Faye braced outside the hall where happy voices spilled into the corridor. Two days shy of St. John’s Eve, almost a year to the day Gregory had brought her and her boys back to Anglesea. He’d left before the great bonfires lit that night were extinguished.
Gathered for the evening meal, Anglesea folk eagerly anticipated the festival marking the summer solstice. So many chattering, laughing people, many of them linked to her by blood and service, yet she still felt like an interloper in her childhood home. She couldn’t stand out here all evening. Lady Faye, daughter of Sir Arthur of Anglesea, Countess of Calder, was expected to present herself for the evening meal and show a pleasant face.
Calder. Wrenching her thoughts away from the cruel brute she’d married, Faye straightened her shoulders and drew a deep, soothing breath. Calder was the past, and it behooved her to face forward and embrace what the future brought. Faye smoothed her frown away with her fingers. Only old shrews wore their vexation on their faces.
A cooling breeze from the hall’s open casements brushed her cheeks, stirring the great tapestries adorning the towering stone walls. Fresh rushes, scented with lavender at Mother’s insistence, crunched beneath her feet as she wove her way through the trestle tables.
“Evening, my lady.” A man-at-arms nodded his greeting as she passed.
More greetings followed her passage, and she returned them all with a smile. What a happy place this hall was, filled with love and laughter and a thousand different memories of a different girl. As a child she had imagined fey folk flitting and peering down at them through the mighty oak beams crisscrossed into arches along the ceiling.
A journeyman minstrel, his beard still a smattering of fuzz on his chin struggled to push his voice above the noise. He beamed a huge smile at her, strummed a chord, and paused for effect with his hand in the air.
A serving maid passed in front of him and ruined his brief flourish.
“Such beauty as was never seen,
In golden hair, sapphire eye and lily skin,
As Fairest of Fairest Faye’s as has ever been,
And for her love my heart shall pine.”
Heat climbed her cheeks as a handful of grinning people turned toward her. Of all the ballads penned to her as a girl, he’d chosen that one. Been and pine, the words didn’t even rhyme. The misguided lad had eight ballads to choose from. Eight!
How her foolish girl’s heart had swelled with pride as she patted herself on her golden head. Stupid girl. Stupid, aye, but that girl’s life had spread before her like a banquet of endless possibilities. Somewhere between her wedding night and her escape—
Good Lord, she was frowning again. At this rate she would be as wrinkled as Nurse by her thirtieth year. No dwelling. Forward. The rise and fall of merriment wrapped around her and eased her irritability. She smiled as Tom turned to greet her approach. He had grown larger since Faye last saw him. Nurse’s son was not so often found in the hall since he had been gifted his allotment by her father. “Good evening, Tom.”
“Good evening, Lady Faye.” Predictably he flushed to his fair hairline at the sight of her. It was sweet, this little tendre he’d harbored for her since he was a boy. Tom was a special friend of Beatrice’s, but Faye was always glad to see him. “And how is your farm?”
His lanky frame had filled in with muscle very nicely, and he had a pair of shoulders on him that rivaled Roger’s. Light blue eyes beneath heavy brows held her gaze for a moment before he dropped his chin to his broad chest. “Very well...um...my lady. Thank you for asking.”
Ivy appeared at his elbow. Tiny and dark, Ivy possessed the sort of delicate beauty and cool distance that kept the men of Anglesea at her heels. Even William failed to thaw the lovely Ivy.
Tom’s regular features split into a huge smile.
Interesting.
“Tom is preparing his north field for planting in the spring.” Ivy put her small hand on Tom’s arm. It lay against the rough sleeve of his tunic like a feather in a pile of wood shavings.
Tom’s wide shoulders straightened. “Aye. I shall have the entire allotment planted by next harvest.”
“Did you manage to finish the irrigation trenches?” Ivy’s pale cheeks bore a delicate flush.
Apparently Ivy was not as immune to all male charm as it would appear.
Over Ivy’s head, Henry sent Faye a grave nod from the far end of the hall where he spoke earnestly to a man with a glazed expression. The poor man had her sympathy. Her youngest brother’s fondness for delivering lectures to any recipient who would stand still long enough to receive one was well known throughout the keep.
Ivy and Tom’s conversation moved on to animal husbandry. Farming bored her so Faye excused herself.
“Faye.” A boisterous kiss from Roger and the herb-honey waft of mead announced him well into his cups. Roger’s light eyes danced at her, a flush suffusing his broad, rough-hewn features. Many a lass sighed over her brother Roger. “Come and explain to William why he should be married.”
“Dear sister.” William’s fine features broke into a smile. Faye couldn’t imagine him relinquishing his position as keep heartbreaker in the near future. He bent his dark head and kissed her cheek.
“Should you be married?” Teasing William was always fun.
“Who would have me?” He quirked a dark brow and drained his cup of mead. If he tried to keep pace with the bigger Roger, he would be rolled out the hall before dinner ended.
“Look at that pretty face.” Cupping William’s carved jaw in his paw of a hand, Roger grinned at her. “There is not a girl for twenty leagues that would naysay our William.”
“Leave him alone, Roger.” Lord, they would be at each other’s throats in a moment. They’d been doing it since they were lads. Roger toddled and William toddled faster, or at least near broke himself trying. It nearly always ended with fists flying.
She gave them a repressive stare as she slid past. It would accomplish nothing. Her brothers had too much time on their hands to get into mischief. Time they were married. Father hinted in that regard. William and Henry were rather sanguine about the idea. Roger had developed a case of deafness. She might take him in hand. Then again, she was hardly in a position to advocate the benefits of matrimony.
"This was such a fresh and intriguing read! [...] With My Lady Faye, Sarah has crafted an original storyline with rich, compelling characters and emotions.I loved the growth of the characters, too. " - Goodreads, Rhenna Morgan
Let’s think back a bit, to the days of Barbara Cartland. I grew up hiding the Dame’s novels under my bed from my family. I was naturally drawn to the covers of fainting damsels or smirking rakes. But even before Barbara Cartland, I tumbled into the wonderful Regency novels of Georgette Heyer.
Ms. Heyer’s historical romances were delightful, they still are. The witty dialogue, the wonderful characters, still pull me in. But the bedroom door stayed very firmly shut.I haven’t read a Barbara Cartland in years, but what I do remember is very domineering, older and wealthy men. Whether feisty or sweet, a virginal, innocent to the point of Sleeping Beauty, heroine was his match.Well, Sleeping Beauty woke up and the bedroom door came flying open, hit the wall and stayed there. I charged right through with Johanna Lindsey.Women have changed and that is reflected in the novels they want to read. Whether a heroine is wearing jeans and a tee, or a samite bliaut, she is still a woman. I think readers want books now that are more relatable to their lives, characters whose struggle they can identify with. Women are out in the workplace, in charge of their own lives, and taking a much more active role in the world. They want to see that reflected in their heroines.As writers, we don’t work in a vacuum. We draw our stories from the world around us, and as the world changes, so the books we write change.Okay, a marriage of convenience is not something a modern woman typically faces, but she does know the feeling of being in a situation over which she has no control.
And lest we forget, our historical heroes. Those domineering, controlling men of yore, would just not cut it with a modern reader. As much as I like my sword-wielding knights, the idea of one charging into my bedroom and taking his conjugal rights, is not something I want to write or read about. The men, like the women, in historical romance have become more ‘real’. We want men, that as a modern woman, we can fall in love with. The flawed hero is here to stay; the knight who is lethal on the battlefield but can’t string a sentence together when confronted with a beautiful woman, the hardened rake whose heart has never mended from being broken, the reclusive reprobate who hides from his inner demons. We love them, and we ache for them, and we long to see him get his happy ending.Humanity hasn’t changed much over time. We have the same basic needs and struggles as our ancestors—food, shelter, love, family, happiness. As historical romance writers, we take those needs, the same stories that have been told since we first sat around a campfire, put them in an historical context and let our readers feel and grow along with our characters.I write medieval, so that’s my favorite time. I’m drawn to the rawness of that period. What is your favorite historical period and what do you like about it?EXCERPTBorn British and raised in South Africa, Sarah Hegger suffers from an incurable case of wanderlust. Her match? A hot Canadian engineer, whose marriage proposal she accepted six short weeks after they first met. Together they’ve made homes in seven different cities across three different continents (and back again once or twice). If only it made her multilingual, but the best she can manage is idiosyncratic English, fluent Afrikaans, conversant Russian, pigeon Portuguese, even worse Zulu and enough French to get herself into trouble.
Mimicking her globe-trotting adventures, Sarah’s career path began as a gainfully employed actress, drifted into public relations, settled a moment in advertising, and eventually took root in the fertile soil of her first love, writing. She also moonlights as a wife and mother. She currently lives in Draper, Utah, with her teenage daughters, two Golden Retrievers and aforementioned husband. Part footloose buccaneer, part quixotic observer of life, Sarah’s restless heart is most content when reading or writing books.She loves to hear from readers and you can find her at any of the places below.
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