The Lord's Right (7 page)

Mrs. Tulane came running to fetch her
that afternoon, saying that the master wanted her to accompany him
into the village, that he had a question for her. She followed
after him on foot, until they were well away from the castle, and
he leaned down and put her up in front of him.

“
You look pensive today,
Mademoiselle,” he said in his native tongue. “What are you thinking
about?”

“
I was wondering what you
wanted to ask me,” she replied in perfectly accented
French.

Piers was quiet for a moment, then
said, “It seems I am a hero in some towns, a heel in others. I
wondered if you had any idea why.”

“
Why would I know,
Sir?”

“
Because you often know of
unusual things, as you are an unusual lady, my flower.”

They turned a corner and rode down a
small hill, into a tiny but generally prosperous village, and were
immediately swamped by children. Piers thought they were all coming
to see him, but then he realized that they weren’t anywhere near as
thrilled to see him as they were to see Amber.

He allowed her to slip down, and she
disappeared into a sea of grubby hands and smiling but generally
toothless and somewhat grimy faces. He pulled Tygan to a halt, and
just listened to her talking to them. She was as straightforward
and no nonsense with them as she was with everyone else.

“
Timmy, how goes your
finger? Has it fallen off yet? Let me see it.”

The lad in question extended his
finger proudly. It had a dirty bandage on it, which he bravely
allowed her to remove.

“
Have you been keeping it
clean and washing it like I showed you?”

He nodded solemnly.

”
Well, it looks like you
have, and it’s healing beautifully. I guess you know what that gets
you!” Like magic, a sweetmeat appeared in her hand, and just as
quickly disappeared down Timmy’s gullet.

The other children were treated much
the same, whether or not they had as grave an injury as
Timmy’s.

Before she let them go, though, he
heard her say quietly, “Remember, though, who is it that lets me
come here, and gives me the medicines that helps your families and
the sweetmeats that fills your bellies to overflowing?”

“
Sir Piers!” They all
screamed in unison. He was stunned.

“
And who is our great king
now?”

“
King William!”

“
Very good, children. Now
run along. I have other things to do.”

When they scattered, and she rose,
Amber refused to look up at him, although she knew without him
saying so that he wished it.

“
I thought I was the
enemy?”

“
You are, to me. But they
have to live in the future, in a world where we’ve lost the war,
where we’re an occupied nation. It’s much easier for them to come
to grips with it than it ever will be for me.” She met his eyes, of
her own volition. “If you win over the hearts of the peasantry,
you’ll win the hearts of the nation. They are England, Sir
Piers.”

As they made their way through the
village, many more people came up to her than to him, which could
well be attributed to his status and their reluctance to approach
him. But some did come to him with flowers, bowing and scraping but
thanking him most often for her, and her for saving this relative
or that, or this limb or that.

“
What are you using to
save them, might I ask?”

Amber glanced up at him, wincing into
the sun. “If you’re asking if your men are feeling the lack, you
may rest assured that I would never do that. The villagers get what
would have ended up on the compost pile, or as a forgotten
ingredient in someone’s tea. It’s such a little thing, and it helps
them so enormously, and I always make sure that they know that I’m
doing it in your and the king’s good names.”

Beautiful, sensual, and politically
adept. This woman was too good to be true.

By the time they left the village, he
looked like a maid on May Day, and she’d filled his saddlebags with
all sorts of homemade goodies from the grateful
villagers.

He was gone for a time, to the site of
the new castle. Amber found herself being extremely productive in
his absence, not having to worry about whether or not she’d be
summoned to his chambers and punished harshly for something she’d
done. She felt free, and did very much as she pleased, almost as if
she was at home again.

The only catch was that he had
awakened her in a way that made her uncomfortable, especially at
night, when her thoughts were wont to travel back to when his
fingers were where they oughtn’t be, touching that spot that no one
else knew about, making her feel that new and exciting way she’d
never felt before. When it had happened that first time, she would
have sworn she would never want to feel that way again. It was too
… just too much. Too sensitive. Too raw. Too impossible to deal
with.

She couldn’t remember a time when
she’d been quite so frightened, except perhaps when her mother had
died. But even then, she hadn’t been in fear for her own life. This
had most definitely been a worry that she was going to expire,
right then and there. Her heart was pounding, she was sweating and
panting and her body was contracting in mysterious and—she was
sure—dangerous ways. It was certain to be a sinful thing, this
whatever it was that he had done to her, and Amber knew she was
going to die from it. She just knew.

But she didn’t. And she would never
forget just how surprisingly gentle he was with her. He’d gathered
her up like the frightened child she was, and taken her into his
enormous bed—which she was surprised to find later was still too
small for him—and held her until she was more able to come to grips
with what had happened.

She wished he had explained to her
what was going to happen. It might have helped, although she wasn’t
sure that she would have believed him. It was something so … so
different that it had to be experienced, and even now, looking back
at it, she almost thought it was some sort of dream, until her body
reminded her, throbbed and ached and almost began to clench again,
on its own, completely without his touch

She would never have thought that her
body was capable of something that extraordinary. No one had ever
told her. Certainly not her father, and she doubt even her mother,
if she had lived.

Amber hated to admit it as she turned
and thrashed on her little bed, but she hoped he came
home.

Soon.

When he did, it was with news that the
king would be visiting soon, so everything needed to be spit-shined
and polished to within an inch of its life. He arrived with only a
small entourage, most of his men having stayed behind to come home
in a few days. Piers slid down from Tygan and crossed the courtyard
to the gardens immediately, grabbing Amber from her duties and
pulling her up the stairs to his chamber, consigning anyone who
might gossip about them to the devil.

He charged his manservant, Archibald,
with bringing him a tub full of fresh bathwater by the fire. Amber
sat on the edge of the bed while he downed a glass of wine and
watched her ravenously, as a stream of servants paraded in and out
of the room with buckets full of water to fill the small, barely
man sized tub with steaming water.

“
Shall I stay and assist
you with your bath, Sir?” Archie asked.

“
No, thank you, you may
go,” Piers dismissed him with a wave, and Archie left
discreetly.

He descended into that water like he’d
dipped into his first woman so many years ago, slowly, savoring it
every inch of the way. He’d always adored water, any way he could
get into it. He’d driven his mother crazy, swimming in lakes and
ponds when she thought it would kill him dead. His entire family
had a complete aversion to bathing, and their annual bath had to
suffice. He bathed as often as he could, which wasn’t nearly as
often as he liked, although he had no aversions whatsoever to
taking dips in the clear, cold streams or lakes hereabouts. They
were absolutely beautiful.

Piers looked out through the steam at
Amber, who sat nervously perched on the side of his bed, and
wondered if she swam. Probably not.

“
Come here, my flower.” He
let his outstretched arm drip onto the cold floor.

She did so, if a bit reluctantly for
his tastes.

Piers handed her a bar of soap and a
cloth, then said, “Tell me, Amber, do you swim?”

Her face lit up, and once again, he
was enchanted by this woman. “I do! My mum used to hate that I
loved to do it, and I used to get into terrible trouble, but there
was a beautiful lake by the house–” She stopped speaking suddenly,
looking down at the contents of her hands.

Piers had already lain back and closed
his eyes, in anticipation of a lovely bath. “What is it?” He opened
on eye in time to see her brush a tear away and begin bathing him.
But he caught her hand and repeated his question in a warning
tone.

“
I just–I just miss
my–miss my family.”

“
I’m sorry, Amber. I’ll
see what I can do about arranging a trip for you to see them. Would
you like that?”

She brightened up so much that he
wished he’d thought of it sooner. “Yes, please, Sir!”

“
They’re not far from
where the new castle’s being built, right?”

“
Yes, Sir.”

She wasn’t washing him, in her
enthusiasm about the trip, so he brought her hand to his chest in a
hint, and watched her turn several shades of red, having forgotten
the reality of what it was he was expecting her to do for
him.

So she bathed him, but she assiduously
avoided all of the strategic areas. His chest was sparkling clean,
as was his neck and face. His hair was cleaner than it had been in
years, and his back, even his feet, and his arms and hands. But
most of the rest of him still reeked of the road, and he intended
that she was going to give him a thorough bath.

So he grabbed the hand that had been
making determined but useless circles on his belly and pushed it
lower, where it would do him some good, in one way or another. The
cloth slipped, as it was wont to do, and her hand came in contact
with him for the first time.

Amber reacted like a scalded cat, but
his reflexes were too finely honed to let her get away with
retracting her hand that quickly. And, luckily, his ego wasn’t
quite that delicate. He brought her fingers back down to him,
murmuring all the way that touching him wasn’t going to hurt her,
or him—not that he fancied she cared—until her fingers finally
wrapped around the full tumescence of him, and he groaned, deep in
the back of his throat.

That caught Amber’s attention like
nothing could have. The connection between her hand on him, and his
guttural, completely animalistic reaction clicked something in her
head, and experimentally, she moved her hand up and down on him,
just to see what would happen.

Jesu, she was getting naturally too
good at this already, he thought, entirely unable to stop himself
from throwing his head back and growling at the way she held him
firmly, but not too tightly. He wasn’t very fond of the way she was
watching him, though, as if he was some sort of oddity she had to
consider very carefully.

“
Close your
eyes.”

“
Close my eyes?” she
parroted back to him, surprised at the command.

“
Yes. I cannot abide the
way you’re looking at me. Close your eyes or I’ll blindfold
you.”

“
But, Sir.”

“
But what?”

“
I can’t bathe
you–”

In answer, Piers leaned forward,
reached out to grab Amber by the back of the neck, and hauled her
forward, nearly into the bath with him, thoroughly dampening the
front of her tunic as he brought that sweet mouth of hers down onto
his. “Did I tell you that you could stop?”

Her fingers were dormant because she
was too preoccupied by his kiss, but they started up again,
slipping carefully up and down that long, thick shaft of his. Piers
was almost immediately unmanned, if only by her untrained skill.
She kept a wonderful rhythm and pressure without having been
taught—he assumed.

His own free hand was far from idle,
having sought and found her budding nipples where they were brought
into relief by the worn, clinging fabric of her garments. One quick
flick of the tip of his index finger on an impudent nub had her
trying to crane away from him, but he wouldn’t allow it, and he
pulled her closer.

Long before he reached his own
pleasure, he had her panting hotly for her own. He’d never had a
wench who was quite so responsive just to breast play, and this was
without having even bared them to his touch.

As he drew closer to his own end, he
wished he hadn’t decided to do this in a bath, as he wish heartily
for her mouth on his cock, but he knew he wouldn’t last to the bed.
He let her go, so that she might concentrate on the matter at hand.
“Faster, Amber. A little faster, and all the way up to the tip,
then all the way down, every stroke.”