His Lady's Ransom. Merline Lovelace

      Slipping easily into a role that was second nature to her, she gave a tremulous sigh of regret. “Alas, Sir William, I can’t bestow that which is already given. Another knight has claimed a token of me.”

      “Then I’ll wrest it from him by force of arms,” Will bragged with the utter confidence of youth. “Only tell me who carries it, and I’ll see that we ride on opposing sides.”

      “La, sir, you know I cannot reveal my champion’s name.”

      The merry little laugh, the sidelong glance from beneath lowered lashes, the slight pout—all were instinctive to a woman schooled in such sophisticated badinage. Madeline performed them with a skill that brought a flush of desire to Will’s open face and a flash of disgust to the earl’s eyes. Telling herself that she was well pleased with both reactions, Madeline ignored the man and smiled prettily at the youth.

      “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