‘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 armoury.’

He did not leap at the offer. Jocelyn would not have trusted him if he had. This one, she’d sensed from the moment he’d stood tall and defiant on the auction block, would break before he’d bend.

‘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.’

Suspicion warred with incredulity in his face. ‘Why?’

‘The reason is not your concern,’ she said haughtily.

He looked her up and down with an insolence that brought the blood rushing to her cheeks.

About the Author

As an Air Force officer, MERLINE LOVELACE served at bases all over the world, including tours in Taiwan, Vietnam, and at the Pentagon. When she hung up her uniform for the last time, she decided to combine her love of adventure with a flair for storytelling, basing many of her tales on her experiences in the service. Since then, she’s produced more than eighty action-packed novels, many of which have made USA TODAY and Waldenbooks bestseller lists. Over eleven million copies of her works are in print in 30 countries.

When she’s not glued to her keyboard pounding out a new book, Merline and her husband Al pack their suitcases and take off for new, exotic locations—all of which eventually appear in a book. Check her website at www.merlinelovelace.com for travelogues, pictures, and information about forthcoming releases.

Novels by the same author:

 A SAVAGE BEAUTY

 UNTAMED

 THE COLONEL’S DAUGHTER

 THE CAPTAIN’S WOMAN

 HIS LADY’S RANSOM

 A QUESTION OF INTENT

Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

Crusader Captive

Merline Lovelace

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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To my own sexy knight in shining armour.

Thanks for all the fabulous adventures, my darling.

Author Note

Okay, I admit it. I’ve always been fascinated by tales of knights and ladies fair. So fascinated that I wrote several novels set during the reigns of Eleanor of Aquitaine and her son, Richard the Lionhearted.

But none of the research I did into their times and the great Crusades that shaped their lives came anywhere close to the incredible experience of visiting the same places Eleanor and Richard had journeyed to. The moment I stepped off the tour bus and viewed Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, I was lost in the awe-inspiring history of the city. And when I walked up the ramparts of Saladin’s great citadel in Cairo, I knew I had to set another book during the era of the Crusades.

So here it is, the tale of a knight pledged to the Templars and the lady who forces him to choose between duty and desire, with the fate of an entire kingdom hanging in the balance. I thoroughly enjoyed watching their story play out against such a rich historical tapestry. Hope you do, too!

Chapter One

The port city of El-Arish, on the much-disputed border between the Caliphate of Cairo and the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, Anno Domini 1152

“That one.”

Her entire face hidden behind a veil after the style of women of the East, Lady Jocelyn tipped a nod toward the wretch who’d been hauled from the slave pens. It took two burly guards armed with pikes to prod the man onto the auction block. Despite his shackles, he was of a size to be reckoned with.

“My lady!”

Her castellan’s protest was low and for her ears only. Sir Hugh had journeyed to Outremer years ago with Jocelyn’s grandfather. He was somewhat grizzled of late but had lost little of his strength and none of his ability to wield a sword. Like Jocelyn, he’d donned Eastern garb for this dangerous excursion across the ever-fluctuating border between the two kingdoms. His hooded robe shielded most of his face as he leaned closer to the lady he’d sworn to serve.

“But look at the bruises on that one’s arms and face. They bespeak a stubborn, intractable nature. He’ll never bend to your will.”

“He has no choice. Not if he wishes his freedom.”

That was true enough. Ever since the Pope had declared a second Crusade seven years ago, thousands upon thousands of would-be warriors for Christ had swelled the ranks of pilgrims making the perilous journey to the Holy Land. Even Louis VII of France and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, had answered the call. Although they’d returned to France after a somewhat less than successful campaign, their daring exploits—and scandalous affairs—had become the stuff of legend in Outremer.

Unfortunately, the ranks of those who preyed on travelers making the hazardous trek had swelled as well. So many pilgrims and Crusaders had fallen victim to brigands and pirates that the slave markets from Cairo to Damascus were flooded with pale-skinned Franks. Even here, on the very border of the Latin kingdom that had been their destination when they had set out months or years ago, so many came on the auction block that prices had dropped like lead weights.

Jocelyn wished fervently she could buy them all. She and her grandfather before her had sent agents to purchase many of these hapless captives until tensions escalated and the Fatamids of Egypt had closed their borders. It was a measure of her desperation that she’d made this risky foray to purchase a slave she could use to achieve her ends.

If she could use him. Her castellan seemed most doubtful.

“But look at him,” Sir Hugh urged. “For all his bruises, he is roped with muscle and sinew.”

He was indeed! Through the slit in her veil, Jocelyn inspected the slave on the auction block. Beneath his matted hair and filthy beard no doubt crawling with lice, he displayed a body that told her this was no mere pilgrim. No lowly plowman or tradesman eager to win everlasting salvation by answering the Pope’s call. Such muscled shoulders, such a flat belly and taut, corded thighs bespoke years of hard training and rigorous discipline. He’d swung a sword, she guessed shrewdly, and swung it often.

But it was his stance that intrigued her. Shoulders square, chin angled, he stood with his feet spread as far as his leg irons would allow and looked out on the noisy crowd with disdain in his astonishingly blue eyes. If she must use a slave to achieve her purposes, she decided, she would as lief not use a sniveling, cowardly one.

Then his gaze caught hers, or seemed to. Scorn rippled across his face and curled his lip. Jocelyn bristled at the sneer even as she acknowledged the reason behind it. Veiled and robed in a voluminous cloak as she was, he took her for a woman of the East. Come, like the other females in the noisy crowd, to inspect and taunt the latest Frankish captives put on the block.

Ever after Jocelyn would wonder whether it was the contempt on his face that sealed his fate—and hers. Or whether her decision was driven by the contrariness that had so delighted her grandfather and caused a long succession of nurses to shake their heads in dismay. Whatever the reason, she’d made her choice. This one would serve her purposes, she vowed silently, say he or nay he.

And despite his rags and matted hair, she had to admit this tall, unbending captive was more pleasing to the eye than most males. Certainly more pleasing than the first man she’d been promised to in marriage. Dark and most dour of visage, Lord Reynaud could have counted forty winters to her five at the time of their betrothal. But he’d brought Jocelyn sweets and baubles, and she had accepted without question that she would wed a man closer to her grandfather’s age than hers.

It was her duty, after all. From the time she was old enough to grasp such matters, Jocelyn had understood that she must contract an alliance with a knight strong enough to hold the lands and massive, fortified castle overlooking the Mediterranean Sea that were her birthright. Lord Reynaud had been just such a fearsome warrior.

When he had taken an arrow through the eye at the siege of Antioch, Jocelyn’s grandfather had sought another mate for her. A much younger lord this time, but no less valiant. Laughing, merry-eyed Geoffrey de Lusignan had been the embodiment of all Jocelyn’s girlish dreams. She had made her vows eagerly, but she had been deemed still too young to consummate the marriage. Her heart had near broke when Geoffrey, too, went down in battle.

She’d matured rapidly in mind and body after that. So much so that her grandsire had agreed it was time she went to a husband’s bed. He’d been negotiating yet another strategic alliance when he had succumbed to a bloody flux of the bowels and his grieving granddaughter had became ward to Baldwin the Third, King of Jerusalem.

And what a turbulent wardship it had been! Twelve months and more of political wrangling, with Jocelyn caught squarely in the middle.

Only a little older than Jocelyn herself, Baldwin had spent most of those twelve months defending his kingdom against the enemies who besieged it on all sides. At the same time, he’d been forced to struggle mightily to wrest power from his mother. Queen Melisande had ruled the Kingdom of Jerusalem for more than two decades and was loath to relinquish the reins now that her son had come of age. So intense had their struggle become that Baldwin had been forced to besiege his lady mother and her loyal followers in Jerusalem before they’d worked out a tentative peace.

As one of the wealthiest heiresses in the kingdom, Jocelyn had become a pawn—nay, a hapless mouse—batted between the paws of those two royal lions. So many matches had been proposed for her before being struck down by either the king or his strong-willed mother that she’d lost count.

But this last…

By all that was holy, this last! And to think both Melisande and her son favored the match!

Beneath her enveloping cloak, a shudder rippled down Jocelyn’s spine. She understood the twisted politics that pitted kin against kin and Christian against other Christians in a kingdom struggling mightily for its very survival. She should, having been born and bred in the turbulent East. What’s more, she fully acknowledged the need for strategic alliances wherever possible with powerful Saracen lords.

But she would be damned if she would go meekly into the bed of the Emir of Damascus. Ali ben Haydar was known throughout the East for his predilection for tender young virgins. Once he’d pierced their maiden’s shield, he consigned them to his harem and rarely, if ever, called them to his bed again. At last count, more than three hundred of his wives and concubines languished in luxurious boredom.

Not Jocelyn! Baldwin and his mother could find another untried maid to send to the emir’s bed. She would use this unkempt slave as the instrument of her delivery from the harem.

“That one,” she instructed Sir Hugh. “Go quickly. Offer gold to the auctioneer before he opens the bidding to all. I want to be back across the border before dark.”

“Milady…”

“Go!”

Jocelyn had acted as chatelaine for her grandfather almost from the day she’d put off short skirts and could totter around the castle at his heels. Her vassals and servants knew her every gesture, her every tone. This one brooked no further argument, even from the knight who’d served as castellan to both her and her grandsire.

“Aye, milady.”

Sir Hugh signaled to the equerries who’d accompanied them across the border. He’d chosen each man carefully. Of Eastern descent, they wore their native robes to disguise the fact they’d sworn allegiance to a Frankish lord. Jocelyn’s grandfather had enlisted many such men in his service, and they now served her with fierce, unswerving devotion. Such were the convoluted, complex and ever-changing loyalties of Outremer.

“Sulim, you and Omar will come with me,” Hugh ordered. “Hanrah, escort our lady back to the horses and wait for me there.”

Jocelyn threw a last look at her prospective purchase. The slanting afternoon sun cast his body in bronze. His tall, square-shouldered and most defiant body.

A spear of doubt lanced through her. And something else. Something that tightened her chest and stirred an unfamiliar heat low in her belly.

Untried maid though she was, she recognized the odd sensation. No girl could grow to womanhood in a crowded keep without understanding what drove dairymaids to lift their skirts to stable hands and knights to rut with willing kitchen wenches. It was lust, pure and simple, of a sort that would earn Jocelyn a heavy penance from the castle priest when she confessed it.

If she confessed it. Her plan was so dangerous, her intentions so outrageous, that she’d confided them to no one but Sir Hugh. Her conscience wouldn’t allow her to put any other of her people at risk, not even the kindly, if somewhat absentminded, priest who served as her confessor.

Suddenly, the enormity of what she contemplated almost overwhelmed her. Dear sweet savior! Was she mad to even think that she might change the course of her future? That she could defy a king? Torn, she came within a breath of abandoning the scheme Sir Hugh kept insisting was foolhardy and hazardous in the extreme.

But her castellan had already left her side and was threading his way through the crowd to the auctioneer’s table. Jocelyn bit her lip, wavered a moment more, then turned on her heel.

Simon de Rhys ignored the raw agony of his wounds and stood rigid with shame. Flies swarmed around his head and bit at the oozing lash marks on his back. Wrist and ankle cuffs cut into his flesh. He said not a word as a sun-weathered man draped from head to foot in a hooded cloak dropped coins into the palm of the slave merchant. Yet of all the indignities he’d suffered in the past year, this was the worst.

He’d answered the call, albeit reluctantly, when summoned to the sickbed of the father whose scheming ways had lost the family both lands and honor.

He’d listened in cynical disbelief when Gervase de Rhys had rasped that he regretted his many sins and had pledged his youngest son to the Knights Templar as penance.

He’d done his damnedest to ignore that pledge until the saintly Bishop of Clairvaux had pointed out that Simon would imperil his own soul if he didn’t fulfill his father’s vow.

And he’d fought like a wild beast when pirates had overrun the ship transporting him and a boatload of other travelers to the Holy Land, then endured the vicious bite of a lead-tipped lash as his captors tried to whip him into submission.

But this…

This scraped away what little was left of his pride. Jaw tight, he tried not to think of the rich prizes his strong arm had won in tournaments. Nor of the ransoms he’d collected from the knights he’d bested in battle. He was no longer Simon de Rhys, champion in more lists than he could count. He’d turned all his earthly possessions over to the Church, as required of members of the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon. And this despite the fact he was as yet only an aspirant to the order. There hadn’t been time for him to undergo the Templars’ secret initiation rituals before he took ship to the Holy Land. Now he was a slave to the very infidels he’d sworn to defeat! The bitter, inescapable fact ate at him like sharp-beaked ravens pecking at his entrails.

Stiff of spine, he ignored the heckling noises from the crowd as coins changed hands, ignored the pain of his lacerated back, ignored all until his new master beckoned imperiously for him to follow. Chains clanking, he hobbled back to the pens crammed with despairing captives.

Once there, the slave master struck off his leg irons. He refused to wince as the man knocked the pins from the cuffs with callous indifference, but fiery pain seared his bruised and bloodied ankles. Teeth gritted, Simon locked his hands together and contemplated a last, desperate act. He was too weak from lack of sustenance to acquit himself in a full-pitched battle, but he could still swing his wrist chain in a deadly arc.

He would not get far. Not in this crowded marketplace. Simon accepted that. But he would die fighting, as he’d sworn to do when he’d accepted the burden of his sire’s pledge. He had intertwined his fingers and was poised for attack when his new master issued a terse command.

“Follow me.”

Simon blinked. Had he heard aright? Had the man addressed him in his own tongue? In a pure accent that marked him unmistakably as a Frank?

“Who are you?”

“You will learn in good time,” the man growled. “Come, we must make haste.”

Simon’s thoughts chased around and around, like a dog after its own tail. He could still swing the length of wrist chain. Still crush a skull or two or three before he was taken down. Or he could follow this man and see where he led…

He led to a small but well-armed cavalcade waiting in the shadow of the city’s walls. Simon’s pulse leaped at his first glimpse of a midnight-black Arabian steed that looked as though he would run with the wind. It leaped again when he saw who straddled the courser’s back.

The woman from the marketplace. Despite her hooded cloak and the veil that obscured everything but her eyes, he’d recognized her immediately. She’d stood taller than the others of her sex, and straighter. As if used to holding her head up among men instead of bending it in proper subservience.

He’d seen how she’d appraised him, like a fishwife looking over the day’s catch. Was she wife to the man who’d bought him? Daughter? Would she expect Simon to bow and scrape? Not while he had a breath left in him, he vowed with a touch of the same scorn that had curled his lip when he’d caught her gaze in the marketplace.

The woman’s eyes narrowed but she said not a word as his new master gestured to a dun-colored barb shifting restlessly at the end of its reins.

“Mount,” the man ordered tersely, “and get you a good seat in the saddle. We’ve a hard ride ahead.”

“Where do we ride?”

“That’s not your concern. Mount.”

Despite his manacled wrists, Simon swung into the saddle with the ease of one more used to being ahorse than afoot. It galled him no little that he wasn’t allowed to take the reins. Those were held fast by a heathen in a white turban.

He’d barely found the stirrups before his new master set off. The female rode at his side. Simon and the guard holding his reins followed, with two more turbaned outriders bringing up the rear.

They halted at the city gates, where the one who’d bought him slipped a handful of coins to the pikemen guarding the entrance. Once clear of the mud huts surrounding the city they gained a well-traveled highway. Steep hills blanketed with olive trees bordered the road on the left. The sea stretched endlessly on the right.

The sun hanging low over the azure waters told Simon they were headed north. But north to where? Frowning, he struggled to draw on his hazy grasp of the geography of the East.

The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was little more than a narrow strip of land squeezed between desert, mountain and sea. A much-beleaguered strip, to be sure, wrested from its original inhabitants during the First Crusade a mere fifty years ago. From the bits and pieces he’d been able to gather from his captors, Simon knew that the city they’d just left lay somewhere close to the kingdom’s border. If this troop continued to ride north, they would come even closer.

Close enough that he might find sanctuary if he escaped. When he escaped, he amended fiercely. He hadn’t come all this way to spend the rest of his life in chains. He might be the fifth son of a minor and most disreputable baron, but he’d won more battles than he’d lost. This one, he vowed grimly, was not yet over.

His hope of escape rose with each thud of his mount’s hooves, only to be dashed some moments later like the waves crashing against the rocks below. News traveled so slowly between East and West. The infidels could well have taken the southern reaches of the Latin Kingdom, just as they’d taken the great principality of Edessa to the north, the loss of which had precipitated the Second Crusade. For all Simon knew, even that most sacred of all Christian sites, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, could have fallen.

The mere thought made his insides churn. He’d come so far. To fulfill his father’s vow and salvage his own soul, he must find some means to complete the last leg of his journey and join the ranks of Templars. He was sorting through various strategies when his new master stiffened in the saddle.

“Fatamids,” he grunted in a voice just loud enough to carry over the restless murmur of the sea.

Simon narrowed his eyes against the sun’s glare and studied the mounted patrol some distance ahead. Their conical helmets identified them as readily as the Arabic symbols on their blood-red pennant. He expected his new master to approach them, mayhap hand over more coins as tariff for using the road. To his amazement, the woman took charge.

“They fly the pennant of the sultan’s personal regiment,” he heard her mutter. “If they stop us, we won’t be able to bribe them as we did the guards at the city gates.”

“Especially if they recognize you, milady,” the man beside her agreed grimly.

So this veiled female was a Frank, and one of high rank. Simon barely had time to absorb those astounding facts before she cast a look over her shoulder. He caught a glimpse of brown eyes blazing with determination as she measured the mettle of her escort.

“I know these hills and orchards well,” she told them in an urgent tone. “Guy of Bures held them in fief before he lost them to the Fatamids. I spent nigh on one summer here with Guy’s wife and daughters. Follow where I lead.”

Before any could protest, she tugged on the reins and dug her heels into her mount’s sides. The sleek Arabian leaped off the road. Its rider canted well forward in her saddle and sent it racing toward the olive trees that climbed the steep hillside.

Cursing, the man Simon now recognized as the woman’s lieutenant dragged his mount’s head around and charged after her. Simon was forced to cling to the saddle like a hapless monkey as he and the rest of the troop followed. Gnarled, twisted tree trunks blackened by age flashed by. Ancient boughs feathered with silver leaves whipped past. He ducked two branches, was lashed by a third.

Over the hammer of iron-shod hooves on the rocky soil, he heard a distant shout. A glance over his shoulder confirmed that the sultan’s troop was giving chase. His trained eye saw at once it was well armed and well horsed.

The fire of battle rose in him. His manacled hands curled tight, as if to grip a lance or sword. He told himself he should care not whose hands he passed into. A slave was a slave was a slave. Yet everything in him rebelled at the idea of being caught weaponless if there was to be a battle. Cursing, he swung forward in his saddle—and felt his heart near jump out of his throat.

They’d reached the crest of the hill. In an instant of sheer disbelief, Simon saw it was slashed by what looked like a bottomless crevasse. The gaping fissure stretched in either direction as far as he could see. And the only means to cross it was a wood-and-hemp bridge that looked as though it would not support a shoat, let alone a horse and rider.

The female in the lead dragged on the reins and brought her mount to a snorting, skittering stop. When she threw her leg over the pommel and slid from the saddle, Simon was sure she meant to surrender. Instead, she issued a hurried assurance.

“The bridge will take us. I crossed it more than once with Sir Guy and his wife. Wait until I gain the other side, then follow one at a time.”

“No, lady!” Her sun-weathered lieutenant kicked free of the stirrups. Dismounting, he shouldered her aside. “I will go first.”

Simon’s breath stuck to the back of his throat as the man led his mount onto the swaying bridge. The damned thing looked as though it would give way at any second, taking man and beast with it.

Against all odds, they made it to the far side. And no sooner had they reached solid ground than the woman followed. She crossed safely, as did one of the turbaned outriders.

That left Simon and two others. The first dragged him out of his saddle. The second flung his mount’s reins at him and drew a curved scimitar.

“Go,” he ordered, his voice low and guttural with menace.

Simon had no fear of heights. He’d climbed many a siege tower and fought atop high castle walls. Yet he held back, debating between evils.

He could swing his wrist chain, knock the scimitar aside, and take to the trees in hopes of escaping both this troop and the one charging up the hill.

Or he could put his fate in the hands of the female who stood on the other side, her gaze once again locked with his.

Those fierce brown eyes challenged him. Bedeviled him. Lured him to God knew what fate. With the grim sensation that he was putting more than his life in this most strange and unaccountable female’s hands, Simon led the dun-colored barb onto the bridge.

It sagged under their weight, but held. Simon forced himself to place one foot before the other and kept his eyes on the lady. Neither he nor she seemed to draw breath until he gained the far side.

As soon as he had, the remaining two followed. All the while, the pursuing troop drew closer. They were almost within arrow range when the grizzled lieutenant drew his sword. Two whacks severed the right-side ropes anchoring the bridge to deep-sunk posts. The planks tipped on their side, swinging like a drunken sailor caught in the rigging.

“They won’t cross now,” the lieutenant said with fierce satisfaction.

“No, they won’t,” his lady agreed gleefully.

With lithe grace and a swirl of her voluminous cloak, she grasped her saddle pommel and swung into the seat unaided.

“To horse,” she ordered over the thunder of approaching hooves. “Let us home to Fortemur.”

Chapter Two

By the time the small cavalcade thundered up to the barbican of a massive castle overlooking the sea, the sun was a flaming ball of red and Simon had to struggle to hold his head upright.

As best he could recall, all he’d eaten since being dragged off the ship two days ago were a few wormy crusts of bread. Worse than the hunger that gnawed at his insides, though, was the burning cauldron of his back. His captors’ lead-tipped whips had cut almost to the bone.

Yet training and instinct refused to die. With an iron effort of will, he blanked his mind to the pain that ate near into his bones and fixed his gaze on the black-and-red pennants flying above the keep’s towers. He didn’t recognize the device on them, nor the coat of arms carved into stone above the gate of the outer barbican.

When they passed through the gates and crossed the drawbridge, he acknowledged grimly that the fortress well deserved its name. Fortemur. Strong walls. It had those aplenty. And guardsmen, as well. He glimpsed pairs of lookouts in the dozen or more towers interspaced along the walls, while more pikemen in red-and-black tabards patrolled the walks between.

The towers were of a unique design that owed as much to the East as to the West. Almost like the minarets that called the infidels to worship. They gave the massive keep an almost fanciful air that belied its well-ordered defenses.

Its outer and inner curtain walls were spaced well apart, he noted. Gardens and orchards flowered in the low-lying land between them. They would feed the defenders during a lengthy siege. Until the outer curtain was breached, at least. Then, Simon surmised, the defenders would open the sea gates and flood the orchards to keep attackers at bay.

He gave the yards the same reluctant approval. Both inner and outer bailey teamed with activity from the dovecote to the farrier’s forge to the kitchens that pumped the tantalizing odor of roasted meat into the air. Simon’s stomach cried for a slice of whatever sizzled on the spits as the troop halted by the stables and the lady slid from her saddle.

She spared him only a glance before throwing back her hood and issuing a low order to her lieutenant. “See him fed and bathed, then bring him to my solar.”

Simon barely heard her. Although the silken veil still covered most of her face, he couldn’t help but gape at the thick braid draped over one shoulder. It was so pale a gold as to be almost luminous. Like winter sunlight shimmering on a frozen lake. Simon had never seen the like.

With some effort, he dragged his gaze from her to her lieutenant. He’d shoved back his hood as well. The man’s weathered face owed more to age than the sun, Simon now saw. Silver tinted his hair at the temples. And the scar running from his ear to the neck of his tunic bespoke a man who’d engaged in more than one battle. Some, obviously, with the female he now faced.

“Do you want him with the wrist cuffs on or off?” he queried in a voice tinged with unmistakable disapproval.

She directed her attention to Simon and raked him again from head to foot. As he had on the auction block, he stiffened under her assessing look.

By the bones of Saint Bartholomew, she was a forward wench. The kind whose bold glance would have raised an answering response from him in other times, other circumstances. He’d bedded his share and more of saucy maids and painted, panting ladies before his father’s dying vow had bound him to a life of poverty, obedience and chastity.

Yet he’d never encountered a female such as this one. Strong enough to ride for hours without so much as slumping in the saddle. Strong-willed enough to issue orders to the battle-scarred veteran who awaited her command.

“Off,” she told him. “But you have my leave to subdue him if he offers violence.”

“He’d best not.”

Simon knew the gruff response was more for his benefit than hers. She knew it, as well. She turned away with a nod, then swung back.

“Be sure to bring him to me by way of the tower stairs.”

“I will.”

Simon’s gaze followed her as she lifted her skirts and stepped around the offal inevitable in a stable yard teeming with horses, swine and chickens. She had a fine-turned ankle, he couldn’t help but note before he faced her lieutenant once again.

“I am Hugh of Poitiers,” the man informed him. “Once in service to Eleanor of Aquitaine. For these past two decades and more, I am sworn to the holder of these lands.”

“Who is he?”

“She.” Sir Hugh tipped his head to the retreating female. “Lady Jocelyn is my liege.”

Simon’s glance whipped to the lady, then back again. “She holds this keep? She has no husband? No father or brother?”

“She has me,” the knight snapped.

“I meant no offense. But a fortress of this size…”

When his glance swept the well-ordered yards again, Sir Hugh offered a terse explanation.

“Lady Jocelyn’s grandfather died this Michaelmas past, before he could negotiate a suitable marriage for her. King Baldwin took her in as his ward and appointed one of his own men as steward. The fool likes to believe he holds sway here. I would suggest you do not make the same mistake.”

So that was the way of it. The lady was an heiress. A prize to be given to a faithful vassal. From the looks of this keep, she was a rich prize indeed.

Simon knew well—all Christendom did—that the constant struggle to hold on to the territories wrested from the Saracens in the First Crusade had caused many a lord to fall on the field of battle. Their sons likewise often went down to the sword or lance. As a result, great fiefs devolved on female heirs here in the East far more often than in the West. Tales abounded of rich widows being given to new husbands almost before they’d buried their last.

Such rumors had lured many a landless knight and adventurous man-at-arms to seek both a bride and a fortune here in Outremer. Simon himself had considered doing so, but he would not now make a fortune nor take a bride in this wild land. Both were forbidden to Knights Templar. All they took in spoils, all revenues they gained through their vast holdings both here and in the West, belonged to the order.

“How are you known?” Sir Hugh wanted to know.

“I am Simon de Rhys, fifth son of Gervase de Rhys.”

“Gervase de Rhys.” The knight’s brow wrinkled. “What have I heard of him?”

That he was foresworn of his honor, his lands and the respect of all men, Simon thought bitterly. That he whored and guzzled ale and took by guile what he could not take by the strength of his arm. It wasn’t by chance that Simon had ridden away from his sire’s crumbling keep soon as he’d been strong enough to swing a sword and not returned until summoned to the man’s deathbed.

His shoulders stiffening, he answered only, “I know not.”

“How old are you?”

“Six and twenty.”

Hugh’s eyes narrowed. “Have you won your spurs?”

“Ten years ago.”

“So young?” Surprised, the scarred warrior raked him with a sharp look. “By whose hand were you knighted?”

“Henri, Duke of Angoulême.”

“Ah, him I have heard of. He was a good man. If he knighted you, you must have won his respect.”

Hugh stroked his chin for several moments, his piercing gaze seeming to see into Simon’s soul.

“I heartily disapprove of what Lady Jocelyn has in store for you,” he said at last, “but understand why she does it. Whether you fall in with her plans or no, hear me well, Simon de Rhys. I will rip you and string you up by your guts should you harm one hair on her head.”

“I—”

He flung up a mailed fist. “I care not what you say or think! Only that you know your life is forfeit if you harm her. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Then let us get you fed and bathed, as my lady commanded. Then I will take you to her solar.”

Jocelyn paced the spacious tower room, her nerves strung so tight she feared they would snap.

Until her grandfather’s death she’d shared a bedchamber with the other unmarried ladies of the keep. Four, sometimes six, of them had slept in the curtained bed, the rest on the cushioned benches they sat on during the day to sew or read or strum their lutes. Now that she’d moved into the lord’s chamber, Jocelyn enjoyed the almost unheard-of luxury of privacy. That privacy allowed her to do what she was determined to do this night!

She’d planned her campaign with the same care Sir Hugh did an attack on enemy strongholds. With the sun about to set, she’d ordered candles and a fire laid. Stout wood shutters now shut out the night and the chill breeze coming off the sea. Rich tapestries kept drafts from seeping through the stone walls, while thick carpets covered the wooden floorboards. The chamber was warm and comfortable, yet her nerves danced and her skin shivered as though she was clothed in nothing but a thin shift.

Yet just the opposite was true! She’d thrown off her hooded cloak and sweat-stained riding gown, washed, and dressed again with great care. A simple linen band drawn across the top of her head and under her chin held back the unbound hair that now fell loose to her waist. Over a finely pleated linen undertunic she wore a bliaut of deepest rose that laced at the sides and boasted sleeves so long their tips trailed the carpets. A broad belt embroidered with gold thread girdled her hips. From it dangled her needle case, her sewing scissors in their leather holder, a pierced gold scent-ball filled with costly musk and the heavy ring of keys that marked her as chatelaine.

Once properly garbed, she’d dismissed her ladies. Sent away even the young page who customarily slept on a pallet outside her door. Jocelyn wanted none to know what passed between her and the man she would soon face.

It was mad, this scheme. As Sir Hugh had pointed out so forcefully, she courted the wrath of both King Baldwin and his still-powerful mother, Queen Melisande. Yet she could not, would not, be shut away in a harem. She was too used to governing the lands and castle that were her birthright.

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 freedom 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.”

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.”

The abrupt command made her blink. “What say you?”

“Remove my clothing.”

Her jaw dropped, then snapped shut again. Enough of this! She was no serf, no scullery maid, to be treated so.

“Remove it yourself.”

He shrugged aside her flash of temper. “You wish me to service you, lady? Then you must use your hands on me. And your mouth. And whatever else I so desire.”

“It takes all that to make you stiffen?”

Something sparked in his blue eyes. Surprise? Derision? Or was it some jest only he understood?

“Fear not, lady,” he drawled. “I am as stiff as a lance even now. But if we’re to do this, I would have some pleasure of it…and of you.”

“Pleasure was not part of our bargain.”

“Not part of yours, mayhap. It figures large in mine.” He beckoned her forward. “You may begin.”

For the life of her, Jocelyn couldn’t understand how he’d turned the tables on her. He was the bound servant, she the mistress. Yet now, apparently, she must needs strip the dolt to his skin if he was to perform as she needed him to.

With a thunderous scowl, she stepped forward and reached for the unadorned leather belt Sir Hugh had obtained for him. It came off easily, but she had to work to remove the coarse wool tunic.

Heavens but he was tall! Nor would he bend to make her task easier. To drag the tunic over his head, she had to go up on her toes and press close to his chest.

So close the tips of her breasts brushed against him. The springy gold hair that arrowed from his chest to the drawstring of his breeks made her nipples tighten even more. Jocelyn near gasped at the sensation that streaked from her breasts to her belly.

She clenched her teeth, refusing to let him see how he’d affected her, and stared at an array of old scars standing white against his tanned skin. One angled across his left shoulder, another circled his lower ribs. Battle scars, or gained in tourney. Her grandfather had collected as many or more.

“Continue,” he instructed, jerking her from contemplation of his chest.

She had to go down on her knees to remove his borrowed felt shoes and woolen stockings. That put her at eye level with his hips, and the bulge in his breeks gave her ample evidence of the truth of his assertion. He was indeed as hard and stiff as a lance.

Jocelyn’s throat went tight. Her stomach tied in knots, and a sudden damp heat swirled between her thighs. Breathing through flared nostrils, she forced herself to rise and stand before him.

“You are not finished, lady.”

She could not mistake the glint in his eyes this time. It was indeed derision, with more than a hint of mockery.

Her temper rising, she tugged the strings of his breeks so hard they broke. The loose-fitting drawers gave way, baring lean flanks and thighs corded with muscle.

And his shaft. God help her, his shaft! It was of a size to match the rest of him. Thick and long and blue-veined, it jutted from a nest of dark gold hair.

“You’re too big,” she gasped, backing away. “You’ll…You’ll split me asunder.”

Simon’s breath hissed out. The unmistakable fright in her voice pierced through the lust her rosy nipples and sleek flanks stirred in him.

She was a maid, he reminded himself savagely. She couldn’t know how a woman stretched and grew moist to ease a man’s passage. Nor how to angle her hips to take his full length. Now he would have to teach her.

With an effort of will, he fought the urge to drag her down to the thick carpet and take her without regard to her fear or comfort. The fierce struggle locked his jaw and put a harsh rasp in his voice.

“You will not split, although you will feel some pain when I pierce your shield. Surely the other women here at Fortemur have spoken to you of that.”

“Yes, but…” Her horrified gaze remained fixed on his shaft. “But they can’t have been pierced by one such as you!”

Despite the dizzying combination of pain and lust that held him in its maw, Simon had to smile. “When you are more well used, lady, you will know such a remark strokes a man’s pride most mightily.”

Her gaze whipped to his face. “I give not a brass penny for your pride! All I want—” She stopped. Drawing in a shuddering breath she squared her shoulders. “All I want is to finish this damnable business.”

She looked so much like a sacrificial victim about to go to the stake that Simon couldn’t help himself. His smile widened into a wicked grin. Bowing as low as his as yet-unhealed wounds would allow, he swung an arm toward the carved wooden bed.

“Then get you between the sheets, lady, and we will see it done.”

He followed her across the solar. Pleasure warred with pain as his hungry gaze roamed from her unbound hair to her swaying hips to her trim calves and shapely ankles. When he made the return trip, his eyes fixed on the linen band swathing her hips.

Did she have her monthly courses? Is that why she bound herself? It wouldn’t matter to Simon if that were the case, although he knew most women shied away from intimacy at such a time. But he saw no thickened cloth within the band that would indicate such was the case with the Lady Jocelyn.

Mayhap this was some new fashion. Some trick learned from Eastern women to entice their men. If so, it most certainly worked. The promise of the shadowed cleft between her rear cheeks put him in a sweat.

Stiff-spined, she drew back the heavy bed curtains. They rattled on their iron rings like the chains he’d worn but a short time ago. The sound was loud in his ears as she dragged down an exquisitely embroidered coverlet. When she slid onto the linen sheets, the down-filled mattress rustled beneath her and gave off the sweet scent of rosemary and lavender. She lay there, rigid and unmoving, while Simon looked his fill. Her breasts were high and proud and pink tipped, her waist narrow, and her mound…

His groin tightened, so hard and fast he near doubled over. He hadn’t thought the woman could make him hurt more than he already did, but the pale gold curls at the apex of her thighs had him gritting his teeth.

“Move to the side and give me room.”

She paled at his gruff tone, and Simon swallowed a curse. Oaf that he was, he’d only added to the woman’s fear. He would have to work now to make sure she could indeed take him. Pray God and all the saints he didn’t spill himself in the process.

He managed to hold back, but the urge to thrust into her was like a knife in his belly. Each stroke of his hand, every brush of his mouth on her heated skin drove the blade deeper. And when he suckled first one breast, then the other, her gasp of surprised pleasure came within a hairbreadth of shattering his iron control.

Her scent filled him. Musk from the golden pomander she’d worn on her girdle. Costly scented oil brushed into her silken tresses. Rosemary and lavender from her bed. And female. Hot, sensual female.

He was afire front and back when he kneed her legs apart. Taut as a bowstring when he slid his palm down the quivering curve of her stomach to cup her mound. Levering onto his elbow, he watched her face as he spread her slick folds and thumbed the nub at her center.

The eyes she’d squeezed shut flew open. A flush spread across her cheeks. When he pressed the nub, she bit down on her lower lip but couldn’t hold back the small, breathless pants that escaped her. Nor the wet heat that dampened Simon’s hand. But when he slid a finger inside her, she bucked and tried to scuttle away.

He restrained her easily. “Let me pleasure you. It will ease our joining.”

His words came low and gruff and hoarse. He felt as though he were on the rack. His back flamed, and his groin ached with such savagery he could scarce draw breath. It took all he had to contain his own vicious need and slide his finger in, out, and in again.

When he judged her ready, he kneed her legs farther apart and positioned himself between her thighs. He rested his weight on a bent arm. With his free hand, he guided his shaft to her hot, slick flesh.

The tip probed, pushed, entered. She gasped again and wiggled frantically.

“Wait, de Rhys! Wait! It’s too monstrous! You cannot…I cannot…”

“Aye, sweeting, we can.”

He canted his hips until the tip was well and truly lodged, then bent again to suckle. His teeth rasped the tight, hard nipple. His tongue soothed it. When she gave a hoarse moan and thrashed her head back and forth on the bolster, Simon knew she could take his full length. Straightening, he flexed his thighs and thrust home.

Jocelyn gave a mewling cry and arched under him. The pain she’d been warned to expect came sharp and fast, but lasted only a few moments. With his second and third thrust, she began to feel something almost pleasurable.

As the feeling gathered intensity, her breath grew short and hot. Her senses whirled. Blind instinct led her to hook her calves around his and lift her hips to meet his. But just when she thought the sensations gathering low in her belly would lead to something more, something that beckoned tantalizingly just beyond her reach, he lunged a final time.

Grunting, he collapsed atop her and buried his face in her neck. She waited, scarce daring to breathe. Her heart hammered in her chest. Her nerves sizzled and spit like hot coals.

Yet he made no further move. None at all. Except for the rise and fall of the chest mashing hers and a raspy rustle of his breath in her ear, she might have thought him dead.

Slowly, so slowly, the fire in her blood subsided. Pressed into the mattress by de Rhys’s slack body, she became all too aware of his weight. The man was as heavy as an ox. Her nose wrinkled as she breathed in his sweat-drenched scent. And the odor of the sticky wetness that now trickled between her legs.

So much for the sly grins and titillated laughter of her ladies, she thought in chagrin. This business of mating was all well and good enough in its way, but…

Somehow Jocelyn had expected more. Oh, her body had heated everywhere de Rhys had stroked it. And she’d near come out of her skin when he’d tormented her breasts. Yet all this fuss and bother had left her wanting. Not to mention smelly and sweaty and thoroughly disgruntled.

And now the dolt came close to smothering her. Scowling, she pushed at his shoulder. “De Rhys. You’re too heavy by half. Move yourself.”

He made an inarticulate sound and rolled onto his back. “Sorry, sweeting.”

That was another matter, she thought in mounting frustration. That casual endearment, as if she was some slattern he’d just taken out behind the stables. Who was he to address her with such familiarity?

The irony of that thought didn’t strike her until she’d drawn the coverlet up to her chin. She’d yielded her maidenhead to this man, had committed the sin of fornication with him, yet she hadn’t so much as given him leave to address her by name.

Ah, well. It was done. Now all she had to do was send him on his way. Clutching the coverlet, Jocelyn propped herself up on one elbow. He lay sprawled on his back beside her with his eyes closed and one knee bent. The gold hair dusting his chest glinted in the firelight.

And, she saw with a gulp, the shaft that had so unnerved her with its jutting size now lay limp against his thigh.

“De Rhys,” she said again, dragging her gaze from his nether parts. “Gather your garments and dress. You must leave my chamber.”

He answered with a low grunt.

“Heed me,” she commanded. “You’ve fulfilled your part of our bargain. Sir Hugh will see you outfitted as I promised. You are free to leave Fortemur on the morrow.”

His chest rose and fell in a slow, soughing breath.

“De Rhys! Do you hear me?”

His eyes opened. They lacked their previous intensity, Jocelyn saw with some surprise. Dull, almost lackluster, they fixed on her face.

“I hear you,” he muttered.

Was this what coupling did to a man? Drain him of all strength and vitality? If so, it was no wonder knights refrained from lying with a woman before tourneys.

“Then get you gone from my bed,” Jocelyn ordered. “And remember your pledge to say nothing of what happened here tonight.”

“Why are you so worried that I will speak of what happened between us?” he asked as he slowly pushed himself up. “Do you fear no man will take you to wife if he knows you won’t bring him the gift of your maidenhead?”

“I’ll bring him Fortemur,” she answered, shrugging. “With such a rich dowry, there will be men aplenty who’ll take me to wife.”

Just not the man the king wanted to give her to. Or so Jocelyn prayed.

“You must go,” she insisted. “I would not have my ladies find you in my chamber come morning.”

His movements slow and lethargic, he threw aside the sheet. Jocelyn’s gaze went instantly to the red splotches on the linen. The stains brought home the full enormity of what she’d done.

“By all the saints…” she murmured.

Then she looked up and another, far more emphatic exclamation threatened to burst from her.

“Holy Mother! What did they do to you?”

The cuts crisscrossed his entire back, deeper and more vicious than any she’d ever seen. Unlike the scars on his chest, these were fresh. Some had scabbed over, some were barely crusted. Others oozed beneath the unguent she belatedly remembered Sir Hugh saying he’d had smeared on them.

Jocelyn had put men to the whip before. Women, too, when their crime warranted. Not very often, thank the Lord, but enough times to know no ordinary leather thong would score the flesh like this.

She scrambled up on her knees, still clutching the coverlet in tight fists. “What manner of lash did they use on you?”

His shoulders rose in a shrug. “One barbed with lead tips.”

“But why? And why so many strokes?”

A dry note crept into his voice. “I’ve been told I have a somewhat stubborn nature.”

Like hers, she acknowledged silently while he pushed off the bed with obvious effort. When he crossed to the clothing they’d left in a heap, Jocelyn couldn’t take her eyes from the horrific cuts. Thus she saw him stagger as he bent to pick up his breeks. He threw out a hand to steady himself, but found nothing to grasp.

She leaped out of bed to rush to his aid. Before she could reach him, he toppled like a felled oak.

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