his back, but he refused to cry out. The lash cut again, drawing blood. It withdrew, and he braced himself for another cut. It never came. He heard a voice snapping with authority, but he hadn’t been in this place long enough to understand more than a word or two.

A shadow blocked out the burning sun. Gray lifted his head. Through vision blurred by drops of sweat, he looked into the face of the man in the azure robe. It was Saladin, who had been named for the great warrior, conqueror, and ruler.

Saladin spoke to him. He hadn’t understood, but his understanding wasn’t required. Saladin waved a hand. Gray was picked up and dragged after the nobleman. An animated conversation took place between the overseer of the quarry and the man whose life he’d saved.

Weak from maltreatment and the beating, and unaccustomed to the heat, Gray lost the battle to remain conscious. His last sight was of the azure robe and a spray of gold coins Saladin threw at the feet of the overseer. He’d been sold like a horse, to Saladin, prince of a noble house, warrior, commander of armies in the fight against the Christian invaders of Egypt and the Holy Land.

Gray cursed and sat up, more awake than ever with the memories of his years in the hands of Saladin. He lay
back down and covered his eyes again. Better to surrender to lustful reverie about Mistress Juliana than to lie awake remembering Saladin. Remembering how he’d been slowly seduced into accepting his fate, accepting corruption made palatable by villas of polished stone and gold, fountains of cool water, beds of silk and down, and relentless, manipulative persuasion.

Gray bit his lip and turned away from those memories. He sought refuge in the image of damascened eyes and the tantalizing vision of Juliana’s hips. He remembered how they moved in a gentle arc—up and down, up and down, their path marked by the movement of that leather girdle. How would she look clad only in that braided leather? A picture of her bare, smooth curves bound by the girdle teased him, and he fell asleep trying to complete every detail of her body above and below that band of leather.

Leaning out the north window of her chamber, Juliana searched the morning sky for clouds and found none. It was one of those mornings when the sharp, cool wind put a snap in her step and color in her cheeks and made the world seem cleaner and brighter. Or was the day’s beauty only a result of her mood? She shivered as the breeze penetrated her shift and tossed black curls about her face. Even to herself she was reluctant to admit that the shiver was more from anticipation than the cold.

Not until she’d regained her chamber last night had she realized what Gray de Valence had meant by promising to recompense her today for helping his servant. Then she’d remembered that today was the first day of the tournament. He had said he’d repay her at the tournament. De Valence would be occupied with ceremonies and contests. How could he repay her? The obvious answer
had risen up to smack her in the face—he was going to ask for her favor when he rode into the lists.

At first she’d rejected the idea, but its logic demanded her consideration. Begging a lady’s favor was the courtly tradition, and she’d seen for herself how well versed in courtly love was Gray de Valence. For a few moments her fancy expanded so that she even contemplated the possibility that, if he was victorious in the jousting, Gray de Valence might choose her as the Queen of Love and Beauty. That unlikely occurrence she rejected, only to return to it in her dreams later.

She was angry with herself over her dreams. As she gazed out at the river Clare, the memory of them brought added color to her cheeks. Never had she had such dreams. Dreams of dark, seething passion that brought a response from her body when de Valence appeared in them. Was she evil to dream of this man? Surely Satan had made her envision his naked body and how it would feel against her own. Juliana put her palms to her hot cheeks as she recalled the dream. Oh, but what of Yolande? Remorse warred with desire, a new kind of battle for Juliana. Desire won. After all, Yolande couldn’t be in love with a man to whom she’d hardly spoken.

Alice distracted her by entering the chamber, arms loaded with clothing Juliana was to wear. Earlier this morning, Juliana had earned a long look of consternation when she told Alice she’d changed her mind about her garments.

Instead of the ordinary wool gown she’d planned to wear, she’d requested one she’d never worn. It was a sleeveless overgown of dark forest-green samite—silk interwoven with silver thread. The side lacing was of silver while the undertunic was of the finest Persian silk of a
much lighter pale green. It clung to her body in a way that hitherto had made her reluctant to wear it, until today.

Juliana noticed Alice yawning as she helped her bathe and don the fragile undertunic. “You’re weary from nursing that boy, Alice. After you’ve helped me, you must rest.”

“But I don’t want to miss the tournament, mistress!”

“Can you stay awake for it?”

Alice eyed Juliana while she slipped her arms through the slits in the overgown. “I can stay awake to see why you’ve suddenly taken to dressing as you should after vowing never to—”

“Hold you tongue!” Juliana knew how odd her behavior must appear to Alice. After all, she’d vowed never to bother with fine clothes and courting after Edmund Strange. “I’m going to wear the silver veil and filet.”

Alice gawked at her, causing Juliana to flush and stamp her foot.

“Fetch the veil, Alice, and—” She caught her lower lip between her teeth before continuing. “And bring my ivory casket.”

BOOK: Suzanne Robinson
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