Crusader Captive

by Merline Lovelace

  She knew the match with the Emir of Damascus was a brilliant one in terms of political alliances. By giving her to ben Haydar, Baldwin would secure the western borders of his kingdom while he battled the incursions of the Seljuk Turks to the north and the Fatamids to the south.

  The emir, in turn, would gain access to the sea for the heavily laden caravans that crossed his vast holdings. In addition to land-passage fees, caravaneers would now have to pay him exorbitant port taxes as well. By taking Jocelyn to wife, the emir would double the gold and silver pouring into his coffers.

  She would not be the first Frankish lady given to an Eastern lord to achieve a political or strategic advantage. The Pope himself had endorsed the marriage of Margaret of Cilicia and the Sultan of Rum to secure a buffer between Constantinople and the ever more powerful Turks. Like Lady Margaret, Jocelyn would be allowed to follow the tenets of her own faith. That the emir had solemnly promised.

  And no wonder, she thought scornfully. The man took wives and concubines of every color and creed. He cared not what gods they prayed to as long as they came fresh and virginal to his bed.

  Jocelyn wasn’t foolish enough to think she could govern her fate completely. She knew she would have to bow her head and accept some other husband of the king’s choosing. Any other husband, as long as he was of her faith and strong enough to hold Fortemur. But she would not—

  The rap of knuckles on the tower door cut off her turbulent thoughts. Her breath caught. Her heart pounded. It was now, she thought with a flutter of panic, or never.

  Now! It must be now.

  The jewel-toned carpeting that could be purchased for a handful of beasants in every Eastern bazaar muffled her footsteps as she crossed the spacious chamber. Her hand shaking, she turned the iron key in the lock and tugged open the door to the tower stairs.

  The winding stone staircase was narrow and dark, lit only by a single flickering torch set in an iron bracket and the moonbeams that came through the arrow slits. Yet there was light enough and more for her to make out Sir Hugh’s disapproving expression and the tight, unreadable one on the face of the man with him.

  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 fr
eedom 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.

  He wanted her, but he would not have her.

  “I cannot bed you, lady, this night or any other. I am pledged to the Church.”

  “The Church!”

  The color bled from her cheeks. Dismay filled her eyes. Gasping, she dropped to her knees and made the sign of the cross. Once, twice, in quick succession.

  “Forgive me, Father! I did not know… I could not know…”

  Shame suffused her face and voice. Head bowed, she addressed him in a voice rife with mortification.

  “Are you Templar or Hospitaller or parish priest come on pilgrimage?”

  Simon couldn’t lie, but the truth tasted like gall on his lips. “I am none of those. Yet.”

  Her head came up. “How say you?”

  “I am pledged to the Knights of the Temple, but there wasn’t time for my induction before I took ship.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “So you’re still an aspirant? Not bound by the rules of the order?”

  “I’ve chosen to live by those rules until such time as I wear the cross.”

  “But you’re not bound?” She gathered her skirts in both hands and pushed to her feet. “Say me no lie, Simon de Rhys. Are you bound or not?”

  “No.”

  Her head went back. Her nostrils flared. Determination and what looked like desperation darkened her cinnamon-colored eyes.

  “Then you need me now even more than before. To be accepted as a Knight of the Temple, you must supply your own armor, warhorse and riding mount along with a squire to see to your needs and mules to transport your equipment.”

  “I’m well aware of the requirements,” he replied, his jaw tight.

  He’d brought all that and more aboard the ship transporting him to Outremer. But his squire had been swept overboard during the fierce storm that had claimed more than a dozen other desperate pilgrims. Then, just days later, the accursed corsairs had attacked. Simon had battled ferociously until their sheer numbers had overwhelmed him and he’d gone down, struck from behind by a mace. When he’d awoken, he’d been in chains. His sword and the mail surcoat he’d had forged to fit him were gone, of course. And God alone knew who now rode the magnificent warhorse he’d won in the lists.

  The loss of his squire and mount had eaten at him almost as much as the loss of his freedom. Yet none of those disasters could presage the devil’s choice this slender, pale-haired siren now offered him.

  “The decision is yours,” she said stonily. “Lie with me this night and I will supply all you need to join the ranks of the Templars. Or you may serve me here at Fortemur until you’ve repaid the cost of your purchase.”

  As he had but hours ago at the swaying rope bridge, he faced a choice between two rocky, untried paths. He could take this woman, as he now wanted most fiercely to do so and leave on the morrow to fulfill his father’s vow. Or he could serve her for a year or more, let his father rot away and put his own soul at risk.

  His eyes cold and his heart like flint, Simon made his choice. “Remove your robes.”

  Chapter Three

  Jocelyn’s throat went as dry as the deserts crossed by the endless caravans bringing silks and spices from Eastern lands. This cold edict had formed no part of her careful plan.

  She’d thought… Assumed…

  What? That he would drag open the heavy bed curtains, tumble her to the silken coverlet and lift her skirts? That it would be quickly done, and quickly put behind her?

  She had not reasoned this enforced mating through, she now realized. Obviously, it would require some effort on her part that she had not anticipated.

  Frowning, she cast back through her mind. She might be a virgin, but many of her ladies were wedded. She’d also overheard more than one giggling maid whispering to another. Such frank and often ribald talk of what one must sometimes do to bring a bedmate to hardness now burned in Jocelyn’s mind.

  Apparently this one needed to see her naked to stiffen his lance. So be it. Naked she would get. Yet as she unwound the linen band that framed her face, her nerves were all ajangle and she could scarce draw breath.

  One night, she reminded herself fiercely. One night with this man was a hundred times, nay, ten thousand times better than a lifetime walled up with bored, idle women. Women who, if the rumors were true, must needs pleasure themselves since they so rarely went to their lord’s bed. Still, her hand trembled as she laid the linen headband atop the chest that held her folded gowns.

  He watched her. Eyes hard, arms crossed against his chest, he followed her every move. As though she were on the auction block this time, to be stripped and displayed for his approval.

  “Continue.”

  She would not flush or cower like a timid maid. She would not!

  Gritting her teeth, Jocelyn removed the girdle belted low across her hips. Her keys and the various accoutrements attached to the belt clinked against each other, the only sounds in the taut silence other than the crackle of the fire.

  Her heart hammered as she reached for the ties that held her bliaut at the sides. Her ladies usually disrobed her. She wasn’t used to contorting like a traveling juggler to reach the laces. Thankfully, the first set gave easily enough. Her rose-hued outer robe gaped on that side, displaying the fine linen tunic she wore beneath. But her fumbling fingers couldn’t work the ribbons on the other side. They knotted and drew tighter rather than looser. Lifting her arm, she thrust aside her long sleeve for a better view and pulled on the stubborn strings. They would not give.

  Sweet mother of…!

  Frustrated and filled with a growing trepidation she refused to acknowledge, Jocelyn was forced to raise her head and meet de Rhys’s unyielding stare.

  “The strings are knotted. I cannot loose them.”

  He closed the distance between them. His eyes never left her face as he hooked two fingers in the finely woven ribbons. One hard tug ripped them apart. And ripped, as well, the costly fabric they secured.

  Jocelyn’s nervousness fled, and years of absolute
authority as the chatelaine of Fortemur rushed to the fore. “This gown is made of pail loomed in Alexandria,” she cried angrily. “It’s worth more than a warhorse, or sword of the finest Toledo steel. You will treat it, and me, with respect or I will—”

  “You will what?” he cut in with a swift, tight smile she did not like in the least. “Shout out to Sir Hugh? Have me stretched on the rack? Broken on the wheel? How then will you forfeit your maiden’s shield?”

  His disrespect fired her fury. Were she not in such desperate straits she would most definitely see him racked. She’d gone this far, however, and by the bones of Saint Catherine, she would have done with this deed and with this man!

  With fire in her heart, Jocelyn stepped back, tugged the torn bliaut over her head, and threw it to the floor. Her under-tunic fastened at the neck with buttons of shimmering pearl. They came free of their loops without resistance, and the soft pleats fell to her feet. Shoulders back, head high, she stood before him clad only in her thin linen bellyband, silk-stockings gartered just below her knees and the curved-toe slippers so in fashion at the moment.

  Jocelyn was not vain. She knew her breasts were smaller and her hips less rounded when measured against some of her ladies. Nor did she possess the pale, almost bloodless complexion so prized by the women who journeyed to Outremer from the West. Despite potions, gloves and veils, the East’s blazing sun had tinted her face and hands to warmest ivory.

  Yet troubadours had composed songs to the luster of her pale tresses and more than one knight had compared her lips to the ripest cherries. Many more had begged to carry her token in the lists, although she knew well their ardor was more for her inheritance than her person.

  Still, she was not without wit and a modicum of female attributes. So never, ever had she imagined that a man seeing her disrobed would stand like a stone obelisk and regard her with such seeming disinterest!

  “Your shoes and stockings,” he said in a voice as hard as flint. “Remove them, too.”