Purebred (Seven Brides for Seven Bastards #3 )

by Georgia Fox

  The seven bastard sons of Guillaume d'Anzeray are on a mission to find wives -- women to breed the next generation of a dark dynasty that many wish to see extinct.

  It won't be easy to find brides from among the Norman nobility, for the d'Anzeray are upstarts, their family's fortunes raised through bloodshed and violence. As one holy man and chronicler of their times has written, "From the devil they came and to the devil they will return". But these brothers don't care much for holy men or for what is written about them. Now, with the future of their bloodline at stake these mercenary warriors need wives and they have no scruples when it comes to claiming the women they desire.

  Purebred

  Seven Brides for Seven Bastards, 3

  by

  Georgia Fox

  M/F/M/M, BRIEF F/F, BONDAGE, BDSM, ANAL,

  SPANKING WITH BELT, CUCKHOLDING, DOUBLE PENETRATION, PUBLIC EXHIBITION,

  SEX TOYS, DUBIOUS CONSENT,

  AND FORCED SEDUCTION

  Twisted Erotica Publishing, Inc.

  A TWISTED EROTICA PUBLISHING BOOK

  Purebred

  Seven Brides for Seven Bastards, 3

  Copyright © 2013 by Georgia Fox

  Edited by Marie Medina

  First E-book Publication: August 2013, SMASHWORDS EDITION

  Cover design by K Designs

  All cover art and logo copyright © 2013, Twisted Erotica Publishing.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  To: Ginger

  "They were ruffians, murderers and wife-stealers. They took as they desired without bowing to law or God, or conscience."

  Herallt, medieval chronicler, on the deeds of the d'Anzeray family

  Chapter One

  1072

  Isobel stepped out of her bath and stood silently while the maid wrapped a clean fleece around her shoulders. It was cold today, the stone under her bare feet stinging like blocks of ice, but she was glad of the change from the long heat of summer. The harsh ache now sweeping up her bones was satisfying proof that the seasons were changing, time passing. At last. While the dusty, dry spell had stretched on with unremitting dreariness, it had seemed to Isobel as if they were all stuck, trapped in purgatory. But the blessed relief of rain had come that morning in the early hours. She'd woken to the pleasing sound of it beating on the shutters of her bedchamber window. It had seeped into the hard ground and even formed a few puddles in the yard. Life could finally move forward again. Soon the leaves would fall and frost would come. Things would change.

  If only her body would change too, she thought, glancing down at her flat belly and small breasts. Alas, there was no chance of pregnancy to fill her out. Not while her husband still failed to breach her maidenhead. Despite several fumbling attempts he had yet to keep a semi-hardened cock in her presence, let alone one capable of breaking through her barrier. Subsequently another flux had just come and gone, as it did every month with tedious monotony. Another chance for a babe was lost with that blood flushed out of her. Now her body's cycle began again and with it the interminable wait to fulfill its duty. Her duty.

  The maid began to comb out her long, wet hair, but Isobel stopped her.

  "Thank you, Jeanne. I'll do it myself."

  "Yes, my lady."

  She took the comb and walked to the window, looking down on the yard. A few figures moved around below, along with some dogs and horses, hens and a few pigs. Two small children leapt in and out of puddles, laughing for joy at the muddy mess they made of their feet.

  Isobel almost smiled, but then she saw a familiar, wide-shouldered figure cantering through the gates and her lips quickly formed their usual hard line of disdain. The guards jumped to attention, but he greeted them with a casual shout and a wave of his gauntleted hand.

  The easy, confident gesture annoyed her. Everything about him always did.

  The way he spoke. The way he moved. The way he ate. The way he looked at her.

  He rode into her husband's castellany and filled it with his brazen, boasting noise, his brutal, ruthless masculinity. And Lady Isobel, wife of the man who had hired him, felt anger, impatience, frustration.

  On that morning, even the mere sight of this mercenary knight brought a sharp halt to her pleasure over the rain. He'd spoiled the day, shattering her simple joy in the change of temperature, just as his warhorse's hooves splattered through the puddles and tore apart the sky's reflection.

  He was a common man, a bastard raised up by his bloodthirsty deeds in battle, and now he thought highly of himself. Perhaps that was why his arrogance annoyed her even more than that of most men she knew, for his was built on the pain and suffering of others.

  Isobel had lost a brother to war and her first betrothed likewise. She could find nothing redeemable in a man who made his fortune from killing.

  Hearing the ruckus outside, her maid joined her at the narrow window and peered out. "The Blackheart," she muttered. "He returns safely again, my lady."

  Isobel forced a yawn. "So it would seem." She kept hoping he would go off on one of his missions for her husband one day and not return. But he was apparently indestructible. "And kindly stop referring to him by that preposterous name. He is Alonso d'Anzeray. But if you must call him anything, upstart bastard will be sufficient."

  He dismounted, talking to one of the grooms and waving his arms about in his usual manner of exaggeration. A small group of soldiers followed behind him, all of them spattered with blood and dirt. They looked tired, but content, celebrating as they gathered around their much-admired leader. Another battle was won in her husband's name.

  "Have you heard, my lady, what they say about the d'Anzeray men?"

  Isobel had, in fact, heard a great many things said about the notorious brothers d'Anzeray, but to her shame it didn't stop her morbid curiosity wanting to know more. "What do they say now, Jeanne?" she snapped.

  "That they are descended from the daughter of Satan, my lady."

  Isobel exhaled a curt laugh. "That explains a lot. Alonso d'Anzeray is a crude beast of a man who might as well have cloven hooves rather than hands and feet, and horns instead of ears."

  In the four weeks since he first came there to work for the Baron Louvet, the warrior had shown himself to have no manners, no couth, no gentility. He slept in the hayloft over the stables, more at home with the horses than with his fellow men. He told loud, filthy stories at supper every evening and monopolized her husband's attention — when he was not seducing the women of the castellany, rutting like a young bull wherever and whenever he took a fancy.

  "And the seven brothers are collecting women for a harem, my lady," her maid continued, slightly breathless. "Their father sent them out to find brides to breed and they...they share their women."

  Isobel sniffed. "This does not surprise me at all, Jeanne. I suggest you stay well out of his way while he remains here. It surely can't be for long. Mercenaries and thieves like him are always on the lookout for a better opportunity."

  "Yes, my lady."

  Suddenly, as if he sensed their eyes upon him, Alonso looked up, swept his shoulder-length black hair aside, and stared directly at her window. His regard was fierce, unblinking. One end of his lips moved in a half smirk that also lifted the corresponding brow in a cocky, sensual arch.

  Little Jeanne whimpered and covered the sound quickly with
both hands. But Isobel was betaken by a sudden wicked impulse. She let the fleece fall from her fingers, as if quite by accident.

  Below in the courtyard, the man they called "Blackheart" did not blink, but stared, ruthlessly taking in the sight of her naked body as she stood at the narrow window with little drips of bath water slowly trickling from her hair. She felt a frisson of heat ripple across her skin and under it.

  "Oh, my lady," Jeanne gasped, stooping quickly to retrieve the fleece and save her mistress's modesty.

  But Isobel made no movement to cover herself. She let him look for a moment more and then, with every ounce of haughtiness she could muster, slammed her shutters closed, blocking out the grey light and his arrogant, unworthy face.

  * * * *

  The Baron was drunk again tonight. Alonso observed the fact soon after taking his seat at supper in the great hall. As usual, seated on Louvet's right at the top table, he was expected to regale the man with all the gory details of his latest victory.

  "I would ride with you myself, d'Anzeray," the Baron slurred, leaning heavily on the carved arm of his great chair, "but there is so much to do here and, of course, until I have strong grown sons to stand in my place I cannot risk leaving the manor untended."

  Alonso merely nodded and drank his wine. He knew Louvet, like many of his kind, was a coward who preferred paying others to do his dirty work. But this was perfectly agreeable for Alonso, who gladly collected a good fee for shedding blood on the Baron's behalf.

  "And it seems my lady wife can't give me those sons I need," Louvet added, sneering over his shoulder at the woman seated on his left. "Seven months and no sign of a babe in her womb. I was sold infertile stock, d'Anzeray. She's all bones and hard edges, never keeps a bit of fat on her. I should return the useless wench to her father."

  His wife kept her eyes on her bowl, her hands cupped around it. Nothing about her calm expression suggested she even heard her husband's insults.

  "Then why don't you?" Alonso asked, setting down his cup. He knew the answer, of course, for Louvet talked of it almost every night.

  "She's a witch," the Baron hissed, leaning closer. "She keeps a doll of me and stabs it full of pins to keep me in these agonies every day. If I sent her back to her father, who knows what she would do."

  Alonso struggled to hide his smile. "Mayhap she would be glad to go home. She does not seem content here."

  "No woman is ever content, d'Anzeray. They're all miserable wretches. No, no, I gave her father fifty head of cattle in exchange for the woman. He won't want her back again. So I must make the best of it."

  The Baron's wife raised a cloth to her lips and dabbed them dry with a stiff, dainty gesture. She had long fingers with clean nails and soft, smooth, pale skin. Her eyes were a very light shade of green, her lips a fragile pink. Since she always wore a wimple Alonso would never have known how dark her hair was until he saw it that day when she stood at her chamber window with her long, wet locks spilled over her shoulders. It was a shocking discovery. All that lush, sable extravagance tumbling around her solemn face had made him stare up at her longer than he should.

  He remembered thinking her plain the first time he saw her. But that was months ago. Now, each time he looked at her prim face he found something new and interesting. Almost as if she revealed herself slowly to him, piece by teasing piece. Today, standing at her chamber window she had let him see her hair. He knew what a concession that must be for such a tightly bound young woman of noble birth. To let him, a mere mercenary soldier — a man whose existence she barely lowered herself to acknowledge— see all the luxury of her thick, dark hair, that alone was improper.

  Then she dropped her fleece and he saw her naked body, from head to thigh. He should have looked away. But Alonso was not the sort to deny himself pleasure. He lived his life, each day and night, to its fullest and made no apology for it.

  She showed. He looked. Why she showed him he had no idea; why he looked was obvious.

  The Baron proclaimed her to be a witch who had sewn his soul up in a straw doll, cast a spell upon his manhood, and robbed him of the ability to mount her. Alonso had always dismissed the story as drunken rambling. He didn't believe in witchcraft.

  Not until today, that is.

  He was more ready to believe it now, after seeing her stand nude at that window. For what man with his parts in working order would not have impregnated this fine woman by now? The Baron apparently enjoyed tupping with other women about the place and only his lady wife remained untouched. It did seem as if she might somehow be keeping her husband at bay deliberately.

  Yes, she was very thin, but with a little care and good food that would change. And she was tall with long bones, which suggested she was naturally slender. It seemed cruel of the Baron to constantly insult her about her figure. But then, if it bothered her she would eat more. Her appetite was meager to say the least. If she ate more, he mused, the Lady Isobel might be a happier person in general. She might—heaven forbid—actually smile once in a while.

  Well, that was none of Alonso's business. He was there to rout persistent rebels from the Baron's land and collect his good fee. That was all.

  The Lady Isobel, a woman with challenge in her eyes and apparently ice in her veins, was no concern of his.

  "My wife holds my balls over a candle every night," Louvet complained in his ear. "I mean, the balls she has sewn on that doll. 'Tis why I can't take a piss without it burning."

  Alonso picked at his teeth with a slender strip of bone. "Why not take the thing away from her then? This doll she made."

  "She keeps it hidden. I know not where."

  "Make her give it to you. She is your wife and as such she must obey you."

  "Ah, to you it seems simple, eh? But you have no witch for a wife."

  He chuckled. "True. Nor will I ever. I prefer obedient, sweet-tempered wenches who know when to be grateful for the hand they've been dealt and don't think themselves too grand to be touched. A wife would never keep me from her bed, doll or nay."

  She must have heard that for she glanced his way very slightly and her green eyes flickered with disgust.

  "I'd soon have her tamed." Alonso expelled a low, rumbling, satisfying burp. "And bred."

  Louvet croaked with laughter, wine leaking out of his mouth and down his beard. "I daresay you would, young scoundrel. But I was once like you too and now look at me. Old and broken before my time, all my fine days lost to history. Make the most of your youth, d'Anzeray. We none of us keep it for long."

  Alonso looked over the other man's head and saw Lady Isobel's lips purse, her eyelids lower wearily. She was, he'd heard, a daughter of the Duc de Bressange. Her mother was a descendent of Charlemagne. Her uncles filled seats at the king's court, and one of her brothers had married a daughter of the Count of Anjou. Her lineage was impeccable. And she knew it.

  Every pert sigh and scornful glimmer made her superior status clear without a word passing her lips.

  How she came to be sent there to marry Louvet, a man twice her age and half her family's consequence, was something of a mystery. Alonso, familiar with the dealings of noblemen, suspected Louvet must have called in a favor, or else had something with which to blackmail Bressange into giving away his daughter. Whatever the reason for her presence there, she was plainly resentful of it.

  Perhaps he could imagine her thrusting sharp pins into a small effigy of her drunkard husband, he thought, darkly amused.

  When a page brought her a tray of fruit, she dismissed it with a terse shake of her head. She had barely eaten anything but broth all evening. He wondered if the pious lady was fasting again. Alonso had seen her once —when she thought no one was looking—nibble like a mouse at the sweet crust of a pie before she sent it away. He'd witnessed the guilty gleam in her eyes. It was as if she punished herself for some reason.

  "You have not congratulated us on today's victory over the rebels, Lady Isobel," he called out to her boldly, determined to make her look at
him tonight.

  "I think you congratulate yourself enough to make up for it," she muttered, her eyes focused across the hall to where the minstrels played. "I fail to see any good cause to shriek with joy every time men spill more blood in the name of conquest. How clever you are to subdue your enemy by silencing them forever. I would be more impressed if you learned to live together in peace."

  It was rare for the lady to speak up this much with her opinions. He wondered why she did so tonight. Why she revealed yet more of herself to him in this way. Perhaps the rains that came that day and ended the dry spell had brought new life to her as it did to the land. Everything was revived by the rain.

  Except the Baron. Between them her husband slumped drowsily in his chair, humming to himself, lost in his own world.

  "Some do not even bother to learn the Saxon tongue," she continued. "Without some effort of communication we may as well all be beasts. Why bother with clothes and laws and churches? The Saxons are people too. They are not ignorant animals, and yet that is how they have been treated. Rounded up and slaughtered, their homes and fields burned." She shot her inattentive husband a quick, disdainful glance and then looked away again. "I have seen it many times in my years here."

  Alonso's eyes narrowed as he watched the woman over her husband's bowed head. "It appears you favor the Saxon cause over your own people, Lady Isobel."

  "A sweet accusation indeed," she replied swiftly, "from a man whose loyalty is bought and paid for, who would fight for anyone offering the right price."

  "I am Norman."

  "But not full blood." At last she turned to look fully at him. "You are part Spaniard, are you not? And god — or the devil—only knows what else you might be."