Conquering William

by Sarah Hegger

  Adam chortled and bobbed in his father’s arms.

  “I like his face just as it is.” Alice stepped between the two men. She suspected Garrett jested but she took no chances with her man. She had grown rather partial to his pretty face.

  Ivy made a choking noise, and all heads swung her way.

  She was so pale, Alice moved swiftly into a catching position. Ivy’s attention stayed fixed on the second figure, her hand clasped to her throat.

  “Aye.” Garrett nodded at the man placing his furs carefully on a table. Flaxen haired and broader than Garrett, he looked drawn, as if recently ill. “He insisted on coming.”

  “Tom.” Ivy took a step forward.

  “Tom!” Beatrice broke into a run.

  Garrett grabbed her about her waist.

  “It is Tom.” Beatrice slapped at his arms.

  “Aye.” Garrett jerked his head toward Ivy. “And he is not here for you.”

  Ivy took another few steps.

  Tom waited by the door, his hungry gaze locked on the tiny woman. “I have been a trifle laid up.”

  “I heard.” Ivy reached Tom and stopped before him.

  He towered about her.

  “Are they just going to stand there?” Beatrice twisted her hand in Garrett’s tunic.

  “Hush, sweeting.” Garrett tucked her against his side. “Let them be.”

  Ivy drew back her fist and punched Tom in the shoulder. “You scared me.” Ivy hit him again. “Do not ever scare me like that again.”

  “Ivy.” Tom caught her fist in his huge paw. “I could never leave you.”

  “Oh, that is very good.” Beatrice sighed and gave a happy smile. “He is learning.”

  Tom swept Ivy into his arms and kissed her.

  William chuckled and turned to give the couple their privacy. “He is learning rather fast.”

  With a snort, Garrett turned away as well. “It took the silly sod long enough.”

  “Aye.” William resumed his seat and pulled Alice onto his lap. “Some men take a while to see what is right before them.”

  Read on for a peek at Sarah Hegger’s Sir Arthur’s Legacy, Book #2

  MY LADY FAYE

  The Lady

  The fair Lady Faye has always played the role allotted her. Yet the marriage her family wanted only brought her years of abuse and heartache. Now, finally free of her tyrannical husband, she is able to live her own life for the first time. But someone from the past has returned. Someone she has never been able to forget.

  The Warrior

  After years of servitude as a warrior for King and Country, Gregory is now free to pursue his own path: to serve God by becoming a monk. The only thing stopping him is Faye. Gregory has loved Faye since the moment he saw her. But their love was not meant to be. How can he serve God when his heart longs for her? He can neither forsake God nor the woman he loves.

  The Promise

  When Faye’s son is kidnapped, Gregory answers her family’s call for help, only to find that even in the most dangerous of circumstances, neither can fight their forbidden attraction. An attraction that now burns brighter than ever before. And it is only a matter of time until it consumes them both.

  A Lyrical Historical Romance on sale now from Kensington Publishing!

  Learn more about Sarah Hegger at

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/author.aspx/30580

  Chapter 1

  Faye braced outside the hall where happy voices spilled into the corridor. Two days shy of St. John’s Eve, almost a year to the day Gregory had brought her and her boys back to Anglesea. He’d left before the great bonfires lit that night were extinguished.

  Gathered for the evening meal, Anglesea folk eagerly anticipated the festival marking the summer solstice. So many chattering, laughing people, many of them linked to her by blood and service, yet she still felt like an interloper in her childhood home. She couldn’t stand out here all evening. Lady Faye, daughter of Sir Arthur of Anglesea, Countess of Calder, was expected to present herself for the evening meal and show a pleasant face.

  Calder. Wrenching her thoughts away from the cruel brute she’d married, Faye straightened her shoulders and drew a deep, soothing breath. Calder was the past, and it behooved her to face forward and embrace what the future brought. Faye smoothed her frown away with her fingers. Only old shrews wore their vexation on their faces.

  A cooling breeze from the hall’s open casements brushed her cheeks, stirring the great tapestries adorning the towering stone walls. Fresh rushes, scented with lavender at Mother’s insistence, crunched beneath her feet as she wove her way through the trestle tables.

  “Evening, my lady.” A man-at-arms nodded his greeting as she passed.

  More greetings followed her passage, and she returned them all with a smile. What a happy place this hall was, filled with love and laughter and a thousand different memories of a different girl. As a child she had imagined fey folk flitting and peering down at them through the mighty oak beams crisscrossed into arches along the ceiling.

  A journeyman minstrel, his beard still a smattering of fuzz on his chin struggled to push his voice above the noise. He beamed a huge smile at her, strummed a chord, and paused for effect with his hand in the air.

  A serving maid passed in front of him and ruined his brief flourish.

  “Such beauty as was never seen,

  In golden hair, sapphire eye and lily skin,

  As Fairest of Fairest Faye’s as has ever been,

  And for her love my heart shall pine.”

  Heat climbed her cheeks as a handful of grinning people turned toward her. Of all the ballads penned to her as a girl, he’d chosen that one. Been and pine, the words didn’t even rhyme. The misguided lad had eight ballads to choose from. Eight!

  How her foolish girl’s heart had swelled with pride as she patted herself on her golden head. Stupid girl. Stupid, aye, but that girl’s life had spread before her like a banquet of endless possibilities. Somewhere between her wedding night and her escape—

  Good Lord, she was frowning again. At this rate she would be as wrinkled as Nurse by her thirtieth year. No dwelling. Forward. The rise and fall of merriment wrapped around her and eased her irritability. She smiled as Tom turned to greet her approach. He had grown larger since Faye last saw him. Nurse’s son was not so often found in the hall since he had been gifted his allotment by her father. “Good evening, Tom.”

  “Good evening, Lady Faye.” Predictably he flushed to his fair hairline at the sight of her.

  It was sweet, this little tendre he’d harbored for her since he was a boy. Tom was a special friend of Beatrice’s, but Faye was always glad to see him. “And how is your farm?”

  His lanky frame had filled in with muscle very nicely, and he had a pair of shoulders on him that rivaled Roger’s. Light blue eyes beneath heavy brows held her gaze for a moment before he dropped his chin to his broad chest. “Very well…um…my lady. Thank you for asking.”

  Ivy appeared at his elbow. Tiny and dark, Ivy possessed the sort of delicate beauty and cool distance that kept the men of Anglesea at her heels. Even William failed to thaw the lovely Ivy.

  Tom’s regular features split into a huge smile.

  Interesting.

  “Tom is preparing his north field for planting in the spring.” Ivy put her small hand on Tom’s arm. It lay against the rough sleeve of his tunic like a feather in a pile of wood shavings.

  Tom’s wide shoulders straightened. “Aye. I shall have the entire allotment planted by next harvest.”

  “Did you manage to finish the irrigation trenches?” Ivy’s pale cheeks bore a delicate flush. Apparently Ivy was not as immune to all male charm as it would appear.

  Over Ivy’s head, Henry sent Faye a grave nod from the far end of the hall where he spoke earnestly to a man with a glazed expression. The poor man had her sympathy. Her youngest brother’s fondness for delivering lectures to any recipient
who would stand still long enough to receive one was well known throughout the keep.

  Ivy and Tom’s conversation moved on to animal husbandry. Farming bored her so Faye excused herself.

  “Faye.” A boisterous kiss from Roger and the herb-honey waft of mead announced him well into his cups. Roger’s light eyes danced at her, a flush suffusing his broad, rough-hewn features. Many a lass sighed over her brother Roger. “Come and explain to William why he should be married.”

  “Dear sister.” William’s fine features broke into a smile. Faye couldn’t imagine him relinquishing his position as keep heartbreaker in the near future. He bent his dark head and kissed her cheek.

  “Should you be married?” Teasing William was always fun.

  “Who would have me?” He quirked a dark brow and drained his cup of mead. If he tried to keep pace with the bigger Roger, he would be rolled out the hall before dinner ended.

  “Look at that pretty face.” Cupping William’s carved jaw in his paw of a hand, Roger grinned at her. “There is not a girl for twenty leagues that would naysay our William.”

  “Leave him alone, Roger.” Lord, they would be at each other’s throats in a moment. They’d been doing it since they were lads. Roger toddled and William toddled faster, or at least near broke himself trying. It nearly always ended with fists flying.

  She gave them a repressive stare as she slid past. It would accomplish nothing. Her brothers had too much time on their hands to get into mischief. Time they were married. Father hinted in that regard. William and Henry were rather sanguine about the idea. Roger had developed a case of deafness. She might take him in hand. Then again, she was hardly in a position to advocate the benefits of matrimony.

  Her mother and father were settled at table and Faye took the seat to her father’s left. As the first girl, born after Roger and William, she’d been accorded a special place in her father’s affection.

  His craggy face split into a grin. “Beautiful Faye.” He kissed her cheek. “Tell me how you have been spending this day.”

  She dreaded the question. He asked it every night and every night she burrowed deep for some interesting morsel that wouldn’t make her day seem as stale as old bread. “I am working on a new set of bed linens for Beatrice’s baby. As we do not know the sex of the child, I thought green was a good choice.”

  “Marvelous.” Her father rubbed his hands together.

  She loved him for the attempt, but honestly, the mighty Sir Arthur of Anglesea had as much interest in bedding as, well, she did.

  Twined up in each other like a pair of clinging vines, Garrett and Beatrice entered the hall. Beatrice waddled under the weight of the child she carried. Garrett strutted and preened like the first man to ever conceive a child, hovering about Beatrice constantly. So in love, it made her wish for things she couldn’t have.

  Nurse leant forward from beside Lady Mary. “She carries a boy, you mark my words.”

  Faye itched to adjust her wimple. Nurse wore it so low and tight, it pressed her face inward and gave her the look of a spotted pudding.

  “It is in the shape of the belly.” Nurse made a circle with her hands. “If it is round like that, it’s a boy. You were the same and your mother before you.”

  Oh, spare her Nurse and her predictions. Both times Nurse had sworn up and down Faye bore a girl. She merely smiled at their resident oracle and accepted a goblet from a serving woman. At least the wine at Anglesea was always good.

  Speaking of her confinements, Simon and Arthur should be back by now.

  “Nurse, have you seen the boys?” She leant far forward to see past her father and mother. She had told Sir Arthur they should commission a curved table at Anglesea. It was one good thing she had taken from Calder Castle.

  Nurse’s bodice dropped in her trencher as she replied. See there, a curved table would be a mercy to silk everywhere. “Nay.” Nurse frowned. “I thought they were with young Oliver.”

  Oliver, the squire charged with watching the boys. There were so many around Anglesea, their names blurred into a crowd of eager young faces.

  “Oliver missed weapons practice this evening.” William took the seat beside her.

  Why he did it baffled her because Roger would only insist he move one down. Men.

  Oliver should not have missed practice. Everyone knew Sir Arthur ran a disciplined keep, and squires did not miss practice. Not unless there was a problem. A tendril of alarm curled in her belly.

  “I saw them heading for the beech thicket.” Roger rumbled from behind. He clapped William on the shoulder, his knuckles whitening as he increased his grip.

  “The beech thicket? Did you not stop them? They told me they would go to the stream at the bottom of the hill. They were to remain in sight of the keep guards.”

  “I thought they had your permission.” Roger won the battle with William and wedged huge shoulders in beside her.

  Roger was so thick sometimes, sitting there sipping his mead as if naught was amiss. She had told her boys right before him the thicket was not allowed, even accompanied. Her brother would be well served if she poured his mead over his thoughtless head. Roger should have stopped them. The beech thicket spread all the way to the village and the boys could be anywhere. Best she start looking. Already planning the stern word she would have with her oldest son when she found him, she got to her feet,

  Simon forever led the way into mischief with little Arthur at his heels. She should never have let them go this morning.

  Sir Arthur rose. “Faye?”

  “Forgive me.” She managed a tight smile for the table. “If you will excuse me, I will go and find my sons.”

  Garrett stood. “I shall come with you.”

  “I am sure there is no reason for concern.” She kept it light. Boys were boys and she did try not to coddle them, but for their bellies not to lead them to dinner was unusual.

  “I will come.” Garrett motioned for Beatrice to stay. “Where would you like to begin?”

  Beatrice had a treasure in her husband. Faye gave him a grateful smile as she led the way out of the hall.

  A bench scraped and William called out. “Hang about, Faye, we can split up and cover more ground.”

  Chapter 2

  Remain calm, Faye. A screaming frenzy would not find Simon and Arthur any faster.

  The boys were not in their chamber, or the hall. The kitchen drudges hadn’t seen them and neither had the keep serving women. As a last resort, Faye even tried the chapel. Father Thomas shrugged and looked regretful, but the boys had not been there either. It had been a guess, at best. Two young boys could not disappear into the air.

  “They are not in the laundry.” William dashed another hope.

  The long summer evening gave way to full dark. The entire keep joined the search as it moved outside into the bailey. A tight knot of anxiety grew in Faye’s chest as face after face turned down in regret. They must be somewhere.

  Tom and Roger checked the stables. Nothing.

  Lady Mary led the keep to Vespers. “We will pray you find them soon.”

  Simon could be anywhere. His sense of adventure needed to be curbed with some good sense. Last spring, he led Arthur into the forests surrounding Calder while they played knights and dragons. They lost track of time in their game. Several anxious hours later, Faye found them, filthy and tired with Simon still engrossed in killing his dragon with a makeshift sword and Arthur fast asleep under a tree.

  But they had never been gone this long before.

  Torches flickered across the faces of the men gathered in the bailey.

  Taking charge, Sir Arthur divided the men into groups to cover the area outside the walls.

  “Never fear, sweeting.” Her father hugged her. “They have lost track of time while about their mischief and got turned around in the dark. I am sure we will find them huddled together and telling grisly stories.”

  Stories like the ones Gregory told. Gregor
y. The name rocked through her. Gregory would know exactly where to look. Except, Gregory had left her. Left them.

  Faye gave Sir Arthur a wan smile. She had naught more to give. Her boys were out there in the wicked dark. Please God, let Simon not have gone anywhere near the sea. Only last summer, the smith’s youngest—

  She needed to concentrate on finding her boys. A good mother would have noticed they were gone long before now. And what had she been doing while her sons were lost? Embroidering countless flowers and swirls on yet another piece of fabric. Heedless mother, thoughtless woman.

  Beatrice slipped a warm hand into hers. “Let us search the stables.”

  “They have already searched the stables.” Faye returned the pressure, grateful for her sister’s presence.

  “Aye, but men could not find their asses with both hands.” Beatrice had picked up all sorts of unladylike expressions from her husband.

  It drew a reluctant chuckle from her. Anything would be better than standing here waiting. Her father and brothers had forbade her joining the search outside the keep walls. Even Garrett turned mulish.

  Beatrice tugged her toward the stable, their pace slow due to Beatrice’s girth.

  Hay and mud littered the floor of the stable and Faye picked up her skirts as they tried the grain storage and hayloft first. They even peered into the great rain barrels kept beside the door.

  The horses stirred and stamped at the intrusion as she and Beatrice checked each stall in turn. Hay, water troughs and horses but empty of two, no doubt, dirty little faces. Faye’s stomach ached from keeping it clenched. The boys were too little to be out there on their own. The smith’s youngest child had wandered too close to the cliffs—

  Claws fastened around her chest until each breath labored. They found the boy in the morning, his perfect, little body broken by the jagged rocks below. How did a mother bear such a thing? To live beyond your child, to never hold them in your arms again.