Free Margo Maguire by Saxon Lady

but he seemed to have more than enough to hold the edges of the wound together. He would suffer no more sewing, at her hand or anyone else’s. “I hope Auvrai finds a cage to put him in.”
    Aelia’s eyes darted around her. “Our people…they’re looking at Osric as if he were a fiend.”
    “What would you call someone who tried to burn fifty men alive?”
    “He did not intend to hurt anyone,” she countered.
    “Tell that to the old man.” Mathieu gestured towardthe Saxon he’d carried out of the storehouse. “I’m sure he will be gratified to know it.”
    Mathieu was shaken by the disaster. Every man in the storehouse might have been burned to death. All the other timber buildings within Ingelwald could have been destroyed—an inauspicious beginning to Mathieu’s sovereignty over the region. As it was, several valuable animals had died in the stable fire.
    He should have carried out his threat to execute both the boy and his sister. None of this would ever have happened—from Halig’s ill-advised attack on the stairs, resulting in the troublesome wound in his side, to Mathieu’s intractable urge to drag Aelia up to his chamber and bury himself inside her until he did not know where she ended and he began.
    “He is still very young,” Aelia said. “He did not understand the—”
    “The boy lacks discipline, not to mention good sense.” Mathieu could see no evidence of training or restraint in him. “He is reckless.”
    “What will you do to him?”
    “He is no longer your concern, demoiselle. ” Mathieu nudged Aelia forward, toward the hall. Auvrai would find a suitable place to confine the boy, and see that he was well guarded through the night. ’Twas up to Mathieu to do the same with Aelia.
    “He is my concern.” Aelia stopped in front of him, turning to place her hands upon his forearms. Given her torn and soiled clothes, her voice heavy with fierce loyalty to her brother, he should have felt no surge of lust at her touch.
    But he’d tasted her once already, and his body hungered for more.
    “Hugh! Durand!” He called to two of the knightswho’d come to Ingelwald earlier with Gui de Reviers, and ignored the proud but pleading look in Aelia’s eyes as he turned her over to them. “Find a secure chamber in the hall and lock her in. Do not leave her unguarded.”
    Each man grasped one of her arms, and they led her away from him, taking no particular care of her injured shoulder. These two would not let her escape as Gilbert had done.
    Mathieu strode away and returned to the stable. He climbed to the roof and went about helping to quell the smoldering embers before he could change his mind about what was to be done with Aelia.

Chapter Seven
    I t stank in Aelia’s little prison room, of disuse and of her sooty clothes and body. The candle she’d been given had burned down to its last hour. Though there were no windows in the little pantry, Aelia was certain ’twas past dawn from the distant sound of chirping birds.
    They had to let her out.
    The only furnishings in the pantry were the four empty burlap sacks Aelia had used as a bed once exhaustion had prevailed over her sorrow and worry. Now that she was awake again, she could not help but fret over Osric’s situation. She went to the door and pounded, ignoring the heavy ache in her shoulder. “Open the door!”
    There was no answer, so Aelia began to pace as she’d done the night before, after she’d been locked in this tiny, dark room.
    She had not been able to read the expression in Fitz Autier’s eyes as he’d sent her away with his men. But she worried that he had already decided to condemn her brother to death.
    What else could the Norman do? Osric had done theunthinkable. In his desire to release the Saxon prisoners and gain his own freedom, he’d endangered everyone in Ingelwald, not just the Norman soldiers.
    He was a foolish child, and she had to convince Fitz Autier to take that into consideration…if he had not