My Lady Faye

The Lady

The fair Lady Faye has always played the role allotted her. She denied herself the love of her heart so she could marry the match her family wanted, yet all it brought her was 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, the only man she can turn to for aid is Gregory. 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.

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Sir Arthur’s Legacy Series

Sweet Bea

My Lady Faye

Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

A Sir Arthur’s Legacy Novel

Sarah Hegger

LYRICAL PRESS

Kensington Publishing Corp.

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Copyright © 2015 by Sarah Hegger

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First Electronic Edition: September 2015

eISBN-13: 978-1-61650-744-2

eISBN-10: 1-61650-744-6

First Print Edition: September 2015

ISBN-13: 978-1-61650-745-9

ISBN-10: 1-61650-744-6

Printed in the United States of America

To Kim for so many different reasons

A big thank to Rhenna Morgan for all her help with this. As always, Penny Jo Barber for being the best editor, in the world, ever. And a shout out to the writers of Romance Weekly #lovechatwrite

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.”