Midnight Eyes (18 page)

Even the escape of sleep was now denied her. Each night they lay only inches apart and she did nothing to bridge the gap and very quickly the inches became miles. She was alone, just as Roger wanted her to be, and surely he gloated over it with increasing relish in each new message that arrived at the Keep.

The second one arrived not even twenty-four hours after the first, Robert bringing Roger’s messenger up to their chamber midmorning. Imogen had been propped up in bed, trying to swallow a few mouthfuls of bread to stop her stomach’s strident protests. The little bit she had managed to ingest turned to lead when Robert had ground out bitterly, “This idiot refuses to give me the message even though I have solemnly promised to have it read to you.”

“I have my orders, sir,” the messenger said stiffly, obviously offended by Robert’s belligerent attitude.

This time, the messenger was an older man, and Imogen wondered dispassionately what had happened to the child of yesterday as she heard Robert’s growl of, “Well, get on with it, then!”

“Robert, if you would leave us,” she said softly, smiling bitterly as she realized she was now as eager as Roger to banish Robert.

Not that Robert seemed to mind.

He left without even a token protest this time, Imogen realized absently. Roger had been right. The loving husband had been an act. A faultless, unbelievably tempting act. She was almost grateful for that insight, as it helped to numb her. She listened to the messenger’s light voice with a growing fatalism:

This time he claimed to be her “loving brother.”

She quickly dismissed the messenger, wanting to be alone with her self-disgust. He knew he’d won. His gloating was clear in the anonymous voices of the messengers he was sending her, and she was letting him. There was nothing she could do about it. All of the battles she had won in the last months came to naught if they could be lost so easily.

And there was
nothing
she could do about it.

She had always known it would come to this even as she had tried to deny it, had always known the happiness she had found with Robert was an illusion designed to crush her utterly. It had all been part of Roger’s plan. It was this certainty that chilled her to the bone, freezing the scepter of hope that had till then been staying tenaciously alive.

It was like losing her sight to those cold stone steps all over again. Just as Roger had known it would. That damn man knew her too well, Imogen realized as she leaned over the bed to retch the pieces of bread into the chamberpot. He knew her so well that her destruction was a certainty, and he planned to kill her with memories and tantalizing glimpses of what could have been.

She sat bolt upright in bed as she realized with a dawning horror that he had told her that years ago, although she hadn’t understood it. He had told her not with words but with stone. The tower. She had always assumed he had built a replica of the stone tower that had claimed her sight as a cold testament to his power over her, as a cold memorial to all of her pain, but it was more than that, she finally understood. It was the key to her ultimate destruction, Roger’s macabre way of letting her know the method of her own demise.

He was always going to win, and Imogen couldn’t help but admire his skill even as she felt herself ceasing to exist. He played an amazing game, and played to win.

Always.

Robert swung the axe violently down, barely noticing that the log obediently split in two as he mechanically reached for another. Then another, and another.

At some point he had absentmindedly discarded his tunic and the sweat ran down his exposed torso, glistening along the ridges of muscles on his abdomen. A dark lock of hair tried to fall over his face, but sweat held it in place at least for a moment, until he impatiently swept it back, then he hefted the axe over his head once more.

He barely noticed the heat of the midday sun beating down on his exposed head, concentrating instead on each muscle as it stretched and shifted to do the repetitive work, relentlessly seeking oblivion in physical labor. Perhaps, if he worked his body till it was exhausted, he could achieve a state of numb bliss.

It wasn’t working, he admitted grimly to himself as he brought the axe down. His mind refused to be silenced, ruthlessly following the well-trod circles of fear and anger, just as it had been doing ever since the arrival of Roger’s first message. With each note Imogen received, the clamoring inside him grew louder.

He watched helplessly while she seemed to fade a little more each time. He couldn’t reach her. No matter what he did or said, the essence of her had somehow slipped through his fingers. She had disappeared into her nightmares where he couldn’t reach her, and it frightened the hell out of him. He had never felt so impotent, so unsure of what to do, and he hated it. He seemed to be sitting idly by while his whole world fell apart silently around him, but there was nothing he could do to stop the decay. That bitter knowledge invoked in him an unholy desire to break things. Lots of very large, human-sized things.

The axe sailed through the air and found its target easily. Lifting the blade quickly he settled a new log on the block and with a fluid movement brought the axe down again, but the violence of metal slicing through wood was nowhere near enough to appease the rage that roiled in him. He had only to think of the hollow, brittle shell that surrounded Imogen, and once more he felt the battle rage fill his every particle.

He ground his teeth as visions of the farce that had been the last month filled his mind like taunting shades. He was slowly sinking in a leaden sea of politeness, damn it. Imogen treated him absentmindedly, as if he was some kind of half-remembered acquaintance. Really, she did it so well that even Robert was sometimes hard-pressed to recall that they were husband and wife, friends and lovers.

Robert deliberately brought the axe down harder, enjoying the pain that shot through his arm as beguiling memories taunted him, memories of what had very nearly been his. Memories of Imogen as she had almost become.

Almost.

Gone was the glorious woman he had watched learning to embrace the world. In her place existed a mere shadow, barely able to sustain enough life to smile. It was an endless torture. Not only did he have to watch her spirit dying before his eyes, but he also had to stand by as each day her body became a little frailer, faded that little bit more.

Sometimes, Robert wasn’t sure which frightened him the most, although he suspected it would be the slow suicide that would be his ultimate enemy. If she willed herself out of existence, he would lose her forever.

She had always been an ethereal being, but now her physical fragility had become a macabre effigy with an eerie appearance of life in death. Her pale skin had taken on a bruised translucency, her eyes dull, lifeless nothings rimmed by gray circles. In bed at night he didn’t dare touch her, frightened that she might just shatter in his arms.

Or, worse still, pull away from him.

To lie next to her and not be able to touch her was a pain beyond pain. He longed with every fiber of his being to pull her close, longed to hold her against his heart again, but her icy withdrawal frustrated all such longings. It left him restless. He prowled around the Keep more like a caged animal than a man. He was beginning to notice the wary glances from his men. They were treating him like he was a wild beast, and a wounded one at that.

He grinned bitterly at the description. It was disturbingly accurate. He
felt
like a wounded beast deprived of its mate, and that primitive part of him would have liked nothing more than to howl his pain to the endless skies.

He could only hope that his men would understand and could forgive him this display of human weakness.

Of course they understood, he thought with a wry twist of humor. Most of them were feeling something very similar themselves. He had already noticed the worried concern that appeared in their eyes as they too watched Imogen’s transformation into a lifeless mockery of what she had been.

And they had every right to be worried, Robert thought darkly as he moved yet another block into place. Hell, Robert was so filled with fears and torments that he thought he would explode, but at least he could find some small consolation in the fact that he knew who was to blame. His enemy had a name: Roger.

That alone wasn’t enough. Robert had long since stopped trying to intercept the bastard’s messages. Imogen’s cold demand to hear each new note alone stilled his hand. So instead, he was forced to stand aside and wait to find out just how much collateral damage had been inflicted with each one.

The axe whistled through the air and landed with a satisfying crack.

He was seriously considering slaughtering the next of Roger’s toads who dared to darken his doorstep. He was only barely managing to hold off doing just that by the merest thread of sanity. Instinct might demand that he protect the woman he loved, but logically he knew the messengers were not his real enemy.

Sadly, Roger was no fool. He stayed comfortably out of reach, hiding behind the king. The cunning little rodent knew that there he was safe from Robert’s anger and could continue to play this little game with complete impunity. There was just no way to get at the man without bringing the full force of the monarch’s anger on his own head.

No, Robert had to wait and see exactly how the game was being played, wait until the prey dared to reveal itself out in the open before he could extract his revenge. It had to happen eventually and hopefully before Imogen was broken entirely. When it did, Robert would remove every last trace of the man from the face of the Earth.

All threats to Imogen had to be annihilated utterly and this sick little game ended absolutely.

He rolled his eyes in disgust when he realized that they had got him doing it now, calling this abomination between brother and sister a game, when it was nothing of the kind. Games didn’t take live hostages, didn’t have body counts, didn’t leave behind victims. That was war, a deadly war that Imogen was losing and there was nothing he could do about it.

His hands were tied till Imogen trusted him enough to tell him what the hell was actually going on here.

Robert lifted the axe high and brought it down with all the force at his disposal.

“You do realize, of course, that you have a veritable army of people whose job it is to chop your wood?” Gareth asked lightly enough.

But Robert’s teeth were bared as he lifted his head. His eyes narrowed as he caught sight of the man leaning casually against a wall.

“What do you want?” Robert spat out tersely.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Those are not the words of a happy leader,” Gareth murmured, levering himself off the wall and ambling over to the woodpile. “And need I ask whose head you envision as you abuse those poor, innocent logs?”

Robert’s smile was almost feral. “They’re messengers. Each and every bloody one is some liveried bastard’s head.” He brought the axe down again, imagining that instead of wood, the cutting edge was burying itself into flesh, sinew and bone.

Gareth’s brow shot up. “Well, you had better not mention that to the bandy-legged man who is uncomfortably standing near the main fire as we speak. The poor man is of that unpopular profession and might lay an egg if he had a glimpse of your—uh, wood-cutting frenzy.”

Robert groaned as he leaned wearily on the axe handle. “Good God, won’t that man ever run out of parchment? That would make it four in five days.” Robert shoved his hair out of his eyes again, feeling heartsick at the thought of losing yet another piece of Imogen. “Have you sent for Imogen yet?” he asked quietly.

“No, can’t say I have,” Gareth said nonchalantly, reaching up a finger to scratch his roughened cheek. “It wouldn’t be the sensible thing to do at all, especially when you consider that the messenger isn’t for her.”

“It’s not?” Robert asked blankly.

“Nope.”

Robert waited a moment before grinding out in exasperation, “Well then, who the hell is it for?”

“Why, just for novelty value, the messenger is actually for the master of the Keep, not our little mistress.”

“Well, why didn’t you just say so?” Robert asked without heat, too busy absorbing the relief that washed through him. Strange, but it almost felt like a reprieve. He buried the axe blade in the cutting block and grabbed his tunic off the pile of logs where it had landed.

“Any idea where this messenger comes from?”

Gareth’s smile was devilishly amused and Robert almost groaned, knowing from long experience that could mean only bad things. Gareth’s humor was always at its best when it was at someone else’s expense.

“Well,” Gareth drew out, “judging by the livery and our man’s general air of pomposity, I’d have to most certainly say that this one comes straight from the king himself.”

Robert stood still midstride. “You’re kidding!”

Gareth shook his head, his smile only growing.

“Well, what the hell could he want?”

Gareth leaned closer and whispered, “Well, I thought you might ask me that, so I asked him, and he said that our beloved monarch has been so lonely without you, he has decided to recall you to court.”

Robert stared openmouthed for a second, hoping against hope that this was one of Gareth’s perverse jokes, but it wasn’t.

“Shit!” he said succinctly.

“So when do you leave?” Imogen asked politely.

“Early tomorrow morning,” Robert said stiffly, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from drinking in the sight of her even as he mouthed mindless pleasantries. “We will have to travel hard if we’re to be back before planting, and I certainly intend to spend as little time as possible on this folly.”

She smiled and nodded, but her expression remained blank. It was like she had already dismissed him from her presence and from her mind.

His hands clenched at his sides. She was so close, yet she might as well have been one hundred leagues from here for all the good it did him. He could no more touch her than he could the moon. He watched the early spring breeze ruffle her hair as she stood by the window, her hands held tightly together, her spine resolutely straight. His eyes saw her serenity, her apparent regal acceptance, but that wasn’t what his heart knew to be true.

In his heart he heard her soul’s endless screams of pain. He had only to look at her to know that for all her apparent strength and resolve, she was slowly being crushed by a great weight. It chilled him to the core that she might be so easily destroyed. In all his life he had never seen anything that frightened him more than Imogen’s living death.

It hurt him just to look at her, hurt to see her passiveness in the face of her own destruction. It hurt so much that it angered him. He wanted to slap her, shake her, kiss her or perhaps all three at once—anything that might bring her back to life, back to him.

His hands remained by his sides.

She sat bathed in sunlight and it harshly illuminated the suffering that had started to dig its way into her face. Her eyes were sunken in the sharp bones of her face, her once gently rounded cheeks were harsh angles that stretched her skin till her cheekbones were angry slashes across the sides of her face. The black-violet shadows under her eyes were the only color. Even the rose-pink of her lips seemed now to be just another shade of white.

It was a face that haunted him even as he searched his brain for some way to draw her away from the demons that were eating her alive; draw her toward him.

But he had no answers. He had to look away from her before he could find his voice.

“You’re not eating enough,” he said gruffly. “That dress looks like its hanging on a corpse, not a woman.” He couldn’t help but smile a little grimly at the lie. She had lost weight and it worried the hell out of him, but not for one moment did he think she looked like a corpse. She would always be the most beautiful woman Robert had ever seen.

She shrugged her shoulders carelessly. “I’ve not been hungry.”

“I don’t care if you are hungry or not,” he roared, his anger igniting in a second, a grim reminder of just how close to the end of his tether he really was. “You will eat properly or I’ll tie you down and force-feed you myself.”

“How very husbandly you sound. Roger would be pleased,” she said sneeringly, her smile darkly amused.

And that was the ultimate problem, Robert realized with sudden certainty. She thought he was Roger’s man and nothing he said or did would penetrate the shell she had built around herself while that viper whispered his poison into her ear. He began pacing, his hands clenched helplessly by his sides.

“I don’t just
sound
husbandly, Imogen, I am your husband, your lord and master, if you prefer. As such, I want you to eat more than the sparrow portions you have been subsisting on. By my return, I will expect you to have put on all the weight you’ve lost. No, I want you to have put on more than that. I want you to be so fat that I will never have to worry again. Am I being understood?” His anger reverberated around the room.

“Of course,” she said silkily and Robert knew she hadn’t heard a word. She was set on going to hell her own way and not a thing he said would make one jot of difference to her.

He paced back to the fire.

“I’m only taking Matthew with me,” he said tersely. “Gareth will be left in charge of the garrison.”

She nodded her head mutely and they lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. He longed to say something. Or perhaps he just longed to hear her say something voluntarily to him or even longed for her to come over to him and let him hold her in his arms for a moment.