The Conqueror's Lady. Terri Brisbin

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СКАЧАТЬ or their legitimate offspring and not their bastards. His smile must have been a dangerous one for Obert backed away and waited without saying a word. Certainly not his usual response to such an open invitation to speak his mind.

      ‘You must have some counsel to offer, good brother,’ he said, encouraging, nay goading, him into saying the words he now held behind his teeth.

      ‘My lord, the taking of those particular lands is in no way a certainty. They are probably the most dangerous that need to be claimed in your name. Mayhap, some will not even survive. ‘Twould be a pity for some of your most loyal subjects to risk their heirs in such endeavours.’

      William rose to his full height, nearly touching the top of his battlefield tent, and nodded. ‘An interesting perspective, Obert,’ he said, walking to the flap and lifting it higher, giving those outside the signal to approach. ‘And a persuasive argument that will satisfy, at least for the immediate time, some of those who would be most vocal.’

      ‘As you say, my lord.’ Obert stepped to his side and they waited for the most noble, the richest and the most powerful of his supporters to enter. ‘Why waste an heir on such a dangerous task when a perfectly good bastard will do?’

      Another man would be dead on the ground for uttering such words to him. Indeed, many had lost much in doing such a thing in the past, but Obert spoke in understood irony as only one bastard could to another. Their own lives and positions had been based on such decisions. William caught sight of the bodies being piled all over the battlefield and nodded. His men were already calling this place Senlac, the blood lake. And there would be much more blood spilled before he controlled the length and breadth of England.

      It did not matter to the ground beneath him if the blood soaking into it was noble or not. It did not matter to the clay if the man leaking his life held a title or even a name. It did not matter to the earth at his feet if his cause was right or wrong.

      And it did not matter to him, William, Duke of Normandy, the Bastard, and now the Conqueror. Only success mattered now and, if those on Odo’s list had much to gain and little to lose, so be it. He crossed his arms over his chest and nodded to Obert, who began to read out the declarations.

      In war, success mattered, blood did not.

       Chapter One

      ‘Finish the words and you will be a widow before you are a wife,’ Giles Fitzhenry, knighted warrior of William the Conqueror, promised in a harsh whisper.

      The blood from the gash above his eye flowed down his face and dripped on the lady’s shoulder, but still he did not relent in his crushing hold. It would take but a moment’s pressure to crush her throat and he swore to himself and then aloud that he would do it if she spoke the words of the vow. Giles turned to face the now-quieting crowd in the small chapel and revealed the dagger he aimed at her ribs, another assurance that the lady would die if anyone tried to intervene.

      His intended moved with him, gripping his hand as though she could stop him. Lady Fayth of Taerford should have thought about the repercussions of her actions before he arrived. Before his men and hers had been killed in the battle for the keep … and for possession of her. Giles nodded to Roger and his man held his sword to the neck of the lady’s comrade in this crime, waiting for her response.

      ‘The keep and lands are mine now, lady, as are you. Your choice of words will simply bring his death more slowly or more swiftly.’ Giles watched as the woman in his arms exchanged glances with the man held a few yards away.

      He felt her body relent before she spoke the words of surrender. Trying with all his determination to ignore the soft, womanly curves beneath his arm, he lessened his grip a tiny bit and lowered the dagger to give her the opportunity to make the choice. ‘Do you take him to husband instead of me?’ he asked aloud.

      ‘I do not,’ she whispered hoarsely into the deathly silence that had covered the room.

      With her capitulation, his men surrounded her people and began to force them from the chapel. Without letting go, he nodded at his second-in-command and then at the man who she had chosen as husband. ‘Kill him.’

      The priest protested loudly, but his men ignored the old man and prepared to follow Giles’s orders. It was her quiet voice that stopped him.

      ‘My lord,’ she began, trying to face him in spite of his grasp. Her movement simply made his blood drip and smear more over her cloak. It wasn’t until he lessened his grip on her that she could speak louder.

      ‘I beg you, my lord. He is not to blame. Truly. Mercy, my lord. Mercy.’ She leaned her head back, offering herself as a sacrifice to his anger.

      He would tell himself later that it was his need to put an end to the bloodshed that made him relent. He would tell himself that he had never planned to kill the man cajoled or ensorcelled by his betrothed into this foolhardy plan to interfere with his rights to her and the land. But Giles only knew that at the moment when his gaze met hers he wanted to grant her whatever she asked of him. He let out his breath and nodded.

      ‘Take him and his men to the edge of my lands and release them,’ he said in a loud voice. ‘And if, from this time forward, they step back onto my lands or try to contact my wife, kill them without hesitation.’

      After Roger dragged his prisoner from the chapel, Giles released his hold on her. She gasped for breath as he pushed her to another of his men. There was much to do and he needed her out of his way.

      ‘Find a place and secure the lady.’

      Reaching up to touch her throat, she turned as though she would speak, but said nothing. His bloody handprint marred her neck and he knew that the armour gauntlets he wore would leave bruises on her fair skin where he’d held her. Any measure of sympathy he began to feel for her was extinguished when he saw that two of his men lay dead in the back of the chapel.

      Giles met her gaze once more and the hatred burning there in her dark green eyes said more than her words would have or could have. Giles smiled grimly at her, accepting the challenge made silently.

      ‘Nothing is to happen to her, except by my word or by my hand,’ he called out.

      ‘Aye, my lord,’ his soldier answered as he dragged Fayth from his presence.

      After surveying the chapel and making certain that his dead and wounded were cared for, Giles strode to the keep to see what his new home looked like.

      She smelled the metallic odour of his blood on her and felt its stickiness on her skin where his gauntleted hand had clutched her. It was as though he had marked his possession of her where all could see it. Fayth’s throat burned and her chest ached from his crushing hold. As his men dragged her across the yard, she saw Edmund and his men being chained together. Pulling against her guard, she managed to come to a stop, but she feared the cost of calling out to Edmund. When their captors finished chaining them, they were hauled across the yard and out of the gate.

      Would she ever see him again? Would her new lord and master keep his word and see them released? Fayth fought back tears at the thought of never seeing her childhood friend alive again. At least she’d been able to save his life, but now that everyone who had protected her was gone, she alone was left to face this invasion.

      The clamouring at her side caught her attention and Fayth looked on in horror as her people, the servants and villeins of the keep, were herded into the yard that usually held СКАЧАТЬ