Shana Abe (42 page)

“He was a killer,” she said finally, “in love with death. He killed Gytha, and then he told me he would begin to kill the serfs next if I would not do as he wanted. So I did what had to be done. That was all. I had to do it.”

Damon kept his silence, watching the shadows play across her face. She had again that brittle look, the one he had not seen since they had been on the boat to Dover. It imbued her with a remoteness that belied her feminine beauty. It was the splintered detachment he had seen in the eyes of a hundred different men since the beginnings of the war.

She listed without inflection the sins of the man she
tried to murder. Damon couldn’t touch that detachment, he knew that from experience. He wasn’t able to heal the wound within her that separated the woman he loved from the creature who had acted to survive. He could only offer her himself. His support, his love.

It could be that he would never be able to know what thing lived in that look she carried now; it could be that he would not be able to ever bear the full truth of it. He didn’t know. But she was here now, safe with him. He would keep her safe for the rest of their days.

“Do you hate me now, Damon Wolf?” she asked lightly in a voice designed to hide her true self. But now he could recognize the worry in her eyes.

“Hate? Is that what you think?” He shook his head. “How could I hate the woman I love most in this world? How could I hate the one who is the other half of me? And although I think it is not a difficult thing to do, she is the better half, at that.”

She gave him that uncertain look, the one that hurt him the most. There were tears hovering on her lashes. “God help me, I do not deserve a man as good as you.”

“Then God help me as well, for I certainly do not deserve a woman as good as you.”

“Do not tease me!”

“Tease? You would think that I would tease after all this?” He gave a broken laugh. “You would not say such a thing if you could see into my heart, dear love.” He moved to sit beside her on the feather bed, sinking them both deep into the center of the mattress. “I have a love who is brave as a warrior, clever as a puzzle, beautiful as no other woman could ever hope to be. I would not dare tease such a one.”

She shifted over to allow him more room in the bed, then nestled down to lie in the crook of his arm. He kissed her forehead. “My heart is forever gone to you. Nothing can change that.”

She was quiet for a while, a long while, and he thought she might have drifted back to sleep, until she spoke again in a small voice. “What will become of us now, my lord? We are not married, I suppose. It seems I am a widow all over again.”

“I have already sent a messenger to Edward, bearing most of the news. I have informed him of the earl’s … inclinations, and requested that he formally annul your marriage to him.”

“Do you think he will listen?”

“Edward is no fool. He will have heard the rumors, and he trusts me. I think he’ll do as I ask. He has incentive. I told him you would grant Redmond’s estates to the king’s treasury as a gesture of goodwill, should it be in your power to do so.”

“He may have them all and burn them to the ground, for all I care.”

“I doubt he will burn them. But I do believe he will do all he can to ensure you have both the right to will them to our sovereign and to obtain the annulment. He is wily enough to find a way.”

A silence again, both of them considering this. Solange took a deep breath.

“So, it is done,” she said.

“Yes, Solange, it is done.”

The purport of his words were just beginning to sink in. It was done. Those nightmares that had possessed him could now be buried with their bitterness.
He wanted no more of that agony. The lady was at last here beside him, truly his in every sense that mattered, just as he had always known she was meant to be. It was done.

She squirmed a little beside him, then slid one of her legs over his. “Perhaps, just to be certain, we should get married once more.”

The bright sunlight encompassed the room, casting a golden glow all around. Damon smiled up at the ceiling. “Is that a proposal, my lady?”

“Well, yes. I suppose it is. Wilt thou have me, my lord?”

“Aye, beautiful lady. I will.”

T
he road to recovery was formed of simple things—the rush of wind from a bird’s wings, the pristine color of the noon sky, the steady reassurance in the eyes of the man who truly did love her. Or now, the wondering face of a child as he tasted the first sweet bite of a late summer—in this case, a long-anticipated cherry tart.

Solange smiled down at the boy. “Well, William, what do you think? Was it worth waiting for?”

William continued thoughtfully chewing, then nodded his head. “Although,” he added seriously in between bites, “three years is an awful long time to have to wait.”

“But your little tree has borne fruit before all the others,” reminded his mother.

“Yes.” He brightened. “And Miranda has been so cross!”

This made the women gathered around the table in the buttery burst into laughter as they passed the tray of tarts around to the rest of the waiting children, drawing
the attention of the tall man who had just entered the room.

“And what is the cause of such mirth, my lady wife?” Damon asked, walking over and artfully stealing a tart from the tray. “Has my daughter done something new to amuse? Has she spoken a new word? Made an inventive new pattern in her food?” He walked over to where Solange stood, holding the toddler in her arms, and kissed them both before biting into the tart.

“Papa!” cried the child, reaching her arms out for him. “Mine!”

“No,” said Solange ruefully. “She has the same words as always.”

“I will share with you, Kathryn, but you cannot have it all.” He broke off a piece of the tart and handed it to her. The little girl gave a gleeful chuckle.

“I am lost, I fear,” Damon said half seriously.

“And how is that?” Solange wiped up the cherry juice from her daughter’s chin.

“Kathryn will be my undoing. She has her mother’s eyes, her mother’s sweetness. How can I say no to her?”

“She has her father’s smile and charm,” Solange replied firmly. “And yet I find myself saying no often enough.”

“Where was your no last night when she wanted to bid a good night to the hawks before she went to sleep?”

Solange laughed. “That was different.”

Kathryn echoed the laugh, releasing the last bit of the pastry to put her fingers in her mother’s mouth. Solange gently extracted the little hand, gave it a kiss, and then began to wipe up again after the tart.

As he watched the two heads bent to each other, one black and the other darkest brown, the two profiles so similar, Damon felt a sense of completion as he had never known. It was a good feeling, a surprising one even still, though the nights were becoming fewer and fewer that he woke up in a panic that Solange had been just another dream of his. She was always there beside him, day or night, real as the black castle itself, sweeter than life.

The past three years had brought to Wolfhaven a multitude of blessings, a gradual increasing of the estate in every area, from financial to geographical to population. The marriage of Godwin and Mairi had begun the cycle.…

No, Damon amended to himself. It was Solange herself who had begun the cycle, and who steadily improved upon it by bringing forth their first child, and soon another. Within her the light of Wolfhaven shone the brightest, tending her gardens, teaching her classes, watching over every living thing she could while still showing him she was grateful, each night, to be his love.

But Damon Wolf did not think, deep in his heart, that she could possibly be as grateful as he was to have her. He did not truly think that such a thing could exist. Damon knew, beyond all mortal doubts, that he
was the most blessed of men. The mirrored faces of his wife and daughter were proof of that.

Solange placed Kathryn in his arms, and then the three of them walked outside to enjoy the enduring fairness of the summer day.

ENGLAND
MAY 1117

S
he thought the whole thing had been rather too easy.

First there was the serendipitous coincidence that the very lord Kyla sought had not bothered to leave the rustic English border town since the massacre at Glencarson last month.

But she had explained that away as a commonsense move on his part, to keep his base entrenched on his own English soil while hunting for her up north. She thought she would have done the same thing.

And how quickly she had been able to pinpoint the inn where the soldiers were staying. To give herself credit, the town only had two inns. It had to be one or the other. The soldiers constantly milling about The Hound’s Taile had resolved that issue.

But perhaps she should have taken a longer look at the arrangements before leaping forward with her plan. She had only given herself a day to scout the area. It had seemed simple enough. A small inn, a
courtyard with easy access to the stables and the main road …

Oh, it had been so sweetly arranged. That tiny twinge of warning was all but vanquished once she had seen the man she sought himself, strolling so casually across the courtyard.

And it had to be him. It had to be.

No other man in this remote little town could have walked with such a manner of confidence, seeming to part the very air in front of him with a wealth of power and grace.

The day was cloudy, so when she first spied him what she noticed was the presence of him more than anything, an overall impression of complete and absolute command.

Then the woolly clouds blocking the sun lifted. With breathtaking abruptness clear sunlight spilled all around him, leaving her almost to gasp out loud.

What twisted fate had endowed a man who had the soul of a devil with a person so blessed? It was bitterly unfair, watching such perfection move across the yard without any acknowledgement of its own beauty.

Honeyed hair fell in casual waves. He had a firm jaw, wide shoulders, and she could swear a crooked smile curved those sculpted lips, a smile given to no one but the birds in the trees, it seemed. She could even make out the color of his eyes, a vivid greenish blue, bright against the tan of his face.

They were an exact match to the color of a small stone she had seen once at court, set in the ring of a Moorish prince.

Turkeis
, the prince had called it, with a knowing smile at her, and then translated the strange word: turquoise.

She hated Strathmore with sudden force, hated that he lived and Alister died. Hated that the man who would have had her in marriage would now have her in chains, yet still walked as a free man without a care to trouble him.

But mostly she hated him for who he was, the man who had hunted what was left of her family to death.

Kyla, crouching behind some empty ale barrels in an alley, closed her eyes then, willing him to go away.

When she opened them again, he was gone.

She faded back into the shadows of the building to wait until nightfall. After that, she had merely chosen the most auspicious room—the largest one, of course, the only one with its own balcony—and had no trouble at all scaling the stripped branches of a summer vine that had buried its roots in the walls of the inn. It had only taken a minute.

Yes, it had been so easy.

And that was what she got for using her heart and not her head, for now he had caught her, and she would die without even the revenge she had been nursing since Glencarson. He had trapped her in this little room with him, and in an instant he would hand her over to Henry’s men. Hound of Hell, indeed.

Her hand ached from the punch she had delivered to his jaw. She sincerely wished she could do it again.