Conquering William (37 page)

He sat before a roaring hearth fire, peevishly insisting that Beatrice, Ivy, and Alice keep him company.

Alice replaced the blanket on William’s lap.

He huffed and pushed it to the ground. “God’s teeth, woman! I am not in my dotage.”

She had tried. Alice left the blanket where it lay and took the seat beside him.

“You look like death.” Beatrice picked at the knot in her yarn.

Ivy took it from her. “He is well enough if he does not overdo it.”

The hall doors flew open on a gust of wind and snow. Two fur-mounded lumps staggered in with it and barred the door behind them.

William rose, his hand moving to his waist. But Alice had instructed Cedric to hide his sword, and the lad had done a fine job of it. “Blast.”

“Sweet Mother of God.” The nearest lump stomped his feet, showering the floor with melting snow. “Is it always so cold this far north?”

Beatrice shot to her feet. Her embroidery dropped to the floor and she stepped on it, her stare fixed on the man.

From the furs a tall, dark-haired man emerged. He dropped them to the ground with a grunt of distaste. “Sweet Bea.” A smile lit his handsome, carved features. “I have fought my way through the depths of winter to find you.” He opened his arms. “The least you can do is get your pretty ass over here.”

“Garrett.” William winked at Alice.

Beatrice pelted across the hall and straight into Garrett’s arms.

At their feet, Adam bounced on his bottom, waving his little arms in the air and yelling, “Da!”

Richard trotted to his parents and flung his arms around their knees.

Garrett released his wife and swung his oldest son into his arms. “I swear, Richard, you have grown a hundred feet since I saw you last.”

“This is my Garrett.” Beatrice tucked herself beneath his arm as they turned and walked toward Alice and William.

“I am glad to meet you, Lady Alice.” Garrett gave her a grin that set Alice’s heart aflutter. Not as handsome as her William, but the man had a roguish charm she would have to be entombed not to appreciate. He turned to William with a sniff. “Are you an old woman now?”

William squared his shoulders. “Then that would make you the sorry sod about to have the piss beaten out of him by an old woman.”

“I am all a-quiver.” Garrett sent William an evil grin and snatched Adam. “Shall Da rearrange your uncle’s pretty face?”

Adam chortled and bobbed in his father’s arms.

“I like his face just as it is.” Alice stepped between the two men. She suspected Garrett jested but she took no chances with her man. She had grown rather partial to his pretty face.

Ivy made a choking noise, and all heads swung her way.

She was so pale, Alice moved swiftly into a catching position. Ivy’s attention stayed fixed on the second figure, her hand clasped to her throat.

“Aye.” Garrett nodded at the man placing his furs carefully on a table. Flaxen haired and broader than Garrett, he looked drawn, as if recently ill. “He insisted on coming.”

“Tom.” Ivy took a step forward.

“Tom!” Beatrice broke into a run.

Garrett grabbed her about her waist.

“It is Tom.” Beatrice slapped at his arms.

“Aye.” Garrett jerked his head toward Ivy. “And he is not here for you.”

Ivy took another few steps.

Tom waited by the door, his hungry gaze locked on the tiny woman. “I have been a trifle laid up.”

“I heard.” Ivy reached Tom and stopped before him.

He towered about her.

“Are they just going to stand there?” Beatrice twisted her hand in Garrett’s tunic.

“Hush, sweeting.” Garrett tucked her against his side. “Let them be.”

Ivy drew back her fist and punched Tom in the shoulder. “You scared me.” Ivy hit him again. “Do not ever scare me like that again.”

“Ivy.” Tom caught her fist in his huge paw. “I could never leave you.”

“Oh, that is very good.” Beatrice sighed and gave a happy smile. “He is learning.”

Tom swept Ivy into his arms and kissed her.

William chuckled and turned to give the couple their privacy. “He is learning rather fast.”

With a snort, Garrett turned away as well. “It took the silly sod long enough.”

“Aye.” William resumed his seat and pulled Alice onto his lap. “Some men take a while to see what is right before them.”

Read on for a peek at Sarah Hegger’s Sir Arthur’s Legacy, Book #2

The Lady

The fair Lady Faye has always played the role allotted her. Yet the marriage her family wanted only brought her years of abuse and heartache. Now, finally free of her tyrannical husband, she is able to live her own life for the first time. But someone from the past has returned. Someone she has never been able to forget.

The Warrior

After years of servitude as a warrior for King and Country, Gregory is now free to pursue his own path: to serve God by becoming a monk. The only thing stopping him is Faye. Gregory has loved Faye since the moment he saw her. But their love was not meant to be. How can he serve God when his heart longs for her? He can neither forsake God nor the woman he loves.

The Promise

When Faye’s son is kidnapped, Gregory answers her family’s call for help, only to find that even in the most dangerous of circumstances, neither can fight their forbidden attraction. An attraction that now burns brighter than ever before. And it is only a matter of time until it consumes them both.

A Lyrical Historical Romance on sale now from Kensington Publishing!

Learn more about Sarah Hegger at

http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/author.aspx/30580

Faye braced outside the hall where happy voices spilled into the corridor. Two days shy of St. John’s Eve, almost a year to the day Gregory had brought her and her boys back to Anglesea. He’d left before the great bonfires lit that night were extinguished.

Gathered for the evening meal, Anglesea folk eagerly anticipated the festival marking the summer solstice. So many chattering, laughing people, many of them linked to her by blood and service, yet she still felt like an interloper in her childhood home. She couldn’t stand out here all evening. Lady Faye, daughter of Sir Arthur of Anglesea, Countess of Calder, was expected to present herself for the evening meal and show a pleasant face.

Calder.
Wrenching her thoughts away from the cruel brute she’d married, Faye straightened her shoulders and drew a deep, soothing breath. Calder was the past, and it behooved her to face forward and embrace what the future brought. Faye smoothed her frown away with her fingers. Only old shrews wore their vexation on their faces.

A cooling breeze from the hall’s open casements brushed her cheeks, stirring the great tapestries adorning the towering stone walls. Fresh rushes, scented with lavender at Mother’s insistence, crunched beneath her feet as she wove her way through the trestle tables.

“Evening, my lady.” A man-at-arms nodded his greeting as she passed.

More greetings followed her passage, and she returned them all with a smile. What a happy place this hall was, filled with love and laughter and a thousand different memories of a different girl. As a child she had imagined fey folk flitting and peering down at them through the mighty oak beams crisscrossed into arches along the ceiling.

A journeyman minstrel, his beard still a smattering of fuzz on his chin struggled to push his voice above the noise. He beamed a huge smile at her, strummed a chord, and paused for effect with his hand in the air.

A serving maid passed in front of him and ruined his brief flourish.

“Such beauty as was never seen,

In golden hair, sapphire eye and lily skin,

As Fairest of Fairest Faye’s as has ever been,

And for her love my heart shall pine.”

Heat climbed her cheeks as a handful of grinning people turned toward her. Of all the ballads penned to her as a girl, he’d chosen that one. Been and pine, the words didn’t even rhyme. The misguided lad had eight ballads to choose from. Eight!

How her foolish girl’s heart had swelled with pride as she patted herself on her golden head. Stupid girl. Stupid, aye, but that girl’s life had spread before her like a banquet of endless possibilities. Somewhere between her wedding night and her escape—

Good Lord, she was frowning again. At this rate she would be as wrinkled as Nurse by her thirtieth year. No dwelling. Forward. The rise and fall of merriment wrapped around her and eased her irritability. She smiled as Tom turned to greet her approach. He had grown larger since Faye last saw him. Nurse’s son was not so often found in the hall since he had been gifted his allotment by her father. “Good evening, Tom.”

“Good evening, Lady Faye.” Predictably he flushed to his fair hairline at the sight of her.

It was sweet, this little tendre he’d harbored for her since he was a boy. Tom was a special friend of Beatrice’s, but Faye was always glad to see him. “And how is your farm?”

His lanky frame had filled in with muscle very nicely, and he had a pair of shoulders on him that rivaled Roger’s. Light blue eyes beneath heavy brows held her gaze for a moment before he dropped his chin to his broad chest. “Very well…um…my lady. Thank you for asking.”

Ivy appeared at his elbow. Tiny and dark, Ivy possessed the sort of delicate beauty and cool distance that kept the men of Anglesea at her heels. Even William failed to thaw the lovely Ivy.

Tom’s regular features split into a huge smile.

Interesting.

“Tom is preparing his north field for planting in the spring.” Ivy put her small hand on Tom’s arm. It lay against the rough sleeve of his tunic like a feather in a pile of wood shavings.

Tom’s wide shoulders straightened. “Aye. I shall have the entire allotment planted by next harvest.”

“Did you manage to finish the irrigation trenches?” Ivy’s pale cheeks bore a delicate flush. Apparently Ivy was not as immune to all male charm as it would appear.

Over Ivy’s head, Henry sent Faye a grave nod from the far end of the hall where he spoke earnestly to a man with a glazed expression. The poor man had her sympathy. Her youngest brother’s fondness for delivering lectures to any recipient who would stand still long enough to receive one was well known throughout the keep.

Ivy and Tom’s conversation moved on to animal husbandry. Farming bored her so Faye excused herself.

“Faye.” A boisterous kiss from Roger and the herb-honey waft of mead announced him well into his cups. Roger’s light eyes danced at her, a flush suffusing his broad, rough-hewn features. Many a lass sighed over her brother Roger. “Come and explain to William why he should be married.”

“Dear sister.” William’s fine features broke into a smile. Faye couldn’t imagine him relinquishing his position as keep heartbreaker in the near future. He bent his dark head and kissed her cheek.

“Should you be married?” Teasing William was always fun.

“Who would have me?” He quirked a dark brow and drained his cup of mead. If he tried to keep pace with the bigger Roger, he would be rolled out the hall before dinner ended.

“Look at that pretty face.” Cupping William’s carved jaw in his paw of a hand, Roger grinned at her. “There is not a girl for twenty leagues that would naysay our William.”

“Leave him alone, Roger.” Lord, they would be at each other’s throats in a moment. They’d been doing it since they were lads. Roger toddled and William toddled faster, or at least near broke himself trying. It nearly always ended with fists flying.

She gave them a repressive stare as she slid past. It would accomplish nothing. Her brothers had too much time on their hands to get into mischief. Time they were married. Father hinted in that regard. William and Henry were rather sanguine about the idea. Roger had developed a case of deafness. She might take him in hand. Then again, she was hardly in a position to advocate the benefits of matrimony.

Her mother and father were settled at table and Faye took the seat to her father’s left. As the first girl, born after Roger and William, she’d been accorded a special place in her father’s affection.

His craggy face split into a grin. “Beautiful Faye.” He kissed her cheek. “Tell me how you have been spending this day.”

She dreaded the question. He asked it every night and every night she burrowed deep for some interesting morsel that wouldn’t make her day seem as stale as old bread. “I am working on a new set of bed linens for Beatrice’s baby. As we do not know the sex of the child, I thought green was a good choice.”

“Marvelous.” Her father rubbed his hands together.

She loved him for the attempt, but honestly, the mighty Sir Arthur of Anglesea had as much interest in bedding as, well, she did.

Twined up in each other like a pair of clinging vines, Garrett and Beatrice entered the hall. Beatrice waddled under the weight of the child she carried. Garrett strutted and preened like the first man to ever conceive a child, hovering about Beatrice constantly. So in love, it made her wish for things she couldn’t have.