Besieged and Betrothed

by Jenni Fletcher

  Bound to her enemy

  Ruthless warrior Lothar the Frank has laid siege to Castle Haword, but there’s a fiery redhead in his way—and she’s not backing down!

  More tomboy than trembling maiden, Lady Juliana Danville would rather die than lose the castle. When she’s caught on opposite sides of a war, a marriage bargain is brokered to bring peace. But is blissful married life possible when Juliana has a dangerous secret hidden within the castle walls?

  “You’re fortunate that I’ve no desire for a wife, either. Especially one who looks more like a stable hand than a woman!”

  Lothar rubbed his jaw gingerly with his knuckles as Juliana stormed away.

  In retrospect, he supposed he could have handled the situation better. She was right—their marriage was a greater advancement than any he could have expected, but her accusations had undermined his self-control to the extent that he’d finally lost his temper, as well.

  He’d meant to say that he’d accepted the offer because he wanted to help her keep her inheritance, not steal it for himself. He’d meant to say that he was a soldier, that when it came to managing a castle, she was a far better person for the job. He’d meant to reassure her that it would be a marriage in name only, or at least insofar as she wanted it to be one. Most of all, he’d meant to tell her that nothing about this was a game. Instead, he’d told her she looked like a stable hand. That had definitely been a mistake.

  Author Note

  I first became interested in the Empress Matilda as a child after reading about her escape from Oxford Castle during the siege of 1142, dressed all in white for camouflage in the snow. Unfortunately, that story is often all that gets told about a woman whose incredible biography has been largely, and ironically, whitewashed out of history. The daughter and mother of kings, and wife of an emperor and then a count, Matilda was a strong woman for any age, and yet she never managed to regain the birthright that was usurped by her cousin, Stephen.

  Matilda’s problem, as Helen Castor’s brilliant book She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth points out, was not that she was a woman, but that she was expected to behave like one—to be a queen and yet not to assert her own individual authority, a contradiction that the medieval mindset seemed unable to overcome, and that I find fascinating.

  This story, while not directly about Matilda, is partly about the roles women were and weren’t allowed to hold in twelfth-century England, four centuries before Elizabeth I came to the throne. Despite my bias, however, I do have a soft spot for Stephen, who was more merciful than the majority of medieval kings, and did actually pardon some of those who rebelled against him. At a distance of almost nine hundred years, it’s impossible to judge who was the hero and who the villain, but for the purposes of this story at least, I side with Matilda.

  JENNI

  FLETCHER

  Besieged and

  Betrothed

  Jenni Fletcher was born on the north coast of Scotland and now lives in Yorkshire with her husband and two children. She wanted to be a writer as a child, but got distracted by reading instead, finally writing down her first paragraph thirty years later. She’s had more jobs than she can remember, but has finally found one she loves. She can be contacted via Twitter, @jenniauthor.

  Also by Jenni Fletcher

  Harlequin Historical

  Married to Her Enemy

  The Convenient Felstone Marriage

  Besieged and Betrothed

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.

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  To Andy again, and my family, as always (that includes you, Hilary!)

  Also a huge thank-you to Kim, Christine, Emma and Sharon, without whose help I’d still only be halfway through. And to Claudia, who could give any empress a run for her money.

  Contents

  Historical Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Excerpt from An Unlikely Debutante by Laura Martin

  Historical Note

  In 1147 England had been in the grip of Civil War for twelve years.

  The tumultuous period now known as The Anarchy was triggered by the death of Henry I in 1135.

  After the drowning of his only legitimate son in the White Ship disaster of 1120, the only direct heir to the throne was Henry’s daughter, Matilda, although at twenty-eight she’d spent comparatively little of her life in England, having been sent abroad at the age of eight to marry the German Emperor Heinrich V. Widowed at twenty-six, she’d then been married to Geoffrey, the young Count of Anjou, with whom she had three sons—the great-grandsons of William the Conqueror.

  Henry’s wishes regarding the succession are evidenced by the fact that he made his nobles swear two separate oaths of allegiance to Matilda.

  When he died, however, his nephew Stephen travelled immediately to England to have himself crowned King in her place. Unable to leave Anjou due to her third pregnancy, and lacking the support of the nobility, many of whom doubted a woman’s ability to rule, Matilda had to wait another four years before pursuing her claim.

  By the time she finally arrived in England Stephen’s grip on power was already too strong to be broken. As a result, her influence was mainly confined to the south-west of the country, with her base in Devizes in Wiltshire. Despite several victories—most notably the Battle of Lincoln—she was unable to gain a definitive upper hand and the power struggle descended into a lengthy and lawless war of attrition.

  By 1147, when this story is set, the majority of the fighting was over. Stephen remained the stronger power in England, but had lost the entirety of Normandy to Matilda’s husband. As a result, barons with lands on both sides of the Channel were forced to make peace treaties with both claimants. Most, however, were weary of fighting and simply wanted an end to the war.

  In 1153, the ageing Stephen finally agreed to a treaty ceding the throne to Matilda’s eldest son—later Henry II—after his death.

  Ultimately Matilda lost the battle but won the war, founding the Plantagenet dynasty that was to rule England for the next three hundred years.

  Chapter One

  Herefordshire—October 1147

  One arrow.

  Lothar narrowed his eyes, estimating the distance between him and the woman on the castle ramparts. The wind was in his favour and she was facing in the other direction, wouldn’t hear the rush of the arrow until it was too late. It was an
easy shot, an easy target. One arrow to end a four-month-long siege.

  If he gave the order.

  ‘That’s her!’ His companion’s voice was sharp-edged with malice. ‘Lady Juliana. She’s the one holding the castle.’

  ‘So I assumed.’

  ‘Then what are you waiting for? Shoot her!’

  Lothar turned slowly, fixing the other man with a cool, charcoal-grey stare. He was known for such looks, had forged a steely reputation based on his inscrutable, hard-boiled exterior. The Angoulême soldiers he commanded called him guerrier de fer, ‘iron warrior’, joking that his skin was so thick that he didn’t need armour, that his heart—if he even had one—was buried too deep for any weapon to find it. Most days he didn’t care. His reputation was useful. It kept him safe, made other men reluctant to challenge him. It was the reason Empress Matilda trusted him, why she sent him to clear up the messes caused by other men’s incompetence. But today...

  His gaze drifted inexorably back towards the woman on the ramparts, her long, crimson-red hair streaming in the wind like a rippling banner. Today, his companion’s assumption of cold-hearted callousness disturbed him. If he were even half as ruthless as his enemies and most of his friends gave him credit for, he would have given the order already, but he wasn’t so cold-blooded, wasn’t about to shoot an unarmed woman in the back.

  On the other hand, it had been two days since he’d had a decent night’s sleep, riding at full pelt from the Empress’s base at Devizes, and he was about ready to shoot someone himself. If Sir Guian de Ravenell didn’t shut up, it would be him.

  ‘Bring her down!’ The Baron’s impatience was bordering on hysteria. ‘Do it!’

  Lothar arched an eyebrow, vaguely surprised that the woman had managed to survive this long with such a voracious wolf at her gates. But then, even a coward like de Ravenell knew that the Empress wouldn’t condone such dishonourable behaviour—which doubtless explained why he was trying to make him give the order.

  He rubbed a hand over his face in disgust, over the livid white scar that ran in a diagonal line from the middle of his forehead, half-hidden by a shock of black hair, through his left eyebrow and down to the corner of his jaw. It always throbbed when the weather turned damp and the autumn mizzle was making the whole side of his face ache.

  ‘You could end the siege right now.’ De Ravenell tried a different tack, trying to sound reasonable. ‘The garrison inside will surrender without her. Her father was loyal to the Empress, but after he died she surrendered and declared for the usurper.’

  He felt a momentary disquiet. After a three-month long siege, William Danville had finally chosen to ride out and confront the usurper King Stephen in battle, but his valiant attempt had ended in disaster. His daughter’s subsequent surrender was understandable, though her oath of allegiance to the man whose forces had just killed her father was...surprising.

  ‘She swore an oath to Stephen straight after the battle?’

  ‘Before her father was even cold. The girl’s a traitor!’

  ‘Girl?’ He didn’t bother to hide his scepticism. ‘If she’s held the castle against you for four months then she’s hardly that.’

  And as for traitor...

  He kept the thought to himself. Between King Stephen and Empress Matilda, two contenders with equally convincing claims to the English throne, it was increasingly difficult to distinguish who was a traitor and who not. Even the Barons seemed to have trouble deciding, given the number whose loyalties seemed to ebb and flow with each passing month. Personally, he had little interest in politics, had his own reasons for serving the Empress, none of which had anything to do with her right to wear the crown. At least Lady Juliana appeared to have a mind of her own. However surprising her decision, she’d chosen her side and stuck to it.

  Unfortunately for her, it was the wrong one.

  ‘Have you tried bargaining with her?’

  ‘Of course.’ The Baron bristled. ‘I tried negotiating when we first arrived, but she refused my terms.’

  ‘So you’ve been inside the castle? What are their defences like? How many men does she have?’

  ‘I’m not certain. That is, not exactly. She came to my tent.’

  ‘Your tent?’ Lothar narrowed his eyes interrogatively. ‘Whose idea was that?’

  ‘Mine. I offered her a flag of truce and she accepted.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing.’ The Baron’s gaze slid to one side evasively. ‘She’s a shrew. ’Tis no wonder she’s still unmarried. She wouldn’t listen to reason.’

  ‘Reason.’

  Lothar repeated the word flatly, letting the unspoken accusation hover in the air between them. Over the years he’d come to judge other men on their ability to look him and his scar in the face. Sir Guian de Ravenell most definitely could not. The man’s reputation as a military commander was bad enough, but with women, it was even worse. If Lady Juliana had gone to his tent alone, expecting to negotiate...

  A muscle twitched in his jaw. After more than a decade of soldiering, he’d grown accustomed to all kinds of fighting, but violence against women still made his blood boil, stirring up memories he’d spent most of his lifetime trying to forget. Traitor or not, if de Ravenell had done anything to hurt Lady Juliana, the man would need to find his own castle walls to hide behind.

  ‘She insulted me.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  Lothar restrained his temper with an effort. Whatever she’d said couldn’t be half as bad as the phrases running through his own mind.

  ‘Have you tried negotiating since?’

  ‘No. I gave her a chance to surrender. Why should I offer again?’

  ‘To end the siege, perhaps?’

  ‘The rules of warfare only oblige me to offer once. She made her choice. Now she can suffer the consequences.’

  Lothar ground his teeth, barely resisting the urge to ram a fist in the other man’s face. But the Empress couldn’t afford to lose allies, even ones as ineffectual as de Ravenell. The way her campaign against Stephen was going, she needed every man she could get—and she needed Castle Haword. Modest though it was, the fortress was strategically vital, holding the only bridge over the Wye for thirty miles. Without a safe route across, the Empress’s allies were at potential risk of being encircled, trapped between Stephen’s forces and the river. She needed the bridge, however small it might seem to his eyes, and the sooner the better. That was why he’d come, to end a siege that had dragged on for too long already. Any quarrel he had with Sir Guian would have to wait.

  He forced his attention back to the castle. He hated sieges, preferred open warfare to simply waiting. There was nothing honourable about starving an enemy into submission, still less in fighting men too weak to defend themselves, but he had orders to follow. One way or another he intended to take Haword by nightfall the following day. His duty to the Empress came first, no matter what he might think of her orders.

  Methodically, he scrutinised the fortifications for weaknesses. Judging by the design, the original motte was old, dating back to before the Conquest, though the Anglo-Saxon timber had been gradually replaced and strengthened with stone. Even so, the work appeared to have been carried out section by section over a period of years, each wall seeming to represent the era in which it was built. The overall effect was an oddly patchwork, ramshackle appearance, but on the whole, the structure looked solid. An assault wouldn’t be easy, but not impossible.

  His gaze swept appraisingly back towards the gatehouse and then stilled, arrested by the pair of eyes looking back. He’d been so preoccupied with studying the defences that he hadn’t seen her turn around, but now Lady Juliana was staring straight at him, her face ablaze with a look of such searing, hate-filled defiance that he felt the unfamiliar urge to take a step back.

  He took a pace forward instea
d, claiming even more ground as he waited for her to drop her gaze and turn away, but she didn’t move, didn’t even flinch at the challenge. What had de Ravenell called her—a girl? No, she was no girl, in her early twenties he guessed, though from the look of her, if she didn’t surrender soon, there’d be naught left but a ghost. The rain was heavier now, casting a murky veil over the space between them, but the effects of the siege were all too evident in her emaciated appearance. Her eyes were too big, the shadowy circles around them too dark against her pale skin, her cheekbones too sharply prominent in her narrow face. Yet he could still feel the heat of her gaze, as if she were channelling all that remained of her energy into that one look of defiance, more eloquent than any words. Something about that look, in the determined set of her jaw and her resolute posture, caught his attention and held it. She looked like a Celtic queen, rebellious and undaunted, the long coils of her red hair tumbling loose over the parapet wall in front of her, the only splash of colour against drab, unrelenting grey. For a fleeting moment, he found himself wishing that they were on the same side of the battlements...

  He tensed, surprised by a stirring sensation deep in his chest. He’d seen sieges enough to consider himself hardened to their effects, but this woman’s wraithlike appearance disturbed him more than he would have expected. He was accustomed to being the observer, not the observed, used to opponents dropping their eyes in front of him, but she held his gaze like the Empress herself. Standing on the ramparts, windswept and buffeted by the elements, she looked as though she’d rather throw herself into the moat below than concede defeat. He had the distinct impression that she’d stand there as long as it took for him to look away.

  Well, he could allow her that victory at least.

  ‘So you have a girl holding the castle.’ He rounded on de Ravenell. ‘Yet you never thought to attack? You have two siege engines. Why haven’t you used them?’

  ‘I saw no point risking men in an assault.’ The Baron looked taken aback. ‘A siege was the safest approach.’