He had been following Joanna and her party at a distance ever since he spotted them leaving West Sarum. Coming late to the rescue of the cottar’s child, Hugh had done what was needed to ensure the boy’s safety and then had decided to take his leave. After seeing the girl’s valiant efforts with the child—and her keepers’ appalling lack of interest in the boy or Joanna—he had felt too ashamed to put his earlier plan into action.

How could he, in good conscience, seize Joanna as his hostage after he had found her risking her own neck to save a little peasant lad? Telling himself there had to be another way to grab Bishop Thomas’s attention, Hugh walked away from the woodland pool, prepared to ride off.

Then, halfway down the long hillside to the main track, he thought of how she had ordered him, asking him to bring her carrying basket as if he was a maid, not a knight. And he remembered her staring at him. In truth he had stripped to the waist as a means of giving the lad warm clothes, but he had been glad to show himself off to her. Now, imagining how she would compare his fit, young frame to the bishop’s soft, sagging body, Hugh found himself becoming angry again. How could she prefer a man like Thomas?

“She is the bishop’s leman. If she does not like how I treat her next, she must take it up with him,” he muttered under his breath, changing his mind in that instant and reverting to his original plan.

So he had challenged the guards. And she had cast stones and fury and hard looks at him. And now, even hauled across his horse, with the earth skimming less than a yard beneath her nose, she fought him still, squirming like an eel. He planted a hand in the middle of her back, pressing her tightly against the horse’s powerful flanks.

“Yield, girl, and you may ride pillion.”

He did not expect thanks and he only wanted her to stop struggling, but she jerked her shoulders free, hardly seeming to care if she fell. As he grabbed her waist to stop her plunging headfirst off the beast, she twisted her head, her face a single dark scowl.

“Or what, sir knight? Will you use your other glove to silence me?”

Still she remembered that! Hugh reined in the horse a little. “I told you, I am sorry for that. Be at peace! I do not abuse my captives.”

“If you believe that, you are deluded. Look out!”

Hugh glanced forward, checking the horse, and Joanna pushed off with her arms. He was only just quick enough to seize her skirts as she tumbled toward the ground.

“Yield!” he yelled in French, in that instant transported to the combat ground and badly shaken as he tugged her back, seating her astride his horse, and wrapped both arms tightly round her. “Be not so reckless!”

She reared up again. “Why not, when I am now riding with you, without any promise?”

“Hell’s teeth, girl! No man prisoner gave me so much trouble!”

“And I fight my way!”

Her hair, which had been loosened in their turmoil, now spilled free of its gold net. The thick brown mass whipped Hugh’s face and he could not answer for a moment: his mouth and eyes were full of hair. He could smell her, taste her: peppery and spicy. His mind reeled with the scent as his body reacted, stiffening and yielding at the same time. He was naked to the waist still and the feel of her against his naked skin made him burn up with desire. He still clasped her, but more gently, his fingers spreading in a semi-caress over her narrow waist.

Using his knees and thighs, he brought the snorting stallion to a stop.

“You are the bishop’s woman,” he said urgently when she moved restively against him and he could speak without the gag of her hair. “For you he will give much, including the release of my brother.”

“Is that your justification?” she flung back, spiraling round in his arms to face him down. “If so, I do not think David would approve! But then he is thrice the man you are!”

“In that we are agreed,” Hugh said, smarting at her easy use of his brother’s name, “and it changes nothing.”

“Were I the strumpet of the garrison, you should not treat me this way.”

“No, you are more choice in the men you bed: raddled, decaying churchmen who can pay you gold.”

She gasped, a blaze of color rushing into her face. Seeing the glint in her bright brown eyes, Hugh held himself taut. She marked that—she noticed everything—and her lip, from trembling, stiffened.

“You do me wrong. Again, you do me wrong,” she said quietly. “What woman harmed you so, that you are this discourteous?”

He had braced himself for a blow. Her words, though less dramatic, stung the more. He had injured his mother first, fatally, and since then had seemed fated to do badly with women.

“’Tis not you,” he admitted, wondering why he was troubling to explain. He was used to women thinking the worst of him. “If you swear not to dash your skull into the track, I will tell you the whole of it.”

“You expect me to obey my own kidnapper? Besides, I know the whole already. You mean to instigate a hostage exchange. I should be in your ‘care’ for one, two days, no more, before you barter me for your brother. A most powerful plan.”

She had pretty eyes, he thought, especially as she now was: flushed with battle. Her mouth was reddened by the ride and he was tempted again to kiss it. Instead, he drew his legs over hers, fixing her in place.

“You laugh at me, mistress.”

“If my laughter means you stop calling me ‘girl,’ then why not?”

Abruptly, she twisted round again and faced forward.

“You are watching where we go to find your way back when you escape,” he remarked, several moments later, when she was quiet.

“You can always blindfold me with a glove.”

Hugh chuckled: doubtless he deserved that. And now she was no longer fighting him, it was oddly pleasant to have her sitting in front of him on his horse. Making his living in tournaments, he’d had little actual contact with women and being this close to Joanna made him feel light-headed, almost happy. The scent of her, the pliant, sweet feel of her—it was like sinking into a warm bath at the end of a grueling day’s battle, one where he had won many prizes.

He had to remind himself that she had not yielded yet. She was turning her head this way and that, picking out landmarks. “Is this your first time out of West Sarum?” he asked as the round ramparts of the city stole into view from the woodland track they were on.

“It is not,” she replied, triangulating with her fingers the course of the meandering river and the hill on which the city was built.

“See those walls?” He pointed ahead, above the flat, reed-filled landscape to the east and north and the tree-clad slopes of the city hill to the massive circular earth-works. “I think these must have been made by giants. What do you think?”

“I think if you have men in West Sarum you should get word to them, lest my lord take out his anger on them. Have you jousted in many places?”

“In Picardy, France, Italy—” A small sigh from her then prompted him to expand his answer. “In Italy the cities are amazing: so many people! And the markets there! You can buy pepper and spices and silks and books!”

“What do you like to read?”

Hugh cursed softly, then admitted, “I do not. I cannot.”

She touched his arm—a gesture of pity?—then asked, “What do men call you at the tournaments? Do you have a nickname?”

Hugh felt himself going hot: this was becoming worse and worse. “Destroyer,” he mumbled, then berated himself for being ashamed. Why should he be made to feel guilty by this scrap of a female? “Though men like your bishop decry it, the tourney is a good life for a man. Better that than being dragged into King John’s wars with the King of France or his barons, where only the leaders gain.”

“A life for a young man, certainly,” Joanna answered, “and he is not my bishop.”

She drew in a large breath that he felt through his own ribs. Alerted by that, he reined in the ambling horse, caught her shoulders, bent her back into the crook of his arm and kissed her—just as a shepherd appeared around a corner on the track in front of them with a small flock of sheep.

Her lips were hard under his, rigid. He nuzzled her mouth with his, then thought, If she dislikes this so much, let her make her appeal to the shepherd: he can only raise the alarm sooner.

He withdrew slightly, then, when she did not cry out, he kissed her again, his lips now soft against hers. He eased her small, tense frame more comfortably against his shoulder and kissed her very lightly several times: tiny, swift embraces, as if he was burying his face into rose petals. Her mouth tasted of salt and a fresh sweetness that was her own perfume.

She sighed and then relaxed, allowing him to kiss her, even kissing him in return. Her hands brushed over his neck and shoulders as she lifted herself to him, plunging her tongue into his mouth.

Hugh reeled, heat pounding into him. He dropped the reins, forgot horse, shepherd, and sheep, and wrapped his arms about her, wanting their kiss to go on and on.

“Why?” he asked, when they finally broke apart. The shepherd was a distant speck, entering the city.

She did not pretend not to know what he meant. “I wanted to know what it was like,” she answered. “And now I have my answer.”

She shifted smoothly from the crook of his arm to face forward again. “Do we have far to go?”

“Ah.” He shook a finger at her. “You must wait to discover that.”

“I am used to waiting,” she answered as he urged the horse into a steady trot.

They moved through the landscape of vineyards, hay fields, reed beds, and woods, Hugh watching her and watching out for the bishop’s men or any hue and cry while most of his mind was racked by a single question.

Did Joanna like his kissing?