Midnight Eyes (19 page)

But longings were not reality, Robert thought hollowly, as she serenely dismissed him with a quiet, emotionless, “God speed, Sir Robert.”

He should have been used to it by now; her rejections should have long since lost their sting. They hadn’t. A fresh flash of pain struck him deep in his gut as she cast him aside once more. He bowed formally over her hand. Her skin felt icy cold under his warm lips, her face carefully blank when he looked into it, drinking in this last sight of her before turning and leaving the room.

Once the door closed behind him he couldn’t stop the fury that built up inside him like an inferno, demanding an outlet. A volley of swearing filled the hall.

“I’ll take that to mean that you two haven’t sorted anything out,” Mary said dryly as she walked toward him.

“There is nothing to sort out, apparently,” he snorted derisively, knowing it for the lie it was. “I can’t remember a time when I have ever been subjected to such politeness before.”

Mary’s brow dropped in concern. “Aye, but there is a wealth of pain behind that politeness.” She shook her head. “I’m worried sick, I don’t mind telling you. I have never seen her like this, never this bad. Oh, he’s hurt her before, but this time”—she shrugged her shoulders helplessly—“it’s like he’s destroying her.”

Before Robert could say anything, she poked a finger into the center of his chest. “And what I would like to know is: what are you going to do about it?”

Robert gave a shout of bitter laughter. “Mary, you seem to have mistaken me for an active player in this farce. I’m just a very bewildered member of the audience, like you.” He shook his head and rubbed a tired hand over his eyes, trying not to notice its slight tremble. “Quite frankly, Mary, I don’t have a clue as to what I should be doing.”

“Neither do I, but I’d like to suggest that running to London ain’t the answer,” she said stoutly.

“I’ve been summoned, and there is sod all I can do about it,” he muttered, feeling strangely defensive in the face of Mary’s righteous indignation. He would never understand how this one old woman always managed to put him on the defensive.

“Well, take her with you, then. I don’t want her left alone, not while she is this fragile.”

“Hardly alone,” he said wearily, but Mary just ignored him.

“She was alone in this Keep for years,” she said earnestly, “regardless of how many people lived here. She was like a sleepwalker. Till you came along.
You
made her alive. She was starting to return to what she had been before she lost her sight and it did my old heart good to see it. If you did it once, surely you can do it again, if only you would try.” She grabbed his arm. “Please try.”

He looked down at the old woman’s determined face as he gently extracted his arm from her tight grip. “There is nothing I can do. Imogen won’t let me help, and I have been summoned to London by the king. I must go.” He awkwardly put a hand on her shoulder, trying to comfort her. “Perhaps it is for the best. Perhaps the distance will help Imogen deal with all that she needs to deal with,” he finished lamely. The platitudes lacked conviction even to his own ears.

She shook herself free from his hand and glared up at him accusingly. “I don’t like it, and no good will come of it,” she muttered darkly, then, with her head held high, walked into Imogen’s chamber.

Robert felt his own shoulders slump wearily.

“I don’t like it either, Mary,” he whispered into the darkened hall. “I don’t like any of it.”

“Can you think of anything I might have left out?” Robert asked as he looked to where Gareth lounged in a comfortable sprawl on the chair by the hearth.

“Well, you did fail to mention anything about exactly how many logs should be on the main hearth at five in the afternoon, but other than that small oversight, I must say I found you disturbingly thorough.” He gave Robert a lopsided smile. “I shouldn’t have to think for the entire time you are gone.”

Robert grimaced. “A bit over the top?”

“Only a shade. Don’t worry, it is only an old Saxon Keep, it will be fine. You have left me to look after entire armies with fewer orders so I’m sure that I can manage one small Keep with such a wealth of information at my disposal.”

Robert stood and walked to the window. “I never felt quite like this about any of my armies.” He clenched his fist and thumped it down on the ledge. “Damn. I don’t like this, Gareth. It just doesn’t feel right.”

He looked out the window at the land that had come to mean so much to him, and couldn’t shake the terror that had lodged itself inside of him, that somehow he was in very real danger of losing it all. It wasn’t rational, but everything suddenly seemed under threat.

He took a deep breath. He had to concentrate on countering any threat, not on his fear of losing everything.

“You think that the summons is part of some kind of plot against you?” Gareth’s voice might have sounded reasonable and calm, but Robert could well hear the thread of steel that ran through it.

Robert shook his head. He turned and leaned his hip against the window ledge, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “Who knows? It might just be as entirely innocent as it sounds. Perhaps the king is preparing for more wars and simply wants to hire me and my men as mercenaries.”

“Are we still for hire?”

Robert shook his head decisively. “The only battles I’m going to fight from now on are going to be for the express purpose of protecting what is mine, not to help our greedy little monarch grab more of this island.”

Gareth smiled faintly. “You make him sound like a fat little boy chasing after sweetmeats.”

“Well, you must admit there are certain similarities.”

“An impressive boy.”

“The sweetmeats aren’t exactly insubstantial either. Any child would have to be a little impressive to want them.”

They both smiled for a moment, but their smiles faded quickly as the ever-present worry returned.

“And if the summons isn’t just an innocent request for a pet warrior?” Gareth asked quietly.

“Then there is going to be some serious trouble,” Robert said grimly, visions of looming disaster crowding his head. “That’s why I have left you in charge.”

Gareth lifted an eyebrow sardonically. “Well, I suppose I am more than amply qualified to deal with trouble. After all, I’ve spent a good deal of my life making it, so spotting it shouldn’t be hard. Your home will be safe with me.”

“That isn’t what concerns me now. Everything I’ve said thus far boils down to one solitary task, and if you don’t succeed at that task, then I’ll kill you, even if I have to come back from the grave to do so.”

“I almost believe you would too,” Gareth said with a dry chuckle, “and that can only mean one thing: Imogen.”

Robert’s jaw tightened painfully. “She is all that matters to you from now on. You protect her, you keep her safe, and to hell with the rest of the world. Is that understood? I don’t care what you have to do, or how many heads you have to break to do it, just see that it’s done.”

Gareth let out a low whistle of admiration. “You really do love her, don’t you?” he forced himself to say, deliberately ignoring the pain he had no right to be feeling about another man’s wife.

For a second, Robert almost forgot to breathe. He had never heard it said out loud before and it seemed strange to hear it now. Strange, but so right at the same time.

He had to clear his voice before he could speak. “Yes, I love her. I love her more than life itself.”

Gareth looked down at his hands. “If it’s any consolation, I think she also loves you.”

“Then keep her alive so that she can tell me herself someday,” Robert said harshly, his emotions too raw to say anything more.

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure.” A sudden wolfish grin flashed over his face. “I might even make her life a little more comfortable by disposing of a messenger or two. There seem to be enough of them about at the moment that one or two less of the little buggers will hardly be missed.”

Robert smiled faintly. “Be my guest.”

“I’m going to enjoy myself.” He paused for a moment, a thoughtful look on his face. “Actually, while you’re in London you could stop the messengers entirely by destroying the source. After all, Roger Colebrook is a creature of the court. He’s bound to be slithering around our monarch somewhere if you look close enough.”

“I could put his head on a pike to give her as a present,” Robert said wistfully.

“Sounds perfect. The castle you intend to build will need the odd head on its walls as decoration.”

“Tempting, isn’t it?” Robert’s eyes gleamed with the possibilities.

“Well then, go and be tempted, my friend.”

The morning air was brisk and the sun not quite risen when Robert walked Dagger into the courtyard. Despite the earliness of the hour, the Keep was already starting to wake, the sounds of life filling the air. Matthew waited for him in the courtyard, mounted a magnificent dappled warhorse. He sat slumped in his saddle, a look of belligerent resignation clear on his face.

Robert couldn’t help but feel the familiarity of the scene. Things seemed to have come full circle, here he was leaving the Keep and Matthew was in almost exactly the same spirit as he had been five months ago.

Robert shook his head. Five months didn’t sound right, somehow. It seemed at once like forever but also the merest blinking of an eye. Still there was no denying that in five months, everything had changed. He had traveled north with dreams of mortar and land, but he was leaving it without his heart. He was now more owned than owning.

Home. It was hard to remember how simple his ideas of home had been. To him it had meant only an abode, a roof to shelter under, but now the word was a rich tapestry woven with all the joy, fear, helplessness, protectiveness and desire that had come into his days.

His entire being was now entwined inexorably with the existence of this simple little Keep. He couldn’t explain it, but over the past months he had become a part of all the souls that found their shelter within his walls, especially with the fragile lady who unknowingly held his heart in her hands.

Not wanting to waste his last night at the Keep on sleep, he had lain in bed and watched over Imogen as she slept, but he hadn’t been content merely to look. No, for the first time in weeks, he allowed himself to reach out a hand and touch her. He had gently traced the sweep of her hair, ran a finger down her delicate nose, rubbed his thumb over the swell of her bottom lip. He had touched her so lightly that he had only just been able to feel her. It hadn’t been enough. His body had burned to do more, but he had been loath to disturb her. She had finally, after weeks of nightmare-filled nights, managed to find sleep and he wouldn’t wake her from that temporary escape from life.

Though perhaps she hadn’t slept that deeply.

He had seen the solitary tear glittering in the firelight as it slipped from under her lashes, watched as it slid silently over her temple and lost itself in her hair. He had wiped its path gently away, hating to think that she cried even in her dreams. The sense of helplessness seemed to have lodged itself permanently in his chest, and he couldn’t say that he was developing much of a taste for the emotion. It was also more than a little frightening to realize he would have been quite content to spend a lifetime just watching over her.

It had been hard to find the willpower to leave, but somehow he had.

He had leaned over and placed a chaste kiss on her forehead, whispering, “Be safe, Little One, and know that I love you.”

While the rightness of his love made him whole, it also left him exposed and vulnerable. He had risen swiftly from the bed and quietly got dressed. He had denied himself the luxury of looking back, knowing that if he did he might never be able to find the will to leave his home and his love.

“Well, are you going to actually get on that horse, or are you going to waste the whole day mooning about?” Matthew asked testily, breaking into Robert’s brooding thoughts.

“I thought age was supposed to make a man more patient,” Robert said with a smile as he ran a hand along Dagger’s mane.

“Hardly. There is a very limited time left to me and I have absolutely no desire to spend it frivolously watching you stare into space.”

Robert laughed as he mounted. “Well, come on, then,” he said, and spurred his horse forward and out of the courtyard, not once looking back.

There was no need, when he carried it all in the space where his heart had once been.

Robert prowled around the room, the frustration that boiled restlessly inside him demanding a physical outlet. A week spent as the king’s “guests” and he felt like he had been static for an eternity. His muscles now demanded work, even if that work was only this pointless wondering.

As he paced, his mind seethed with an uncomfortable mixture of memories and questions.

No, that wasn’t honest. It wasn’t questions, plural, that haunted him but a single, solitary question. All of his curiosity could be rendered down to one simple, pure droplet of puzzlement: exactly what the hell was going on here?

Robert strode from one side of the room to the other, then back again as his bewilderment went round and round his mind with a dizzying speed, but still he could find no answer. Not that it should have surprised him. Nothing was as it should be.

In the time it had taken the king’s summons to reach Robert and for him to make his way down South, the king had decided to remove the court from Westminster Palace. Apparently, on whatever idle whim guided him, William had felt an overwhelming urge to inspect one of the many fortresses he was having built along the South Eastern coastline above the line of London.

Robert’s jaw clenched in frustration. God save him from the whims of monarchs! He had wasted valuable time in the pointless trip to Westminster, and had then been forced to make his way through the ever-busy eastern roads, chasing after the court.

When finally he had managed to track down the wandering king, his sole ambition had been to get it all over with and start for home at the earliest opportunity.

As distasteful as it was, Robert had even been prepared to play the courtier if it would hasten the process. After all, with the correct amount of subservient drivel administered, even the most recalcitrant monarch could be rendered pliable.

Then Robert could have got to his very important point.

He knew he would enjoy telling William firmly and succinctly that he was no longer for hire. He was retiring from the life of a mercenary and the king would have to find himself some other fool to come running when he beckoned. If William didn’t kill him after that outburst, Robert thought wryly, well then, he could start planning the rest of his life.

The first thing he would do with his retirement would be to start looking under some of England’s most aristocratic rocks to find out exactly where Roger was skulking these days. Beyond finding the little scum, Robert hadn’t quite decided what precisely he would do to him, but whatever he chose, it would be deliciously and irrefutably permanent. With that pleasurable little job done, he could return home and, if all went according to his schemes, he would never again leave it.

That had been the plan, simple yet effective. Just the way Robert liked things, but everything remained strangely elusive.

Elusive be damned, he hadn’t yet even managed to clear the first hurdle. Thus far he had been denied even an audience with the monarch. With a truly exasperating politeness, Matthew and he had found themselves imprisoned in two small rooms, ostensibly awaiting a royal audience. Oh, they had placed the most discreet of guards on their door and didn’t once mention the word arrest, but that was just a small political technicality and everyone knew it.

So he was forced to wait.

Day after long day passed while he awaited an audience that he had never wanted in the first place. Really, it was enough to cleave a man permanently from his sanity, Robert thought with a grim smile. God knows, he could feel his own slipping away a little bit more with each successive day of enforced inertia.

Inertia was a grim punishment for a man used to action. It was leaving him with far too much time for thinking. The more he was left to his thoughts, the more he dwelled on how everything had got so messed up, and it wasn’t a very edifying exercise. No matter how he tried to sort it all out into some semblance of rational order, it came back to one certainty that haunted him: he should have stopped this torture before it got started. He should have stopped Roger from getting his talons into Imogen’s soul.

If he had managed to do that one small task, then perhaps he could have prevented his world from collapsing around him.

He should have simply run all of the messengers through with the point of his sword and burnt their parchments into so many pounds of ashes. Granted, it wouldn’t have been very friendly, but at least it would have left Imogen untouched by the soul disease that was even now eating its way through her.

Or he could have taken Imogen away from this cloudy island and let her find some peace in the sun of southern France far away from her brother.

Robert gritted his teeth and closed his eyes in self-disgust. Should haves and could haves all boiled down to one sickeningly solid reality: he should have done everything in his power to save her from the nightmare world that was slowly crushing her into nothing, and the only way he could have done that was by making her tell him exactly what the hell was going on between her and her brother. Then he could have put an immediate stop to it, bloodily, if that was what the situation required.

Strange, but from this distance it all became clear. It really had been as simple as that. But something had stilled his hand.

No, not a nameless something, he thought with a disgusted growl, but pride. It was his own cocky, foolish pride that had stopped him doing what needed to be done. What else but pride would demand that he wait for her to come to him? It was his pride that had desperately wanted her to admit that she needed him as much as he needed her.

Now, all his pride was gone, burnt away by the shame that almost overwhelmed him. What did his pride matter in the face of love?

A love he had never declared when she could hear.

And that was another thing that he should have done. He should have gone to her on bended knee and told her that he loved her. He should have taken her into his arms and held her tightly and never let her go. Damn, but he didn’t like being so far away from her, not when he had left so much unsaid between them. It ate at him.

What if she wasn’t safe? What if she had stopped eating entirely and had even now faded away? What if she was being stalked by her nightmares with no one to hold her in the darkness?

He paced to the window and stared into the sunshine without seeing. He was being tortured by what ifs, he thought with a derisive snort, and began pacing once again.

“If you don’t stop that, I may be forced to kill you,” Matthew said amiably, the sleepy expression on his face at odds with the violence of his words. He lay on his side in the cot that had been pushed hastily against one wall to accommodate the old man in Robert’s makeshift prison. A half-drunk jug of wine sat on the floor beside him, the major contributor to Matthew’s amiability.

Robert tried to quiet the stalking demons that possessed him, sitting down on the floor and leaning his head back against the wall, but his feet still tapped on the stones and his fists rhythmically clenched and unclenched in time with the churning of his thoughts.

Matthew looked over to him balefully. And that was Robert trying to be restful, Matthew thought with a silent sigh. Still, it was an improvement on the incessant pacing Robert had been doing for the past week, so Matthew just closed his eyes. He couldn’t help grimacing as he felt the motion sickness—caused by the cheap liquor and Robert’s prowling—roll through him.

He opened his eyes quickly and lifted the jug to his lips once more. “To the king and all who sail in him,” Matthew slurred, and tilted the jug in a mock salute.

“You’re drinking too much, Old Man.”

“Of course I am,” Matthew agreed with a lip-smacking slurp. “It’s not as if there is anything more pressing that I should be doing. I might as well enjoy the king’s hospitality to its full extent.” He looked balefully at the ruby liquor. “Although, I do think that the king could afford to at least buy some wine that doesn’t taste like vinegar.”

“Not that taste would stop you,” Robert murmured and sighed with resignation as Matthew’s Adam’s apple bobbed with each long swallow, but still he couldn’t help but envy the old man’s ability to lose himself in an alcoholic fog. God knows, he would have tried it himself if he had even half believed for a moment that Imogen’s pain wouldn’t follow him into his stupor. At least sober he was in some kind of control. Drunk, he might just disgrace himself with tears.

Robert shifted uncomfortably and started to get up to resume his pacing, but quickly sat back down when he caught sight of Matthew’s raised eyebrow.

Silence descended but Robert’s mind roared with his impatience and guilt even though he knew that, for now, there was nothing that could be done. He took a deep breath, trying to calm the swelter of emotions. He needed to forget, needed to numb his mind. He closed his eyes and willed himself to feel no pain. He might have actually slept for a moment, because the bang of the solid wooden door hitting the wall brought him jarringly back to consciousness.

He stood quickly, instinctively wary of any change to their monotonous routine. Matthew, however, didn’t seem to be all that interested. His drunken face reflected only the most mild curiosity.

Robert didn’t recognize the guard who couldn’t quite look him in the eye.

“The king commands Sir Robert’s presence in the throne room,” the man said formally, and Robert narrowed his eyes. This wasn’t an invitation to dine with a benevolent monarch. This was serious.

“Finally,” Robert murmured steadily, but a cold chill settled low in his spine, warning him of impending danger. He reached for the sword that rested against the wall.

“Sorry, Sir Robert, but I’ve been told to make sure you are unarmed before you go into His Majesty’s presence.”

Robert’s hand hovered over the hilt for a second, then dropped to his side.

He was reluctant to leave it behind when every nerve in his body screamed that danger was threateningly close. He might as well be naked as leave the relative safety of these rooms unarmed, he thought grimly. The presence of his sword hanging low on his left hip would at least give him a chance, but apparently it was a chance that was being denied him.

He had never before been unarmed in the king’s presence.

Strange. William had never been squeamish about weapons before and those with any sense went armed when close to a throne. After all, absolute power produced a lethal violence that was equaled only by the violence produced by extreme poverty.

Casting a rueful glance at his sword, he turned to the guard and shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. “Well, in that case, I’m ready.”

The other man nodded and, with a formal “Follow me,” left the room. Robert turned quickly to Matthew, painfully aware that his time had run out.

“Get out of here if you can, Old Man. Get to Shadowsend and tell Gareth to move Imogen out of the country as fast as he can. There should be enough gold in my strongbox to buy you all a new life somewhere else. Tell him to also pay the men and then they can scatter.”

Despite all of the alcohol in his system, the older man’s eyes were clear as he nodded his head once. Robert longed to say more, but the guard waited with visible impatience in the hallway just out of earshot. Robert gave Matthew a crooked smile and followed the guard from the room.

“Give the king my love,” Matthew called after him, “and tell him not to be so cheap next time. He could at least buy some decent wine for his prisoners.”

Robert’s smile broadened and he just shrugged at the clearly scandalized guard as he casually followed him along the halls. His smile slowly faded as the strange quiet of the castle penetrated his consciousness.

Things had certainly changed in the six months Robert had been absent from the court. Gone was the easy air of debauchery, replaced by the heavier atmosphere of suspicion and fear. As they passed down passageways the silence became oppressive. Voices that had once risen in dissipation and revelry seemed to have been unnaturally stilled. It was disconcertingly like the hush of a tomb.

A well-protected tomb, at that.

The guards appeared to have trebled in number. They stood guarding who knew what at regular intervals along the halls. Robert suspected that more likely than not it was their presence that had suppressed the normal babble of the court. It had even infected the servants. They scurried about in a terrified muteness, never once letting their eyes rise higher than the floor.

Robert’s eyes narrowed speculatively. William’s debauched, merry court seemed to have died and on its corpse was growing a fungus that reeked of fear.

They passed clusters of noblemen whispering in corners. Every now and then Robert recognized a face of someone who had been if not a friend, then at least an ally, but whenever he tried to meet their eyes they slid their gaze away quickly, as if he no longer existed.

Robert didn’t take it personally. Judging by the level of fear that was trapped in the stone walls of the castle, they were probably wishing themselves out of existence at the same time.

It didn’t take a genius to realize that there was something wrong here, very wrong.

Robert felt himself preparing for battle as they waited outside the throne room, to be announced to a monarch who had always waved aside such formalities. The apprehension lodged like a solid block of ice in his stomach as the realization dawned that he would be very lucky to ever leave this place alive.

Robert closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. Unbidden an image of Shadowsend filled his mind, its dark rooms and unsteady stairs suddenly a comfort. Thoughts of the Keep were swiftly followed by thoughts of its lady. In his imaginings she smiled at him and, strangely, the tightening in his gut started to ease.

Slowly he opened his eyes and straightened his shoulders. He was ready. William might be a dangerous opponent but, for the first time in his life, Robert had something worth fighting for.

He walked with quiet confidence into the throne room behind the guard, his gaze sweeping over the scene carefully, all the while assessing the situation.