The Fall of Lady Westwood Read Online Free PDF Page B

away.
    “Hush now, Em,” the husband said in a low voice, his head close to his wife’s ear. “Just a few more strokes and it’ll be all over. Be strong now, my love.”
    His wife’s shift had slipped down somewhat, partially concealing the martyred buttocks. The aggrieved woman, the tails of the whip swinging back and forth in her hand, waited as the husband stroked a hand down his wife’s flank, his fingers gathering up the folds of her shift to secure it high up on her hips once more.
    “Come, Sandra, I’ve something else to show you.” Miriam laced her arm in her friend’s, leading her away from the fascinating scene.
    The sound of the next strike of the flogger greeted their ears as the two nobles strolled through the massive black doors of the inner keep.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Three
     
    McClearn Farmstead
     
    C layton McClearn and his friend Isaac Galt rode along the dusty ridge demarcating the northern boundary of the McClearn farmstead. The morning sun beat down on the fields mercilessly. It was shaping up to be an unseasonably hot day for so late in the year.
    Two oxen, dragging a massive iron-tined plow toiled in the field below, turning over the cropland. A young man in grubby coveralls and a broad-rimmed hat cracked a long whip above the animals’ backs, urging them to struggle onward. The crop yield had been plentiful that year, and the subsequent auctions at Wyndhaven and Steerton had been quite successful. Such good news however, did little to raise Clayton’s spirits.
    “What news from the Frontier?” Clayton wiped the back of his hand across his sweaty brow. “I’ve heard nothing in weeks. It’s unusual for it to be this quiet.”
    “Lord Westwood has been on the Frontier for at least the last two months.”
    Clayton cursed under his breath. “Now it makes sense.”
    Isaac grimaced, his graying dark hair blowing in a sudden gust of wind. “Most of what I hear is just talk. It’s been so long since the last Incursion. What if we’re overdue for one?”
    “We are, Isaac.”
    Isaac nodded, stroking a hand along his close cropped gray beard. “There is talk of a levy. The last time there was a levy … ”
    Clayton remembered all right. The countryside had emptied of able-bodied males between age 14 and 45, all flooding toward the Frontier. It had been the oddest sensation to ride along the Border road, and meet so many of the men he’d grown up with. Few of them had survived through the next year.
    “You know something don’t you, Isaac?”
    “As I said, just talk, my friend.” Isaac’s horse snorted as he had the animal pick its way through a patch of exposed rock along the ridge.
    “Complacence and decadence are even worse enemies than the nocturne ; they’ve always known when we’re rife with it.”
    Clayton had foolishly allowed some hope to steal into his heart. Crops were plentiful, the population was booming —and that wasn’t even counting the steady trickle of Others that were being encountered with increasing regularity. There hadn’t been an Incursion in more than twenty years; most of the soldiers on the line at the Frontier had no memory of the enemy.
    Clayton and Isaac did though; they had enough memory for ten lifetimes.
    “You’ve got fine strong oxen down there, Clayton,” Isaac said, nodding toward the toiling draft animals in the field below. He sat high in his saddle, his straight back and keen gaze belying his 49 years.
    “That they are, my friend. Rory picked them up from the Tilders’ stead for a song. The old woman had no use for them once her husband passed, and her sons decided to sell the land.”
    He remembered long ago on a visit to Westwood Manor what he’d seen pulling plows in their fields. It hadn’t been oxen. The thought made him shiver, knowing that his daughter was held captive at that very same manor.
    Clayton leaned an elbow on the pommel of his saddle. “You didn’t come here to talk about the Frontier or my