The Lord's Right (15 page)

One day, while she was seeing to
someone’s tooth and the men had wandered off to see about lumber or
some such thing, the town came abuzz as a rag tag bunch of soldiers
drifted back into town, dazed, having been ambushed deep in the
woods by a group of rebellious men with visions of glory and murder
in their hearts. Many of the king’s guard had been killed and the
king himself had been injured.

Amber finished up with her patient as
quickly as she could and gathered as much information as was
possible from the returning men. She knew that Piers was with the
party that had gone into the woods with the king, and her heart
leapt to her throat.

Luckily, the place that they described
was one she knew well, and she thought she had an idea of who the
attackers were, too. As she divested herself of her feminine
trappings and donned the look of a boy, hiding her glorious hair
beneath a disreputable cap, she was glad she’d followed her
instinct and brought almost all of her provisions.

But the good thing was that she still
had a lot of secret hidey-holes that contained even more items.
Unfortunately, most of those were defensive rather than offensive,
although there were a few arrows and knives amongst them, which she
quickly retrieved.

Moving stealthily through the
underbrush, she spotted the killers easily, stomping through the
woods like elephants, looking for their prey, then found where the
remains of the king’s guard, as well as the king himself and her
husband were holed up.

“
It’s me, Amber,” she
whispered to Piers before touching his ankle. “I’ve brought
supplies. How is His Majesty? Where was he wounded?”

“
Bleeding. His leg.” He
was glad she’d identified herself before touching him, or he would
have swung his sword before thinking and she would have been dead
right then and there. What the hell was she doing out there,
anyway?

She pressed a wad of clean cloths into
his hand. “Press these onto the wound hard, and lift the leg if you
can without giving yourselves away. I’ll be right back.”

He whispered after her, as harshly as
he could, that she should stay put, and he knew she heard him, but
he could hardly scream at her without giving themselves away. If
they lived through this, he was going to make sure she learned how
to obey.

But she was gone, and he knew agony
such as he’d never felt before at the idea that she might not
return.

Amber circled well around the clumsy
oafs that were trying to harm her husband, and the idea occurred to
her that she would really like to toy with them, because she could,
but she knew she shouldn’t, so she simply set about capturing them
as quickly and efficiently as possible. As they began to either
drop from arrows, or encounter various quick traps she’d setup,
they never saw their enemy, and that was a great psychological
advantage. As their numbers dwindled, the remaining imbeciles
became even more reckless and easier to capture.

When they had all been rendered
harmless, she tucked her inappropriate clothing into a makeshift
spot and donned her tunic again, and walked back to where the men
were, falling on Piers in a dramatic scene that wasn’t very like
her, except that she had been very worried about him until she’d
found him.

“
Husband! Are you all
right?” She lay full on top of him, not caring what anyone else
thought or said. She was a newlywed. She could get away with
it.

The other men were quite bewildered at
her appearance, especially when they still considered that they
were in mortal danger.

Amber spun quite a story as the men
ate it up, all except her husband, of course, who watched her
quietly from under a hooded brow. She worked on the king as she
spoke, telling them of a young man in the same style of clothing as
she had actually worn, who had come to get her while she wandered
in the woods looking for them, telling her that he’d rendered all
of the rebels moot and leading her to them, knowing that the king
needed her medical attentions.

“
What was his name? Did
you recognize him?” King William asked, although he was in great
pain. “I would reward this young man.”

“
No, I didn’t recognize
him, Your Majesty.”

Once she’d had him stabilized, the men
decided to bring the king home as soon as possible, where he could
be better treated, and would be more secure.

Amber spoke up, though, as he was her
patient. “I’m not so sure that that long trip would be good for him
at this point. I have an idea.”

Within the hour, the king himself was
comfortably ensconced at her father’s house, and her father was
about as close to beside himself as Amber had ever seen him. It was
a brilliant move. The cottage was unassuming and quiet, all by
itself in a quiet clearing in the thick woods. They had departed
quietly, as if they were taking him home to be treated, but had
instead diverted with as little fuss—and as few men—as possible, to
the cottage.

Amber had even suggested that a decoy
carry on with the majority of men acting like they were still
bringing the ailing monarch home, while he recuperated at her
father’s house.

She concentrated every bit of medical
knowledge she had on restoring the king’s health. Luckily, he was
of fairly robust health to begin with, but he had also endured a
fairly serious wound. Her worst fear was infection, so she did her
best to keep the wound clean, which meant cleaning it regularly,
which made her cry every time she did it, while he bore it quite
stoically.

“
Tell me,” he’d asked one
time, having taken to talking to her to distract himself while she
was seeing to him like this, “are you happy in your
marriage?”

He knew she’d stopped, because his
pain level had lowered quite considerably, but then she resumed and
he wished he’d shut up. “Yes, thank you, my liege. I
am.”

“
But you weren’t certain
there, at the first.”

“
I hadn’t intended to
marry anyone, Your Majesty.”

“
Not marry at all? Were
you bound for the nunnery?”

“
No.”

“
That’s quite unnatural,
my girl. Women need men to watch over them.”

“
So I’m told.”

Her tone let him know that she had
grave doubts as to the veracity of his statement, and he actually
chuckled, despite his discomfort.

“
I tell you, Lady Amber,
if I didn’t have my Matilda, I would have given Sir Piers a run for
his money.”

She blushed beautifully. “Why, Your
Majesty, what makes you think I would have chosen either of
you?”

He fairly roared at that comment,
slapping the bed and moving when he shouldn’t have. Everyone—except
Piers—who was outside the house listening couldn’t believe that he
was laughing during such a painful part of his treatment, but there
it was.

Piers knew how his wife could be, and
that she was probably just speaking her mind to the man, which
could probably end up with him becoming a serf, but that was okay,
as long as she was still his wife.

When Amber finally poked her head out
of the house, wiping her hands of the solution she used to clean
out his wound, Piers waylaid her and guided her towards the woods.
He knew these sessions were at least as hard on her as they were on
the king himself. She always cried right after them, and probably
all the way through them, if he knew her. She had such a soft
heart, and he knew that she couldn’t stand the idea that anyone was
in pain, especially someone close to her.

“
He should sleep,” she
said, collapsing into his arms in tears.

“
So should you,” Piers
said, kissing her forehead.

“
I’ll sleep when I’m sure
he’ll live.”

He tipped her chin back and forced her
to meet his eyes. “You won’t be any good to him, or me, if you’re
dead.”

Amber didn’t say anything. She
couldn’t. She was too exhausted.

“
He was laughing this
time.”

She smiled wearily. “I talked to him.
It helps to distract him. He wanted to talk about us. He asked if I
was happy in our marriage.”

That perked him up. He wanted to know
what answer she gave. “Well?”

“
I told him I am, but he
caught my hesitation and asked about it.”

“
And?”

“
I told him the
truth.”

Piers wasn’t at all sure that that was
a good thing.

“
That I hadn’t intended on
marrying anyone, and he said that women need men to look after
them. I said that that was what I had been told, but I don’t think
I said it in a very convincing way, and he found that uproariously
funny. Then he said if he wasn’t attached he’d give you a challenge
for me, and I said he shouldn’t count on the idea that I would
choose either of you, and that set him off again.” She put her
hands on her hips. “Why don’t you think it’s so funny when I speak
my mind?”

“
Because I know you’re not
kidding. It’s the best if he thinks you’re not, that you’re
amusing. We’re likely to keep our heads longer that
way.”

She gave up trying to make sense of
how men thought and simply curled up against him, letting him wrap
those big arms around her and hold her impossibly tight. They
weren’t the most logical of creatures, as far as she could
see.

As he rubbed her back soothingly, he
said, “I don’t want you to think that I’ve forgotten what you did,
though.”

“
Did?”

“
You risked your life.
When you first found us, which you shouldn’t have in the first
place, before you left, I whispered, very loudly and clearly, that
you were to stay put. I know you heard it, my flower.” Again, he
tipped her chin up, so that she had to meet his eyes.

Amber always met someone’s eyes. One
of the easiest ways to tell when she felt guilty was that she tried
to avoid his gaze, and she was definitely doing so now. She was
looking just past his shoulder, and at his Adam’s apple, and at his
hairline, but not into his eyes. She stomped her foot in a manner
he found charmingly childish. “But I knew I could handle those
buffoons. I don’t know how they managed to accost you and win—I
could have led a better raid on you guys.”

And well he knew she could. But that
wasn’t the point. “We would have taken care of ourselves, I assure
you. I was fine, Bruce was fine, we had plenty of able bodied men;
we just hadn’t had the time to put a plan into action yet, and then
you came along.”

She crossed her arms over her chest.
“And it was a good thing I did, too.”

“
But what did I say,
little flower?”

Her lips twitched, then pursed on the
words. She sighed, but confessed. “You said to stay
put.”

He let his emotions take a hold of
him, just this once, as the fear he’d felt, watching her walk away
to her possible death flooded over him again. His palms cradled the
sides of her face. “Do you know how frightened I was, not knowing
if I’d ever see you again? If we’d get up to defend ourselves and
I’d stumble over your body?” Piers crushed her to him in an embrace
that literally took her breath away. “I will not lose you, Amber. I
will not.”

With that, he produced the belt that
her father had used on her, just before they’d met the first time.
He looked around them and picked a large tree that allowed her to
stand straight up against it, and that had a good sized trunk, one
that kept her arms stretched out and didn’t allow them to meet at
the back. He secured her wrists around the trunk, ensuring that she
couldn’t avoid even one second of her punishment, then lifted her
dress and belted it well up around her waist, so that the material
was in no danger of falling and providing her any comfort or
respite there, either.

She was at his mercy, and he has her
father’s disciplinary tool, which, in his hands was bad, but he
didn’t have anywhere near the power that Piers had, being about
half Piers’ size. He thought of everything, though, and even put a
scrap of fur under her cheek, so that it wasn’t scraped by the tree
bark. There was only one part of her that he wanted to remember her
correction, and that was her backside.

For a long moment, he simply stood to
one side of her, long thick belt in one hand, letting those
horrible emotions course through him. “Amber?”

She was already crying.
“Yes?”

“
I love you.” It was the
first time he’d ever said that to a woman. He’d certainly had his
share of women in his life, and, frankly, he’d heard it from them
quite a few times, but never said it back, because he didn’t want
to say it and not mean it. But the time had come, and it was right
with this woman. He loved her more than life itself.

That made her cry even harder, because
she knew it was going to make him discipline her even harder, each
and every time. If he hated her, he wouldn't care about it. If he
loved her, he would care enough to make sure that she got things
right, and if she didn’t, that he got it right when he corrected
her for it.

“
I love you, too, my
lord.” She meant it, too. Despite the fact that he had been her
enemy and that he spanked her with alarming frequency, she had
fallen deeply in love with this man, and everything that he
was—honorable, smart, and more careful with her than she was with
herself.