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“She came alone but for a lady's maid and three knights to guard her dowry” Meg said.

“The knights left as soon as they saw the dowry safely inside the keep” Dominic added.

“Hardly the way I would expect a great baron to treat his hounds,” Simon muttered, “much less his only daughter.”

“The baron was much put out by having to marry his daughter to a Saxon,” Dominic said neutrally.

“Then the baron may be pleased to get his daughter back.”

“If Duncan jilts Ariane, he will have no means of supporting the knights he must have to hold Stone Ring Keep,” Dominic said flatly. “And I, along with my unruly vassal, would suffer the displeasure of both the King of England and the King of Normandy.”

“All this,” Meg said quietly, “at a time when the last of the warriors you sent with Duncan are only now straggling back to Blackthorne Keep on foot, muttering about lightning from a clear sky that drove their horses mad.”

“Are you quite certain,” Dominic asked Simon, “that Duncan hasn't forsworn himself and cast his lot with Erik?”

“Never!” Meg said before anyone could speak.

“That is what I feared at first,” Simon said calmly. “It would have explained much.”

“And?” Dominic asked.

“Rather quickly, I decided it wasn't a simple matter of betrayal. If it had been, Duncan would have given me away to Sir Erik.”

Sven nodded, silently agreeing. “It would have meant Simon's death.”

“So you decided he was bewitched,” Meg said, “and truly didn't know you.”

“Yes. What else could it be?”

“Sometimes,” Meg said, “a man who is kicked in the head by a horse or hit with a battle hammer… if they survive, sometimes such men lose all knowledge of themselves for a time.”

“How long?” Dominic asked sharply.

“Sometimes days. Sometimes months. Sometimes… forever.”

Sven crossed himself and muttered, “You call it accident. I call it Satan, who knows more disguises than I do.”

“Truly?” Simon asked innocently. “A bemusing thought.”

Dominic ignored them and looked at Meg.

“What do you say, Glendruid healer?” he asked.

“I can't know whether it is accident or bewitchment until I see Duncan.”

“While Duncan and I fought—,” Simon began.

“You fought?” Meg asked, appalled. “Why?”

“Sir Erik wanted to know the temper of the two new warriors he had found,” Simon said dryly. “So Duncan and I fought to display our skills with the sword.”

Dominic's smile was as thin as the edge of a dagger.

“I would like to have seen that,” he said. “Your quickness against his strength.”

Simon's black eyes gleamed with laughter and a warrior's love of testing himself against another warrior's skill.

“It was like fighting you,” Simon admitted, “but every bruise was rewarded by the certainty that Duncan hadn't betrayed his oath of fealty to you.”

“How so?”

“When I said the words 'Blackthorne Keep' Duncan faltered as though at a blow. For an instant the darkness in his eyes lifted and he almost knew me.”

“What happened next?” Meg asked intently.

“I put him on his back in the field. Then I asked him if what Erik had said about his memory was true.”

“And?”

“Duncan said it was.”

“You believed him,” Meg said.

“Aye. He remembered nothing. The hell-witch has stolen his soul.”

Meg flinched at the naked loathing in Simon's voice. She knew he hated necromancy as few men hated anything.

But she didn't know why.

“I now knew all that was required” Simon said. “I made my excuses to Erik, found Sven, and set off for Blackthorne Keep as fast as our horses could carry us.”

Absently, Dominic ran his fingertips over the cool silver of the Glendruid Wolf. Then he turned and looked at Simon and Sven with eyes whose icy clarity precisely matched those of the huge pin.

“Rest for a time,” Dominic said. “When you are ready, the three of us will ride for the Disputed Lands.”

“What will you accomplish with just three men?” Meg asked. “Stone Ring Keep can hold out for months against such a small force.”

“To take any more warriors would endanger Blackthorne Keep.”

Dominic's expression softened as he smiled at his red-haired wife. He touched Meg's lower lip with his thumb in a brief, sensual caress.

“Besides,” Dominic added, “don't you remember what I taught you about the best way to take a well-defended keep?”

“Treachery,” Meg said huskily. “From within.”

“Aye.”

“What will you do?” she asked.

“Somehow they stole Duncan from us. We shall steal him back.”

“How?” Simon asked.

“With a net,” Dominic said succinctly.

“And then?”

“We will teach Duncan who he is,” Dominic said. “Then we will send him back to Stone Ring Keep. When he is inside, he will open the gates for us.”

Sven laughed softly.

Simon simply smiled. “How like you, brother. Bold, yet bloodless.”

“There's little point to killing good men when better means are available,” Dominic said, shrugging.

“We had best hurry to be about our treacherous business,” Meg said. “The sooner we—”

“We?” Dominic interrupted.

“Aye, husband. We.”

All amusement and sensual indulgence vanished from Dominic's expression.

“Nay,” he said flatly. “You're carrying the future of Blackthorne Keep in your womb. You will stay here.”

Meg's mouth tightened.

“I am many months from birthing your heir,” she said. “I'm as fit as any of your knights to ride. I'm no frail lady unable to pick up a dropped shoe.”

Her voice and expression were every bit as determined as her lord's.

“Nay,” Dominic said.

Simon looked at his brother, cursed silently, and did what few men would have the courage to do when Dominic looked so fierce. Deliberately Simon cleared his throat, drawing his brother's attention.

And his ire.

“What is it?” Dominic snarled.

“If Duncan is injured, Meg can treat him. If he is enthralled…” Simon shrugged. “What one witch has done, another witch might undo.”

“We were going to move the household to Carlysle Manor for several fortnights in any case,” Meg said calmly. “The Disputed Lands are but a few days' gentle ride from Carlysle.”

Dominic remained as silent and forbidding as a drawn sword. Then he lifted his hand and set it beneath Meg's chin.

“If God willed it, I could bear losing the babe,” Dominic said softly, “but not you. You are my heart.”

Meg turned her head and kissed the scarred hand that held her so gently.

“I have dreamed no Glendruid dreams of death,” she said, “and being parted from you is a kind of dying. Take me with you. Let me do what I was born to do.”

“Heal?”

“Aye.”

There was a long silence. Then Dominic released his wife with a gentle touch and turned to Sven.

“Inform the grooms to ready horses for dawn.”

“How many horses, lord?”

Dominic paused, looked at Meg's unflinching Glendruid eyes, and knew what he must do whether it pleased him or not.

“Four.”

The flicker of a dying candle flame beyond the bed's luxurious draperies made Duncan start from his uneasy sleep.

Danger!

He reached for his sword as he had so often in the twelve days since his marriage. Belatedly he realized he was only half awake and fully nude.

Even as Duncan told himself it was but a dream that had disturbed him, he eased out of the bed and lit candles around the room until there were no shadows where enemies could hide. Only then did he go back to bed as silently as he had arisen.

“Duncan?”

He started again, then turned on his side toward the soft voice that was both familiar and oddly alien. Thoughts like black lightning raged through the shades of darkness that were his mind.

She is not part of my past.

Danger!

I am surrounded by enemies.

Danger!

Yet even as part of Duncan's mind cried of peril, his recent memories scoffed, for nothing but kindness and incandescent passion had come to him at Stone Ring Keep.

Am I going mad?

Will I be torn in two and die writhing while shades of darkness and amber light battle for my soul?

The only answer that came to Duncan was an inner silence which seethed with contradictions.

The unremembered past was taking shape in his mind as random threads and fragmented patterns, names and no faces, places and no names, faces and no places. He was a tapestry rent and shredded, unraveled as much as woven, threads all snarled and frayed.

Sometimes, the worst times, he saw the shadows retreat, revealing his memory. And that was when he truly knew despair like black ice, freezing everything.

He feared his returning memory.

What is happening to me? God's wounds, why do I fear the very thing that I long for!

With a harsh sound Duncan grabbed his head in both hands. An instant later, fingers that were both gentle and insistent stroked his clenched ringers.

“Dark warrior,” Amber whispered. “Be at peace.”

If Duncan heard, he made no sound.

Tears slid hotly down Amber's cheeks as she shared Duncan's anguish.

And his fear.

Like Duncan, Amber sensed the slow healing of his memory. She saw faces where only shadows had been, heard names where only silence had been, sensed time's shuttle at work. The pattern which would weave all together was lacking, but it, too, would return. She was certain of it.

And then she would know the wrath of a proud warrior who had been defeated in secret rather than allowed to fight as he had been born to do.

It is too soon. Duncan has had so little time with me. A fortnight before we became lovers. Barely a fortnight since we wed. Not enough time to learn to love me.

Dear God, not nearly enough time.

Only love could forgive so great a deception. If he remembers too soon, he will never forgive me.

Never love me.

And great death will surely flow.

Amber never knew whether she called Duncan's name with her lips or with her heart. She knew only that suddenly they were holding each other so tightly she couldn't breathe.

“Precious Amber,” Duncan said in a raw voice. “What would I do without you?”

Tears burned against her eyes and filled her throat.

“You would fare better than I would without you,” she whispered. “You are the heart in my body.”

Duncan felt the hot flow of Amber's tears. Slowly he eased his grip on her.

“Don't cry,” he said. “It was but a dream I had, naught to disturb yourself over.”

Amber knew with Learned precision just how little of what had gone on in Duncan's mind resembled a dream, and she knew that he knew it as well as she did.

Yet she said nothing about the gentle lie. She had no more desire than Duncan to search among the tangled, agonizing threads of his memory for the truth she feared more than she feared death itself.

“Duncan,” she whispered.

The sound was more a caress than it was a word, for she spoke with her lips pressed against the pulse that beat in his neck.

Duncan's body stilled for an instant before he shuddered and tightened with a different kind of tension than that of a warring mind. He felt an answering ripple of sensation pass through Amber and knew how clearly she felt his desire.

Yet he knew now that it was also her desire. In the brief time of their marriage, she not only responded when he cast the sensual lure, she wanted him whether or not he was touching her.

She came to him when he stood brooding and watching the rain through the keep's narrow windows.

If she awakened before he did, she curled against him, stroking her slender hands the length of his body and laughing softly when he rose to meet her touch.

Each day before dinner she rode with him, sharing her knowledge of the forest and fields and the people of the keep.

In the evenings she dismissed his attendant and bathed Duncan with great pleasure, teaching him the Learned way of purifying the flesh and then shivering with delight when he taught her how the Saracen sultans bathed.

And always her eyes brightened when he came to her after hearing the complaints of serf and villein in the morning. She smiled with happiness when she turned and saw him standing in a doorway, watching her decipher ancient manuscripts.

In a thousand ways she came to him, telling him how much she was pleased to be his mate.

“You are sunlight when all else is rain,” Duncan said.

More tears seeped from Amber's eyes to glide hotly over Duncan's skin. He shifted onto his back, pulling her close against his side.

“Without you,” he whispered, “I don't know how I could have survived the battleground that is my mind.”

“Dark warrior…”

Pain twisted in Amber, squeezing her throat shut more surely than tears. The words of love she wanted to give Duncan were fire burning within her silence.

Blindly Amber moved to lie even more closely against her husband's body. His heat and power were a lure that grew greater every hour she spent with him. The thought of losing Duncan was a dagger turning in her soul.

“Duncan,” she whispered.

Amber's ragged voice and the hot glide of her tears against Duncan's shoulder sent a wave of tenderness through him. Gently he stroked her hair. She shifted and a moist heat traced the length of Duncan's jaw.

For an instant he thought it was her tears. Then he understood that it was the tip of her tongue in a lover's caress.

“You tempt me,” Duncan said huskily.

A ripple of pleasure went through Amber, a sweet echo of the sensual anticipation sweeping through Duncan. He no longer fought the wild surging of his desire when she touched him, for he no longer worried whose hunger rose first to the sensual lure and whose followed.

Duncan had learned that Amber's passion was a fire that burned brightly whether alone or entwined with his.

Small teeth delicately tested the pad of muscle on Duncan's shoulder. Hidden within the caress was a sensual tasting of his skin. Surrounding and enhancing the kiss was a shivering sigh.

“Do you want me, precious Amber?”

Another trembling sigh.

“Yes,” she whispered.

Yet when Duncan moved to hold her, she pulled away.

“No,” she whispered.

“It appears you are of two minds,” Duncan said, smiling. “Is there anything I can do to—”

His teasing words broke over a groan of pleasure as Amber's leg moved to lie between his.

“The flower is already blooming,” Duncan said thickly. “I can feel its heat.”

“The flower knows that the sun will soon rise. It wants each petal already open to drink the first golden shaft of the sun.”

“The sun is already risen,” he said thickly.

“Is it?”

Beneath the bed covers, a small hand trailed down Duncan's bare torso.

The rest of him was equally naked.

Delicate fingertips brushed over Duncan, measuring and caressing his aroused flesh. A soft palm fitted itself around him. He made a sound that was laughter and passion at once.

“You know fair well it is risen,” he said. “You are holding the proof in your palm.”

“Only part of the proof. I fear the full proof would overrun both of my hands together.”

“A waste.”

“Aye,” Amber murmured.

“There is a solution for that.”

“I'm considering it.”

“Lie on your back, precious Amber. You will consider things much more deeply from that perspective.”

“I think… not.”

The laughter and husky sensuality curling through Amber's voice made Duncan smile. Passion and anticipation coiled more tightly within him.

“What are you thinking of, then?” he asked.

“I fear it would shock you into swooning,” she said.

“I'm lying down.”

“Not all of you is supine.”

“The greater part is.”

Amber smiled and drew her fingertips up the part of Duncan which was not at rest.

“Such a sweet, witchy little smile,” he said thickly. “What are you thinking of that makes you smile so?”

“Two hands… and a mouth. Will that suffice?”

For an instant Duncan didn't comprehend. Then Amber's hands circled him and the velvet heat of her tongue caressed him. His whole body tightened in a savage rush.

“Amber.”

She looked up at him.

“Did I hurt you?” she asked.

As she spoke, she stroked the length of his rigid flesh. Blood beat visibly beneath her caress, hardening him even more.

“Nay,” Duncan said.

“Shock you?”

“Yes. No.”

He forced breath into a body that was clamoring for another intimate kiss, for the sleek glide of her tongue tasting him.

“Can't you decide?” Amber asked, knowing full well how deep Duncan's pleasure had been. “Perhaps this will help.”

She repeated the wild caress, lingering over the part of him that was most intriguingly different.

And most sensitive.

“Have I told you,” Amber murmured between caresses, “how much your body pleases me?”

“If you please me any more, I will come unraveled.”

'Then I shall just have to knit you up again."

“The heart falters at the thought.”

“The heart, perhaps, but not the flesh. It tugs like a stallion too closely tied.”

Duncan laughed despite the heat flooding through him, driven by the wild rush of his blood and the feel of Amber caressing him with her words, her hands, her tongue.

Smiling, knowing how much she was exciting him. Amber shook her head until her hair fell like a veil over Duncan's loins. But not all of him could be easily veiled. Passion stood forth proudly, demanding to be eased.

Or teased.

“I particularly like this,” Amber said. “Hard, yet so smooth to my fingertips, like polished silver warmed by the sun.”

A deep shudder went through Duncan as he watched and felt the pink flame of her tongue licking over him, setting him utterly ablaze. Strong hands buried themselves in her hair.

“Come here” Duncan said hoarsely.

“Soon,” she whispered. “But first…”

Amber's mouth circled him, tasted him, tested his hardness and resolve with loving caresses. The wildness that gathered in him also gathered in her. At any instant she expected Duncan to overturn her, draw up her knees, and bury himself within her.

Abruptly Duncan sat up and drew Amber's leg across his thighs until she was astride him, open to him. He found her drenched with the same passion that made his body gleam as though polished with oil.

His hand moved between her thighs, testing and savoring her in the same caress. His fingers came away glistening with her desire. Watching her, he lifted his hand and breathed in deeply, infusing himself with her fragrance.

“Next time,” he said, “I shall know your taste as well. But not this time. This time I am already undone by your sweet mouth.”

“You look quite whole,” she whispered.

Her fingertip rested for an instant on him, just long enough to steal the single, hot drop that had eluded his control. When she brushed her fingertip over her lips, tasted, and smiled, Duncan made the sound of a man in torment. Another drop welled up, called by her pleasure in him.

“Come, witch. Ride the dragon you have summoned from mortal flesh.”

“How does a maid ride a dragon?”

“Like this.”

Duncan's hands closed on Amber's hips, pulling her closer even as he lifted her. A instant later his blunt, eager flesh parted her. With a cry of fulfillment, she slid down on him, claiming him as deeply as he was claiming her.

Amber tried to say Duncan's name, but could not. His pleasure in her had stolen her voice. The sudden clenching of his hands on her hips scattered her thoughts and focused her desire. She began moving, riding him more surely with each slow motion of her hips, feeling his passion and her own with unusual clarity.

When he would have speeded the pace of the ride. Amber lifted one of his hands, kissed it, and put it on her breast.

“You're enjoying tormenting me,” Duncan said through his teeth.

“Aye.”

His fingers closed on the taut peak of Amber's breast. A delicate convulsion shivered through her, forerunner of the ecstasy to come. When his hands caressed both nipples into hardness, her back arched and her breath tore. The sweet heat of her passion flowed between their joined bodies.

“Yes,” Duncan whispered. “Let me feel your pleasure.”

Without warning, ecstasy ravished Amber, setting her to shivering and crying. He thrust into her, fusing their bodies together with the searing pulses of his own release.

Feeling Duncan's ecstasy increased Amber's, driving her even higher. He rocked his hips against her until she called his name and came completely undone once more.

Then he held her against his chest until both of them could breathe evenly again. Only then did he move, reversing positions until he lay between her legs. He kissed her slowly, deeply.

“Each time you please me more,” Duncan said.

“And you please me most. 'Tis almost frightening.”

“Why?”

“If I enjoyed you any more” Amber whispered, “I would die.”

“And I would bring you back to life.”

“ Tis impossible.”