My Lady Faye Read Online Free

A crack opened in the hard ice within. Those eyes, darker than ebony in the harsh planes of his face. Her salvation. Her hope. The fissure widened and the anguish flooded in.
    He walked toward her, his postulant robes fluttering about his powerful legs.
    She would tear that robe to pieces. It had taken him from her, but the resentment was tiny, inconsequential, beside the rending asunder within her.
    He was here to make Arthur safe, to bear her pain and her gnawing fear. Gregory would never let them take her boy. She could rest. Her legs buckled.
    He caught her, his arms like steel around her as he drew her against his strength.
    Faye rested there and drew in the scent of wool and horse and Gregory. A hundred images buffeted her, dark eyes so caring and sure, her anchor, her one safe point. Her fingers dug into the wool and touched the hewn strength beneath.
    The first sob shook her.
    His arms tightened.
    She pressed her cheek to the rough homespun of his robes and absorbed the heat of him. The awful noise in her head stilled beneath the steady thump of his heart.
    “My lady,” he murmured against her hair. “My own lady.”
    “They took Simon,” she said, the words muffled by his chest.
    “I know and I am here.”
    His warmth curled into her and ice shattered and splintered, driving hard into her wounded heart.
    And Faye cried.
    * * * *
    Drawing the covers up to Faye’s chin, Gregory drank in the sight of her. Dark rings stood out in sharp contrast to the deathly pale of her skin. Still so damned beautiful and fragile she near broke him as she sobbed in his arms. He pressed his palm to his chest and tried to ease the ache inside. Since the moment he first saw her, he had not beheld anything as lovely. His failure tasted bitter in his mouth. She needed him and he had been on his knees praying for his salvation.
    “She sleeps?” Lady Mary nudged him aside. The torment of the last few days etched harsh lines around her mouth.
    They told him Faye had not slept in three days, had barely eaten, just paced her chamber in a frightening, brittle calm. “It is better she rests.”
    “Thank you.” Tears glittered as Lady Mary turned her head aside to hide them. “We did not know what else to do. She…”
    Gregory waited for her to compose herself. Rage smoldered like a banked fire within him. That whoreson had Simon. The profanity shocked him a little, but it was apt. Only he knew the depth of the man’s depravity. His lady knew, only too well, the beast to whom she was wed. Seven years he’d lived with it, an impotent witness with no power or right to intervene between a man and his wife.
    Faye’s hair escaped confinement in wisps across her cheek, spun silk, the color of an early moon.
    His fingers twitched to trace the creamy softness of her skin. He turned away. The lust, he could surrender to God, but the tenderness always hit him like a stave to the knees.
    “You will want to speak with Sir Arthur.” Lady Mary straightened the covers about her daughter and little Arthur.
    The boy had grown. He would be tall like his grandfather and those sturdy little limbs held all the promise of a fine, strong man. For the first two years of his life, all Arthur had managed to lisp of his name was “Gree.” “Story, Gree!” or “Up, Gree!” His little face twisted in determination as he bellowed. “Nay, Gree!” Arthur had a will to match any man’s.
    Young Simon, in the hands of that monster. It made him want to rip his robes off, grab his sword and ride like the devil himself to get his boy. Her boy, not his, only his for a short time, it became too easy to forget that.
    He followed Lady Mary out of the chamber and into the upper reaches of Anglesea. People nodded a greeting as he passed, subdued and wearing their sadness on their faces.
    Lady Mary left him at the entrance to the hall.
    Seated in one of two enormous carved chairs, Sir Arthur waited for him.
    It was a fine hall, tall and majestic, proclaiming to all