His Lady's Ransom

His soft, slow drawl raised ripples of pleasure all along Madeline’s nerves. When the man chose to be charming, he did so with a vengeance, she thought somewhat breathlessly. That particular combination of gleaming eyes and crooked grin was enough to make any woman’s breath catch in her throat. She ran her tongue across suddenly dry lips and sought for something to say.

“Your pardon, my lord, my lady.”

She turned to see one of the household pages standing just beyond the alcove. The golden lion, symbol of the house of Plantagenet, shone on the boy’s red tunic.

“They’re laying the boards and will soon begin to serve. Lord John sent me to escort you to your seat, my lady.”

“Aye, I’ll be with you shortly.”

Madeline turned back to finish her conversation with the earl. She had yet to assure him that he need not worry about Will. The boy’s adoration amused her, but she’d been in the world enough to know how to let down a young knight without shattering either his pride or his illusions.

The earl’s closed expression stopped the words in her mouth. No trace of either laughter or friendliness lingered in his eyes. Confused, Madeline stared up at his tanned face.

He bent at the waist in a bow so shallow it was more insult than salute. “Don’t let me keep you from a royal summons, madame.”

His cold tone sent a spear of regret through her so swift and sharp she had to bite back a small gasp. So he, like all the others, disparaged her friendship with John. This knight, whose reputation with women was common knowledge, dared scorn her.

Madeline knew well the rumors that flitted through the court about her, skittering here and there through the castle halls like old rushes stirred by the drafts that swept the winding corridors. ‘Twas widely believed that the king’s son took her to mistress. If John led her in the dance, heads would bow and whispers pass from mouth to mouth. If she danced with another knight, knowing eyes would flash the message that she sought another husband to wear the cuckold’s horns while she dallied with the king’s son. After all, she’d held the man enthralled since childhood and through two marriages.

Normally Madeline dismissed the whispers with the ease of long practice. The look in de Burgh’s eyes, however, pricked at her pride.

Lifting her chin, she nodded coolly. “Aye, I must not keep the prince waiting.”

Allowing none of her inner turmoil to show in her face, Madeline followed the page through the throng filling Kenilworth’s vast hall and took her seat at the high table beside the man who was youngest son to King Henry and Queen Eleanor.

Her usual place was lower, well below the salt, with the other maidens and widows in warship to the crown. But with the king not yet arrived and Richard Lion-heart otherwise disposed, John had ordered the seating this night to suit his own preferences. Madeline bit back a sigh as she caught the sly glances thrown her way from those seated at the lower tables. By elevating her well above her station, John had once again fueled the rumors about them. ‘Twould do no good to protest, however. It never did. Spoiled, darkly handsome, and indulged by his father from earliest infancy, the young lord was rarely denied his wishes.

“Why don’t you eat?” he asked when she took a meager helping from the dish of eels stewed in honey and wild onions that a perspiring page presented. “You’ll never attract another husband if you don’t fatten up and fill out your gowns more. You were ever flat as a sword blade, Maddy.”

Her gaze flew up to meet his dancing black eyes. “Aye, and you were ever ready to tell me so, my lord. You’ll never know how much I feared my first wedding and bedding because of your slighting comments about my shape when we were children.”

“Ha! That doting old fool who wed you cared not about your shape. He was as beguiled as they all are by your green eyes and ripe lips.”

The lips under discussion lost their ripeness. Slowly Madeline set down her two-tined fork—a recent introduction to the court—and turned to give the man beside her a level look.

“I’ve valued your friendship since I first came to your mother’s household these many years ago. But I’ll not allow you to speak so of the man who wed me. He was good, and kind, and treated me most gently.”

“He was also so old his knees rattled when he walked.” John held up a hand. “Nay, nay, do not glower at me. He was good and kind, if so you say.”

He waited until she had given a stiff nod and picked up her fork once more, then grinned wickedly.

“But I’ll warrant you enjoyed your second wedding and bedding far more.”

“Jack-a-napes,” Madeline sputtered, using the nickname she’d called him by privately since they were four years old. “Do not start on that again!”

He leaned forward, his shoulder brushing hers. “Come, Maddy. Your second lord may have had wool for brains, but he was rumored to have the accoutrements of an ox. Were the pleasures of the marriage bed all that they’re rumored to be?”

“You’ll find out when you consummate your marriage to the Lady Isabel,” Madeline replied lightly. “As if you didn’t already know!”

At the mention of his betrothed, John’s eyes lost their dark light. He drew back and lifted his wine goblet to his lips.

Madeline stabbed at a slithery eel and cursed herself under her breath for her slip. As the youngest of the king’s eight children, John had no hereditary duchies to claim as his own, and much resented his landless state. To rectify this situation, King Henry had debated endlessly whether to strip his other sons of some of their lands to give John a heritage. He’d also betrothed him as a young boy to Isabel of Gloucester, Strong-bow’s great heiress, a cold, supercilious girl. Despite the fact that Isabel’s holdings constituted as yet his only estates, or mayhap because of it, John secretly despised the dark-haired heiress. He was careful not to show his dislike, but Madeline knew of his disdain for his betrothed, as she knew most of his innermost thoughts.

Almost since the day she’d come into the king’s wardship, a lonely little four-year-old, John had been her friend and companion. Madeline could recall as if it were yesterday the rainy April morning he’d released her, white-faced and stiff with fright, from the dark privy a mischievous playmate had locked her in hours before. On that day, he’d become her instant hero.

Madeline often wondered at the unlikely friendship that had sprung from that inauspicious meeting. Although the son of the most powerful king in Christendom, John had always alternated between flashing smiles and dark melancholy. Madeline, by contrast, was the orphan of a minor baron and found easy release for her ready laughter. Yet, whenever the young lord could steal away from his tutors and Madeline from her duties to Queen Eleanor, the two children would explore the gardens or the stables, tearing hose and skirts in their adventures. Over the years, the friendship between the prince and maid had grown haphazardly, in fits and starts, but grown it had.

Not even Madeline’s two marriages, as brief and as fruitless as they’d been, had lessened the bond. Her first lord, a kind, chivalrous old knight who professed himself delighted with his child bride, had taken her into his household when she was twelve. Spoiled and petted and shamelessly indulged, Madeline had gone willingly to his bed to consummate their marriage two years later. When he died within a twelvemonth, the king had taken the young widow into wardship once again.

King Henry himself had chosen Madeline’s second husband, a brawny but slow-witted young knight who’d all but fallen over his feet in his desire for the lady. The knight had gladly paid the exorbitant bride price into the royal coffers, reverently and most satisfactorily bedded his wife—at least in his mind—then promptly lost his life in a mad charge across a battlefield.

Now she was once more the king’s ward. At John’s request, she’d been brought back to reside within the royal household, while castellans managed her estates and rendered their revenues to the crown. Madeline didn’t mind. ‘Twas the only home she’d ever known, after all, and John the only constant in the shifting world in which she’d come to womanhood. This time, her friend had promised her, she would not have to leave until she so chose. This time he’d used his influence with his father, who’d agreed Madeline would have a say in the choice of her next lord.

Her next husband would not be quite as old as her first, Madeline had already decided, nor as foolhardy as her second. She wanted a man strong enough to hold her lands and mature enough to manage them wisely, yet young enough to laugh with. Someone to stoke the fires of passion that flickered within her but had, as yet, not been fanned to flames.

Unbidden, Madeline’s gaze drifted down the boards and met that of Ian de Burgh. At the look in his blue eyes, she stiffened. Suddenly the sweetmeat she had just bitten into tasted like ashes in her mouth.

She’d hoped, nay dreamed, for a husband such as Lord Ian. One whose body made her breath catch and whose eyes bespoke intelligence and wit. But the scorn that now curled his mouth made a mockery of her dreams. Better by far to take one of those who dangled after her, Madeline decided with a sigh, than to waste her wishes on a man who clearly believed the court’s gossip. Swearing a silent vow to avoid the earl in the future, Madeline gave her attention to the prince.

As the days passed, Ian felt both his ire and his unwilling fascination with Lady Madeline grow in equal measures. The lady was like a moth, he decided, light and frivolous, fluttering from one man to the next. With the king’s arrival, Kenilworth Castle was filled to overflowing, yet Ian had only to walk past a crowded salon to hear her merry laughter. He couldn’t stroll into the great hall of an evening without seeing a knot of courtiers clustered about a slender form and knowing she was holding court.

She was discreet enough not to flaunt her relationship with the king’s son in his father’s presence, but she flirted with every other male in the castle, it seemed.

Every male except him.

Ian shrugged, telling himself that he cared naught about the lady’s cold stare when he’d chanced upon her in the corridor yestereve, but in truth he was no more used to being snubbed than he was to having his brother ignore his subtle tugs on the reins.

Despite his efforts to detach Will from the lady’s circle, the lad was well and truly smitten. He’d join Ian in the hunt with great good humor, and participate vigorously in the games leading up to the great tourney that was to begin in a few days. But, like an iron filing drawn to a lodestone, Will would find his way to the lady’s side as soon as he could.

As he had tonight.

Thoroughly disgusted, Ian watched his brother lead the lady through a stately dance, his bright head clearly visible above the rest of the crowd. Clad in a richly embroidered robe of shimmering blue silk, Lady Madeline looked slender and graceful next to Will’s towering bulk.

Forcing himself to remain casual, Ian intercepted Will after the dance ended and steered his brother to a quiet corner. A passing page provided them both with wine, which Will downed in long, thirsty gulps.

“I tell you, Ian, this dancing is a warm business,” he confided, wiping the sweat from his brow with one arm.

“More like ‘tis all the layers of finery you’ve adorned yourself with,” Ian responded with a grin.

The brothers exchanged good-natured insults for a few moments, before Ian led the conversation to the issue that concerned him. “You should not be quite so particular in your attentions to the Lady Madeline,” he suggested casually.

Will’s smile slipped a bit, and a hesitant expression crept into his eyes. “Why not?”

“’Twill give her the idea that you wish more than just a pleasant dalliance.”

The lad’s face took on a closed expression, as though he weighed matters in his mind that he could not, or would not, share.

Ian felt a stab of hurt. Never before had Will been the least reluctant to discuss his amatory adventures or seek his older brother’s counsel on such matters. Swallowing his anger at the woman who had caused this sudden caution in his open, trusting brother, Ian shrugged. “She’s a widow, after all, on the look for a new husband. You shouldn’t monopolize her time, nor distract her from her task.”