My Lady Faye by Sarah Hegger Page B

at the Abbey muted by comparison to the fresh bite of the air, the freedom of the forest about him.
    His morning growth itched like the devil. He liked to be clean-shaven. He took a knife from his boot and tested the edge with his thumb. Next, he dug out a small pot of bathing soap from his pack and a washing cloth. Road dust coated him and he needed to refresh himself before they traveled farther. When Faye woke, he would draw clean water for her .
    Smoke drifted up from the inn’s chimney. The smell of fresh baking bread made his mouth water. After he was clean, they would see to breaking their fast. He would need to buy some more food. He lathered his face. The blade rasped against his cheek.
    At Anglesea, Sir Arthur would be busy this morning, the danger to Faye adding fuel to his fire. They were good people, Sir Arthur’s family. Wily as a sack of fox cubs, but kind and well intentioned and their people prospered beneath their rule. He was glad Faye had returned to them. He would never have been able to leave her until he was assured of her safety. He wiped the blade clean and moved to his chin.
    On the other side of the cart, a farmer sleepily harnessed a pair to his bullock cart. The cart was empty. He must be on his way back from market. Gregory would wager it would be well into morning before last night’s carousers arose. They had made noise long into the night.
    A woman appeared in the inn’s doorway and tossed the contents of a bucket into the yard.
    The well water stung his skin with cold. He hissed in a breath as he worked the frigid cloth over the skin of his chest and arms.
    * * * *
    Faye lay dead still. If she so much as twitched, he might stop.
    His limbs were all hewn strength. Darkened by the sun, his skin clung tight to the swells and ridges of muscle. Dark, coarse hair dusted the center of his chest, before marching in a straight line beneath his waistband.
    Her fingers twitched to trace that path and beyond.
    Calder was a strong, well-proportioned man, but nothing to Gregory. His form thrillingly base and elemental, a beautiful male creature shaped for power and conquest.
    Heat spread from her belly to between her thighs. Under her bindings, her nipples tingled.
    He rubbed the cloth up his side and under his arm. His skin gleamed under a fine layer of water.
    How would it be to take the cloth from his hand and stroke it over him? Follow the narrow indentation of his waist as it broadened into his shoulders, up and over and down the sinewy steel of his arms. Her skin prickled with heat. This was madness. She screwed her eyes shut, the image of him branded on her closed lids. She pressed her palms into her eyes to erase it.
    “You are awake?” Gregory’s voice startled her. “I will finish and fetch you some fresh water.”
    She nodded, not trusting her voice to speak or her gaze not to return right to the source of her discomfort. He would be shocked rigid if he so much as guessed the direction of her thoughts. She’d never seen him take a woman to his bed. At Calder she’d made it her business to know, half of her intrigued and the other terrified that he would. She was married and had no claim on him yet, in her mind he was hers.
    In his mind, he was God’s man.
    She rolled on her front and crawled out from under the cart. The morning sun made scant inroads on the dense foliage. Long shadows stretched across the yard.
    Gregory snatched up his robe and tugged it over his head.
    She sighed. What a waste of male beauty.
     
     

Chapter 8
     
    Calder Castle soared against the moody gray sky casting grasping fingers of shadow over the deep green forest spread around it. It hit Faye like a fist in her belly. She never wanted to see the place again. Over a year since she’d been here, and the familiar sense of being trapped fastened around her throat.
    “There she is.” Gregory halted the bullocks.
    A solid red-stone structure atop a rise, built for defense, its front guarded by a large mere