“An Eastern curiosity, but exceedingly useful. Now come. I weary of this constant battle between us.”
She had no choice, but that did not make it any easier to comply with his demand. She followed him reluctantly to the bed.
“Do you need help removing your gown?”
Josselyn scowled. “I have no intention of shedding any of my garments.”
He shrugged as if he did not care. Then still holding her gaze, he released the ties on his braies, unwound the cross-bands, and stepped out of the loose garment.
She averted her face. She could not, however, hide the rush of hot color to her cheeks. She feared that would be visible even in pitch darkness. “Is your brother as crude in his manner as are you?” she muttered. The phantom Jasper was her only defense against Rand. But did she invoke Jasper’s name to warn Rand away or to warn herself? She feared to examine her motives too closely.
“I am not privy to the particulars of his behavior with women. But leave off these delaying tactics, Josselyn. I wish only to sleep.”
He tugged on the chain that bound her to him and she took a step closer. But still she kept her eyes fixed on the
wall somewhere above his head. “How … how old is he?” she stammered.
The bed ropes creaked beneath his weight and her cheeks burned hotter. That sound would forever remind her of … of what she should put completely out of her head.
“He is ten years my junior. Son to my father’s second wife. Lie down, Josselyn.” He tugged and she sat down abruptly on the bed.
“Have you a wife?” she blurted out.
“No.” After a moment he added, “Nor am I seeking one.”
The insult implied in his answer restored her to anger. “Yet you would seek one for your brother.”
“I want peace between the English and Welsh. I want him wed to a Welshwoman. You are the obvious choice. Enough of this.” He caught her around the waist and pulled her down on the mattress beside him. “Enough of this,” he repeated, yawning against her hair. “’Tis time to sleep.”
Perhaps for him, Josselyn thought as she lay there on her back, stiff and unmoving. His arm lay heavy across her waist, a warning for her not to escape. His breathing grew slow and even, a warm, rhythmic wave rustling her hair, tickling her ear. His bent knee pressed against her thigh.
It might be time to sleep, but their intimate proximity precluded it.
Yet somehow, at some point, she did sleep. Somewhere between wondering if she could break the chain and trying to squeeze her hand through the cuff, she fell into the heavy, dreamless sleep of the truly exhausted. She awoke only when someone shook her.
Rand.
Her eyes blinked, he smoothed the hair back from her face, and it began again. The terrible tension. The impossible attraction.
He leaned over her, backlit by the unshuttered window. Silent. Strong. For that moment, between the dreams of
night and the reality of day, he was only a man, neither Welsh nor English. He had not come to conquer or rule, but simply to offer her pleasure.
She stared up at him through the haze of morning light, through the haze of feelings unaffected by reason or responsibility.
Then he shifted and his leg slid along her thigh. Her bare thigh. With a start she realized that during the night her gown had edged up so that it bunched now around her waist, leaving the rest of her naked.
As naked as was he.
His hand moved down while his eyes held steady. “Did you sleep well?” His long fingers found the smooth skin of her hip. His palm did as well.
“Yes.”
“And are you refreshed? Renewed?” His voice was husky with sleep … and with desire. It awakened an answering desire in her.
“You promised only sleep,” she whispered.
“Do you want to go back to sleep?”
What she wanted she could not speak out loud, neither in his language nor hers. “Please, Rand.”
He shifted her near him so that her hip nestled against his groin. He was hard and ready for her, and suddenly she could hardly breathe. Once more he toyed with her hair. “When you say my name, Josselyn … Say it again.”
“Rand,” she repeated, like one mesmerized.
He groaned and closed his eyes as if in pain.
She did that to him, she realized. She made him desire her just as she desired him. It was a heady thing to wield that sort of power over a man like him. Yet what could she do with that power save ultimately destroy herself?
She would enjoy it for a moment more. That was all, she told herself. She lifted her hand to his face to cup his lean cheek, to thread her fingers in his dark hair. But the chain caught beneath her elbow and prevented her. Her hand stopped halfway to its goal. The silver cuff winked morning
light at her, reminding her of the grim reality that lay between them.
He saw it too, and when their eyes met she thought she spied regret on his face. Certainly she saw frustration.
“There are those women who enjoy the limitations of bindings,” he murmured. “You did yesterday.”
So she had, and it shamed her to admit as much. But this was worse than physical bindings, whether they be rope or silver chain. For he meant to bind her with the love of his body, then give her to another. To his brother.
“No,” she said, closing her eyes.
“You say no. But I hear yes.” This time he slid fully over her, pressing her into the mattress, thrilling her body with the hard weight and heat of his own. He kissed her closed eyes. “Say yes, Josselyn. We shall both of us be glad for it.”
She made herself look at him. She made herself struggle against the powerful tide sucking her along with him. “Tell me you will not wed me to your brother.”
He started to say it. She was certain of it. He opened his mouth and began to form the words. But then he stopped.
He caught her face between his hands and gazed earnestly into her eyes. “We both have our duty. Your loyalty is to your people and you will do whatever is necessary to preserve their well-being, just as I do the same for mine.”
“Lying with you and then your brother cannot help my people,” she countered.
He hesitated. He had no good answer to that. “Marrying you to Jasper will keep a reasonable sort of peace between your people and mine, long enough to prove that we can prosper together, Welsh and English, side by side.”
“You are wrong in that. I can understand why you wish to believe it. Still … still, that does not pertain to this … To us …”
“To us,” he repeated. He was close enough and there was enough light for Josselyn to see the stubbled growth on his cheeks, each individual dark hair. She saw also the
hairless scar on his cheek and the hungry glitter in his clear gray eyes. “This desire that lies between us,” he continued, “need have nothing to do with anyone else, Josselyn. We desire one another. There is no impediment to—”
“There is every impediment! Even were your brother not a part of it, I am your hostage. You are my enemy.”
He swore under his breath. “I could force you.”
“Don’t.”
His eyes burned into hers. “I can seduce you.”
“I know,” she admitted in a whisper.
A vein throbbed in his neck, pumping the blood that made him warm, that made him so alive. That made him the man who moved her so violently. Had he pressed her—had he bent down and kissed her then—she would have caved in to his demands, to the demands of her own pent-up desires.
But he didn’t do that and she knew she ought to be glad. He pulled away. His hands fell away from her face, and with a curse and then a groan, he rolled off her.
They lay side by side, tethered by the chain he’d placed on their wrists, but as far apart as duty and politics could place them. Josselyn wanted to weep, though it was the unlikeliest of reactions. He was her enemy and he did not mean to force her. That was cause for joy, or at the least, relief. Certainly not for sorrow.
She made herself speak. “Will you remove this cuff?”
He removed it then dressed himself in silence and left without further word. Josselyn remained in the bed until he was gone. It was a new day. Pray God it would be easier than the previous one.
She rose, sluggish, her body clumsy, not yet fully roused from the heavy sleep she’d sunk into. An ewer of water refreshed her. The barred door depressed her.
She should never have agreed to teach her language to Rand. She should never have ventured into his camp at all. She would not be in this agonizing predicament if she had only resigned herself to marrying Owain.
A shudder ripped through her. Marry Owain? Never. It took only the touch of Rand’s hand—or lips or any portion of his body—for her to know she could never share such intimacies with Owain.
“Why must he be English?” She muttered the unhappy question out loud. But even that was not the biggest impediment, she realized. The fact remained that while he would have his brother marry her, he would not do so himself. Whether English or Welsh, if he did not wish to marry her, there was no one who could force him to do so.
That meant this Jasper would become her husband unless her uncle succeeded in their desperate plan. But when would that happen?
She spent the day waiting. One of Odo’s kitchen helpers delivered her a tasteless meal of undercooked bread and scorched eel. The new guard at the door gave her a small bundle—her personal items at last. Someone had quite obviously searched them, not that Josselyn was surprised. It was just one more ignominy, a minor one in the face of all the others she’d suffered—and was yet to suffer.
But news of Rand’s brother Jasper did not arrive that day. Nor the next. And when it did come, it came through the unlikeliest source, and before the actual event had even occurred.
T
he guard Horace ushered Newlin in, giving the twisted bard a suspicious look and a wide berth. Josselyn could have kissed them both, she was that overjoyed to see one of her own people. She was also fairly bursting with questions. Two days alone had left her desperate for company. She should have guessed that Newlin was the only Welshman Rand would allow in his camp. For his part, Newlin appeared equally pleased to see her.
“You are well treated?” he asked, circling her, scrutinizing her with his one good eye.
“As well as can be expected. The food is awful,” she added in English, aiming those words at the departing guard.
“’Tis your own fault,” the man muttered before slamming the door on his way out.
“My fault.
My
fault!” Josselyn turned to Newlin, throwing her hands up in the air. “What manner of men are these English that they expect their prisoners to labor on their behalf, preparing them delectable meals so that their workers are satisfied and can proceed more swiftly than ever to obliterate us from our own lands? They are madmen, every one of them, most especially the one who leads them.” She paused in her tirade. “And they are driving
me
mad,” she finished in a less strident tone.
“’Tis the separation from your family that tortures you so,” Newlin stated.
“Indeed it does.”
“And the confinement to this single room, the inability to feel the wind and climb the hills.”
“Oh, yes. I miss that terribly.”
“No doubt the absence of the Englishman makes it worse.”
“It does.
Not.
It does
not,”
she corrected as soon as she realized her mistake. But it was impossible to lie to Newlin. He fixed his unblinking gaze on her, his odd, unfocused stare, and with a sigh Josselyn gave up. She turned away from him and began to pace. “I do not understand any of this.”
“You do not speak of politics but of your own feelings.”
Resigned, she nodded. “I cannot understand even a portion of them, and I don’t believe I ever will. But it is not for you to interpret my perverse emotions,” she continued. “That is not the purpose of your visit. Tell me about everyone. Does Nesta worry overmuch? Did Rhonwen deliver my message? Does my uncle think it a worthy plan?”
“Yes to all of your questions,” Newlin responded as he wandered the room, examining Rand’s belongings. He ran a finger over the inkwell and three quill pens. He smoothed his hand along a roll of parchment, then across the locked trunk where Rand kept his personal possessions. “He is avoiding you, I think.”
“Uncle Clyde?”
Newlin looked up at her and smiled. “Randulf Fitz Hugh.”
Josselyn frowned. “And well he ought to.”
“His brother comes.”
“He has been sighted?” Josselyn’s heart began to pound. Would her plan work?
Newlin tilted his head and stared somewhere beyond her. “They take him now, south of Bryn Mound, near the ford below Raven Hill.”
“Now? This very minute?” Josselyn stared at the bard and the skin on her arms prickled. He could not be right. How would he know? And yet she could hardly doubt him. How he knew such things she could never say. No one could. It was enough that he did, and that he’d come to tell her.
“What will happen next? What will my uncle do first?”
Newlin’s face reflected no satisfaction as he studied her. “Owain will torture him, I think.”
“Owain? But this is not his concern.”
“You are his betrothed. When you first disappeared, your uncle suspected Owain of capturing you. There are yet hard feelings between them for his mistake. But Owain has not been deterred by the insult. He has roused many of the younger village men on your behalf. Where your uncle would be cautious, he is bold.”
Dismay crept over Josselyn, robbing her of hope. “It was he who fired the English boats and nearly killed Alan.”
“It was.”
“And it is he who has captured Jasper Fitz Hugh.”
Newlin stared at her, not blinking. “So it would seem.”
Josselyn sat down, sick with dread for anyone who fell into Owain’s power, even this Jasper, whose capture would lead to her escape. But this was war, she reminded herself. People were bound to be hurt. People were likely to be killed.
Still, this was the first time she’d caused such pain, and even though her involvement was indirect, she felt no less guilty. She swallowed hard. “Does Rand know?” Then she realized how foolish her question was. The ford near Raven Hill lay more than three hours’ hard ride to the south. “Will you tell him?” she amended.
“I did not see him in the camp.”
Josselyn sighed. Rand had stayed away these past two days. Two long, drawn-out days. “They will tell you where he is if you ask.”
“When he hears the news, he may well take out his anger on you.”
Josselyn suspected as much, but hearing her fear expressed by the wise bard sent a shiver of apprehension up her spine. After a long moment she said, “Surely my uncle will not allow Owain to torture him.”
“No doubt he will try to prevent it.”
“Will he succeed?”
Newlin’s answer was a noncommittal shrug.
Agitated, Josselyn pushed to her feet. “This should never have happened. I sent that message to my uncle. Why has he let Owain take over this way? He should have known Owain would ruin everything! Don’t you see, Newlin? If Owain hurts Jasper—if he kills him—Rand will never let me go. And he’ll never forgive any of us. He is a man of honor, notwithstanding that he is our enemy. He will avenge his brother’s death. I know he will, Newlin. You have to stop Owain before this goes too far.”
“’Tis out of my hands, child. Better for you to think on your own situation.”
“Does Owain even plan to offer Jasper in trade for me?”
Newlin took a long time to answer. “The day will come, and not far off, when you will be free to marry into Owain’s s family.”
Josselyn’s nostrils flared and she shook her head vehemently. “I could never marry a man so bloodthirsty as Owain ap Madoc, a man so cruel as to torture his captives.”
“Then marry another.”
Newlin’s words lingered long after he was gone. Marry another. And yet to shun the Lloyds now would be to ensure their undying enmity—unless she married another from among their number. That gave her pause. Madoc ap Lloyd had no other sons, but he had nephews and brothers and cousins. Surely one of them was yet unwed or perhaps widowed.
Like Madoc himself.
Josselyn ceased the restless pacing she’d begun on Newlin’s
departure. Marry Madoc, Owain’s father. Would he agree? Did he even desire another wife? And then, could she agree to lie with a man old enough to be her sire?
The answer was horrifyingly simple. She could resign herself more easily to the aging Madoc than to the cruel Owain.
She sagged back against the wall and covered her face with her hands, then slid slowly down until she sat huddled on the floor, sick with the choices left to her. She was but chattel in the war games played by the men who surrounded her. Her body was a prize to them. Uncle, enemy, betrothed—they were all the same in their view of her and, indeed, of all women. Her body was a prize while her feelings were of no consequence at all.
She was too sick with dread to cry. Too crushed by despair to weep. Her plan to infiltrate Rand’s camp and somehow save herself from Owain seemed now but the dreams of a foolish girl. She could never defeat any of these men. No woman could.
Rand found her thus when he ventured into his quarters a short while later. He’d allowed Newlin’s visit and he’d wondered what they’d conversed about. Though he’d made a solemn vow two days previously to avoid being alone with her again, the bard was not an hour gone before Rand reneged on that vow. To see her so subdued, so beaten down, alarmed him.
When the door shut behind him she looked up, then rose slowly—painfully, it seemed—to her feet.
“What ails you?” he demanded to know. “Josselyn?”
She refused to look at him. “I long for my freedom,” she answered, wrapping her arms around herself. “Is that so surprising?”
It was not. Yet he knew there was more that she was not saying. “What news has Newlin brought that leaves you in such a state?”
She turned to face him and her eyes were bleak. Something had happened, and while logically he knew that whatever
news depressed her would more than likely have the opposite effect on him, he nonetheless felt an inkling of alarm. Without planning to, he took hold of her shoulders. “What has happened?”
She pulled away from him—recoiled, it seemed. Though he did not want to, he let her go. She crossed the room, hugging her arms around herself again, avoiding his searching gaze. It must be grim news, indeed, for her to react this way. But what? His men had engaged no one in battle.
Unless it was conflict between the Welsh, conflict between her uncle and her betrothed, neither of whom apparently trusted the other.
He studied her, noting her pale color, her agitated movements, and sorrowful demeanor. From nowhere the unlikeliest emotion rose in his chest. He wanted to comfort her. If someone she cared for had been wounded or killed, he wanted to comfort her.
Unless that person was Owain. If it was Owain she mourned, he wanted to wipe the man’s memory completely from her brain.
He clenched his fists and forced himself to stay where he was, to allow her to reveal the problem to him at her own pace.
She rubbed her arms, then drew a fortifying breath. He saw her gather her courage and turn to face him. But he was so taken with the totality of her womanly beauty, the beauty of her face and form, the beauty of her rare strength and fortitude, that the words she said did not initially register.
“Your brother has been captured.”
Their eyes met and held until he blinked. “What?”
“Your brother … Jasper. He has been captured.”
Reality felt like an interloper in the cozy room he’d given over to her. Reality was too ugly to exist here, between them when they were alone. But her slender body, so tense, and her compelling face, so pale, lent strength to the interloper,
and in the space of a heartbeat reality slammed like an unblunted lance into his gut.
He did not want to believe her, but he knew instinctively it was true. A cold calm settled over him. An icy fury. “Who has captured him? Your uncle?”
She bit her lower lip. “Owain.”
“Where is he?”
“At Raven Hill. Three hours from here.”
He planted his fists on his hips, never taking his eyes from her. “I assume he plans to trade Jasper for you. Why did Newlin not relay the terms to me directly?”
She looked away. He fancied he saw her tremble. Why was she so afraid? Then his heart stopped in his chest. “He’s not dead, is he?”
Her startled face turned back to him. “No. At least … at least I don’t think so.”
“Damn you, tell me what you know!”
He thought she’d shrink back beneath his fury, but instead she stiffened and met his accusing glare. “It has just happened. I cannot explain how Newlin knows such things, but he does.”
“It has just happened three hours’ ride from here and he already knows of it?” Rand shook his head. He would not believe such foolishness. How would they even know Jasper was en route?
The answer stood just before him: from Josselyn.
The facts spun through his head in dizzying sequence. His drunken revelation to Osborn and Alan within her hearing. She’d told Newlin—
No. Newlin had already departed that night. Then suddenly he knew. “It was the little girl in the woods. You sent word through her.”
She didn’t have to admit it, but to her credit she did. “I cannot be your passive prisoner. I cannot stand idly by while you take our lands, while you carelessly pair me with your brother. I told Rhonwen and she told my uncle—”
“And he sent Owain to hunt Jasper down.”
“I don’t know the particulars of what happened beyond my own part in it,” she said.
Rand wanted to rage at her. He had no reason to expect any loyalty from her, and yet perversely enough, he did. He felt betrayed. But he’d as lief grovel at her feet as admit it. How she would gloat to know the true depths of her triumph over him.
And yet there was a strange lack of satisfaction in her bearing. “Why do you not rejoice in this victory of your betrothed over my brother?”
She looked away.
Something was not right, he realized. Something about her reaction made no sense. “Don’t you want to be traded for Jasper? Don’t you want to leave here and return to your beloved Owain?”
Her little involuntary shudder at the mention of Owain’s name revealed much to Rand, all of it welcome. “You do not have to marry him, Josselyn. Not if you do not wish it.”