CAPTIVE
Louisa Trent
Trent Publishing
www.louisatrent.com
Copyrighted Material
CAPTIVE
Louisa Trent
Copyright © Louisa Trent 2011
Published by Trent Publishing at Smashwords
Prologue
The year 1100. The Court of King William Rufus...
The telltale squeak of a closing portal roused Geoffrey de Sage from his night terrors.
Weapon drawn and at the ready, he kicked free of the silvery wolf pelts and leapt from bed. Spinning in a precise arc, the two-sided blade of his broadsword silently slashing the air, he searched all corners, prepared to end the life of whoever dared enter his private solar, unannounced, uninvited, and in the dead of night.
A taper floated in the bedchamber’s dark recesses, the feeble yellow flame revealing the soft shape of a female form. Clad only in a flaxen shift, the woman swayed her hips seductively as she approached. Was the intruder a spy for the king, perchance? An assassin hired to eliminate him whilst he slept? Or worse yet, was she another apparition of his beleaguered mind?
Real, he decided. Unquestionably flesh and blood. His nightmare phantoms never undulated. And though self-serving and given to nocturnal clandestine activities, this schemer was no royal cohort.
Coming upright from his tensed crouch, Sage loosed his grip on the hilt of his weapon and called out to the foolish lady who had very nearly taken her last breath. “Lost your way, Thea?”
“Certainly not,” she cooed sweetly, having missed the bite of his sarcasm. “These passages hold no mystery for me.” Without uttering so much as a by-your-leave, Thea ensconced her faltering wick on the stone wall nearest the threshold.
This forwardness was quite usual, as Thea made herself welcome wherever she went, regardless of the reception she received.
“Brr.” Giving a delicate shiver that belied her substantial padding, she artfully shelved her arms under a fine bosom, lovingly nesting those two corpulent birds. “’Tis chilly! But will you see here? I actually have the gooseflesh.”
His attention thus caught, Sage eyed the hardened nipples on her plump-pigeon mounds. “Cold, milady?” he asked with guarded detachment. “Mayhap a covering might help.”
“Harrumph. Leave it to a man to complicate simple matters.”
Amused despite himself, Sage placed his warrior’s sword aside. Though undoubtedly misguided, Thea’s motivations contained no trace of maliciousness and so warranted exasperation, not rancor. As a result, he modulated his voice to hold little in the way of sanction. “Pray, how does this man complicate your simple matters?”
“Sage, dear, really!” She snorted. “Why bother to cover what I would have you lay bare?” She posed a coy finger to a chin too fleshy for some tastes, but not his, and offered a smug smile. “Is the purpose of my visit now clear?”
He gave a slight courtier’s bow. “As abundantly clear as your attributes. You are exceedingly generous with your charms -- all the lords from hither and yon do say so. But sorry to say, I must decline your invitation.”
“What!” she screeched in answer.
Despite his recoiling ears, he cushioned his own reply with a fair approximation of civility. “Kindly beat a hasty return to your bedchamber, ere your husband reaches for you middle-night and comes away with naught but a fistful of cooling fur.”
“My husband never reaches for me at night or at any other time for that matter. His negligence provokes my visit here. I find myself almost pitifully in need of male companionship this eve. If not attended to soon, I fear I shall wither and dry like an old crone’s pouch.” Sniffing in disdain, Thea took a mincing step in his direction
Now within injurious proximity, she playfully raked a talon-like fingernail down his bare chest and over the raised welts of his battle-scars. “Come to this dameisele’s rescue, oh-great-and-powerful knight.”
At this bit of preposterousness, Sage could only shake his head. He deserved the title of knight, great and powerful or otherwise, about as much as the well-wedded and much-bedded Thea deserved the title of dameisele. The lady had left maidenhood behind many lovers ago, whilst he had never been anyone’s idea of a chivalrous champion.
Nonetheless, ere a pretend cat-scratch drew very real blood, Sage gallantly retreated. “That which you seek to set afire was doused long ago.”
Not one to give up easily, the lady simply exchanged one tactic for another. “Surely, you are lonely?”
Lonely? Verily, he had known naught but loneliness. Loneliness was his unrelenting lover, his harsh mistress during those long, dark, sleepless nights. Thea had no blame in this unhappy state of affairs. Hardly her fault either that her offer of companionship left his manhood unstirred. Placing responsibility for his solitary existence where it rightly belonged, he muttered, “I am celibate.”
She gasped. “Surely you jest?”
Given her royal background, Thea’s shock was quite understandable. Though spies routinely listened at castle portals, he wagered not one ever overheard a mention of chastity waft through courtly keyholes.
Admittedly, upon occasion -- the times scarce and far between -- he still missed the wet heat of penetration, the grunts and groans during the rut, the white-hot flash of illumination at climax. But never did he miss the ruling urgency, that mad, uncontrollable rush to mate. Thankfully, he had not suffered that particular torment with his wife.
Thea, her wind finally caught, launched into a scold. “You, my Lord Celibate, should wear a bell! ’Tis unforgivable to expose the unsuspecting this way.”
“The affliction is not contagious. Rest easy, you are in no danger of contracting an incurable case of abstinence from me.”
“Oh, how very humorous. Though, I must say, I have heard worrisome rumors about this strange condition of yours. Naturally, I gave the gossip no credence. Now I wonder the truth of the tales. ’Tis even said you took monk’s vows during the Crusades.”
At his irreverent smirk, she blessed herself. And then, fanning her lashes like a vulture’s wing, she lowered her eyes, her gaze swooping atop his loincloth. “Oh, my! You are quite correct to leave Holy Orders to the less endowed. Enormous talents such as yours would be wasted in ecclesiasticism.”
“You flatter me far too much, milady.”
She sent him a withering look. “I shall believe in the existence of fire-belching dragons long ere believing in such a thing as too much flattery. Personally, I can attest to receiving far less fawning than I deserve.”
Once again showing a remarkable insensitivity to futility, Thea shrugged her sloping shoulders in a move designed to accentuate the roll and swell of her voluptuousness. As rehearsed moves went, this one succeeded admirably well.
Sage sighed, resigned to Thea’s seduction. As she flounced her way to the furs, he allowed his sights to linger on her hips. Difficult to ignore such fulsome persuasion.
“In any case, Sage, I am not here for you to play the toady. I realize you are no sycophant, but neither are you so cruel as to send me away. Only an unconscionable heathen would cast out a lady in my extremity of distress.”
Alas, Thea had misjudged him, and on all three counts. Circumstances had made him cruel. A Holy War would make a heathen out of any man. And because the former held true in her statement, the latter must also follow -- he would most definitely cast her out.
He did, however, smile at the incorrigible lady. He was celibate, not blind, and Thea of Trenwyth was an extraordinarily healthy female. Brunette, buxom, and brazen. She epitomized everything he had once admired in a bed partner. But that was long ago, in a former life, and he was a changed man. Now, he hardly recalled desire’s hard prick.
Then again, his own hard prick had also faded from memory.
For that reason and more, he rushed forward and intercepted the lady ere she threw herself bodily atop the bedding. Taking her arm, he escorted her to the portal, where he placed the taper once again in her hand. “Leave me to my darkness, Thea.”
“Wait!” After that strident bellow, she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial hush. “You depart for the borderlands on the morrow?”
At his nod, she whispered, “Do you still intend the capture of Aeschine of Scotland?”
He nodded again.
“I know you seek justice for your wife, Sage, but do take care. Make no misstep in your pursuit of your enemy, LaTourne. Should you stumble, should you so much as falter in your quest, you will find the wrath of Rufus visited upon your head.”
“How? Tell me how!”
“You know of DuFont?”
“The king’s henchman -- what of him?”
“When you leave the castle gates, he is assigned to follow you. Watch your back, my dear friend.”
Warning given, the lady disappeared down the hall, taking the light with her.
Chapter One
On the Scottish borderlands...
The fog had done much to conceal her escape.
But when the soft drizzle changed quite suddenly to a pelting rain, the moor’s spongy surface turned treacherously slick beneath her racing feet. Her leather boots skidding in the muck, Aeschine left the open space behind and dove for the cover of the wooded glen.
Doubled over, she scooted under the low-growing encroachment of bushes and vines. Only when the forest canopy lifted did she once again regain her full height, lamentably tall for a female. So deplorably long in the leg was she that moist leaves from over-hanging tree branches slapped limply at her face, leaving behind jagged green shreds to cling to her chin.
Brambles created another problem entirely. The hideous nuisances ripped through the coif covering her plaited hair, the thorns imbedding in the linen and lacerating her scalp. At ground level, detestable thistles stuck to the hem of her damp kirtle, their sharp spines scratching her ankles beneath her woolen hose.
No time to wipe the slimy scurf away, she ran ever deeper into the dank forest.
Just her foul luck. Straightaway, she encountered witch moss. The damnable stuff dripped as thick as donjon cobwebs from the gnarled branches of century-old oaks.
“Devil take you!” she cried. She hated, hated, hated witch moss.
Raising both hands before her face, Aeschine ripped through the spun tangle of silvery threads. Once free of their dangling entrapment, she sucked air into her lungs in great greedy swallows and then jumped a brackish stream, all the while clutching a sharp ache in her side,
For a brief time, she picked up speed. Until a crop of lichen-covered stones got the best of her and she fell, facedown. Belly scraping swampy mud, nose pressed to a steaming pile of rotten vegetation, ear flattened to the moldy ground, she listened for the sounds of pursuit.
Ack. Just as she suspected, the soggy ground hammered in a steady rhythm, much as a baker pounded his yeasty dough. A large and heavy steed. A solitary rider galloping at a fine clip. Toward her.
Her betrothed. Who else would come after her? The perverted blackguard hunted her down like an animal. May his soul rot in hell.
Pushing aside the feathery frond of a shuttlecock fern, Aeschine stuck her cold nose out into the opening and surveyed her surroundings, paying strict attention to the northerly approach.
Seeing that no search party advanced on foot, poking the undergrowth with sticks to ferret out a wayward bride, she pounced to a stand. Fastidiousness long forgotten, she waded through a pool of fetid brown pulp, the malodorous brew soaking her cote, her only thought on flight.
She had to escape, had to escape. Must get away from her deviant betrothed...
Alongside the rain-swollen river grew a strip of stately reeds. They would hide her ’til the pox-riddled bastard rode by.
But when she scrambled between the upright grass stalks, the late summer display of white plumes rustled like dry parchment, fairly screaming out her location. To add insult to injury, scores of contentious bullfrogs, their bloated throats croaking in annoyance at having their lazy sleep disturbed, jumped into the stagnant water all around her, their irksome bleeps and muddy splashes betraying her further.
She dared not stop here.
Wickedly sharp reeds abrading her hands, bleeping frogs leaping every which way, mindless of everything save evasion, she hiked her sodden gunna to the waist, scrambled down the muddy bank, and began fording the river.
Holy Mary, Mother of God. If the good sisters at Saint Andrew’s could see her exposed hinny, for sure they would keel over into a collective nun-heap on the floor.
Too bad about them. In her opinion, modesty paid for with the coin of her freedom amounted to an overpriced virtue. She swam like a fish, at least when not weighed down. And if she sank in her sodden skirts and boots? So be it. ’Twas said drowning victims died peacefully. If given free choice, she would take a painless death over the agony of life wed to the loathsome LaTourne.
Striking out for deeper depths, Aeschine dove headfirst into the river’s murky waters.
Spirit strong, but flesh weak, she resurfaced much too soon. Sputtering and choking, she refilled her laboring lungs with air. Whilst she treaded the currents, water streaming into her eyes, hooves splashed behind her. A steed’s hot breath snorted at her ear.
Nay, nay, nay. This could not be happening to her.
After hauling her up out of the river, the rider dumped her, bottom end up, over his saddle. In blind fury, she reached behind her and pummeled the muscled arm holding her prone.
In response, a heavy hand landed on her bared haunches.
She shuddered. The hoary degenerate, LaTourne. They were yet to wed, and already he had fiendish designs on her person.
Changing strategies, she made herself go limp, as though she had given up the fight. “Air,” she gasped pathetically and pretended to cough. “Can-not-breathe. Please. I need air.”
When the hold on her exposed backside lifted, she rolled to an upright position on the saddle. After a swiftly prayed Act of Contrition, she made ready to leap. She would escape or she would die trying.
“Fling yourself from me, Aeschine of Scotland, and I swear by all that is holy, my destrier will dance a merry jig on your round arse.”
She froze.
What? That muffled voice did not belong to the buggering swine, LaTourne. And how dare a complete stranger comment on the delicate matter of her posterior.
Twisting ’round, she stared down the rider who held her hostage.
Ominous, relentless, suffocating darkness besieged her. Unmitigated hopelessness. The warrior who imprisoned her seemed to encapsulate all the frightening elements of night, without the redeeming anticipation of dawning light. Despair surely had this man locked in its grip. She felt his suffering; his pain chilled her to the marrow.
Then, she discerned his features.
A protective helm partially obscured his visage, but what she could glean set her atremble. A curled tip of a formidable scar, starting high on the cheek and extending downwards like a jagged lightning bolt, ruined his sensual lips. A hawkish nose, narrow at the top, jutted arrogantly but irregularly from high on his forehead. Eyes that should have shone like black gems burrowed dead in his head.
Suddenly, as those sunken jewel-eyes focused unwaveringly on her, they sprang to life.
A cloistered novice knows little of men, less of mating, naught of lust. But need? Aye, she understood need all right. This warrior needed her.
Sweet Jesu. For what?
With blessed unconsciousness the only escape left her, Aeschine let go of the light within her and surrendered to his darkness.
* * * * *
The entrance to the cave lay straight ahead. In deference to his bait’s faint, Sage slowed the ruthless pace of his steed.
The abduction had gone according to plan. Verily, Aeschine of Scotland had made her capture ridiculously easy. Owing to her straying a goodly distance from the protection of her traveling party, no one had seen the abduction and, thus far, no one followed.
Save for the king’s henchman.
As Thea had warned, DuFont tracked him at a distance.
No help for it. Regardless of their audience, Sage would do what he must do. The king’s servant would not intimidate him into giving up his captive until, and unless, he saw justice served.
Fortunately, the small knoll where they would make camp provided an excellent view of all comers. When DuFont found Sage -- and the henchman would find him -- the advantage of advance notice would award him the upper hand.
Sage breathed a weary sigh of relief. On the intake of air, his nose twitched. Then wrinkled in distaste.
Hen’s teeth. But Aeschine of Scotland made for an exceedingly foul-smelling bundle.
His armor chafed and his captive stank -- time to put both aside for a time. If his prisoner did not awaken soon, he would let her slide to the ground on a trail of slime, much as a slug departs a cabbage leaf. He could tolerate the aroma of an open latrine for only so long.
The wench was not what he had expected. In her dung-hued, dung-fragrant kirtle, she resembled more a peasant than a high and mighty noblewoman of prestigious rank. Her rough-textured cote fell straight from the shoulders, much as a serf’s garb might, without the cinch of a girdle to display either a waist or jewels.
On second thought, though unadorned in the strictest sense, his prisoner in no way lacked for decoration. Nature had gifted her. Even under the caked mud, her face showed the promise of comeliness. Fine bones called her pretty. Her cheeks, smooth and rounded, and set high under a slanted eye socket, gave her countenance a wild foreign look...a mysterious, exotic look.
To think she had tried to outrun him!
And she had almost succeeded.
The crafty lass possessed the light-footed nimbleness of a feral cat. Still, the uneven ground had tripped her up, and she stumbled to hands and knees, her nicely round bottom elevated in the air.
At that exact moment, his attention had stirred. Undaunted, his fey quarry had risen, and he had risen too, his loins unexpectedly hardening.
He hardly believed his eyes when she had gotten up and literally heaved herself into the water. Strength. Bold determination. Reckless valor. The will to survive. The lass possessed the essential attributes of a warrior.
And none of the qualities he admired in a woman.
Yet, shamefully, waves of heat suffused his body. And for the first time in his life, fever won out over self-discipline, lust triumphed over principles, control gave way to desire, and seemingly of their own volition, his fingers caressed her cheek, his thumb moving over her full, pink, lush, moist mouth.
“Mmm,” his prisoner murmured in her sleep. The tip of her tongue delicately met his finger pad. “Oh, aye.”
He raised a brow. “You like that, do you?”
Eyes closed, she smiled.
What else does she like?
Sage blinked in consternation. Of a sudden, his long-held celibacy felt like a caul wrapped tight around his burgeoning manhood. His body’s response was unsolicited, unwelcome, and completely unwarranted, considering the size of the baggage causing the ache, for after measuring her from hair-rail to mud-encrusted boots, he pronounced the journey long and uninspiring, a trip that covered extraordinarily flat terrain. Why, Her Muddiness was arrow narrow, as straight up and down as a lad.
With the exception of her round derriere, an interesting bump in an otherwise uninspired landscape, and one he already noted.
Holding his breath, lest he inhale too much of her low-tide perfume, Sage settled the forbidden fruit away from his caged urgency.
“Wake up,” he commanded.
The dameisele moaned. The dameisele groaned. The dameisele did not awaken.
Sage shifted in the saddle. Not exactly a squirm, but close. Gritting his teeth against the fiery surge of lust, he gave her a firm, no-nonsense shake. “Awaken, I say!”
“Do you rape me now or later?”
Her voice! Soft and throaty. A carnal timbre best suited to the bedchamber. Easy to imagine her calling out to a lover from a tussled bed of wolf pelts, her pale skin bared save for a rosy blush of pleasure, as she found her release.
And her hair! When loosened, the wealth would most certainly fall past her slim hips to fan her bottom. A round, fetching bottom to be sure, despite her lad’s narrowness. Ahem.
In his mind’s eye, he saw her glide downward onto the furs and sink to her knees, then to her belly, ere hiking herself up onto all fours. Like a tame deer, she raised her hips for him. High. Nay, higher! All the way up, little doe! Until her soft, round buttocks cradled the hard lance of his cock.
She would whisper to him then, the intimate phrases of lovers. Honeyed coupling words. Provocative mating words. Ribald and passionate poetry used to persuade, used to entice, used not for the benefit of seducing that corrupt boil LaTourne but...but...him. Geoffrey de Sage.
Why her?
Why now?
Rape played no part in his plan. He believed in an eye for an eye. But had he descended to such cruelty that he would revenge himself on a helpless female?
He had no answer. Save he would have the truth: Had the dameisele acted as an accomplice in his wife’s death? Or, was the lass no more than a powerless female unwittingly linked to the twisted butcher, LaTourne?
Disquieted, he slid his hand under his prisoner’s wide shoulders, and she arched her elegant throat, pale and unprotected, as her rapid pulse beat woefully vulnerable. If he but flexed his fingers, he would still that rapidly beating pulse. A turn of his wrist and he would sever the windpipe within that elegant throat evermore.
He allowed his big knuckles to graze her coif, the light brush of his hand knocking the linen askew and releasing a lock of her hair. Not the yellow of buttercups, nor quite the whiteness of lilies, the tendril straddled a nameless hue somewhere in between.
He had it. ’Twas moonlight. Her hair trapped a beam of that celestial sphere within its length.
Whimsy. The fanciful meanderings of a crazed mind.
Thinking to calm his thoughts, he inhaled. And a scent drifted upwards.
Lavender?
Lavender!
He shook his head. What in God’s name ailed his nose? Filth covered his prisoner. How could he possibly distinguish the sweet aroma of flowers from the odious mud she wore?
Because he could and did, desperation had him pushing her ungently away. He must break free of her spell.
The abrupt move disturbed her slumber. Finally, she granted him the favor of opening her closed lids, a slow flutter followed by a disdainful stare.
Her eyes. In nomini Patri, her eyes. The compelling color of a deep Scottish loch but without any of the remote coolness, their blue heat held his gaze defiantly.
To avoid their scrutiny, he removed his visor, hooked it to the pommel, and then jumped from the saddle.
He must maintain his distance. Remain impersonal. Uninvolved. Detached. Just. A judge must never fall victim to a prisoner’s appeal.
After a while -- that was to say, when she was good and ready -- she said, and not at all like the docile doe of his fantasy, “Answer me! Do you rape me now, or do you wait ’til later?”
Carefully maintaining a wooden expression, he met her steady regard. “I do not violate females.”
“Making you the first warlord in history.” Rejecting his proffered assistance, she performed a lithe dismount.
Aha! Not so flat, after all! Small breasts, round as apples, bounced upon her one-footed landing.
In response, his cock jutted. Hot carnality rushed to his loins.
Odd, how her little apple-breasts intrigued him. Generally, yielding plumpness lured him. Luscious large breasts. Bountiful big bellies. Tremendous bums made to warm a man on a cold night...mounds of jiggling, quivering womanly flesh that called to mind a sumptuous feast.
His stones tightened and he coughed, and not at the buxom image in his mind. The delicate reality of Aeschine of Scotland had caused the cock squeeze.
“No harm will befall you,” he assured her. Although he had endeavored to keep his tone of voice even, he feared the declaration came out sounding like a bag of wind bluster.
He tried again. “I have you.”
And he did have her. He owned her. She was his possession. The pleasure that gave him was a cross almost too great to be borne.
Chapter Two
“No harm will befall me?” His prisoner smirked up at him. “I see. Well, glad tidings! And here I thought only God possessed omnipotence. In light of your all-knowing righteousness, I must know your name.”
She delayed less than a heartbeat ere snapping, “Speak up, man! What is it? Who has taken me prisoner?”
“You may call me Captor.”
“And you may call me dumbfounded. You would keep me in the dark, I suppose?”
When he disregarded her question, she pursed her lush mouth. “Captor, I dislike the dark almost as much as I dislike cryptic responses. Answer me this: How long will I remain your prisoner? A day? A year? Indefinitely?”
As the volatility of the situation would hardly inspire confidence in her small, pointed bosom, he settled on an answer that fell halfway between the honor of truth and the pragmatism of a lie, a compromise that would tell her naught. “You are my prisoner for as long as it takes.”
“As long as it takes?” She clucked her tongue. “How very clever of you. But owing to the precariousness of my dilemma, I must insist upon more than verbal evasion. Oh, and please to forgive my rudeness. You see, this is the very first occasion that a dark knight has ever absconded with me, so one must make up the etiquette as one goes along.” She tapped her fingers on her lips. “If rape is not the intent of this abduction, what then, pray, is your purpose in keeping me?”
She held up a hand. “Nay, Captor, do not tell me. That would spoil our sport. Let me hazard a guess.” Blue eyes glinted in speculation. “As you called me by name, you must already know who I am.” She furrowed her smooth brow. “But then, you must also know I am betrothed to one of your own, to the nobleman, LaTourne. So why…?”
She smiled, impishly, her good humor hinting at a frolicsome nature. “Aha! I have it! This is personal. My betrothed is your enemy. You detain me for revenge.”
Her smugness might have struck him as comical in the extreme...if her quick assessment of his motivation had not spoken of a cutting intelligence. Naught mirthful there.