Sebastian the Alchemist and His Captive [Medieval Captives 1] (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Read online

  Medieval Captives 1

  Sebastian the Alchemist and His Captive

  He takes her for hate. Will he keep her for love?

  Sebastian, lord of the tower in the northern high lands, is a proud, bitter man with a dark past. An alchemist and a warrior, he has had lovers but knows he is ugly—experience and betrayal have taught him that. When Melissa, the beautiful, neglected daughter of two old enemies, falls into his possessive hands he is determined to hold her. Why?

  As one of the detested and defeated Felix family, Melissa must cling to her courage when she is claimed as a war-prize by the tall, grim Sebastian. Expecting torture and ravishment, she finds instead a peace and sanctuary that she has never known. Treated with kindness for the first time in her life, Melissa begins to blossom.

  But there are secrets and old betrayals between them. Sebastian’s abiding jealousy is not easily quelled, especially when someone at the tower seeks to destroy his growing love with Melissa…

  Genre: Historical

  Length: 22,019 words

  SEBASTIAN THE ALCHEMIST AND HIS CAPTIVE

  Medieval Captives 1

  Lindsay Townsend

  ROMANCE

  www.BookStrand.com

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  A SIRENBOOKSTRAND TITLE

  IMPRINT: Romance

  SEBASTIAN THE ALCHEMIST AND HIS CAPTIVE

  Copyright © 2014 by Lindsay Townsend

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-63258-737-4

  First E-book Publication: December 2014

  Cover design by Harris Channing

  All art and logo copyright © 2014 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  About the Author

  SEBASTIAN THE ALCHEMIST AND HIS CAPTIVE

  Medieval Captives 1

  LINDSAY TOWNSEND

  Copyright © 2014

  Chapter 1

  Sebastian settled back in his chair. He still had many petitions to read and tomorrow he would fight a duel, with mace and daggers, but for the rest of the evening…Yes, he could grant himself the time, the indulgence. Ignoring the dull ache in his lower back, he stretched his long arms above his head.

  “Robert.” He spoke quietly to the gangling chestnut-headed squire patrolling by the door. “Send the girl to me. Then get some rest before you fall over.” The youth had only lately recovered from a fever and even in the firelight looked as pale as the falling snow outside.

  “I will sleep when you do, my lord.” Robert gave a brief, jerky bow and slipped from the stone chamber, his rapid footsteps fading in the vastness of the tower. Sebastian returned to his reading, making notes on the parchment, listening to the spit of the flames, and waiting. What will she be like? He had only caught a glimpse yesterday, when he had claimed her as his prize. The child of an old enemy and my first, unrequited love. What have her people told her about me?

  The door swung open, slowly at first and then in a rush, as if whoever was entering was determined not to be cowed. Headstrong, just like her mother. Amused, Sebastian rested the tip of his writing quill on the tabletop to watch an energetic, vivid figure hasten into the chamber.

  “Idonotcarewhatyoudotome, butdonothurtmypeople…”

  Sebastian raised the quill and the spate of words instantly stopped. “Closer,” he commanded, when the creature remained still, glancing behind her at the closing door. “Look at me, girl.”

  She took a step forward this time, halting exactly in the shadows cast between the torches and firelight so that her face and form remained hidden. Arrogant and stubborn, just like her father. A whip of irritation cracked down his spine.

  “Artos, guard,” he ordered the black wolf he had saved as a cub from a hunter’s trap. Artos yawned, stretched himself up from the rug by the fire, and trotted to the threshold. With widening eyes the girl studied the wolf as it began a steady pacing back and forth before the entrance.

  “He is not my familiar, if that is what you are thinking.”

  “Your shadow, then.” The girl swung round to face him. Her voice was low, cracking a little from nerves or disuse. “He is handsome.” Unlike you. The unspoken words filled the chamber like the apple-wood smoke.

  Sebastian pushed back his chair and strode toward his captive, circling his prize. She stood stiffly at attention, her head held perfectly straight, her hands clenched by her sides, half-hidden in her once gaudy, now tattered, green and gold robes. In the shifting alliances of these lush and rugged highlands her kindred had backed the wrong overlord and lost. In the scramble afterward between the northern princelings for booty and lands, Sebastian had been able to take the girl, claim her by right of revenge. Revenge. What a monster she must think me, this dainty youngster, to make her pay for ancient hurts her father wreaked on me, for the old betrayals of her mother. Does she even know that pitiful tale?

  He circled her again, sensing her quiver as he loomed. She was a brunette, but there all similarity between them ended. Where he was tall and lean and intense, large-jointed and craggy, precise from years of deliberate, often hard-won control, this tiny girl shimmered like a flame. Where his hair was black, dull and fine as silk, hanging straight to his broad shoulders, hers was the color of brimstone and treacle, long, heavy ropes of shining curling waves, sunset brown shot through with chestnut. Her father’s coloring, and wasn’t Baldwin always aware of his good looks? As for her mother in her—Sebastian halted before the girl and, with a long finger, tipped up her chin, glimpsing a pair of bright brown eyes in a freckled, delicate face. The child shifted, lowering her head in a gesture of apparent submission. The shape of her eyes are the same as Rosemond’s, but not the color. Her mother had blue eye
s and gold hair and smiled like a Madonna, all the better to beguile men.

  “Like but not like,” Sebastian murmured, releasing his grip and continuing his prowl. The girl was easily a head shorter than himself, small and thin, where Rosemond had been tall and stately. “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.” The bright eyes fixed on his and a spark of heat tingled from his chest to his groin in response. He saw her blush and wondered if she had also sensed the spark. “Eighteen, Sir Sebastian.”

  He scowled at her address, disliking the arrogant assumption behind it that only knights had value. Just like her father. “I am no knight, girl, remember that,” he barked. She trembled and he could not decide if that was due to fear or revulsion. Watching the pretty glow drop from her face like a fallen ribbon, he decided it was both.

  Irritated and a little ashamed with his behavior, he closed his eyes, desperately trying to entomb his own past within himself. “Who would care for such a lanky thing as you?” His mother had first told him that. “Sallow, dark, possessive,” a previous lover or two had complained, before each one had parted with him due to his jealousy. “An ugly, crook-nosed brute…” Sebastian remembered that description only too clearly, the taunts “ugly” and “crook-nose” following him throughout his service as a page, then squire, before he had turned his back on the cruel, glittering world of chivalry. And who had first called him ugly and crook-nosed? Baldwin of course, this girl’s father, jibing and taunting, bullying and tormenting, setting on him with his friends and cronies, four, five, six against one. Sebastian had stomached that but then worse followed—he had heard Rosemond agreeing with Baldwin, the pair laughing together, laughing at him. After all I did for her and tried to do for her, after I helped her, after I told her I loved her.

  Strange after all these years that it should still ache so much, as if an anvil had been hurled into his chest. Fighting the despair, Sebastian growled like Artos and shook his head to clear it. Here he was, aged three and thirty, still re-fighting old battles, old hurts. I am pathetic.

  He opened his eyes, relaxing his grip on the quill before he shattered it. The girl was staring at the floor now, nervously rubbing her mouth with her thumb.

  “Melissa Felix of the winter lands.” She flinched at her name and title, clearly expecting him to mock her. For an instant Sebastian was tempted to do just that, but held off. This child is not Baldwin or Rosemond. She has never harmed you, so try not judge her as such. “Daughter of the brave and the beautiful.” Stalking again, this time stopping behind the girl, Sebastian stroked the quill lightly across the narrow shoulders, feeling a slight shiver through the feathers. “That much I can agree with in the endless praise-fest that is sung about your parents.”

  “Please—” Melissa twisted round quickly, slipping on the stone floor. Sebastian caught her one-handed before she stumbled, briefly astonished at how light-boned she was. From being rosy-cheeked, then pale, her expressive face brimmed with life, with questions. Clearly the wench has never been taught any discretion. “You were brought up with them, sir. You knew them. Hardly anyone talks about them, not really, not stories how they were, what they enjoyed, the little things they did. Please tell me what they were like.”

  Of course she had been a child, an infant, when Baldwin and Rosemond had been ambushed and killed by Viking raiders, Baldwin dying with a blood eagle carved into his body. That foul end I would not have wished on anyone, even him. The sudden, hideous memories of finding too many other warriors murdered in that way made his voice harsh. “You do not want my recollections of them, girl! Have your people truly told you nothing? Are you a fool? Is this a ploy to trick me? Or do you not care for the feelings of others? Are you prideful and spiteful, too, as your father and mother were?”

  “They were not!”

  “And how would you know, little girl? You have just told me no one speaks of them.”

  She flared anew, clearly taking his words as an insult. “I am no child. I stand for my people!”

  “Oh yes, the fragile creatures whom you do not want me to hurt. How insufferably noble of you, how unbelievably presumptuous.” Anger and suspicion coiled along his body in a choking miasma. Already she is poisoned against me. Did that matter?

  “No one is hurt in this tower.” Sebastian laid his hand flat across her shoulders, feeling the surge of muscle and bone beneath her skin as Melissa gathered herself to spring away. “No one,” he said again, winding his free arm about her narrow waist, lifting her to trap against him, her back and bottom tight against his front.

  “No,” Melissa whispered. She had stiffened in indignation at being so easily handled but had now stopped moving altogether, stopped breathing, even. Deciding it would be unkind to press himself any closer into the inviting cleft between her surprisingly pert, round arse—her gown does not fit her properly and why is she wearing cast-offs?—Sebastian blew softly against the side of her neck.

  “You are safe here. Nothing will happen that you do not want,” he said, low, insistent. “Now swallow and exhale.”

  She did so with an almost imperceptible shudder. “Release me,” she whispered. “Please.”

  Was she really close to weeping, bowed against him, taut as a harp string? If this were Rosemond would he have savored her breakdown? Enough. She is Melissa. With the more brutish of his own followers he knew he had to appear to want her for revenge, but already he realized he did not. Or at least I am less sure.

  He still held her, snug against him, firmly but gently, allowing Melissa to bite down on her tears and panic. Listening to her huffing little breaths, Sebastian wished for an instant that the girl was different, not his prisoner. Mine. The temptation of that word! He knew what he was about, dealing with soldiers, smiths, clerks, even knights. Any of those as a captive he would have treated fairly and dealt with easily, but this girl…

  Let me see what she expects. “Why are you here?” he asked softly, inhaling her fresh, sweet scent, like a bluebell wood after rain.

  “As your, your—” Her voice hitched.

  “My prize,” he finished for her. “And you think it will be terrible.”

  Her silence was his answer.

  “Shall I oblige you, Melissa?” He was tempted to kiss her neck, to suck and mark her as his. Lucifer, I am perverted and I do not greatly care. “I could claim you tonight and no one will stop me.”

  “Do as you want.”

  Ah, a flash of spirit as she steeled herself, quite delicious, entirely too seductive. She does not know even what she is about. I must take great care. It was not his habit to ravish those in his power.

  He released her and returned to the table with its towering mound of parchments and scrolls. Before he sat down, with a small mental groan at the work still to do, he looked at Melissa. She had followed him, he noted with amusement, and was hovering beside the fireplace, the brightness of the tumbling flames casting pools of light across her flanks and thighs. So easy to take her again in my arms.

  He nodded to the wine jug and cups at the end of the table. “Pour me some, and for yourself.”

  The girl hesitated an instant and Sebastian did not restrain himself. “What? You did not think you would work? We are not nobles here in this tower, lounging on cushions and reciting poetry. I left that kind of nonsense to your father.”

  Melissa had picked up the jug and was pouring. Glaring at him, she spilled some of the liquid, where it pooled and ran toward the parchments.

  “Clean it up, up! Not your robe, little idiot, use a cloth!”

  “What cloth? I see none.” She slammed down the jug, continued to use her skirts to soak up the fluid and turned on him. “Can you not show some pity, sir? I am trying to do my best.”

  “Not good enough,” Sebastian lashed back, before the peculiar humor and yes, pity, of the situation, made him pause. I have not lost my temper like that for years. Something about this girl provoked him. He decided it was because of her parents. He sighed. “What can you do?”
<
br />   At once the ready blush rose in Melissa’s face as she placed a cup of wine on the table beside his chair, deftly and with only a tiny tremor of her narrow fingers. He had meant the question simply but she took it as a sneer. “What use am I, you mean? Beyond my reciting poetry?”

  “If you know the Iliad or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight I might even listen.”

  He had surprised the little wench. Her bright eyes widened and her rosy lips sagged open for an instant, displaying an impudent pink tongue. Tearing his attention from her mouth, Sebastian tried another question, beginning first with a reminder. “As I told you, in this tower everyone works. What skills do you possess, Mistress Felix?”

  “Why should I work for you?”

  Another brave or cheeky attempt at boldness, spoiled by her immediate blush. She is more volatile than Rosemond ever was. Telling himself it was not pity that prompted his reply, rather the desire to learn something about the girl before the night was out, Sebastian answered mildly, “You would soon become bored if you did nothing all day. Can you brew cordials? Can you repair clothes? Dress and heal wounds? Spin? Weave? Roast meat? Write a good hand?”

  Throughout this list of conventional skills for a knight’s daughter, Melissa pinched her lips together and shook her head.

  “Too lazy?”

  “Not allowed. Never taught,” came the mumbled reply, before she hid behind her wine cup and gulped a mouthful.

  Of course she was an orphan, raised by her uncle and aunt. He had assumed she had been spoiled and pampered but now he wondered. If she was not wanted that explains the ill-fitting clothes, her slimness—though she has a pert enough arse. Sebastian felt his mouth dry and glanced at his wine cup. He forced his attention back to the mystery at hand.

  “You did nothing at the castle of your uncle and aunt?”

  “I helped look after the children and delivered messages.”

  Sebastian frowned. To teach the girl nothing seemed the height of all folly, unless her deliberate lack of training was down to spite. Watching Melissa tracking Artos again, interest flaring in her mobile, pretty face, he suspected spite. The aunt would be jealous of this pretty lass.