My Lady Faye (3 page)

He didn’t want to ask the question. It did not concern him. Yet, his stubborn gut demanded an answer. “What has happened?”

Garrett clasped his arm. “It is Faye.”

“What?” His muscles bunched in response. The words rasped from his throat.
Dear Father, please do not let her be
…

What? Hurt, or worse, reconciled with Calder. He grabbed the other man’s tunic, twisting his hand in the fabric.

Garrett shrugged him off. “I will explain as we ride.”

He couldn’t go. He couldn’t not go. Again, the same tussle within him. Faye or the Abbey, his lady versus his God. It never ended.

Garrett stepped closer until his face was inches away. “Beatrice is worrying herself sick. She carries our first child and if I have to tie your saintly ass on a horse, you are coming with me. Faye needs you.”

Faye needed him. The confusion cleared. It was all Garrett need say. Clean, crisp purpose flooded his being. “Do you have a horse for me?”

Garrett’s grim face softened into a smile. “Come on, before one of your monks catches sight of me and tosses me in there.”

* * * *

The tide washed close and crashed over the large rocks beneath Faye’s casement, back and forth it went, in an endless draw and suck. The walls of her chamber closed around her, robbing the air from her.

Women whispering all around her, driving her closer to the dark place. Like hens in a battery—Bea, her mother and Nurse—heads clustered together and clucking over her near untouched dinner. They didn’t understand. Calder had her boy. That monstrous brute had her child and she could not rest, could not eat. She sprang to her feet and paced over to the hearth.

A roaring fire warmed her bedchamber, but left the ice within her untouched.

Her father wouldn’t help her. Couldn’t help her, he said. Her teeth ground together. The vaunted Sir Arthur of Anglesea would not act to save his grandchild. She hated him. Nay, she loved her father. Her hatred belonged with Calder. They didn’t know, didn’t understand, the darkness within Calder and the lengths to which he would go. Only she really knew, and Gregory.

A dark, tousled angel amidst a feminine whirl of embroidered flowers and rich blue silk, Arthur slept on her bed. She wouldn’t allow them to take him from her sight. She was all that stood between him and the devil who had his brother.

“Faye.” Lady Mary caught her arm. “You must eat, sweeting.”

“Aye.” Faye tugged free. She had not the strength to argue with them. They offered her food when she needed an army to rain vengeance down on Calder’s head. Her Arthur needed her strength for him. She must gather her inner resources and conserve them for the battle to win Simon. A hot shaft of anger wrenched up from her feet until it vibrated through her. She clenched her hands into her bliaut to hide their shaking. She was alone in this. Sir Arthur would not help her.

“You will make yourself ill if you carry on in this manner.” Lady Mary’s eyes filled with tears.

“Do not cry.” Tears were useless. No more tears. She turned her back on her mother and went to check on her son. Sleeping, his cheeks flushed.

Whispering from the door. Talking about her. Casting their soulful, pitying glances in her direction. Her eyes smarted, gritty from lack of sleep. She dared not sleep. If she closed her eyes for a moment, they would come and take Arthur as well. Never. She forced her legs to walk. She must stay awake like the tide, alert to danger.

A knock on the door.

She jerked to a stop. The knock must mean news of Simon. She stared at the door.

Beatrice went to answer, cracking the door open and peering through.

More infernal whispering. They thought she’d lost her mind. They kept her confined to this room like a madwoman. Her eyes burned from staring and she blinked.

Beatrice’s face relaxed into a smile.

It must mean they had Simon, or news of him. Her throat felt raw from holding in the tears and her voice came out as a harsh rasp. “Is it Simon?”

“Nay.” Beatrice’s brow creased and her mouth dropped.

Faye turned her back. The hope was almost worse than the constant fear. It was harsh in its flicker of life and left her only raging disappointment like a hook dragging through her lungs.

Arthur stirred in his sleep.

She went to him, touched the silk of his dark head with her hand. So warm and so alive, his soft breath raising and lowering his chest. They would not take him. Not while she still breathed.

Simon. She hunched her shoulders, hiding her face from the whisperers. The rawness inside her left her gasping for breath.

The door opened. Footfalls thumped the flags. The air stirred with a new presence.

“My lady?”

The hair on her nape rose. His voice, like a hot blade to an open wound. She had lost her mind. They were right. She could not turn and face the bitter anguish of the lie.

“My Lady Faye?”

Damn her legs! They turned her to face the door. Her head came up last, heavy on her stiff neck.

Strong, beautiful, outlined by the light in the corridor beyond. She had forgotten how tall and how broad. And his face. A crack opened in the hard ice within. Those eyes, darker than ebony in the harsh planes of his face. Her salvation. Her hope. The fissure widened and the anguish flooded in.

He walked toward her, his postulant robes fluttering about his powerful legs.

She would tear that robe to pieces. It had taken him from her, but the resentment was tiny, inconsequential, beside the rending asunder within her.

He was here to make Arthur safe, to bear her pain and her gnawing fear. Gregory would never let them take her boy. She could rest. Her legs buckled.

He caught her, his arms like steel around her as he drew her against his strength.

Faye rested there and drew in the scent of wool and horse and Gregory. A hundred images buffeted her, dark eyes so caring and sure, her anchor, her one safe point. Her fingers dug into the wool and touched the hewn strength beneath.

The first sob shook her.

His arms tightened.

She pressed her cheek to the rough homespun of his robes and absorbed the heat of him. The awful noise in her head stilled beneath the steady thump of his heart.

“My lady,” he murmured against her hair. “My own lady.”

“They took Simon,” she said, the words muffled by his chest.

“I know and I am here.”

His warmth curled into her and ice shattered and splintered, driving hard into her wounded heart.

And Faye cried.

* * * *

Drawing the covers up to Faye’s chin, Gregory drank in the sight of her. Dark rings stood out in sharp contrast to the deathly pale of her skin. Still so damned beautiful and fragile she near broke him as she sobbed in his arms. He pressed his palm to his chest and tried to ease the ache inside. Since the moment he first saw her, he had not beheld anything as lovely. His failure tasted bitter in his mouth. She needed him and he had been on his knees praying for his salvation.

“She sleeps?” Lady Mary nudged him aside. The torment of the last few days etched harsh lines around her mouth.

They told him Faye had not slept in three days, had barely eaten, just paced her chamber in a frightening, brittle calm. “It is better she rests.”

“Thank you.” Tears glittered as Lady Mary turned her head aside to hide them. “We did not know what else to do. She…”

Gregory waited for her to compose herself. Rage smoldered like a banked fire within him. That whoreson had Simon. The profanity shocked him a little, but it was apt. Only he knew the depth of the man’s depravity. His lady knew, only too well, the beast to whom she was wed. Seven years he’d lived with it, an impotent witness with no power or right to intervene between a man and his wife.

Faye’s hair escaped confinement in wisps across her cheek, spun silk, the color of an early moon.

His fingers twitched to trace the creamy softness of her skin. He turned away. The lust, he could surrender to God, but the tenderness always hit him like a stave to the knees.

“You will want to speak with Sir Arthur.” Lady Mary straightened the covers about her daughter and little Arthur.

The boy had grown. He would be tall like his grandfather and those sturdy little limbs held all the promise of a fine, strong man. For the first two years of his life, all Arthur had managed to lisp of his name was “Gree.” “Story, Gree!” or “Up, Gree!” His little face twisted in determination as he bellowed. “Nay, Gree!” Arthur had a will to match any man’s.

Young Simon, in the hands of that monster. It made him want to rip his robes off, grab his sword and ride like the devil himself to get his boy. Her boy, not his, only his for a short time, it became too easy to forget that.

He followed Lady Mary out of the chamber and into the upper reaches of Anglesea. People nodded a greeting as he passed, subdued and wearing their sadness on their faces.

Lady Mary left him at the entrance to the hall.

Seated in one of two enormous carved chairs, Sir Arthur waited for him.

It was a fine hall, tall and majestic, proclaiming to all the might of its owner. On any other night, it would have been filled with castle folk, chatting away the hours before bedtime. Only Sir Arthur was here now, keeping silent vigil. Even the dogs lay silent by the hearth, their ears pricked, their gazes patient and watchful.

A pall hung over Anglesea and contrasted with his happy memories of the place. This hall should be a place filled with cheery, laughing faces, packed with love and good humor. The difference saddened him.

A large man with a barrel chest and the battle-hardened arms of a warrior, Sir Arthur’s craggy face drew into grim lines. He rose to his impressive height. “Sir Gregory.”

Not many men met him eye to eye. Sir Arthur stopped just shy. “Merely Gregory, now.”

Sir Arthur flushed. “Indeed, Father, my apologies.”

“Not Father either.” The admission pinched at his gut. “I am still a postulant.”

Sir Arthur’s brows rose. “You have not become a novice?”

“Nay.” Resentment sputtered and died. Calder had Simon and his Lady Faye lay as a brittle shell in her chamber. Thank the Lord he could produce coherent speech with all warring inside him. “The Father Abbott has adjudged me not ready to take my vows.”

“Indeed. It is perhaps fortunate for us this is so.” Sir Arthur pressed his thumbs into his eyes. “You have seen my daughter?”

“I have.” She still rendered him weak when they shared the same space.

“I have failed her.” The older man’s shoulders slumped. “My child has come to me in her hour of greatest need and I am impotent as a—” His gaze flickered over Gregory and he flushed.

The first glimmering of humor since Garrett dragged him from the monastery tilted his mouth into a smile. “Not impotence, my lord, abstinence.”

“Verily.” Sir Arthur cleared his throat and motioned the chair beside him.

Gregory adjusted the skirts of his habit and sat. They seemed ridiculous beside the armor-clad Sir Arthur. Of course, they were not ridiculous. His robes served as a reminder of his inner conviction, the symbol of his chosen life. He shouldn’t be here. Dear Father in Heaven, as if he would be anywhere else. “The abstinence is harder.”

Sir Arthur gave a short bark of laughter. “I wager so.”

A log popped in the hearth and one of the coursing hounds raised his head. The hound trundled over to him as Gregory clicked his fingers. There were animals aplenty at the Abbey, but farming beasts, bullocks, chickens and goats. He stroked the courser’s brindle coat and the animal settled again with a heavy sigh.

“I am given to understand your hands are tied.” One of them had to broach the conversation and Sir Arthur seemed lost in his study of the fire.

The older man grunted. “Aye. Since the Army of God, I am under the king’s suspicion. All the rebel barons are.”

“And Calder has risen as a shining example of loyalty.” Sour coated the back of his tongue. Calder played this well, the larcenous wretch, he stayed on the side most likely to pad his coffers. Supporting the late King John through the baron’s uprising had played well for Calder, and now he enjoyed the favor of the boy King Henry.

“I did not see it.” Sir Arthur shook his head. “I, who have always prided myself on my acuity in reading men, gave my daughter to that conniving dog.”

Anger curled low in Gregory’s belly, demanding he tell the man the truth of what he had given his daughter into. It was not his secret to tell, so he held his peace.

Whining, the dog nudged his hand.

“Calder is a master dissembler. I was fostered into his household as a page and I did not see him for who he truly was until recently.” To say more would be cruel. Sir Arthur’s careworn visage rebuked his anger and he had not the heart to add another worry.

“But you are not her father. She was not entrusted into your care at birth.” Sir Arthur brushed his hand across his face.

Nay, but she was entrusted into his care at her marriage. It amused Calder to have Gregory stand as Faye’s knight protector. They jeered at him and called him Father Piety and gave into his care the most beautiful treasure of Calder Castle.

“I will do what I can.” Sir Arthur leant his elbows on his knees. “I have sent a message to Lady Mary’s brothers. They are still in the new king’s favor and will intercede on our behalf. The king is young and we can play on his youth to further the cause of the mother.”

It was a fair plan. England still staggered under the weight of the dead King John’s rule. Loyalties shifted like sea sand in the tide of power. The weight on Sir Arthur’s shoulders might have crippled a lesser man.

Calder’s star had risen since King John’s death and an act against the Earl of Calder could be construed as raising his hand against the new king. After taking part in the Army of God against King John, Sir Arthur’s every action fell under close scrutiny. As much as it chafed to admit it, the man trod a thin line between treason and loyalty to the family he had to protect.

Calder would know it, too, which was why he acted now. There would not be much support for a rebel baron raising an army to take the heir to a powerful earl.