The Lord's Right Read Online Free

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 underbrush, 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 commandeered 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 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 with compassion and
alacrity, pronouncing him fit, if not the best of woods
scouts.
    Piers had 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 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 probably hadn’t seen a bath since he’d left his
mother’s