Droit De Seigneur Read Online Free

of the people that had been sitting with her at their table, such as it was, dropped immediately to their knees in front of him, but Amber simply rose and curtsied instead.
    Piers took the two steps necessary to grab a fistful of her hair and yank her head back, saying, “Hoyden, what have you done with Fitzwilliam?”
    “Nothing, Sir. He left as soon as we arrived here,” Amber answered truthfully, afraid for one of the first times in her life, but trying desperately not to show it.
    “He has not arrived back at camp, and no one has seen him. Are you sure he came to no harm?” In truth, Piers had come to the end of his rope. The woods were thick with under brush, tiny sheep trails, half broken down and ancient rock walls, and paths, and he had half a mind that he knew what had happened to the man had nothing to do with his bad sense of direction, so he came right to who he thought might have been the source of the problem, intending that she would be the one to clean it up for him.
    Her father piped up, his voice several octaves higher than usual. “I beg you, my Lord, no one here would hurt your man. He was fine when he left us.”
    “I’m not sure that no one here would wish him harm,” Piers responded, looking directly at Amber. He shoved her ahead of him, out the door. “You’re going to help us find him, and you’d better pray, for your sake, that he’s alive.” He, for one, didn’t want to have to explain to the lad’s father that he had died while under his care.
    There had been very few times in Amber’s life that she’d regretted anything she’d done, but this was one of them. Perhaps taking Fitzwilliam straight to her home, since this was obviously unfamiliar territory to him, might have been the more judicious thing to do. But she squared her shoulders, laced on a pair of knee length boots, grabbed a belt packed with useful items that she laced about her waist, as well as a satchel full of other medicinal items, just in case, and set out well ahead of the man who had commanded her and the small cadre of men who had followed him there, leading the way into the woods from whence they had come.
    She tracked him easily, spotting the times he’d turned around and back tracked on himself, fallen into the stream, grasped a rash inducing plant, had an encounter with a badger –
    which the badger had apparently won – and discovered him, shivering, exhausted and bleeding, huddled in a hollow near a small bog she often went to to collect its soothing mud, which she immediately used to help his itchy rash.
    Amber ordered his men around like she was the commander instead of him. They looked to him at first, and after his initial nod, they obeyed her without question. She had several of the larger ones set up a perimeter guard, just in case, putting the smaller ones, with torches, close to her so that she could treat the unfortunate Fitz, which she did so with compassion and alacrity, pronouncing him fit, if not the best of woods scouts.
    Piers’d been amused to notice that she’d kept him in the middle of it all, well guarded and close to her. He’d wondered if that had been by accident, but he was beginning to think that little this maid did was by accident.
    Piers clapped Fitz on the shoulder. “Take him home, lads.” Home was relative – a small camp nearby, until they moved into their temporary quarters while the castle was built.
    “Wait!” She knelt by the bog and filled a small skin with a generous amount of the muck, handing it to him with what he thought was a small smile, but it was so fleeting it might not have been. “Apply this as often as you need to to control the itching. But don’t wash it off until all of the itching has gone.”
    Fitz smiled shyly down at her, gawky, awkward boy that he was. He’d taken a shine to her, Piers could see. And she needn’t have any worries that he was going to wash anything off himself, much less something that was there to help him. That boy