The Lord's Right (4 page)

It wasn’t much of a castle any more,
which was why there was a new one being built, but this was the
closest thing they had, so they were making do with it for now. His
men would be joining him by the morning, and they would be at least
a thousand strong to protect this area for King William.

He helped her down from his big
charger and she looked around hesitantly. It was the first time
she’d been out of her little village, and it made her feel much
smaller than she liked. Even though it was the middle of the night,
the place bustled with activity.

“
I want you to work in the
gardens here, Amber. We have need of a woman who is good with
medicines to see to the needs of the soldiers and others who work
here. You shall have a room in the castle, and in the new castle
when it’s built. You’ll be working for Mrs. Tulane, who will show
you around in the morning.” He had an idea that giving her
something productive to do might keep her from stealing wineskins
and slashing stirrups, too, as well as wandering the forest against
her father’s wishes. That poor man must’ve had his hands full with
her. He’d seen two other girls at their table. All Piers could wish
for him was that his other two daughters were more docile than his
first.

Amber didn’t know what to say, and
then she imagined she didn’t have much choice about what to say.
She was here, and he was her lord. He wasn’t going to just let her
say no and go home.

He took her to the kitchen and
introduced her to Mrs. Tulane, who seemed a nice woman, and then he
disappeared. Amber wondered if she’d ever see him again, to say
nothing of her father and her family.

It was a strange thing to have been
plucked from one’s home and transported far away, but her love of
plants was strong enough that she settled in all right to her new
surroundings, although life here was certainly different from what
living with her family had been. She and Mrs. Tulane got along all
right, although the woman could be a bit bossy, and she was already
getting to be well known as the person to come to with wounds and
medical problems. Piers’ men had arrived, and Fitzwilliam had come
to thank her for treating him, which she felt very awkward about,
since she’d been the cause of his misery in the first
place.

Troy had taken to tagging along with
Fitz when he came to see her. Amber did not like Troy at all, but
Troy made it very clear that he was quite interested in her. She
was doing her best to fend him off, and trying to do it politely,
instead of just pushing him into the broken down fountain he was
sitting in front of, which was full of stagnant water and was her
first instinct. He had a tendency to be very free with his hands,
which she detested. She hated being manhandled, especially by him.
He reeked of alcohol most of the time, and his breath smelled of
sick, or worse.

When he reached up to touch her breast
for the twentieth time, that was it. She had had enough of him and
his forward ways, and she did what she’d wanted to do: she pushed
him backwards, into the fountain. Like Sir Piers had said about
Fitz, it was probably the first time he’d met with water in a long
time, brackish or not.

Funny, Amber couldn’t say that about
Sir Piers. He always smelled good, like a man should, usually of
horses and leather, but not offensively so. Like he wasn’t afraid
of a bath or a bar of soap. She didn’t know why he popped into her
head at such a strange moment, except perhaps because of the way he
was laughing from atop Tygan at the sight of Troy standing there,
sopping wet, weeds on his head and trying to wring the muck and
water out of his clothes.

Troy started to run after Amber, with
a deadly glint in his eye, until Piers got down and stood in front
of her. She annoyingly, kept moving away from him, that ever
present little knife in her hand, daring Troy to come at her, and
balancing her weight from the balls of one foot to the other in a
practiced fighting stance. “Stay put behind me, Miss, or I’ll punch
you myself!” he roared, and she obeyed, however
reluctantly.

“
I’m going to whip her
good!” Troy screamed, looking around for something with which to
accomplish the task. “Pushing her betters into the muck and mire!
She needs to be taught a lesson, that wench! She has thoughts above
her station!”

After turning around to Amber and
disarming her with practiced and insulting ease, and tucking her
child’s blade well away from her on his person, Piers drew himself
to his full height and advanced on Troy, who, although a good
soldier, was no match for the master. He fairly cringed up at
Piers.

“
You spread this word
through the men and all that will listen: if anyone thinks that
Amber needs a lesson of any kind, they’re to come to me, and I’m
the only one that’s to deliver it, is that understood? She’s here
under my auspices.”

Troy looked fairly apoplectic. Piers
had never been known to take much interest in any woman. Oh, he had
Josette waiting for him in France that all the men knew about, but
everyone also knew that he didn’t care a whit for her one way or
another. The gossip was that he’d never cared for any woman, since
his mother had never cared for him. No woman ever could, or ever
would, touch his heart, no matter how beautiful or accomplished,
and all of them, in the French court, had tried.

None of them had succeeded. He’d tried
and tasted all of them, but left each and every one of them flat.
Josette had merely come the closest to catching him. He would marry
her in a lavish ceremony, shower her with gifts, and get children
on her. But he wouldn’t love her, and she had had to accept that.
He’d made it excruciatingly clear.

“
Amber, come,” Piers said,
not sparing Troy another look as he turned to walk into the main
hall of the castle, which was really the only livable part
remaining.

She disliked immensely being called to
like a dog, but knew she had just been saved, so she held her
tongue. Mrs. Tulane saw her crossing the open hall behind him and
said nothing, nor did any of the fifty or so other servants that
saw her parading up the huge staircase behind him.

They ended up in the room he was using
as his bedroom, which contained a bed that was too small for him,
as they all were, until he had the one he used at his home in
France, a custom made one, shipped here, and he wouldn’t do that
until the permanent castle was built. It had an enormous fireplace
across from the bed, and a wall of windows at the end opposite the
door. There were what had probably been gorgeous tapestries on the
walls to absorb moisture and warm the place up, but they had long
since faded and become ratty looking. Still, Amber thought it
must’ve been a wonderful place in its prime, and even the tiny room
she’d been given was luxurious compared to the small pallet she
slept on next to her sisters at home.

“
So, Miss Cooper, do you
need to be whipped, as Mr. Seville insists?” he asked, pouring
himself some wine from the sideboard, then sinking down into an
enormous chair in front of the roaring fire, and motioning her over
to stand beside him.

“
No, Sir.”

He smiled. He seemed to do a lot of
that around her, and he liked it. Piers hadn’t realized, until he
met her, how little he smiled. “Tell me something, Amber, had you
drawn your knife since I’d dropped you off here?”

“
No.”

He laughed. “So it’s something I
inspire in you, hmm?”

She didn’t know quite what to say to
that, especially not without getting herself into even more trouble
than she already seemed to be with him.

“
I’m teasing. Why did you
push Troy into the fountain?” He knew the answer, because he’d been
watching them for a short while before making his appearance, but
he wanted to hear it from her.

Unlike most of the people he called
before him, Amber didn’t toady well. She didn’t look at her feet or
mumble while she spoke, she didn’t plead or wheedle. She simple
said what had happened, and damn the consequences. She was a very
refreshing voice, if a sometimes annoying one with a sharp little
knife and a tendency to play tricks. “He was touching me,
Sir.”

“
Yes, he was, wasn’t he,”
Piers agreed. “And you didn’t like that at all, did
you?”

“
No, Sir.”

“
Not at all? Not even a
little?”

She didn’t hesitate, not once, in her
answers, which gave him his answer, even without her words. “No,
Sir.”

Piers stood, leaving the glass on the
sideboard and returning to her. He tipped her head back and claimed
her mouth the way he’d wanted to but hadn’t admitted to himself
since she’d startled him on his horse weeks ago. He’d set her to
working in the gardens so that he could keep her around and watch
her clandestinely. He liked her more than he wanted to, although
she was a thorn in his side. Mrs. Tulane thought she was much too
outspoken. And she had a tendency to wander into the woods when she
was supposed to be working, not that the older lady could ever say
that she’d left anything undone, though, and she was autocratic
when she tended to people, not taking into account their station in
the household and changing her manner or tone to accommodate
them.

But he liked her, so he kept her
on.

Now at least two of his men were at
odds over her, perhaps more, he didn’t know.

But then, he did know about at least
one more.

Him. He wanted her.

Her mouth was sweet and minty. He knew
she often chewed mint; he’d smelled it on her breath, which was a
damned sight better than what he usually smelled on women’s breath.
Piers bent her backwards, over his arm, making her squeal, but not
letting her up. He loved a woman in this position. It naturally
left her breasts accessible, and they found themselves much more
vulnerable, feeling like they were going to fall, so they were more
likely to cling to anything solid, which was always going to be
him.

Amber had never felt anything like
this. She’d never been kissed before; no boy or man would have
dared in the village for fear they’d be sliced open from throat to
nuts. But this man more than dared. His tongue plundered her mouth,
setting fires in its wake, confusing her, making her forget that
she even had a weapon that she might try to stop him with—making
her like it and want more.

Once she was at that point, when her
arms were just beginning to creep around those broad shoulders and
his mouth had just settled over the thin material covering her
breasts, he stood suddenly, bringing her with him.

“
I think I agree with Mr.
Seville, Amber. You do need a whipping, if for no other reason than
that he’s right. You can’t go around pushing your betters into
fountains, even if they have taken liberties that they shouldn’t.
If there should be a next time, you’ve my permission to defend
yourself and get away to tell me about it, but you must do your
best not to harm or humiliate the man.” He was really thinking only
of her. Troy had no relatives with power, but if it had been Fitz
instead of Troy, with the connections that Fitz had—not that he
would ever use them, and he wouldn’t, because he wasn’t that kind
of a lad. She could find herself on the wrong end of a rope if she
did that to the wrong man some time.

Still craving his lips, and hating
herself for it, but what’s more so, hating him for making her want
him, she found herself unceremoniously arched over the arm of that
big chair in front of the fire, with her tunics raised, bottom
bared, a thin leather whip that was more akin to a tawse in his
hand. He saw her looking at it and said, “Ah, we borrowed this from
the Scots. It works wonders on recalcitrant women.”

Her face was buried in the thick
cushion, and the chair was so big that she couldn’t even reach
back, over the arm, to defend the ample, vulnerable target that her
raised buttocks provided him. She was completely helpless, to say
nothing of the fact that he was standing just to the side of her
that she would have rolled towards to get out of the chair, so that
escape route was blocked, too.

She had never cried so much at being
punished as she did with this man, and it was absolutely
humiliating. Why with him, of all people, the person she would most
want to be strong around? He was the enemy, after all, despite the
fact that he’d gotten her a job and a nice room to live in. That
didn’t make her like him any better. Especially since here she was,
getting her bottom blistered for no reason other than trying to
defend herself from one of his men, who was taking liberties that
he oughtn’t.

And she cried like a baby each time
those nasty, split pieces of leather snapped against her naked
flesh. He wielded them like it was something he’d done every day of
his life, with intent to cause as much pain as possible, making
sure they landed at the peak of the stroke, and at the point on her
upturned rump that was going to hurt the worst. Amber was already
on her tip toes, because of the height of the chair and awkwardness
of her position, and her balance was precarious, so she couldn’t
even flail her legs up to defend the tender backs of her thighs,
which he also scourged thoroughly, until the entire backside of
her, from stem to stern, was a fiery almost purplish
red.