His Lady's Ransom

“Come, sir, let me pass, else you will miss the call to arms.”

“My lady—”

“Enough, halfling.” De Burgh’s voice held no hint of the anger Madeline saw in the cold blue of his eyes. “Do you not see the lady has made her choice, and ‘tis not you.”

“Not this day,” Will conceded cheerfully. He reached for Madeline’s hand. “But mayhap another.”

When he lifted her fingers to his lips, Madeline couldn’t help but be touched by the reverent salute. Her gaze softened as it rested on the golden head bent over her hand. Any tender feelings stirring in her breast died aborning, however, when she looked up and met the earl’s icy glare. Throwing him one last, mocking glance, she tugged her hand free.

“Aye, mayhap another, day,” she told Will sweetly. Lifting her skirts, she glided by the two men.

With every ounce of willpower he possessed, Ian fought the urge to reach out and grasp the woman as she swept past. He wanted to shake her, as much for keeping Will dangling on her silken strings as for the taunting look she’d given him. Her mocking glance told him more clearly than words that she had thrown down the gauntlet. The battle between them was now a full-scale, if undeclared, war. One she would not win, Ian vowed, watching the sway of her hips as she walked away.

Will’s bemused voice cut into his preoccupation.

“Do you think ‘tis the king’s son who claims her token?”

Ian drew in a quick breath and faced his brother. He’d never coddled Will, nor spoken less than the truth to him. “If half the rumors whispered about him and the Lady Madeline are true, he claims more than a token.”

“Nay, he does not.”

The flat assertion brought Ian’s head around slowly. “You have some knowledge of the matter that others lack?”

Will shrugged. “I know you think me besotted, Ian, and well I may be. But I’m not a fool. I…I’ve watched my lady from afar these many weeks, and seen her in every mood. Laughing. Playful. Sometimes scolding, often mischievous. But never, never, have I seen wanton.”

Ian clenched his jaw as he conjured up an image of Lady Madeline bent over his arm in a winter-swept garden, her small bosom heaving and her huge eyes alight with emerald flames.

“She…she has a flirtatious nature,” Will admitted hesitantly, then flushed, as if it ill became a knight to acknowledge his lady’s faults, “but not a licentious one.”

At the simple declaration, Ian felt his temper push hard against its careful bounds. “Will, listen to me. This lady is not for you. Whether she beds with them or not, she plays with princes.”

A troubled frown creased Will’s forehead. “I know. And I fear for her, Ian. Although I don’t believe the rumors about my lady, there are those who do. Lady Isabel de Clare, for one. She looked ready to claw Lady Madeline’s eyes the last time she was at court.”

Ian drew in a slow breath. The jealousy of John’s betrothed was no light matter. A great heiress, Isabel was known for her temper, and was not above arranging a rival’s death. It wouldn’t be the first time a mistress was so disposed of. Queen Eleanor herself was rumored to have poisoned her husband’s leman, Rosamund the Fair, and thus earned the unceasing enmity of the king who had once loved her.

To his disgust, Ian felt a new worry curl deep in his belly. His concern was Will, he told himself, only Will. But the thought of Madeline’s gleaming eyes dulled with pain and her red, ripe lips blue with the cold of death made his hands close into tight fists. Damn the woman, he thought, even as his agile mind worked at the knots that now seemed to ensnare them all.

Will’s unaccustomed solemnity vanished. He grinned at his frowning brother with all the bravado of a newly knighted youth. “The only recourse is for me to challenge the prince in the tourney today. I’ll dump him on his arse and claim my lady’s favor, as well as a fat ransom from the king for his precious son!”

“And you think yourself not a fool,” Ian replied dryly.

Will laughed and clamped an arm around his brother’s shoulders. “Come, we’d best find our squires and arm, lest we miss the tourney altogether. If the bishops have their way, we may not have many more to ride to.”

As he strolled through the vaulted corridors with Will, Ian almost wished that the bishops had indeed prevailed in their futile attempt to gain the king’s sanction against the tourneys held in conjunction with feast days. The church, it seemed, objected to the carnage that often resulted, claiming it profaned the holiness of the occasion.

Having participated in many tourneys, Ian knew well that death was not an infrequent occurrence in the great, brawling free-for-alls, in which squadrons of mounted knights charged across a broad plain at opponents coming from the opposite direction. Although the object was to take prizes for ransom and not to kill or maim, combatants fought with the same sharpened lances and swords they used in battle. More than one knight, stunned from repeated blows to the helm, fell from his saddle and was trampled to death. Others died from wounds inadvertently given in the heat of battle. The king’s fourth son, Duke Geoffrey, traitor that he was, had died just last year during a tournament given in his honor by King Philip of France.

His mouth grim, Ian swore a silent vow that the king’s youngest and favorite son would not meet a similar fate at Will’s hands this day. Nor would he allow his brother to earn the prince’s rancor by battling with him to win Lady Madeline’s favor.

Ian had time yet for a word with the marshal who arranged the order of the tourney. He’d make sure Will rode with, and not against, the prince. And then, he swore savagely, he’d put an end to the Lady Madeline’s game once and for all.

Cursing the female who had brought them all to this dangerous pass, Ian strode into his chamber and bellowed for his squire.

“Look, Lady Madeline, is that not the cub who would claim your favor? The one with the bordure d’or around his chequy shield? There, leading the charge?”

Madeline’s breath frosted in the cold March air as she brushed her veil out of her eyes and followed the direction of Lady Nichola’s outstretched arm. Muted thunder from a hundred or more pounding hooves rolled up from the valley below. Squinting at the galloping, unformed mass of men that charged across the flat valley floor, Madeline tried to find the checkered blue-and-white shield bordered in gold that Lady Nichola alluded to.

“Nay, I cannot tell. They’re too far afield.”

“I wish we could descend this hill and go closer to the fray,” one of the other women complained. “I can see naught from here.”

“’Tis not safe,” the squire charged with escorting them repeated. “The battle rages where it will.”

Lady Nichola straightened in her saddle. “Look, Madeline! There he is! Isn’t that your young swain, riding against the prince?”

Madeline put up a hand to shield her eyes and peered through the morning haze.

“Sweet Jesu, there’s a man,” her companion murmured breathlessly. Then she gasped. “But ‘tis not your cub after all. ‘Tis his brother. See, there’s the golden hawk of St. Briac quartered in the corner of the shield.”

‘Twas indeed Ian de Burgh, earl of Margill, baron St. Briac, who led the charge, Madeline saw at last. As she watched, biting her lower lip, he bore down on an armored knight mounted on a magnificent black destrier that bore the prince’s trappings. Above the thunder of hooves striking hard earth, the sound of steel ringing against steel rose in cold air.

“Take him,” Madeline whispered fiercely, wanting John to triumph as much as she wanted the earl to take a blow. “Knock him senseless.”

“Oh, he did!” her companion trilled in delight. “He did.”

To her profound disappointment, Madeline saw that the wrong man had carried the day. ‘Twas John who wavered in his saddle, clearly dazed from a blow that had slipped under his guard and dented his golden helm. Fear knotted suddenly in her chest as she watched him tip slowly sideways.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, don’t let him fall, she prayed desperately, her hands pressed to her mouth. With a sob of thanksgiving, she saw de Burgh spur his mount next to the black and catch the stunned man before he could slip out of the saddle. When John regained his seat, de Burgh leaned forward to catch the black’s reins, then threaded through the surging mass to the woven wicker pen where squires waited with fresh arms and saw to the needs of captured knights.

The lists, as the safe haven was termed, lay directly below the hill where the women watched. In some disgust, Madeline saw de Burgh remove his great bucket-shaped helm and run a hand through sweat-flattened, sun-streaked hair. The prince did the same. Even from her high perch, Madeline could see John’s rueful laugh as his gloved fingers measured the dent in the gilded metal. The two warriors, only moments before fierce enemies, now stood side by side in companionable accord.

The battle was done soon after that. A few knights fought on, their frenzied fight carrying them far across the broad valley and through a small village that lay in their path. Frightened serfs peered out of mud-and-wattle huts as the war-horses churned their fresh-turned plots into a muddy morass. But one by one the victors claimed their prizes, and the clash of sword on shield slowly died away. The weary knights retired, captives in tow, to the lists.

The sound of horns cut through the cold air as the king himself rode out to acknowledge the victors of this engagement. Although now well past his fiftieth summer, King Henry was still a formidable figure in the saddle. He sat tall and straight, the golden lion emblazoned on his tunic catching the sun’s gleam. Pausing before his son, he said something to John, who shrugged. The king rested his forearms across the cantle and leaned down to hold discourse with Lord Ian.

They were settling the terms of the ransom, Madeline knew. De Burgh would claim John’s destrier, of course. The costly war-horse, worth more than a small manse, always went to the victor. Most like, Ian would also come away richer by a fortified castle or two—as if a person of his wealth needed them, Madeline sniffed. Of a sudden, her enthusiasm for the tourney faded.

“’Tis colder than a sow’s belly out here,” she said to Lady Nichola. “What say you we return to the castle?”

The other woman laughed and tossed her veil over her shoulder with a coquette’s practiced ease. “As you will. I’ll admit my toes are like to fall off, they’re so frozen. I just hope I get the use of them back before the banquet and dancing tonight.”

As they galloped across the winter-browned earth, their escort at their heels, Madeline decided to use the hours this afternoon to prepare for the great feast that would celebrate the tourney. Will would follow at her heels most of the night, if she let him, which would displease his brother mightily. If she had to deflect de Burgh’s cold glances all night long, she needed the armor of her best looks. Ignoring a twinge of guilt at using the boy as a pawn in what had become a silent war between her and his brother, Madeline plotted her strategy with all the skill of a great marshal.

The first step in her campaign, she decided, was a bath. She knew the servants would be heating great caldrons of water for the returning knights. A few copper pennies delivered by Gerda would divert one of the wooden tubs, and sufficient buckets of hot water to fill it, to the ladies’ bower.

She had barely stepped into the steaming water, dotted with scattered rose petals, when a knock sounded on the door to the tower room. Madeline sank down in the wooden tub until the scented water covered her shoulders. Then Gerda lifted the latch.

“Aye?”

A gangly page in parti-color hose and a loose knee-length tunic stood on the threshold. His eyes rounded at the sight of Madeline in the tub.

“Don’t ye be gawking at my mistress, lad,” Gerda admonished. “What do ye want?”

“I have a message for the Lady Madeline de Courcey from Ian, Lord de Burgh.”

Water sloshed over the sides of the tub as Madeline plucked a linen towel from the stool beside the tub to cover her breasts and swiveled to stare at the page. What? Was the battle between her and the earl to be joined so soon? “Well, what is it?”

“Your pardon, lady, but Lord Ian requests your presence immediately.”

Madeline felt her jaw sag at the imperious summons.

“He awaits you in the solar just behind the great hall. I’m to lead you to him.”

She waved a wet, disdainful hand. “Inform the earl that I’m otherwise engaged. He may seek me out after the banquet this eve if he desires discourse with me.”

“But, my lady…”

“Shut the door, Gerda. The draft chills the water.”

A satisfied grin curved Madeline’s lips as she slid back down, letting the warm water wash over her shoulders once more. She rested her head against the rim of the tub and wished she could see de Burgh’s face when he received her response.

She regretted that wish mightily not ten minutes later. She was on her knees, head bowed for Gerda to rinse the soap from her hair, when the wooden door to the tower room crashed open.

Gerda shrieked and jumped back. The jug she’d been using to sluice water over her mistress slipped from her hands and shattered on the floor.

Madeline sloshed around in the tub, pushing through the curtain of hair that cascaded over her face. Soap stung her eyes and blurred the figure who stepped into the chamber.

“My lord, ye cannot come in here!” Gerda’s dismayed warble had Madeline scrabbling for a linen towel.

“Get you gone. I have business with your mistress.”

“Are you mad?” Madeline swiped the soap from her eyes, then clutched the linen frantically over her breasts. “Get out of here!”

De Burgh ignored her, addressing the maid. “You may wait outside and attend your lady when I have said what I will to her.”

Gerda sent Madeline a helpless look.

“Go,” she ordered. “Go and summon the king’s guard.”

When the maid scuttled from the chamber, de Burgh turned to face Madeline. His blue eyes surveyed her coldly, from the soap-filled mass of hair that tumbled over her shoulders to the swell of her breasts under the wet linen.

He must have come straight from the tourney, she thought furiously. He’d removed his great helm and the greaves that protected his shins, but under his mud-spattered tunic he still wore the heavy mail shirt and padded gambeson. The added weight made him look huge and formidable and altogether too fearsome.

Madeline ground her teeth at being caught on her knees before this man, but she could not rise without baring more than the towel could cover. Still, she refused to cringe before him.

“In the future, lady, you will attend me when I summon you.”

Her chin lifted. “In the future, sir, you are not likely to issue any summons. You will be dead when the king hears of this!”

His lips curled in a slow, predatory smile that sent chills down Madeline’s bare back. “I think not.”

“If not dead, then blind,” she spit out. “I’ll see your eyes put out with hot pokers! How dare you intrude upon my privacy!”

He strolled forward, his spurs scraping the rushes. Madeline fought the urge to shrink back against the far rim of the tub. Shivers raced down her spine, caused in equal part by the cold air wafting on her back and the fury that sizzled in her veins. Angrily she flung her hair over her shoulder and glared at him.

He seemed to find her defiance amusing. “A woman who defies her lord is not entitled to privacy. If he so wished, he could strip her before all and inflict what punishment he would upon her.”

“You took one too many sword blows to your helm this day, sir. You are not my lord, nor have you any say in what punishments I may or may not incur. I am in the king’s keeping.”

“No longer, lady.”

The flat assertion made her clutch her towel in suddenly tight fingers. “Wh—what? What say you?”

“You are mine now, as are your lands and revenues. To hold and to use as I will, until I decide where to settle you.”

Her voice sank to a disbelieving croak. “Yours?”

“Aye. I won you in the tourney.” A sardonic gleam flared in the blue eyes hovering over her. “You, my lady Madeline, are the Lord John’s ransom.”

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