His Lady's Ransom

As he had tonight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Is it so improbable that Lady Madeline might want me as a husband?” Will asked slowly.

Ian threw him a sharp glance. “You are betrothed.”

“Aye.” Will gnawed on his lower lip for a long, hesitant moment. “But the last time I was in the north, Alicia seemed to find little joy in the prospect of marriage with me. Mayhap she would be better matched with someone else.”

Ian’s brows soared in surprise. “Are you saying she wants release from the betrothal? Our lady mother mentioned nothing of this when I was home.”

Will shook his head, clearly miserable. “Nay, Ian. Alicia would not ask for release. She’s such a mouse, she would not have the courage. But…but neither does she invite my kisses.”

Ian wavered between exasperation and amusement. Will’s next words, however, erased all inclination to laugh.

“Lady Madeline doesn’t shrink away and call me a heavy-handed brute when I take her arm.”

“Nay, I’ll wager she does not,” Ian drawled. “She’s more used to men by a goodly measure than is Alicia.”

A frown settled between Will’s brows at this description of his ladylove. Satisfied that he’d planted at least a seed of doubt, Ian turned the subject. He’d heard enough to know that Will would not disgrace himself by forswearing his vows, though the lad longed for this Madeline de Courcey with all the urgency of a young man in the throes of his first love.

There was only one solution, Ian concluded, and that was to convince the woman herself to call a halt before the boy’s heart took a serious blow. Or before he earned the enmity of the king’s son with his pursuit of the lady. Sending Will off with the suggestion that he find himself a flagon of ale or a willing wench, or both, Ian decided that ‘twas time he and the Lady Madeline finished their discussion of some days before.

With the skill of the hunter cutting his prey from the herd, Ian separated the lady from the women she walked with in the castle gardens the next afternoon. Holding her hand longer than was either polite or necessary, he gave the other ladies a slow grin and the unmistakable hint that he desired private speech with Lady Madeline. Despite Madeline’s raised brows and stiff rejoinder that ‘twas too cold and damp for conversation, the other women fluttered off, casting more than one arch glance over a cloaked shoulder. As soon as they had disappeared around a bend of the intricate evergreen hedges that made Kenilworth’s gardens famous, Madeline snatched back her hand.

“I much mislike this tendency you have to separate me from my companions, my lord. Do not do so again.”

Ian stared down at her flushed face. Whether it was the cold February wind that had put the pink in her cheeks or his own determined tactics, he neither knew nor cared. But the sight of her creamy, rose-tinted skin and huge, flashing eyes framed by a blue wool hood lined with sable made Ian suck in a quick breath. Irritated that she would cause such a reaction in him, he folded his arms across his chest.

“And I much mislike seeing my brother make a fool of himself over one such as you, my lady. You will cease your attentions to him.”

Her breath puffed out in a little cloud of white vapor. “One such as I?”

“Come, you told me yourself that you preferred plain speaking.”

To his surprise, a gleam of wry laughter appeared in her expressive eyes. “’Tis one thing for me to speak plainly about myself, my lord. ‘Tis another thing altogether for you to do so.”

Despite himself, Ian felt an answering grin tug at his lips. “I see. ‘Tis well I know the rules before I play the game.”

“The game?”

“Aye. ‘Tis what you do, is it not? You draw men in with your laughter and your merry eyes, and play with them. You’re most skilled at it.”

She drew back and surveyed him thoughtfully. “I’d thank you for the compliment sir, if I thought it one.”

“Oh, it is, most assuredly.”

Ian brushed a knuckle down the alabaster coldness of her cheek. She jerked her head back, startled and a little breathless. Her fingers curled under her chin.

“I would be drawn by those eyes myself,” he murmured, “were I not reluctant to poach in my brother’s preserves.”

Madeline stared up at him, confused by the conflicting emotions he generated within her breast. With every double-edged word he spoke, he seemed to be offering her insult. But the lambent gleam in his dark blue eyes, and the way his hand now cupped her chin in a warm, hard hold, fanned a tiny flame within her. When it came to playing the game, Madeline decided, this man was more skilled by far than she.

“My lord…” she began, embarrassed at the breathless quality of her voice.

“Aye?”

His murmured response sent a tingle of awareness shimmering down her spine. Or mayhap it was the feel of his callused fingers on her skin. Or the scent that drifted to her on the cold, crisp air of leather and dry wood and male.

“You need not worry about William.”

“Need I not?”

Madeline’s hood slid off her hair as she tilted her head back to look up into the face above her. The winter sun painted his high cheeks and square, blunt jaw. It was a strong face, Madeline decided, echoing the character of its owner.

“Nay, you need not,” she replied lightly. “I will ensure he takes no hurt. As you said, I’m much skilled at this game.”

The hold on her chin tightened suddenly. Madeline blinked in surprise as his eyes took on the silvery sheen of old slate.

“You mistake Will’s character, lady. Unlike your husbands, my brother is neither old nor thick-skulled.”

“What are you speaking of?” she gasped.

“I won’t allow Will to break his betrothal and marry you,” he replied with knife-edged bluntness. “However well you play this game of yours, you’ll not put cuckold’s horns on my brother while you dally with the king’s son.”

Madeline jerked her chin out of his hold, stunned by his attack. “How—how dare you speak to me so!”

“I dare because Will is my responsibility.”

“You take your responsibilities too heavily,” she said, gathering her skirts. “William is a man, fully grown and knighted. ‘Tis time you let him think for himself.”

She whirled, intending to stalk out of the garden, but a hard hand grasped her arm and whipped her around.

“I tell you now, he’ll not break his betrothal. Will has more honor than you appear to credit him with. He’s…infatuated with you, ‘tis all.”

“If infatuation is all it is, you need not worry,” Madeline snapped, tugging furiously at his hold.

“Cut the strings you keep him dangling by, or I’ll cut them myself, in a manner you’ll like not.”

Incensed, Madeline swung back to face him. “You may take your threats and your insults straight to the reddest, hottest flames of hell, my lord, and yourself with them.”

His jaw clenching, he caught both of her arms in an iron, unbreakable hold. “Let the lad be, lady.”

“Why should I do so?” she retorted, stung by the flat coldness in a voice that had sent a shiver of delight through her only moments before. She wanted to hurt this man, as he’d hurt her. Humble him. Cause him to sweat under his fur-lined surcoat. If this…this dolt wanted to think she sought to ensnare his precious brother, then she’d not disabuse him of his folly.

Without giving him time to reply, she rushed on. “The boy’s besotted, any fool can see that. And he has lands and incomes greater by far than my previous lords,” she ended on a sneer.

He tightened his grip, drawing her up, until her toes just touched the stone walk and her head tilted back. A muscle twitched at one side of his jaw.

Madeline watched it, fascinated and a little frightened. She swallowed, thinking that mayhap she’d been a little too precipitate. Wetting her lips, she drew in a deep breath.

“My lord…” she began.

“Will’s estates and income are under my control.” He ground out the words. “If ‘tis moneys you want, you play with the wrong brother.” He drew her against him, banding her body to his with an arm around her waist.

“My lord!”

“Why not try your games with me, Lady Madeline?” he taunted softly. “Let’s see how skilled you really are.”

She splayed her hands against his chest, pushing against the hold that held her locked to him in such intimate embrace. “I thought you did not hunt in your brother’s preserves!”

“That was when I believed Will the hunter. I see now he’s the quarry, instead.”

Madeline arched backward, and realized immediately her mistake. Her hips pressed hard into his. Through the thick layers separating them, she could feel the unyielding strength of his thighs, the flat planes of his belly. And something else. Something that grew harder with every effort she made to twist free.

She was the king’s ward, Madeline thought incredulously. She could claim royal protection. Yet this arrogant knight appeared to care naught. He would take her here, on the bare, windswept ground, did she let him!

“You’d best beware,” she warned, breathing hard. “’Tis also royal ground you poach upon.”

She’d meant to remind him that she was under the king’s protection, but she saw at once he’d mistaken her meaning. Disgust flared in his eyes, the same disgust she’d seen when he looked upon her at the high table, seated beside John. Before she could make clear her meaning, or even decide if she wanted to, he tangled a fist in the silk anchored over her braided hair and angled her face up to his.

“Well, at least we know the game is plentiful,” he told her grimly, then bent and took her lips with his.

It was a kiss intended to convey more insult than passion, and it did. His lips were hard and unyielding, taking rather than giving. They branded her. Seared her. Humiliated her as no spoken insult could have. Never in her brief years of marriage had Madeline felt so used or so dominated by a man.

He shifted, widening his stance. Madeline gave a muffled squeak of dismay as she felt herself bent backward over his arm.

Her distress penetrated the fury ringing in Ian’s ears. Christ’s bones, he hadn’t meant to savage the woman, only to show her whom it was she had pitted herself against.

Not unskilled himself in the games played between men and women, Ian brought her up against him and savored the unexpected pleasure that shot through him at the feel of her body arching into his. He gentled his kiss, and his lips molded hers, tasting instead of torturing, teasing instead of taking.

She gave a soft, breathless moan, and her fingers loosed their clawing hold on his arms.

Ian lifted his head, his nostrils flaring in fierce male satisfaction at the sound of her surrender. His conscience screamed ‘twas Will’s love he held in his arms, but when she stared up at him, her huge eyes dazed, he could not have loosed her had his life depended on it.

Madeline drew in a shaky breath, trying to gather her disordered senses. Anger coursed through her, so fast and hot she shivered with the force of it. And stunned astonishment that the earl would use her like some kitchen wench. And desire. Hot, shameful desire.

Her lips throbbed from the force of his, and when he lowered his head to kiss her once again, Madeline knew she had to win free of him.

Abandoning all pretensions to courtly sophistication or dignity, she did what she’d done once before, when she and John were but six and he wrestled her to the ground in an argument over a frog they’d found.

She bit her tormentor. Hard.

The earl jerked back with a startled oath.

Madeline twisted out of his arms. Had it been a sword, the glare she gave him would have sliced off his manhood. Picking up her skirts, she stalked out of the garden.

Chapter Three

Madeline spent a restless night, tossing and turning on the thick fur-covered pallet on the floor. Not for anything would she have shared the curtained bed with the other women assigned to the tower chamber. Her long, frightened hours in the dark privy as a child had given her a dislike of confined spaces that she’d never lost. She far preferred a scratchy mattress of straw to the closeness of the wood-framed bed.

The other ladies considered her strange, she knew, to forfeit warm comfort for a mat on the hard floor. Or, worse, they thought her sly beyond words, placing her pallet near the door so that she could slip away unnoticed to go to her lover’s bed. Madeline could have told them of her childhood fright, but her pride refused to admit such silly weakness to any but John. Besides, she’d long since learned not to care what others thought.

So why did the scorn of one particular earl raise her ire so? she wondered irritably, curling her body into a tight ball under the furs. Why did she clench her teeth in the predawn darkness at just the memory of his punishing kiss? Why should she care if he, like all the others, believed her mistress to the king’s son?

‘Twas no disgrace to take a lover, after all. Queen Eleanor herself had postulated the rules for courtly love years ago. Following well-established procedures, a knight pursued his objet d’amour with poetry and song and feats of arms, using all his skills to win his lady’s favor. Once she accepted him as her lover, a lady was bound to her knight even more than to her husband—at least in the songs of the troubadours.

All too often, Madeline acknowledged sardonically, courtly ideals and reality clashed, sometimes with brutal results. More than one lady discovered in the arms of her chivalrous love had been beaten or even killed by her lord. Only last year, one enraged husband had served his wife her lover’s heart on a golden plate, forcing the horrified woman to partake of it before he threw her from a tower window. The queen’s courtiers still argued the lovers’ rights in that sad affair, much good it did the unfortunate pair! The bald fact was that church and canon law gave a husband absolute mastery over his wife, whatever the troubadours might sing.

Which was why Madeline intended to use all her influence with John to ensure that she had a say in the choice of her next husband. Whichever lord she chose, he would not, she decided, bear the remotest resemblance in face, figure or temperament to Ian de Burgh.

She snuggled deeper in the furs, pitying the poor woman given to the man as wife. She knew he was a widower of some years’ standing. Although she didn’t believe the earl quite so barbaric as to cut out a rival’s heart, he would no doubt make a most exacting husband. That lazy smile hid a ruthlessness Madeline had herself tasted of just yesterday. She slid a hand from under the coverings to touch her lips, still swollen and tender from his kiss. How dare he use her so, as though she were some kitchen wench, his for the taking! She hoped with all her being that Lord Ian’s lip throbbed far more painfully than did hers this morn.

“The devil take the man!” Madeline muttered, shoving aside her furs.

The rushes covering the stone floor rustled as the slumbering form on the pallet beside hers stirred. “Be ye awake, mistress?” a sleepy voice asked. “So early?”

“Aye, Gerda. Come, get you up and help me dress. I would attend early mass this morn, that I might break my fast before I ride out to watch the tourney.”

The maid rolled over on one broad hip, yawning prodigiously and scratching her hair under the nightcap she wore as protection against the chill night air. At her movement, the other maids began to stir, as well. Soon the chamber was filled with the rustle of straw pallets being rolled up and the clatter of wooden shutters thrown open to allow in the faint glow of dawn. One by one the other ladies burrowed out from the curtained nest and began their morning toilets.

“Will ye wear your red?” Gerda asked, rummaging through the tall parquet-fronted chest that held the ladies’ robes.

“Aye, and be careful with that veil!”

Madeline’s warning came too late. The gossamer silk head covering Gerda reached for snagged on a wooden peg and tore. The maid’s brown eyes flooded with remorse as she held up the ruined strip of crimson silk.

Shaking her head, Madeline poked two fingers through the ice encrusting the washbowl, then bent to splash her face with the frigid water. ‘Twould do no good to remonstrate with the maid. She had the clumsiest hands in all of England. A sturdy lass whose mother had attended Madeline as a child bride, Gerda had neither her dam’s light touch with delicate linens nor her skill with the needle. In truth, she was more apt to step upon the hem of her mistress’s robe and rend it than not. But, though she tried Madeline’s patience, she was fiercely loyal and devoted to her mistress. In Madeline’s mind, such loyalty more than compensated for the girl’s heavy hands. Still, there were times…

“Here, let me.”

Shivering in her thin wool shift, Madeline took the scarlet bliaut from the maid’s fumbling fingers. She pulled the robe over her head and thrust her arms through its wide fur-trimmed sleeves, then twisted sideways to reach the laces. A rich Burgundian red wool edged with sable, the bliaut fitted tightly over her bust and waist, then flared in thick folds over her hips. Sitting on a low stool, Madeline pulled on brightly embroidered stockings and broad-toed boots. She winced as Gerda fumbled a comb through the heavy mass of her hair, then rebraided it with rough, if competent, hands. Bending to retrieve the wooden pins the maid had dropped for the second time, Madeline herself stabbed at her scalp to anchor the braids to either side of her head. At this rate, she’d miss not only early mass, but the escort to the tourney field, as well.

At the thought of being confined to the castle all day, Madeline threw her fur-lined mantle over her shoulders and hurried out of the tower room. Lifting her skirts to avoid the occasional droppings deposited by the hounds during the night, she sped through the drafty halls. In the distance she heard the faint echo of the priest’s voice lifted in holy song. Breathless, she rounded the corner that led to the chapel—and careered headlong into a solid, wool-clad chest.

The man she collided with wrapped an instinctive arm around her waist. Madeline found herself held firmly against a hard, muscled plane. A chuckle rumbled in his broad chest under her ear.

“’Ware, sweetings. Such impetuous haste is ever the downfall of man and maid.”

Biting back a groan, Madeline fought the urge to bury her face in the smoky wool. She had no difficulty recognizing the rolling north-country burr of the man who held her, or the huge feet of the one who stood beside him. Drawing in a deep breath, she drew back slowly and raised her eyes to Ian de Burgh’s.

The laughter faded from his eyes when he saw who it was he held. His arm dropped to his side, freeing her.

Madeline stepped back. “Your pardon, my lord.” She forced the words out through stiff lips.

“Lady Madeline!” William’s exclamation drew her attention. “I hope you took no hurt.”

She managed a small laugh. “Nay, none, except to my dignity.”

Will stepped forward and made as if to take her arm.

“Truly,” Madeline snapped with something less than her usual mellifluous charm, wanting only to be away from both of them, “I’m fine. ‘Tis your brother who took the brunt of my charge. Look instead to him.”

Undaunted by her sharpness, Will gave a good-natured laugh. “In truth, he does need someone to protect him from the women of this castle. Yestereve he was marked by a jealous wench, and today he’s all but brought to his knees by a lady half his size.”

At the lighthearted words, Madeline’s gaze flew to the discolored swelling on the earl’s lower lip. Her own mouth curled in a faint sneer. “A jealous wench?”

Will’s grin widened. “Well, that’s how I describe her. My brother’s description is not fit for the ears of a lady.”

One sable brow arched. “Oh, is it not?”

“’Tis not fit for polite company, at any rate,” Ian drawled.

Madeline bit back a gasp at the implied insult behind his words. ‘Twas plain to her from his careless tone that he chose not to number her among the “polite.” At that moment, with the icy drafts swirling about the hem of her skirts and the distant chanting from the chancel sounding faint in her ears, Madeline swore she would bring this man low. She didn’t know how, nor when, but she would see him humbled if ‘twas the last thing she did on this earth.

One sure way, she fumed, would be to tell Will just how his esteemed brother had earned that bruise on his lips. She could imagine the young knight’s reaction to the knowledge that his hero had molested the lady he himself revered. She debated within herself, torn between the desire to hurt the earl and a reluctance to do the same to Will.

De Burgh must have read her intentions in the angry glitter that sparked her eyes. His own narrowed, and he took a half step toward her. His brother’s voice forestalled whatever it was he would have said to her.

“My lady…”

With a start, Madeline saw that Will had stepped to her side. She glanced up and saw shy devotion writ plain on his handsome face. Sighing, she realized that she could not willfully cause the boy pain to satisfy her own need to prick the earl.

“If it please you, I would beg a favor to wear in the tourney.”

When she saw the sudden scowl on the earl’s face, Madeline knew she had the instrument of her revenge at hand. She had no intention of letting Will’s infatuation ripen into something deeper, but de Burgh didn’t believe that. So be it! If he wished to worry and stew, she’d give him something to worry about. She was a master at this game he’d accused her of playing. She’d learned it from Queen Eleanor herself, a woman who’d enthralled two kings. Madeline would see that Will took no real hurt of her, but, by the Virgin, she’d make his brother squirm in the process.

Slipping easily into a role that was second nature to her, she gave a tremulous sigh of regret. “Alas, Sir William, I can’t bestow that which is already given. Another knight has claimed a token of me.”

“Then I’ll wrest it from him by force of arms,” Will bragged with the utter confidence of youth. “Only tell me who carries it, and I’ll see that we ride on opposing sides.”

“La, sir, you know I cannot reveal my champion’s name.”

The merry little laugh, the sidelong glance from beneath lowered lashes, the slight pout—all were instinctive to a woman schooled in such sophisticated badinage. Madeline performed them with a skill that brought a flush of desire to Will’s open face and a flash of disgust to the earl’s eyes. Telling herself that she was well pleased with both reactions, Madeline ignored the man and smiled prettily at the youth.