‘My thanks for seeing to the lady,’ her husband said to his friend. Fayth could not meet the knight’s eyes.
‘I shall return, Giles. I need to ride.’
He pulled on his courser, causing the horse to rear up on its hind legs before landing forward with a great thud. Fayth moved with Giles to give the knight room and within a few seconds the knight urged his horse to a gallop and they were gone through the gates.
‘Lucien, watch his direction and send two riders after him,’ Giles called up to the guard tower.
Taking her hand, he led her along towards the keep. ‘Worry not, lady. He suffers these dark moods and nothing can soothe them.’
‘Nay, my lord. I suspect it has been my behaviour that has so angered him. I do not jump at his command or take his counsel when offered.’ It was close to the truth.
‘Lucien, where did he head?’ he called out just before entering the building.
‘To the east, my lord. I am sending Stephen and Fouque after him.’
‘They are the best trackers amongst my men. They will make certain he returns in one piece.’
As she followed him inside Fayth realized that Brice was headed towards Lord Huard’s lands.
Brice strapped his helm and sword to his saddle and gave his horse its head to gallop. He headed east towards Huard’s lands to seek answers to questions he’d not shared with Giles. Suspicion was all he had right now and without proof he would not draw Giles into the middle of it. But after listening to the lady’s conversations in the cottage, he knew there was more going on here and he would be damned if he did not cover his friend’s back.
He slowed his horse down and rode for several miles until he nearly reached the end of Giles’s lands and then turned northward along a stream and a small rise of hills. He found a small lake and stopped to let his horse rest and water. It was there that Stephen and Fouque caught up with him. Giles had sent no orders along, so he led the men up through the hills to the borders with Huard’s lands.
It took some hours to explore but Brice discovered the sickening proof of Huard’s despicable acts against his people. Three bodies lay close enough to a road to be seen if someone rode by, in a heap, so he suspected that they’d been dumped there after death. Examining them, he imagined that the two in the weaver’s croft must have the same types of injuries.
As they searched the area near the bodies they found the hoof prints of large, heavy warhorses in the rain-soaked ground. Giles and he and their men were not wealthy enough to afford the prized destriers that noblemen could, destriers that left prints like these in the mud.
But, Lord Huard’s men were.
Brice swore the other two to secrecy until he could inform Giles of his findings, then they buried the bodies beneath stone cairns and rode back to Taerford Manor. It was after nightfall by the time they arrived and he found that the lord and his lady had retired to their chambers for the night.
Deciding to allow his friend his night of pleasure in his wife’s bed before revealing the information he’d gathered, Brice only hoped it was not the last one they shared.
Chapter Sixteen
She’d been skittish all day, ever since returning from the village and being the target of Brice’s dark temper. His friend had these episodes frequently and it was best to let him seek relief as he had today—riding far and fast. It was almost as though he knew his days as an unencumbered knight were drawing to a close and his time as a lord with many responsibilities and duties drew closer. Brice wanted those things, as Giles and Soren did, but the approach of gaining that which they had dreamed of and never thought possible made them nervous and uncertain.
Giles had faced it on his way here to Taerford, but had had only a few days in which to tackle his fears and ready himself to take control. Not an easy task, preparing for things in a matter of days that others took their lives to do, but now, seeing Brice grow tense and irritated, he wondered if his experience had been the easier one.
Giles tried not to press his attentions too quickly, but now that the time was here he was skittish, too. He’d watched as Fayth said her prayers, sliding the prayer beads over and through her fingers, her lips moving but no sound escaping. And all the while, God forgive him, he’d thought of nothing but her naked body under his.
He was hard already. He thought that it had started at the slight nod she had given him during dinner to his unspoken question about whether her courses had stopped. She’d blushed, while his blood had rushed to his manhood and had never left it. Giles shifted from his place on the floor, trying to ease the tightness in his groin, his blade now sharper than it ever had been after this last hour of working the stone over its edge. Anything, anything to keep his mind off what he wanted to do to the lovely Fayth.
What he would do to her once they were abed.
He tried to look away when she glanced over at him, but he could not. She’d removed her veil and let her hair down once he’d closed the chamber door and now sat in only her shift and a robe that she’d found in one of the old chests of clothing that day. The worst part was knowing the beauty that lay beneath those flimsy coverings and even knowing the scent and taste of her skin.
Finally, finally she’d gathered the beads together and put them on the table, signalling an end to her nightly ritual. She stood then and poured some wine into a cup, offering it first to him and then raising it to her mouth when he shook his head. Giles watched as her hands trembled badly. He stood then and went to her, steadying the goblet so that she drank every drop.
‘Are you nervous, lady?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
He poured more wine for her and waited while she drank it, hoping it would ease her fears. When he took the cup from her and placed it on the table, she looked at him.
‘Will it hurt as I have heard?’
‘I, too, have heard such things, but I fear I know not, lady. I have never bedded a virgin.’
