Merline Lovelace – His Lady's Ransom (страница 10)

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.”

Chapter Four

Ian felt a grim satisfaction as the lady’s eyes widened to huge, mossy pools and she sank back into the now-scummy water. With her face scrubbed clean of all paint and her body stripped of rich silks and furs, she looked younger than she usually did—and far more vulnerable. Deciding from her dazed expression that she was sufficiently cowed, Ian straightened.

“You have an hour to dress yourself and see that your belongings are packed.”

“Packed?” She swallowed painfully. “Wherefore packed?”

“Now that you are in my keeping, I will see you properly housed. You leave today for the north.”

“The north? Today?”

He strode toward the door. “You have an hour. Bring with you only what you need for the journey. The rest may follow with the baggage train.”

“Wait!”

The stupor that seemed to have locked her limbs loosened. She knelt upright in the tub and glared at him.

“Wait. You cannot be so thick-skulled as to think I can leave Kenilworth within the hour. There’s too much that needs doing. And I’m expected at the banquet this eve,” she finished on a shrill note.

And Ian had thought her cowed! He turned and advanced on her once again. She blinked, but refused to shrink back as she had before.

“’Twould appear you’ve held a favored position in the king’s wardship for far too long,” Ian said softly. “You’ve become lax in the respect due those above you.”

“But—”

“You will call me ‘lord’ when you address me.”

Her jaw clamped shut.

“And you will be ready within the hour.” His voice lowered dangerously. “Do not make me lesson you, Lady Madeline. You would not enjoy it.”

Nay, she would not, Madeline thought in simmering fury, but no doubt he would, the cur. The varl. The whoreson knave. Her whole body shook with the need to launch herself at him and scratch and claw. She wanted nothing so much as to add more bruises to that marking his lower lip. She, who had always won her way with smiles and merry laughter! She, who had enchanted one husband with her wit and enthralled another with her body! Never in Madeline’s life had any man spoken to her thus, nor raised such violence in her soul.

Shaken by the force of her unaccustomed blood lust, she curled her hands into fists under the surface of the water. As angry as she was, she had yet the sense to know that she could not win in any physical encounter with this broad-shouldered, muscled man.

Taking her smoldering silence for acquiescence, the earl nodded once, then turned and left. The wooden door slammed behind him. It opened again almost immediately, catching Madeline half out of the tub. With a gasp, she sank back into the chilled water.

“Ooh, milady,” Gerda cried, “I couldna bring the guard! His lordship’s men blocked the corridor!”

“It matters not. Just help me with my hair. Quickly. Quickly!”

Bending over the tub so that Gerda could rinse the last of the soap from her heavy fall of hair, Madeline twisted it into a tight rope to wring it free of excess water, then tugged on the shift she’d discarded just a short time ago. She pushed aside the stained red robe she’d worn to the tourney to find her jeweled girdle. Her fingers fumbled with the flap of the embroidered pouch attached to it.

“God’s teeth,” she hissed, as clumsy in her haste as Gerda ever was. Finally she wrenched the pouch open and extracted a handful of copper pennies. She pressed them into the maid’s palm, folding her plump fingers tight over them.

“Get you downstairs immediately and find out where Lord John is. Give these coins to a page and ask him to tell the king’s son that I desire urgent speech with him. If it please his grace, I would meet with him…” She searched her mind frantically for a place where she might have private speech with John. “I would meet with him in the chapel. Go! Go quickly!”