The Lord's Right (2 page)

But then, all Normans seemed dreadful
to her.

She appeared out of the thick forest
in front of him like a wraith, and his horse, Tygan, reared
unexpectedly, nearly unseating him. But for all the commotion she
caused, she never acknowledged him, or his ill-behaved horse. She
merely crossed what rough trail passed for an English road and
entered the woods on the other side. Piers ruthlessly controlled
his mount, embarrassed that he’d lost control of him in the first
place—and in front of a common English wench, at that. Yet, there
was something about her that intrigued him, and more than that,
annoyed him.

He wasn’t used to being summarily
ignored.

After swinging down from his mount, he
followed her into the woods, catching up to her only a few steps
in. He swung her around with a jerk on her arm and was amazed to
see that when she whirled around she’d assumed a fighting stance
and had a small blade in her right hand. If he hadn’t been so
surprised, he would have burst out laughing. He was at least twice
her size and he’d be willing to bet that he had a lifetime’s worth
of battle experience on her.

But she wasn’t smiling, and a
frightened woman with a blade could be dangerous.

And apparently she wasn’t afraid to
use it, he surmised, when she stabbed at him and managed to draw
blood from a small nick on his forearm, only because he was trying
not to hurt her—why, exactly, he wasn’t quite sure
himself.

His left eyebrow rose. This woman was
growing more and more intriguing by the minute. He’d barely been on
his own land for more than an hour, and already someone was
challenging him to a fight—and that someone was a female, at that!
What kind of welcome could he expect from the men of the area? Had
his reputation not preceded him? Had no one in these backwards
parts ever heard that they called him Cruel Piers?

Within seconds, once he put his mind
to it and let himself forget that she was a woman, he had her
clamped against him and completely subdued.

Well, as subdued as Amber ever got.
He’d applied pressure to a point between her second and third
fingers such that agony shot through her hand and she’d dropped her
small blade, wishing desperately that she’d kept something more
substantial on her person. But she kept her feet kicking and her
head butting, however ineffectively. Her toes were—she was
sure—breaking against his rock hard shins, and she was certain her
forehead was going to wear the brand of his chain hauberk as she
banged her head incessantly against it.

He switched her position and carried
her at his side like a log, where she could do less damage to the
both of them and simply thought for a moment. Part of him wanted to
laugh, and part wanted to bury himself deep within her, and he
wasn’t at all sure he liked either impulse. But the foremost
thought in his mind was that this young woman needed to be taken in
hand. She was wandering in the woods all by herself. She was
obviously of marriageable age. Where was her husband? Or at the
very least, her father? Why wasn’t she home, taking care of her
babies? Or the house? Why hadn’t she noticed or acknowledged the
fact that she’d frightened his horse, and then attacked him when
he’d come to take her to task about it?

Obviously, whoever’s responsibility it
was to see to this woman wasn’t doing a very good job of it. He
wasn’t the type to shy away from doing what he thought was right.
Whether the job was big or small, Piers never shied from bending
his back to hard work. It was one of the things that made him so
beloved by his men—he was always right there beside them in the
thick of the battle, unlike a lot of leaders, who preferred to lead
from a safer, more comfortable distance.

And this job was just right for him.
He thought back to France, where the amiable Josette awaited his
word to come join him, once he’d established himself here in this
foreign land. She would make a most biddable wife. There was not a
contentious bone in her body. She would be content to give him sons
and run his household, as a woman should.

As he settled onto a fallen log and
placed Amber face down over his lap, controlling her outraged
protests with depressing ease, he said a prayer for her husband, if
indeed there was one. From the way this woman was acting, he needed
it. With no more ceremony than if he was taking out his cock to
relieve himself, he lifted her tunics, which he noted were worn,
but extremely clean, to expose her already scourged
bottom.

“
Well, I can see someone’s
already beaten me to it.” His mouth twisted in a wry smile at his
unintentional word play. Someone had definitely already been at her
bottom, and they’d done a nice job of it, too, but apparently it
hadn’t taken, if its message had been to keep her at home. “Why’d
you get the strapping?” He recognized the marks of a strap well,
having used it himself in several instances, as well has having
been on the receiving end on more than one occasion in his own
youth. Then he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “And who
delivered it?”

It was on the tip of her tongue to
call him a Norman pig. It was glaringly obvious that he was a part
of the occupying force that was scouting out possible sites in the
area for building the castle fortress where their Norman master
would live. But then she also had half a mind to pretend she didn’t
know the French the Norman was speaking. Most hereabouts didn’t; it
was only because of her mother’s wish that her girls be
educated—and her father’s complete devotion to her mother—that she
did. She could both read and write French and English, as well as
Latin and Greek, plus she could do basic math and had a
predilection for sciences, especially botany, which she’d already
parlayed into an herb garden that had villagers from far and wide
coming to her—however grudgingly—for remedies that only she seemed
able to concoct.

While she was deciding, the man who,
unbeknownst to her, would be her lord and master let her know in no
uncertain terms that he wasn’t the type who appreciated being left
waiting. He repeated his question in clear, unaccented English,
just in case, but also applied several unforgiving swats to her
exposed rear, to hurry things along.

His swats were nothing like those her
father gave her. Lawson had long since given up spanking her with
his hand; he didn’t have the upper body strength necessary to make
an impression on her, so he’d taken to using implements, which gave
him the emphasis he needed for his stubborn daughter.

But this man didn’t need help from
anything but his own huge palm and impossibly broad shoulders that
strained against the chain hauberk. To her complete shame, she’d
shrieked with each smack, which was exactly what she didn’t want to
do in front of this man. Her father was her father, and she loved
him, he was a larger than life figure to her, but he wasn’t a
physically big man. He was about her height, and didn’t weigh much
more than she did.

The man, over whose lap she currently
resided, was nothing if not huge. He had long black hair that
wasn’t covered by a helmet, which may or may not have been the
smartest choice, considering that the Normans had only recently
completed their conquest of the English. His eyes were a bright,
intelligent green that seemed to cut right through her. For a
moment, just before she’d lunged at him with her pitifully small
knife, it had seemed as if those eyes had seen much more of her
than she’d wanted him to, and that was what had prompted her to
take a swipe at him. He’d made her feel vulnerable by just looking
at her, and she didn’t like that, especially not the idea of
feeling vulnerable to the enemy, whether she was supposed to be one
of the vanquished or not.

His thighs were broad and strong, she
could attest personally to that since they were rock hard beneath
her stomach, and one hugely muscled arm lay surprisingly gently
across the small of her back, holding her—and the tunics he’d
unceremoniously lifted to reveal her naked and previously punished
backside—in place but not causing her any pain.

It wasn’t the arm across her lower
back that she had to worry about, she realized, when two more
bruising blows were delivered to her already blistered rear. “My
father. My father strapped me.” She stopped herself there, figuring
it prudent not to tell him that she’d been stealing from a group of
people who, from the look of him, were probably his own men. He was
definitely a soldier of some sort or other, not that she knew a lot
about Norman soldiers, nor did she intend to learn.

Unlike her father, he was making freer
with his hands than he should, rubbing her offended parts and even
letting his fingers travel down the crack of her bottom to boldly
tickle the junction of her thighs.

If she’d thought she could find a
vulnerable spot on him, she would have bitten him, but all that she
was presented with was covered with chain mail, and her teeth were
too valuable to her.

“
And what were you being
punished for, Madame?”

“
It’s Miss,” she corrected
bravely.

“
Miss, is it? No man
around here can handle you, hmm?” He asked, emphasizing each of his
words with a smack that had her bottom aching and her eyes flooding
with tears.

The audacity of the man! And the
accuracy, but the audacity mostly! Amber could feel her cheeks
burning worse than they had when he’d flipped her tunics up over
her bum without so much as a by your leave. He knew her all too
well on an all too short acquaintance and he seemed intent on
getting to know her better much too quickly for her
tastes.

Without interrupting that awful rhythm
of slaps, he asked again, “And why did he lay the leather to your
impudent bottom, Miss …?”

Again, she had half a mind to give him
a made up name, but thought better of it. “Amber. Amber Cooper.”
The words came hard to her, as she did her best not to cry,
although it was a lost cause. She’d be damned if she’d let a Norman
pig reduce her to tears. She hadn’t let anyone see her cry since
her Mother died when Faine was born, and she wasn’t going to start
now, with some strange Norman warrior who fancied a slap and tickle
in the woods.

But it was hard. He knew what he was
doing. His hand rarely fell in exactly the same spot, but it was
big enough that there were always areas that overlapped, so every
swat was agonizing.

“
I–I,” she’d never been at
a loss for words before in her life, but this man was accomplishing
a lot of firsts for her. She couldn’t think straight for the fire
he was igniting in her bottom.

“
I was wandering in the
woods. Papa doesn’t like me to do that.”

He stopped for a moment, and Amber was
completely humiliated by the sigh she let out when the barrage of
swats finally let up. “Ahh. So today,” he checked the sky for the
position of the sun, “by only noon, you’ve already disobeyed your
father twice, nearly unseated me from my horse, and attacked me,
and been punished twice. Quite a day’s work for a mere
woman.”

She’d started struggling even before
he’d begun insulting her, not that it had gotten her anywhere. She
was exactly where he wanted her, and not an inch different from
when she’d begun flailing to try to get away from him. The only
thing different was that she was now more exhausted than before
she’d begun.

But she wasn’t out of fight, by any
means, and, out of the corner of her eye, she could see her small
blade not far from his left foot. If only she could lean over, just
a bit, just enough …

Several things happened at once. His
leg went out from under her, yet, when she tried to use this sudden
change in position to her advantage, she found herself still well
trapped. The knife she’d been aiming for, desperately reaching for,
almost dislocating her arm from its socket in order to reach, was
kicked well away, and a hard flat item crashed down onto her
already swollen nates. Pain exploded in her bottom and her head,
and she lost herself entirely, bursting into abject
tears.

She rolled herself into a ball,
wanting only to disappear, hoping to die, and wishing that he would
simply get on with the killing, like all the Normans did. Instead,
to add insult to injury, he was suddenly surrounded by a cadre of
soldiers, all of who saluted him as their leader.

One came forward and bowed down on one
knee before the big man, who stood, paying no attention to Amber
whatsoever, for which she was truly grateful. “We believe we’ve
found a spot, my lord. It awaits your approval.”

“
Thank you, Troy. I’ll see
it now.”

To her surprise, he put his cape over
her, and then she heard him mount that magnificent black beast
whose wild mane of black hair matched his own. “Fitzwilliam, escort
the lady back to her father.”

And with that, he was gone, and she
felt more alone than she had in all her life.

Fitzwilliam did exactly as he was
told, nothing more, nothing less, although, all the way home, he
did keep sneaking glances at Amber. For her part, she had made sure
to quickly scoop up the knife she’d lost to that awful, dark man
who had ended up being exactly the man she’d least wanted him to
be, before they departed, and then she did nothing to make it easy
for him to follow her through the woods, knowing them like the back
of her hand, she nearly lost him several times on the way, and she
wasn’t at all sure he could make it back to his men. But then, that
wasn’t at all her problem. She’d deliberately taken him in the most
circuitous route possible, and whether or not he made it back was
in God’s hands.