Crusader Captive

“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.”

She did, so furious with him now that she was able to ignore the stinging embarrassment of being forced to bend and display her bottom cheeks.

Heat seared her face when she straightened. It flamed even hotter when he looked her up and down again, as if appraising a mare led into the stable yard for a stallion to mount.

And like a skittish mare, she quivered under his unrelenting gaze. Despite the warmth from the fire, enough drafts slipped past the tapestries covering the walls to cause shivers to ripple across her skin and her nipples to pucker. She could feel them growing tight, see how they drew—and held—his gaze. When those piercing blue eyes met hers again, they were no longer so cold and flat.

“Now me.”