Droit De Seigneur by Carolyn Faulkner Page A

it.” The lad in question extended his finger proudly. It had a dirty bandage on it, which he bravely allowed her to remove.
    “Have you been keeping it clean and washing it like I showed you?” He nodded solemnly.
    ”Well, it looks like you have, and it’s healing beautifully. I guess you know what that gets you!” Like magic, a sweetmeat appeared in her hand, and just as quickly disappeared down Timmy’s gullet.
    The other children were treated much the same, whether or not they had as grave an injury as Timmy’s.
    Before she let them go, though, he heard her say quietly, “Remember, though, who is it that lets me come here, and gives me the medicines that helps your families and the sweetmeats that fills your bellies to overflowing?”
    “Sir Piers!” They all screamed in unison. He was stunned.
    “And who is our great king now?”
    “King William!”
    “Very good, children. Now run along. I have other things to do.” When they scattered, and she rose, Amber refused to look up at him, although she knew without him saying so that he wished it.
    “I thought I was the enemy?”
    “You are, to me. But they have to live in the future, in a world where we’ve lost the war, where we’re an occupied nation. It’s much easier for them to come to grips with it than it ever will be for me.” She met his eyes, of her own volition. “If you win over the hearts of the peasantry, you’ll win the hearts of the nation. They are England, Sir Piers.” As they made their way through the village, many more people came up to her than to him, which could well be attributed to his status and their reluctance to approach him. But some did come to him with flowers, bowing and scraping but thanking him most often for her, and her for saving this relative or that, or this limb or that.
    “What are you using to save them, might I ask?”
    Amber glanced up at him, wincing into the sun. “If you’re asking if your men are feeling the lack, you may rest assured that I would never do that. The villagers get what would have ended up on the compost pile, or as a forgotten ingredient in someone’s tea. It’s such a little thing, and it helps them so enormously, and I always make sure that they know that I’m doing it in your and the King’s good names.”
    Beautiful, sensual, and politically adept. This woman was too good to be true.
    By the time they left the village, he looked like a maid on May Day, and she’d filled his saddle bags with all sorts of homemade goodies from the grateful villagers.
    He was gone for a time, to the site of the new castle. Amber found herself being extremely productive in his absence, not having to worry about whether or not she’d be summoned to his chambers and punished harshly for something she’d done. She felt free, and did very much as she pleased, almost as if she was at home again.
    The only catch was that he had awakened her in a way that made her uncomfortable, especially at night, when her thoughts were wont to travel back to when his fingers were where they oughtn’t be, touching that spot that no one else knew about, making her feel that new and exciting way she’d never felt before. When it had happened that first time, she would have sworn she would never want to feel that way again. It was too . . . just too much. Too sensitive. Too raw. Too impossible to deal with.
    She couldn’t remember a time when she’d been quite so frightened, except perhaps when he mother had died. But even then, she hadn’t been in fear for her own life. This had most definitely been a worry that she was going to expire, right then and there. Her heart was pounding, she was sweating and panting and her body was contracting in mysterious and she was sure dangerous ways . . . it was certain to be a sinful thing, this whatever it was that he had done to her, and Amber knew she was going to die from it. She just knew.
    But she didn’t. And she would never forget just how surprisingly gentle he was with