Chapter 23
Hawk stared at her, at this beautiful girl who looked at him with promise-colored eyes. If she saw romance in a fortress, what could she possibly see in him? A gift? Him? She was the gift. A tulle-wrapped gift. A gift he dared not touch. Dared not believe it was his.
She frowned, her gaze searching the gallery. “What is this noise?”
Hawk stilled. What noise? The cannons? Those had to be the thumps of his heart. But there was something else. The wind moaning over battlements. How many nights had he stayed guard in his youth, listening to the wind, and kneeling on the ground to hear the enemy approach?
Hawk tucked a fiery strand under her ear. “That’s the sound of the tower.”
“Is there a tower? Where?”
Hawk pointed to the opposite corner. “Up those stairs.”
“Take me there.”
“It’s late—”
“Why, General. It is never too late to reconnoiter the castle’s defenses.”
Hawk crossed his arms. “The fortress is impregnable.”
She gasped, hand pressed to her chest in mock horror. “You mean to tell me that a great leader like yourself would march blindly into battle without firsthand knowledge of the terrain? What if you are besieged? What if enemy forces are scaling the walls as we speak?”
“There is no enemy.”
None other than his treacherous arms, which wanted to hold her close; his mutinous heart, which beat faster with each of her smiles; and his insurgent blood, which ignited at the mere scent of her.
She clicked her tongue. “A true strategist prepares for all possibilities. But if you are afraid of heights, then…”
“Celeste—”
She held up a hand. “No, no, I understand. Some war heroes simply prefer solid ground. Still, if I must conquer my fears by taking small doses of the male sex, surely you must do the same with what you are afraid of.”
Hawk growled low in his throat.
Something in his expression must have alerted her to the change in him, because she took a step backward, eyes alight with mischief. “Now, my lord, there is something else to consider.”
A muscle in his jaw started to tick. “And what is that?”
She tapped a finger to her lips as if contemplating some great military maneuver.
“Well, if an enemy were to breach the castle walls—unlikely, of course, with such impenetrable defenses—would you not need to test how swiftly you could reach the battlements in case of an attack? Unless of course you would stay below, commanding the action from afar?”
Hawk narrowed his eyes. “I don’t command from behind, Celeste. A cavalry general leads the charge.”
“Are you sure? Because I’m quite positive I can make it to the battlements before this general.” She dared poke him in the chest, and before he could grab her untamed finger, she bolted toward the stairs, skirts swirling around her legs.
At the first step, she looked back over her shoulder. “Come, my lord! Don’t tell me the dove will reach the fray before the hawk? What would your regiment think?”
Her challenge unleashed a barrage of foreign emotions.
Fear charged first—if allowed up there unsupervised, she might topple down the battlement.
Irritation followed next—she had removed herself from his presence when he was not done looking at her lips.
But then pride struck. She had called herself his dove.
His. The moniker his men had given her. And then, the most insidious assault of all—temptation.
The riotous pull to abandon discipline and charge. To chase her. To join in her folly.
Her joy was a battle cry, setting fire to his veins. And that’s why he bolted up the stairs after her, his boots striking against the stone, faster than when he charged with the heavies.
“Seems like I’ll be the first. Should I draft the terms of surrender?” Celeste’s laughter was brighter than the wind.
The battlement door sat only a few steps above them. She would win—let her. A general shouldn’t race a ballerina. Still, Hawk grunted loud enough to upset the tower doves and braced against the stone wall.
Halting, she glanced back.
A sharp pang—equal parts guilt and want—struck him. He took advantage of her hesitation and surged forward. In an instant, he had her at the waist and lifted her into his arms.
She laughed, her hands clutching his shoulders. “You tricked me! That was a foul move, Alexander de Warenne.”
His name on her lips. True to her word, she spoke it sparingly. Almost as if she treasured speaking it as much as he did hearing her voicing it.
He could barely tear his gaze from her mouth. “And you fell for it, which means you’re now my prisoner.” And he never wanted to let her go.
She gasped as he climbed the last steps with her in his arms. He drank in the sound, wanting to take full possession of it, to write his name on it, perhaps bottle it for when the only sounds he heard were bullets and screams.
Wriggling in his hold, she wasn’t a burden but a spark, so much so that he began to wonder who had captured whom. His heart thundered against hers, their bodies pressed close as he took her across the final archway onto the tower’s parapet.
The ocean spread before them, framed by the dented rocks of the battlements. The wind roared, but his body burned.
He brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, and she smiled up at him, content in his arms. Their childish play faded.
The Norman conquerors who built this fortress must have felt the same reckless pride and breathless exhilaration when they brought their brides to see the view.
Were they tired of war? Were they eager for a soft future filled with colors and laughter?
Celeste’s gaze swept over the cliffs, the distant waves crashing below. “It’s magnificent,” she whispered.
He lowered her legs to the ground slowly, reluctant to let her go. She stepped forward, her hands poised on the rough rock of the battlements. He doubted the stone had ever been touched by something so fine.
He should step back. The danger was not that she would fall from the battlement, but that he would. Into her. Into the reckless surrender of wanting her with no defenses left.
While she admired the wild countryside, his gaze was fixed on her. His ballerina-turned-heiress was enamored of the view, while her general-turned-guardian was enamored of her.
He pulled her back against his chest as if he had every right to lean his chin against the top of her head. He wanted to do so much more, but settled into breathing in her scent and closing his eyes.
Every inch of his body that touched hers ached, and if he had a knife, he would’ve ripped his front open so he could fit her inside of him.
What in heaven’s name was this feeling? He was not wounded, yet he was not whole.
His breath faltered, and his heart was a dull drumbeat in his breast. She had invaded his chest with cunning or grace, with subtlety or sharp maneuvers—it mattered not.
Hawk inspected himself like a battle terrain, and could no longer deny it.
He had fallen. But not in combat. He was in love.
His stomach clenched, a coil of longing spreading to encompass all of his battle-weary frame. He loved her with a consuming certainty. How could a soldier endure such a state? Love did not obey the rules of war. Love did not wait for permission. Love did not respect rank.
She lifted her graceful arm and touched his cheek, her palm brushing against his bristles and then lingering. Just like that, she cut through his lines, trampled over walls he had spent a lifetime reinforcing.
Hawk didn’t fight it. Couldn’t. She felt too good, and his chest expanded beyond his ribs, as if he had finally inhaled after years without air.
He breathed in her scent, brushing his face against her hair. Instead of pulling away, she gave in, resting her head on his shoulder. Hawk hadn’t known trust could taste this sweet.
“I’ve never seen so many colors,” she said, her voice warmed by the sun.
Hawk’s throat worked. He looked out, eyes sweeping the same view. The land he had bled for. It was all gray to him.
“Describe them for me.”
“Well… that field down there is bright green. Almost unruly. It looks like it would run wild if it could. The one beside it is deeper. Wiser. The color of waiting. And the sky is soft blue. Not the blue of uniforms or porcelain. The kind that makes you want to breathe deeper. The hedgerows are tipped with gold. And the clouds have this blush—like they’ve just heard something scandalous and aren’t sure whether to be offended or thrilled. ”
A breath escaped him. Nearly a laugh. He didn’t open his eyes.
“What’s your favorite color?” she asked, lightly. As if it were nothing.
“Red,” he said finally.
“The red of roses? Of battle flags?”
He looked down at her. “The red of your hair.”
Hawk gathered the unruly strands and smoothed them over her shoulder, then he sifted his fingers through the coppery locks until the wind stole them back from him.
Leaning in, he pressed his lips to the curve of her neck, where her pulse fluttered.
What if she were right? What if Philip had brought them together not for him to be her guardian, but her husband?
Heat seared through him, fierce and consuming, as if his ribs had been pried open and the breath of life poured straight into the hollow.
What if there was more than war ahead—what if he could come home not to silence and shadows, but to her laughter echoing through his halls, to children with her eyes, to mornings not shattered by bugle calls but by him warming her chilled feet?
“You said you saw the future in this castle.” He turned her in his arms, facing a frontal attack, without reserves in sight, without a place to retreat, his flanks unguarded. “What do you want in the future, Little Tulle?”
“I want a love so shiny and pure that it will color all these hills.”
Her eyes lit up, full of something too bright, too untouched, too young. Her fingers curled against his chest as if she had always known he’d be there. She laughed softly, breathless, as if love were a play and she was already stepping onto the stage.
“The giddy love of Beatrice and Benedick. The poetry of Orlando and Rosalind. The stolen thrill of Juliet’s first kiss. The firsts of everything.”
Hawk stilled. His throat locked, while his heart slammed against his sternum like a soldier pounding on a barred gate.
For one disorienting instant, he swore the stones beneath his boots shifted, the ground itself rebelling—because how could he stand steady when she wanted a kind of love he had long ago burned out of himself?
She wanted the young love of Juliet, but he was no unscarred Romeo. She wanted the lyrical devotion of Orlando, who believed poetry could win a woman’s heart. But Hawk’s hands had never held a poet’s quill, only a soldier’s sword.
She wanted a lover who dreamed.
And he was made of waking.
There were no firsts left in him. This thing inside him that clamored for her, this love, would never be young—it was fierce, desperate, ruined at the edges. It would not dance under the moonlight, but kneel in the dirt, bloodied and ruthless, swearing itself hers.
She wanted young love. Fresh promises. Lightness of heart. While he had breathed battle air instead of perfume, seen carnage instead of carnations, slept in hay instead of goose down.
Pain spread, hollowing him out from sternum to spine.
Hope—the wild, reckless thing he had dared to cradle for the span of a heartbeat—turned sharp in his grip, cutting until he bled inside.
To become her vision meant surrendering everything he was.
And once a general surrendered himself, what remained?
So he locked the pain. Because his Little Tulle deserved the fairy tale. And her guardian would find her a young prince who could share her cloud castle, even if it crushed the one beating organ left inside his chest.
She lifted her face to him, oblivious of his thoughts. As she smiled at him, radiant and full of belief in a future he could never give her, he did the hardest thing of all—he smiled back.