Forbidden (23 page)

Relief and rage warred within Duncan. He waited until the small party was across the bridge and through the gate. Then his gauntleted hand clamped around Whitefoot's reins, bringing the mare to a stop.

“Go about your tasks,” Duncan told the men curtly.

The men-at-arms left without a backward look. Their speedy departure said more clearly than words that they would be quite pleased not to be within sight or sound of Duncan when he looked so fierce.

Even Amber, braced for Duncan's rage, knew a chill when he looked up at her with eyes as hard as agates.

“Why did you come here?” he demanded.

“Where else would a wife be but with her husband?”

Duncan became utterly still.

“Or had you forgotten we are wed?” Amber asked with a bittersweet smile.

“I have forgotten nothing, witch.”

The chill she had felt returned doubly, becoming fingernails of ice along her spine.

“Then, husband, release Whitefoot so that a groom may see to her comfort.”

Duncan turned his head just enough to see Dominic without taking his eyes off Amber.

“Dominic,” said Duncan distinctly, “I trust your months as Lord of Blackthorne Keep have not caused to you forget how to close gates and lift a drawbridge?”

The Glendruid Wolf laughed.

“Good,” Duncan said. “If you would be so kind as to see to those small tasks for me…”

Before Duncan had finished speaking, Dominic was working the mechanism that lifted the drawbridge until it fit like a heavy barrier across the opening to the keep. Bolts thumped home one after another, mating the bridge to the thick stone walls. The inner gate soon followed, closing with thick sounds of timber on timber.

It seemed very dark in the bailey without sunlight slanting through the gate.

“You should have run while you could,” Duncan said silkily to Amber.

“To what purpose?”

“To bring Erik, of course.”

“Then death would surely come as well,” Amber said. “As long as I am within the keep, Erik won't attack.”

“Let him come!” Duncan snarled.

Amber looked past Duncan to the man who wore the Glendruid Wolf.

“Is that what you want, lord?” she asked. “War?”

“What I want is of little moment,” Dominic said. “The keep and all that comes with it are Duncan's, not mine. The decisions that pass here will also be his.”

Amber's breath caught swiftly.

“You gave it to Duncan?” she asked, stunned.

“Aye,” Dominic said, walking forward to stand next to Duncan.

“And to his heirs, without let or hindrance?”

“Aye.”

“You are a man as generous as you are shrewd, Dominic le Sabre,” she said. “ 'Tis no wonder Duncan's unremembered oath to you caused him such unease.”

“If you knew going back on his oath was causing him so much distress,” Dominic said coolly, “why didn't you help him to remember?”

Shadowed golden eyes looked from one man to the other. Both men looked very much alike at the moment. Tall. Powerful. Fierce.

Proud.

Drawing a hidden, shaking breath. Amber forced herself to meet the savage, disapproving eyes of the Glendruid Wolf. As she did, she remembered the way those eyes changed when Dominic looked at Meg.

It gave Amber hope. Not much, but a spark seems brightest when all else is dark.

“If you knew a time was coming when your wife would look at you with loathing,” Amber said, “what would you do to delay that day?”

Dominic's eyes widened fractionally, then narrowed into opaque slices of silver.

“Meg said as much on the ride in,” Dominic muttered, “but I find it hard to believe.”

“What is that?” Amber asked.

“That a woman can love a man, yet not love his honor, too.”

Amber's skin became even more pale, until even her lips were bloodless.

“Then you believe as Duncan does,” she said, “that it would have been better to let him hang.”

“It would have been better not to force the marriage in the first place,” Dominic said bluntly.

“Yes,” she tonelessly. “But Erik forestalled that possibility, too.”

“What?” demanded Duncan and Dominic as one.

“1 have had much time to think since you left me at the cottage,” Amber said.

Duncan grunted.

“Men call Erik a sorcerer, but I think often that he is simply shrewd in the way the Glendruid Wolf is shrewd,” Amber said.

“Meaning?” Dominic asked her softly.

“Meaning that he understands what moves people and what leaves them unmoved.”

Stillness came over Dominic. “My brother said as much.”

“Simon?”

Dominic nodded and asked, “What did Erik know that he used against Duncan?”

“He knew that Duncan didn't love me.”

Duncan didn't deny it.

Amber hadn't expected him to, but his silence stung like salt in an oozing wound. She drew another hidden, shaking breath and was grateful Meg wasn't there to measure her distress with Glendruid eyes that saw too deeply, too clearly.

When Amber spoke again, it was to Duncan rather than to the Glendruid Wolf.

“Erik knew you wouldn't marry me if you remembered,” Amber said with aching calm. “And he knew how much you desired me. He knew I wanted you… dawn after a lifetime of night…”

Her voice thinned into splinters of silence.

“So he left us utterly alone but for his most foolish squire,” Duncan finished savagely, “and all the time you allowed me to believe you weren't a maiden.”

“Nay,” Amber said fiercely. “That was your own doing, Duncan. Erik and I both swore otherwise, but you didn't listen. You didn't want to know the truth, because if you believed me a virgin you wouldn't have allowed yourself to take me.”

“Aye,” he said in a cold tone.

“ 'Aye,' ” she mimicked. “Or maybe nay, Duncan of the broad shoulders and thick skull! Maybe you wouldn't have been able to stop yourself even if you knew. Then you would have hated yourself for breaking your vow!”

Memories arced like summer lightning between Amber and Duncan, the wild instant when he had taken her beneath the sacred rowan with a single, unexpected thrust of his body.

“ 'Tis much easier to hate me than yourself, isn't it?” Amber asked.

She yanked on the reins, freeing them from Duncan's grasp before he could recover. Whitefoot backed up in a frantic clatter of metal shoes on cobblestones, taking her rider beyond Duncan's reach.

“The bridge is drawn up,” Duncan said savagely. “It's too late to run.”

“I know. I've known it since I first touched you. Now you know it, too.”

WORD of Cassandra's appearance went through the keep almost as quickly as word of Duncan's true name had two days before. Amber heard rumors of the Learned woman whispered by the serving men who brought steaming bathwater to the room where Amber and Duncan had once slept together.

But no more.

Amber hadn't seen Duncan since he had requested that Simon escort her to the luxurious room. She had become a prisoner in all but name, her only company the servants who came and went without warning.

And without conversation. It was as though they were terrified of being caught speaking to the lady of the keep.

A shout from the bailey below drifted through the partially open shutters. Amber stood poised on the edge of entering the big wooden tub, where water gently steamed.

“She be here, I tell you! Saw her with me own two eyes. Blood-red robes and silver hair!”

Amber listened, but nothing more about Cassandra's presence could be heard from the high room. With a sigh. Amber slid into the water.

Will Duncan come to me now? Will he finally admit that he needs me as much as I need him?

Only silence answered Amber's half-fearful, half-yearning thoughts.

That same silence had once been her customary state, but she had never noticed it. She hadn't known then what it was like to wake up feeling herself surrounded by Duncan's arms. She hadn't known then what it was like to feel his warmth, his laughter, his hunger, his peace, his strength, all that was Duncan enfolding her in a richness of emotion she had never imagined.

Having known that sharing. Amber now knew what true loneliness was. She measured its extent in the echoing emptiness that was inside her.

No, Duncan won't come to me.

'Tis just as well. I dream of black wings beating at me, whispering unthinkable rage, unspeakable grief.

I fear what would happen if I touched him now.

For both of us.

I fear.

And yet I yearn…

The coolness of the bath told Amber that she had spent too long in useless regrets. Despite the hearth's cheerful fire close by, she felt chilled.

Amber reached for a pot of soap and began washing quickly, barely noticing the complex fragrance of evergreen and spices that rose from the soap. Soon the scent drifted through the room, as did the sound of soft splashes as she bathed.

“My lady,” Egbert called from the hallway beyond the room.

“Again?” muttered Amber under her breath. Then, “What is it?”

“May I enter?”

Though the bath was shielded by wooden screens both for privacy and to hold the hearth's warmth close to the wooden tub. Amber had no desire for Egberts company.

“As I told you a few minutes ago, I'm bathing” she said tartly.

There was an odd silence followed by the sound of feet shifting against the wooden floor.

“Lord Duncan requires your presence in the solar” Egbert said.

“I will be down presently.”

Nothing in Amber's voice suggested that she was excited to have her time of forced seclusion end.

Or that she was longing to see her husband.

“The lord was most, um, urgent in his requirement.”

“Ask him, then, if he would like to see me in the great hall, wearing only the liquid remains of my bath?”

The sound of rapidly retreating footsteps was Egbert's answer.

Moments later, candle flames dipped and trembled as a draft moved through the room. Amber didn't notice, for she was rinsing her face. But an instant later, she looked up and froze. A frisson of awareness shot through her.

Someone was in the room with her, standing just beyond the wooden screens. Watching her.

Duncan.

She was certain of it.

“Yes, lord?” Amber asked.

Despite her best efforts at calm, her voice wasn't steady. Her heart was beating far too rapidly with the knowledge that Duncan was so close.

For the space of several breaths, no answer came. Rage and desire fought for control of Duncan. Every breath he took was infused with the scent of evergreen and spice. The silence shivered with the tiny sounds of water gliding over skin. Each instant announced in a new way that Amber was nearby, fragrant, warm.

Naked.

The hammer blow of desire that went through Duncan made him sway.

“Cassandra has asked after you,” he said finally.

But Duncan's voice said much more, husky and heavy, telling of blood racing hotly, flesh hardening, a body yearning to be completed. He could not have told Amber of his desire more clearly if he had touched her.

His mind might be closed like a fist against her, but his body wasn't.

Amber made a soft sound as her own body softened in a heated rush. She prayed that Duncan hadn't heard the telltale break and thickening of her breath.

And she prayed that he had.

The same instinct that had told Amber about Duncan in that first single touch had been whispering relentlessly to her since he had looked at her and seen his betrayer rather than his lover.

Instinct and gift combined told Amber that she must somehow get past Duncan's rage before it destroyed both of them, and the people of Stone Ring Keep as well. If desire was the only way to reach him…

Then let it burn.

“Tell Cassandra I am bathing,” Amber said huskily.

Deliberately she shifted in the tub so that her profile rather than her back was to the screens. Slowly, gracefully, she trickled fragrant water over her shoulders and breasts. Crystal drops ran down the shadow cleft between her breasts and gathered in glittering crowns on nipples that had tightened simply at the sound of Duncan's voice.

Amber heard Duncan draw in his breath. As she had hoped, he was watching her through the space where the screens didn't completely meet. She wished she could see him as well as he was seeing her.

And as naked.

“You don't usually bathe at this time of day,” Duncan said.

Like Amber's voice, Duncan's said more than his words.

She shrugged, sending intriguing patterns of light, shadow, and moisture over her breasts.

“I'm not usually held prisoner,” Amber said.

She lifted her arms and reached behind her head to tuck up stray strands of her hair. Her breasts swayed gently. The nipples gathered into even higher crowns. Silhouetted against the fire, she appeared to be licked by amorous flames.

With a throttled sound, Duncan forced himself to look away. The first thing he saw was the dinner that had been brought hours before to Amber's room. Little had been touched. Less had been eaten.

“Is something wrong with your food?” he asked roughly.

“No.”

“You must eat more,” he said.

“Why? It takes little strength to be a prisoner.”

The calm question infuriated Duncan. He had no answer save that the thought of her fasting when there was no religious need disturbed him.

Abruptly Duncan turned and headed for the door. This time he made no attempt to be silent. The clink and rub of chain-mail hauberk and hood, chausses, gauntlets, and sword announced that the lord of the keep was prepared for battle.

But he hadn't been prepared to find his enemy naked.

“Finish your bath,” Duncan said in a harsh voice. “Be quick about it. If you aren't in the great hall before I become impatient, I'll send a scullery wench in to dress you and drag you forth.”

The door to the room shut with emphasis, announcing that Duncan had left. Anger and disappointment swept through Amber, but she wasn't foolish enough to test her husband's temper by dragging her feet. Whether Duncan knew it or not, she would rather have been whipped than forced to endure being touched by all but three people in the world.

Cassandra was one of them. Erik was another. The third had just left in a fury.

It was a very short time before Amber appeared in the solar, wearing a gown the color of highland pines. Against the dark green of her gown, the ancient amber pendant glowed as though on fire. Her hair was a loose, flowing cloud held back from her face by a silver circlet set with amber gems the precise color of her eyes.

Duncan looked at Amber as though she were a stranger. A glance, no more, before he turned again to watch the Learned woman whose gray eyes had never looked more like a winter sky.

“As you see,” Duncan said curtly, gesturing toward the doorway, “Amber is unharmed.”

Cassandra turned and looked at the girl she had raised as her own daughter.

“How goes it with you?” Cassandra asked.

“It is as you foresaw.”

Pain passed like a shadow over the Learned woman's face at Amber's soft words. Cassandra bowed her head for a moment. When she looked up again, there was no expression on her face at all. She turned toward Duncan.

“Thank you, lord,” Cassandra said quietly. “I will trouble you no more.”

“Hold,” Duncan said when Cassandra would have turned away.

“Yes?” she asked calmly.

“What did you foresee for Amber?”

“Nothing that would affect your ability to rule Stone Ring Keep, its people, or its lands.”

“Amber,” Duncan said without looking away from Cassandra. “Touch the Learned woman while I question her.”

Disbelief showed in Amber's face for an instant. Then anger came.

“There is no reason to doubt her word,” Amber said stiffly.

Duncan's smile was as cold as Cassandra's eyes.

“No reason for you, perhaps,” he said. “She has no affection for me.”

“Daughter,” Cassandra said, holding out her hand. “Your husband is uneasy. Reassure him.”

Amber took the other woman's elegant fingers between her own. The emotions that poured into Amber were complex, powerful, darkly seething with all that had been risked.

And lost.

Closing her eyes. Amber fought against the tears that Cassandra would not shed.

“I have foreseen nothing that would affect your hold on Stone Ring Keep, its people, or its lands,” Cassandra repeated.

“It is the truth,” Amber said.

She put Cassandra's palm against her cheek in a brief caress and released her.

Unease rippled through Duncan. Though nothing more was said, he could feel the sadness flowing between the two women.

It was as though they were saying good-bye.

“What did you foresee for Amber?” he demanded again.

Neither woman spoke.

“What did you foresee?”

Cassandra looked at Amber. She shook her head.

“That is a matter between Amber and myself,” Cassandra said, looking back at Duncan.

“I am lord of this keep. You will answer me!” .

“Aye,” the Learned woman said, “you are lord of this keep. My answer is that what passed between Amber and myself has naught to do with the safety of this keep.”

Duncan looked into Cassandra's calm gray eyes and knew that he would get no better answer from her.

“Amber,” he said, “you will tell me what I seek.”

“To use my gift merely to satisfy idle curiosity would be a sin. You are lord of the people's bodies, not of their minds.”

Duncan came out of the riven oak chair as though shot from a bow. His hand clamped around Amber's arm. She barely had time to prepare herself for whatever pain might come along with the pleasure of his touch.

But there was no preparation possible for what poured into Amber with Duncan's touch. Rage and desire, contempt and yearning, restraint and grief, a torment that knew no bounds. There was no beginning to it, no end, no place to hide.

His pain and her own combined.

A keening sound of anguish was dragged from between Amber's clenched teeth.

“Amber?” he said roughly.

She didn't answer. She couldn't. It was all she could do simply to stand upright against the combined torrent of their emotions.

“It would be kinder to take a whip to her,” Cassandra said bitterly. “But you feel no kindness toward her now, do you?”

“What in the name of God are you chattering about?” Duncan shot back. “I'm not holding her tightly enough to give pain.”

“You could break her bones and she would feel no worse.”

“Make sense, woman!” Duncan snarled.

“”I am. Whether light or heavy, your touch is agony to her."

Duncan looked at Amber, seeing her rather than his own rage. She was as pale as salt. The centers of her eyes had dilated until there were only glittering rims of gold. A sheen of sweat stood on her cold skin. Strength visibly drained from her with every quick, shallow breath she took.

Shaken, Duncan released Amber as though she were a burning brand.

She sank to her knees, put her arms around her cold body, and fought to bring the pain under control. It was possible now that Duncan wasn't touching her.

Possible, but agonizing.

“I don't understand,” Duncan said, baffled and angry at once. “My touch used to give you pleasure. Is it because my mind is whole now?”

Amber shook her head.

“Then what in the name of Mary and Jesus is happening!” Duncan demanded.

For a moment Amber struggled to speak. Then she simply shook her head again.

“Your rage,” Cassandra said simply.

Duncan spun toward her. The look in his eyes would have made an armed knight flinch, but the Learned woman made no move away from the lord of Stone Ring Keep.

“Speak plainly,” he ordered.

“ Tis simple. You are consumed by rage. When you touch Amber, she feels your hatred of her as greatly as she once felt your pleasure. Beating her with a whip would cause less pain.”

Stunned, Duncan looked at his own hands as though they belonged to a stranger. Never had he beaten a horse, a woman, or a child. The thought of causing such pain with no more than a touch sickened Rim.

“How could Erik have used her gift to discover truth?” Duncan asked in a low voice. “He is a monster!”

“Nay,” Amber said raggedly. “Most people give me but a few instants of pain.” 

“What of Simon?” Duncan demanded. “You fainted.”

“Simon had but one thought when he grabbed my wrist. Loathing for me. He is a man of intense passion. It overwhelmed me.”

“What of Erik?” Duncan asked bluntly. “I doubt that his passions are timid.”

“Nay. Nor do they wound me. He has tenderness for me, and I for him.”