Free Crusader Captive by Merline Lovelace Page B

her.
    She could not help but admire his seat. He sat easily in the saddle, using muscled thighs and firm hands to guide Avenger instead of spurs. The warhorse responded with a smooth, steady gait. He was as much a warrior as the man who rode him, Jocelyn knew. Her grandfather would be pleased, she thought ruefully—with the match between knight and destrier, mayhap, if not with the shameful bargain she and de Rhys had struck.
    She shook aside the lowering thought and deliberately turned her mind instead to the matter at hand. Her destination this morning was the copse of stunted oak perched on a bluff high above the sea. Ordinarily a full hunt with hounds or birds would take her much farther afield. Today she wanted only to test the skills of the creature she’d spent so many hours training.
    Some moments later she reined in atop the cliffs she’d climbed and clambered over since childhood. The wind was stronger here, but its bite was more than made up for by the achingly blue sky and lace-tipped waves far below.
    “We’ll stop here,” she told de Rhys.
    Nodding, he drew rein beside her. The others of their troop halted as well. Only then did Jocelyn remove the peregrine’s hood. She did so slowly, taking care not to startle it and risk losing a chunk of flesh to its sharp, curved beak. Her falconer had bred the bird from one of Fortemur’s most rapacious hunters. Once the chick had shed its downy fuzz and grown feathers, it had been removed from the clutch. Jocelyn had painstakingly fed it bits of raw meat by hand so it would become used to her touch, but she was not such a fool as to think it tamed.
    For several weeks now, she and her falconer had by turns let it fly at the end of a long tether. Each time they whistled it back to their wrist, they rewarded it with a bit of meat. Several times the tethered peregrine had taken down pigeons released specifically to test its sharp claws and hunting instincts. Today it would shed its leash for the first time.
    “That’s a fine bird,” de Rhys commented as she stroked its blue-gray feathers.
    “Yes, it is.”
    Not as large or as heavy as the gyrfalcons her grandfather had preferred for the hunt but far swifter. When the peregrine folded its wings and dived on prey, it became no more than a blur to the eye. Jocelyn didn’t doubt it would provide many a plump pigeon or juicy quail for the table.
    Its sharp claws dug into the leather sleeve shielding her wrist and forearm. One handed, she wrapped her reins around the pommel and fumbled a pair of bells from the pouch at her waist. When she’d attached them to the falcon’s leg, she crooned to the bird.
    “Are you ready to fly?” She sang to it with a soft, caressing voice. “Will you soar high and return to me?”
    Watching, listening, Simon almost convinced himself she sang to him as well as to the bird. Much as he’d gentled the magnificent destrier he now rode, she gentled the skittish bird. And with each movement of her hand, Simon could almost swear he felt her fingers on his skin.
    She hadn’t stroked him when they’d lain together. Their joining had been too swift and his back too raw to indulge in prolonged touching and tasting. Nor had he brought her to her peak before he’d spilled himself, he recalled ruefully. She’d come close, though. He’d bedded enough women to know that. Regret, sharp and lancing, speared into his belly as he watched her murmur to her bird. Had he another chance, he would take great pains to give her the pleasure she deserved.
    But he would not have another chance. He forced himself to accept that stark fact as she released the falcon. It swooped up and around their heads, bells tinkling, as if unsure what to do with its unaccustomed freedom. Then it caught the wind and soared. Its circles gradually widened until it flew over the forest of scrub oak.
    When Jocelyn shielded her eyes with a hand and watched it closely, Simon shifted his gaze from the speck of blue in the sky back