Forbidden (3 page)

Big hands clamped around her shoulders and strong fingers dug urgently into her flesh.

“There is no time! I must—I must—God's teeth, I can't remember!”

Tears came to Amber's eyes as the stranger's anguish swept through her. He was a man whose honor was his greatest possession. He had given vows that must be kept.

But he could not remember who had accepted those vows.

Nor could he remember what the vows had been. A cry was dragged from Amber's throat, for the man's pain and fear and rage were also hers while she touched him.

Instantly the pressure on her shoulders was relieved. Battle-hardened hands began caressing rather than digging into soft flesh.

“Forgive me,” he said hoarsely. “I didn't mean to hurt you.”

Surprisingly gentle fingers brushed over Amber's eyelashes, taking her tears. Startled, she opened her eyes.

The man's face was very close to hers. Despite his own agitation, he was concerned for her. It was as clear to her as the dark, thick lashes that framed his hazel eyes.

“You d-didn't hurt me,” Amber said. “Not in the way you mean.”

“You're crying.”

“ Tis your anguish. I sense it so very clearly.”

Dark eyebrows rose. The backs of the man's fingers brushed very lightly over Amber's cheek. Hot tears burned against his skin.

“Don't cry, gentle fairy.”

Amber smiled despite her tears. “I'm not a fairy.”

“I don't believe you. Only a creature of magic could have pulled me from that savage darkness.”

“I'm a student of Cassandra the Wise.”

“Ah, that explains it,” he said. “You're a witch.”

“Not at all! I'm simply one of the Learned.”

“I meant no insult. I have a fondness for witches who can heal.”

“You do?” Amber asked, startled. “Have you known many?”

“One.” The man frowned. “Or is it two?”

His control threatened to break at the new evidence that he had none of the memories other people take for granted.

“Try not to fight so,” Amber said. “It only makes things worse. Can't you feel that?”

“ 'Tis hard not to fight,” he said through his teeth. “Fighting is what I do best!”

“How do you know?”

The man went still.

“I don't know,” he said finally. “But I know it's true just the same.”

“It's also true that a man who fights himself can't win.” Silently the stranger absorbed that unhappy truth.

“If you are meant to remember,” Amber said, “you will.”

“And if I'm not?” he asked starkly. “Will I go through the rest of my life a man with no name?”

His words were too close to the bleak prophecy that had haunted Amber's life.

“Nay!” she cried. “I will give you a name. I will call you—Duncan.”

The echoes of the name beat at Amber, horrifying her. She hadn't meant to say that name. She truly hadn't.

He can't be Duncan of Maxwell. I refuse to believe it. Better that he remain forever a man with no name!

 But it was too late. She had given him a name. Duncan. Breath held, her hands clenched around one of  his. Amber waited for Duncan's response.

There was a distant sense of straining, of shifting, of focusing, of…

Then it was gone, fading like an echo heard for the third time.

“Duncan?” he asked. “Is that my name?”

“I don't know,” Amber said unhappily. “But the name suits you. It means 'dark warrior.' ”

His eyes narrowed.

“Your body bears the marks of battle,” Amber said, touching the scars on his chest, “and your hair is a most pleasing shade of darkness.”

The light caress of her fingers lured and beguiled Duncan, encouraging him to accept his strange awakening into a world both familiar and forever changed.

And whether it was strange or familiar, Duncan was too spent to fight anymore. The long climb up from darkness had sapped even his great strength.

“Promise you won't bind me if I sleep again,” he said huskily.

“I promise.”

Duncan looked at the intent, intense maid who was watching him with such concern. Questions crowded his thoughts, too many questions to sort out. Too many which had no answer. He might not remember the details of his life before he had awakened, but he hadn't forgotten everything. At some time in the past he had learned that a frontal attack wasn't always the best way to take a fortified position.

And in any case, at the moment he hadn't the strength to attack a butterfly. Every time he gathered himself to fight, the pain in his head all but blinded him.

“Rest for a bit,” Amber said encouragingly. “I'll make some tea to ease the pain in your head.”

“How did you know?”

Amber reached for the fallen covers without answering. Her unbound hair fell over Duncan and was drawn beneath the covers as she pulled them up. With an impatient sound, she swept the long mass back over her shoulders, only to have a handful escape once more.

“You hair is like amber,” Duncan said, stroking a soft lock. “Smooth and precious.”

“That is my name.”

“Precious?” he asked, smiling slowly.

Amber's breath caught. Duncan had a smile to melt sleet and call meadowlarks from a midnight sky.

“No,” she said with a soft laugh, shaking her head. “My name is Amber.”

“Amber…”

Duncan looked from her long hair to her luminous golden eyes.

“Yes,” he said. “Precious Amber.”

Duncan released the silky strand of hair, stroked her wrist, and let his hand settle onto the thick fur cover.

The lack of Duncan's touch was like having a fire go out. Amber had to swallow a sound of protest.

“So I am Duncan and you are Amber,” he said after a few moments. “For now…”

“Yes,” she whispered.

Desperately Amber wished that she had called Duncan by any other name.

Yet at the same time she knew she couldn't have withheld what she feared could be his true name. She, called simply Amber, knew only too well the hole in the center of life that came from having no name, no real  heritage.

Perhaps it is simply my fears playing upon me, drawing shadow monsters upon an empty wall.

Do I fear that he is Duncan of Maxwell simply because I want so much for him to be someone else?

Anyone else.

“Where am I?” Duncan asked.

“In my cottage.”

He glanced around, seeing beyond Amber to the large room. There was a central fire burning cheerfully as smoke was drawn to the hole at the peak of the thatched roof. Something savory cooked in the small cauldron suspended from a trivet over the fire. The walls had been limed to whiteness and the floor was covered with clean rushes. Shuttered windows were set in three walls. In the fourth was a door.

Thoughtfully Duncan fingered the bedding. Linen and soft wool and luxurious fur, rich curtains of cloth pulled aside for the day. Nearby was a table with a chair, an oil lamp, and, astonishingly, a handful of what appeared to be ancient manuscripts.

Duncan looked back to the girl who had attended his illness, a girl who was familiar and unknown at once.

Amber's clothes were like the bedding, wonderfully rich, soft, warm, and colorful. At her wrists and neck, amber gems gleamed in costly shades of warm yellow and gold.

“You live far better than most cottagers,” Duncan said.

“I have been fortunate. Erik, heir to Lord Robert of the North, watches over me.”

Amber's affection for Erik was clear in her voice and in her smile. Duncan's expression darkened, making him look every bit the formidable warrior he was.

For an instant. Amber wondered if she hadn't been a bit too hasty in untying him.

“Are you his leman?” Duncan asked.

At first Amber didn't understand the blunt question. When she did, she flushed.

“Nay! Lord Robert is a—”

“Not Robert,” Duncan interrupted curtly. “Erik, the mere mention of whose name makes you smile.”

Amber smiled widely.

“Erik's leman?” she repeated. “He would laugh fit to choke at the thought. We've known one another since we were no bigger than goslings.”

“Does he give costly gifts to all his childhood friends?” Duncan asked coolly.

“We were both students of Cassandra the Wise.”

“So?”

“So Erik's family befriended me.”

“At some expense to themselves,” Duncan said pointedly.

“Their gifts, though generous indeed, do not strain Lord Robert's wealth,” Amber said in a dry tone.

As Duncan opened his mouth to question Amber further, he realized that he was reacting with far too much jealousy over a maid he had just met.

Or had he?

He was quite naked in her bed. Her hands weren't hesitant to touch him. She had neither blushed nor turned away when the bed covers went sliding in disarray, revealing his nakedness. Nor had she been in any great haste to cover him again.

But how did one delicately ask a maid if she was his betrothed, his wife, or his leman?

Or, God forbid, his sister

Duncan grimaced. The thought that he and Amber might be close in blood appalled him.

“Duncan? Are you in pain?”

“No.”

“Are you certain?”

He made a harsh sound. “Tell me…”

His voice and his courage faded. The sensual heat in his blood did not.

“Yes?” Amber said encouragingly.

“Are we related by blood?”

“Nay,” she said instantly.

“Thank God.”

Amber looked startled.

“Is Cassandra one of those whom you call Learned?” Duncan asked, changing the subject before Amber could pursue it.

“Yes.”

“Is that a tribe or a clan or a priesthood?”

At first Amber wondered if Duncan were toying with her. Any man who was found inside the Stone Ring asleep at the foot of the sacred rowan was certainly one of the Learned!

The thought was like a balm. She had heard many things about Duncan of Maxwell, the Scots Hammer, but never had it been so much as hinted that he was one of the Learned.

Whatever or whomever the stranger she had named Duncan had once been, he was now a different man driven from past Learning by a bolt of lightning.

Frowning, Amber tried to find the words to describe her relationship with Cassandra and Erik and the few other Learned whom she had met. She didn't want Duncan to look at her with superstition or fear, as some of the simple folk did.

“Many Learned are related by blood, but not all,” Amber said slowly. “It is a kind of discipline, like a school, but all those who attempt to learn aren't equally apt.”

“Like hounds or horses or knights?” Duncan asked after a time.

She looked puzzled.

“Some are always better than others at what they do,” he said simply. “A few, a very few, are far better than any.”

“Yes,” Amber said, relieved that Duncan understood. 'Those who can't be taught say that those who can learn are cursed or blessed. Usually cursed."

Duncan smiled wryly.

“But we aren't,” she said. “We are simply what God made us to be. Different.”

“Aye. I have met a few people like that. Different.”

Absently, Duncan flexed his right hand as though to grasp a sword. It was a movement made without forethought, as much a part of him as breathing. He didn't even notice the act.

Amber did.

She remembered what she had heard about the Scots Hammer, a warrior who had been defeated in battle only once, and that by the hated Norman usurper, Dominic le Sabre. In exchange for his own life, Duncan had sworn fealty to the enemy.

It was rumored that Dominic had defeated Duncan with the help of his Glendruid witch-wife.

Amber remembered the face she had glimpsed through Duncan's thick veil of forgetfulness—hair of flame and eyes of an unusually intense green.

Glendruid green.

Dear God, could he be Dominic le Sabre, Erik's sworn enemy?

Staring at Duncan's eyes. Amber tried to see them as gray, but honestly could not. Green, perhaps. Or blue. Or brown. But not gray.

Amber let out a long sigh and prayed she wasn't deluding herself.

“Where did you meet these unusual men?” she asked. “Or were they women?”

Duncan opened his mouth, but no words came. He grimaced at the fresh evidence of his lack of memory.

“I don't know,” he said flatly. “But I know that I have met them.”

Amber went to Duncan and put her fingers over his restless sword hand.

“Their names?” Amber asked in a soft voice.

Silence answered her, followed by a curse.

She sensed Duncan's raw frustration and growing anger but no faces, no names, nothing to call forth memories.

“Were they friend or foe?” she asked quietly.

“Both,” he said hoarsely. “But not… not quite.”

Duncan's hand clenched into a heavy fist. Gently Amber tried to soothe the fingers into relaxation. He jerked his hand away and pounded on his thigh.

“God's blood!” he snarled. “What kind of dishonorable cur can't remember friend or foe or sacred vows?”

Pain twisted through Amber, pain that was both Duncan's and, eerily, her own.

“Have you made any such vows?” she asked in a low voice.

“I—don't—know!” The words were almost a shout.

“Gently, my warrior,” Amber said.

While she spoke, she stroked Duncan's hair and face as she had through the long hours when he had been lost in an odd kind of sleep. At the first touch, Duncan flinched. When he looked into Amber's troubled golden eyes, he groaned and unclenched his hands, allowing her gentle caresses to soothe him.

“Sleep, Duncan. I can feel your exhaustion.”

“No,” he said grimly.

“You must let yourself heal.”

“I don't want to go into that fell darkness again.”

“You won't.”

“And if I do?”

“I'll call you forth again.”

“Why?” he asked. “Who am I to you?”

Amber hesitated at the blunt question, then smiled an odd, bittersweet smile as Cassandra's prophecy echoed like distant thunder. He will come to you in shades of darkness. And he had. She had touched a man with no name and he had claimed her heart.

Amber didn't know if she could bend events so that life as well as death flowed from her reckless action. She knew only one thing, and she knew it with a certainty greater than that of the sun's burning progress across the sky.