Free Crusader Captive by Merline Lovelace

at the memory of his fierce thrusts, nor gasp at this sudden spasm low in her belly. She would not!
    Dragging off her muddied gown, she told herself the morrow could not come quickly enough.

    It dawned bright and cool, but a disagreement with Sir Thomas over a tax he wanted to levy on the next Assizes Day delayed Jocelyn’s proposed expedition. As a consequence, her temper hung by a thread when she strode outside and descended into the bailey.
    Her barb was saddled and waiting, its reins held by the stable master. Her falconer was already mounted with the hooded peregrine perched on his leather-shielded forearm. Her escort was similarly prepared to ride. Although she would remain within sight of Fortemur’s towers, she was too rich a prize to go anywhere without suitable protection. The only one not ahorse, she saw with a frown, was Simon de Rhys.
    A quick glance told her Sir Guy had provided him a sword, buckler and embossed leather shield from the castle armory. They weren’t the finest, nor yet the meanest, she noted. Guy had also assured her that he’d set the castle blacksmith to altering a hooded mail hauberk to fit de Rhys’s broad shoulders. The faint chinking sound of a hammer coming from the farrier’s shed told Jocelyn the smith was even now adding the necessary links. All that de Rhys lacked, apparently, was a mount.
    “Why are you not horsed?” she asked him.
    “It appears the dun-colored barb that carried me to Fortemur has gone lame.”
    “The dun is not the only mount in my stables up to your weight.” Her frown deepening, she turned to her stable master. “What of the courser Sir Hugh rides betimes? The sorrel with the white blaze?”
    “She’s near to foaling, lady.”
    “Then saddle one of the palfreys. Surely there is one… No, wait.”
    She took her lower lip between her teeth. She’d promised de Rhys a warhorse. There were a goodly number of well-trained destriers in the stables, but her knights laid claim to all but one. “Saddle Avenger.”
    “My lady! You know he’ll let no one mount him.” His glance cut to de Rhys. “And I’m told Sir Simon is but recently risen from the sickbed. He has not the strength to manage Avenger.”
    The knight in question stepped forward. “Is Avenger the well-muscled bay in the last stall?”
    “He is,” Jocelyn replied.
    “He looks to be most powerful.”
    “Not just powerful, but most diligently trained. He was my grandfather’s first choice to ride in battle. He’ll lead a charge or block it with equal purpose.”
    It went much against her grain to gift this ragtag knight with the destrier that had carried her grandsire in and out of battle. Such well-trained warhorses were worth their weight in gold. But Avenger sorely needed the hand of one who could control him, and she’d promised de Rhys she would outfit him.
    “If you can ride him,” she said stiffly, “he’s yours.”
    Satisfaction leaped into his face. “Don’t fear, lady. I can ride him.”
    His utter confidence overrode her doubts. That and the wry glint that crept into his blue eyes.
    “In truth, Lady Constance forced so many draughts down my throat that I must needs do something with the energy they’ve stirred. Even if it means getting tossed on my head a time or two.”
    Jocelyn barely heard him. Caught by that ghost of a smile, she near gawked at the man. By all the saints! How could something that simple transform him so?
    She’d seen him now wearing a half-dozen or more faces. Defiant slave. Distrustful captive. Harsh conspirator who ordered her so coldly to remove her clothes. Wan and pale and drenched in sweat as he thrashed with fever.
    This smiling man was a stranger to her. One who caused her heart to flutter inside her rib cage as she nodded to the stable master.
    “Saddle Avenger and bring him forth.”
    The men of her escort dismounted, eager to watch the show. Her falconer kept his seat but nudged his steed some distance away so the snorting and