Crusader Captive (4 page)

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.

Chapter Four

“D
e Rhys! De Rhys, do you hear me?”

Her tangled hair falling in her face, Jocelyn dropped to her knees and struggled to turn the man over. It was like pushing at rock.

“De Rhys!”

His only response was an inarticulate grunt.

This was most assuredly not part of the plan.

Cursing, Jocelyn threw on her torn bliaut and rushed to the tower door. A swift descent of the narrow, winding stairs brought her to the guardroom directly below her bedchamber. The three men rattling dice glanced up in surprise at her sudden appearance.

Her disheveled state generated no little surprise. The two guardsmen gaped in astonishment. Sir Hugh kicked aside his three-legged stool and hurried to her side.

“What’s amiss, lady?”

“De Rhys.”

“What has that whoreson done?” His hand went to the hilt of his dagger. His eyes raked her hurriedly clothed person. “Did he give you hurt?”

“No, but I fear I’ve hurt him. Most grievously.”

“You had to fight him?” His voice was low and fierce and for her ears only. “Why didn’t you call out?”

“No, no. It wasn’t that.” She gave the two guardsmen a quick glance and kept her response as cryptic as she could. “He, uh, sapped his strength such that his wounds overcame him.”

Her castellan swore under his breath. “I feared something like this when I saw his back.”

A layer of guilt piled on top of Jocelyn’s churning emotions. Hugh had indeed told her de Rhys had been hard used. But she’d been so determined to go forward with her scheme that she’d ignored the warning.

“Come and help me with him.”

Gathering her skirts, she hurried back up the winding tower stairs. Hugh issued a curt order to the other men to remain where they were and followed. When they reentered her chamber, de Rhys still lay where he’d fallen, his naked body sprawled atop his scattered clothing.

“He’s too heavy for me alone,” Hugh muttered. “I’ll need to summon aid to carry him from your chamber.”

“I can’t have him seen unclothed like this! Help me draw on his breeks, then we’ll drag him to the bed.”

Hugh’s glance cut from the fallen knight to Jocelyn. “Your bed?”

“Yes.”

She struggled to gather her scattered wits. Her original plan had called for de Rhys to depart her chamber when he’d done what she’d required of him and spend the rest of the night in the great hall with her other knights before departing on the morrow. Now…

Now she must needs cover what they’d done here to protect him from the curiosity of her people and, ultimately, the king’s wrath.

“I’ll…I’ll say I had you bring him to my solar so I might speak with him about his capture,” she got out, hastily revising her plan. “While we were speaking, de Rhys appeared most weak. I bade him show me his wounds and was so appalled by them that I insisted he lie abed that I might tend him. That’s what… That’s what any chatelaine would do,” she finished lamely.

Sir Hugh grunted, but didn’t gainsay her. Muttering under his breath, he knelt beside de Rhys and pulled the man’s breeks up one leg, then the other. With another grunt, he rolled the man over. Once his nether parts were covered, he signaled to Jocelyn.

“Grasp his arm.”

They dragged him to the bed without too much difficulty. Getting him into it was another matter altogether. As strong as Sir Hugh was, he had to strain to lift de Rhys’s dead weight. He got him to the edge of the mattress finally and let him collapse face-down into the linen sheets.

The stained linen sheets. Hugh’s sharp glance took in the reddish smears and cut to Jocelyn. “So it’s done?”

“It’s done.”

He nodded once, a quick jerk of his chin, and maneuvered de Rhys’s legs onto the mattress. When the man was fully laid out, the castellan regarded her in the flickering light from the fire.

“Had it been a husband you’d bedded with, you could show these sheets as proof that you came to him a maid.”

She was all too aware of that. Aware, as well, that she could not use the sheets as proof of her lost virginity. The king would question whether the stains were the result of her monthly courses. Or whether she’d cut herself. Or sprinkled sheep’s blood on the sheets.

She didn’t doubt Baldwin would have his personal physician examine her. Perhaps in front of witnesses. The prospect made Jocelyn writhe inside, but she would endure such a humiliation, and gladly, if it turned the Emir of Damascus against marriage to her.

“I’ll tell my women the stains are from de Rhys’s wounds,” she said with another hasty revision to her scheme.

“If you don’t want them to know what occurred here this night,” Sir Hugh said gruffly, “you’d best wash yourself first. You have the scent of him on you.”

In her flustered state, Jocelyn had forgotten the yeasty stickiness between her thighs. She guessed it, too, was tinged with red. And obviously gave off a distinctive scent. That an old and loyal vassal should have to remind her of such an intimate matter brought heat to her cheeks.

“I’ll tend to it.”

Nodding, he turned to leave. “Sir Hugh…”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

His brow creased into deep lines. “I fear you’ll be cursing rather than thanking me before this sorry business is done with, milady.”

He took the tower stairs again and closed the door behind him. Jocelyn cleansed herself quickly, using scented oils and a linen towel she wadded up with her torn bliaut. She stuffed both in her clothes chest to be disposed of later. Only then did she go to the door and call for her page.

The remaining hours of the night passed in a seemingly endless blur.

To her dismay, de Rhys soon grew feverish. She and Lady Constance, wife to the knight who governed Fortemur’s armory and a woman with great knowledge of medicinal herbs, took turns spreading soothing balms on his inflamed back and bathing his sweat-drenched body. At one point he became so flushed that they feared for his life.

Racked with guilt that she’d brought him to such a state, Jocelyn sent for the castle priest. As gentle, elderly Brother Joseph prayed over the sick man, she sank to her knees on her intricately carved prie-dieu. Head bowed, she pressed her palms together so hard that pain shot through her wrists. Yet the prayers that normally fell by rote from her lips wouldn’t come.

She’d fornicated with this man. Until she confessed that grievous sin and did penance, how could she ask God’s mercy on him or on herself? And until de Rhys was safely away, how could she confess?

Not that Father Joseph would betray her. The gray-haired priest had lived at Fortemur for most of his life. But he, too, was of the Church. If de Rhys muttered something in his delirium, if the good father learned through other means than confession what had occurred here, his conscience might compel him to report the matter through the Church hierarchy to the Grand Master of the Knights of the Temple. The Templars’ rules forbade them to so much as speak to a female. Having sexual concourse with one would cost a Templar his habit, his weapons, and his warhorse for a year or more.

Assuming, that is, de Rhys was even accepted into the order. Politics weighed with the Knights Templar as heavily as it did with the Knights Hospitaller here in the East. While both groups owed allegiance only to the Pope, their continued existence in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem depended on the survival of the kingdom itself. The Templars’ Grand Master would not look favorably on an aspirant who threatened an alliance King Baldwin was determined to secure.

Her fingers locked so tight her knuckles showed white, Jocelyn prayed most heartily for de Rhys’s quick recovery and departure from her life.

He quieted enough by dawn’s light for her to leave him in Lady Constance’s care while she attended Mass and broke her fast in the great hall with the rest of the keep’s residents.

Word had already spread of the stranger in their midst. Between the clink of ale cups and clatter of wooden spoons, she caught snippets of the gossip that was life’s blood to the more than three hundred souls who resided within Fortemur’s massive walls. Only one dared query her directly on the matter, however.

Red-haired and ruddy-faced Thomas of Beaumont had journeyed to Outremer to share in the riches and booty of a conquered land. He’d yet to win a fief of his own in battle, however, and must needs be content with managing lands belonging to others. A distant cousin of the king, Thomas counted himself lucky to have been given stewardship of Fortemur.

As steward, he had a hand in fiscal and judicial matters. With Jocelyn’s close watch, he kept a tally of all revenue-generating activities within the keep and its surrounding farms and orchards. He was also charged with ensuring appropriate levies were paid into the king’s coffers. As reimbursement for his services, he took a share of these levies to himself.

Jocelyn had made every effort to accommodate the man and his sharp-nosed wife. She’d assigned them the sunny bower she’d called her own before moving into the lord’s chamber. She made sure Sir Thomas accompanied her to the cellars when she had business in the counting room, where the keep’s gold and treasures were kept. Likewise when she unlocked the spice room to dole out precious peppercorns or cinnamon sticks to the cooks. He rode with her when she went to inspect the outlying farms and orchards, and dispensed in her name such justice as she decided appropriate.

Yet try as she would, she could not like the man. He was puffed up with his own consequence and quick to remind everyone within hearing of his kinship to the king. Worse yet, his wife was petty and cruel to those who served her. Jocelyn had spoken to the woman about that more than once. On the last occasion, she’d threatened to take a whip to her if she struck or kicked or pinched another maid so hard as to raise bruises. Thus Jocelyn had to stifle a groan when she saw Sir Thomas and his shrew of a wife already seated at the high table.

Given his exalted position, the steward sat on her left. As castellan, Sir Hugh held place of honor on her right. Sir Guy, husband to Lady Constance, sat next to Hugh. Jocelyn nodded to her loyal vassals and managed a polite smile for the king’s cousin.

“Good morrow, Sir Thomas.”

“And you, lady.”

The steward’s wife inclined her head as was due Jocelyn’s rank but forebore to speak as a small army of pages scurried to serve them. Since the first meal of the day was the lightest, they offered only thick slices of bread, cold pigeon breast, sardines drenched in olive oil, stewed boar left over from the night before, pears, candied cherries and a plate of the dates so plentiful here in the East.

Sir Thomas waited to scoop up a sardine with a bread crust and pop both in his mouth before fixing his gaze on Jocelyn. “What’s this I hear? Did you indeed ride to El-Arish yesterday to purchase a slave?”

“I did.”

“God’s tooth, lady! El-Arish is on the other side of a border much disputed between my cousin and the Fatamids.”

“I’m well aware of that, Sir Thomas.”

“Yet you went to the slave market?”

Jocelyn downed a swallow of ale before replying. The story she’d devised to explain her excursion into enemy territory came easily to her lips.

“I heard there was a new batch of Frankish prisoners to go on the block. I felt it my Christian duty to ransom one or more of them if I could.”

The king’s cousin could hardly argue with that. So many pilgrims and other travelers had been taken by pirates of late that not even the royal treasurer could ransom them all.

“But the one you purchased,” he said with a frown. “Did I mishear, or does he indeed lie in your bed?”

“You heard aright,” Jocelyn replied coolly. “When we returned from El-Arish yesterday afternoon, I bade Sir Hugh see the poor wretch was fed and bathed, then asked that he be escorted to my chamber. I wanted to know from whence he came and why he’d journeyed to the Holy Land.”

“Yes, but—”

She ignored the interruption. “I know you’ll be most pleased when I tell you he has vowed to join the Knights Templar. Of all the great warriors who defend your cousin’s kingdom, they are the most fierce.”

“That is true enough,” Sir Thomas was forced to concede.

It was, they both knew, an uneasy alliance at best. Since their humble beginnings as self-appointed protectors of pilgrims, the Order of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon had grown as rich and powerful as the kings of Jerusalem themselves.

Nor did it help that rumors skittered and swirled concerning their founder’s insistence that they be allotted quarters abutting the one remaining wall of Solomon’s second temple. More than one rumor whispered the Templars had broken through the walls to search the warren of underground tunnels. More still whispered that they’d found the treasures hidden there centuries before, along with that most sacred of all relics, the long-lost Ark of the Covenant.

Jocelyn didn’t believe that for a second. No one, least of all the head of a religious order dedicated to serving Christ, would deny the world such a sacred relic. Still, one had to wonder how they’d come so far from their original designation as poor fellow knights. Poor they were most definitely not!

Sir Thomas’s persistent and most annoying drone pulled her from her thoughts. “But why is this would-be Templar in your bed?”

Jocelyn laid down her jeweled eating knife and gave him her haughtiest, lady-of-the-manner stare. “He was ill used by the pirates who took him. So ill used that he collapsed at my feet, raging with fever. Lady Constance prepared healing unguents and helped me tend him throughout this long night.”

Lips pursed, the steward speared a date and bit into it. Juice spurted from the ripe fruit onto his reddish beard. Unmindful of the dribble, he chewed thoughtfully for a moment.

“The man must be noble born if he’s to join the Templars. Did he give you his name?”

“He did. Simon de Rhys.”

“Son of Gervase de Rhys?”

“He didn’t name his sire.”

“Yes, he did.” Sir Hugh leaned forward and looked around her. “He said this Gervase de Rhys is indeed his sire. Do you know him?”