4 #2
The temptation to touch him and discover what he was feeling almost overwhelmed Amber. She fought her own hunger, her own need.
And she lost.
Her fingertips smoothed lightly over Duncan’s clean-shaven cheek.
Anger.
Bafflement.
A loss so great it couldn’t be described, only felt like thunder from a distant storm quivering through the air.
“Duncan,” Amber whispered painfully. “My dark warrior.”
He watched her with eyes that were narrowed, glittering, the eyes of an animal caught within a trap.
“Fighting yourself only wounds you more,” she said. “Let yourself grow used to the life you have now.”
“How can I?” Duncan asked in a rough voice. “What of the life I left behind? What if there is a lord expecting me to honor my vow? What if there is a wife? Heirs? Land?”
When Duncan spoke of lord and land, Amber sensed the dark seething of his memory. No such response came at the mention of wife or heirs.
Her relief was so acute that Amber’s knees weakened. The thought of Duncan bound by sacred vow to another woman had been like a knife turning in Amber’s heart. She hadn’t known how great her fear had been until it was banished by the unspeakable certainty that lay beneath Duncan’s elusive memory.
Pray God that his memory doesn’t return. The more he remembers, the more I fear.
Enemy, not friend.
Soul mate.
In shades of darkness Duncan came to me. In shades of darkness he must remain.
Or die.
And that thought was even more unbearable than Duncan alive and bound to another woman.
THE merlin’s quick, shallow wing-beats brought it swiftly toward the lure Duncan was casting with smooth, powerful sweeps of his arm.
“Well done,” Amber said, clapping her hands in excitement. “You must have cast the lure many times before.”
The lure jerked, then resumed its steady circling.
Instantly Amber regretted her words. For the last five days she had refused to discuss Duncan’s past in any way at all. Nor had his memory returned, though it had been nine days since he had awakened.
After that first, swift look at Amber, Duncan concentrated only on the smooth circling of the lure, calling the winged predator down from the cloud-tossed sky.
Without warning the small falcon stooped, hit the lure with deadly speed, and settled to the ground to feed, mantling its wings protectively over its “prey.”
Quickly Amber lured the merlin with a bit of meat and piercing whistles. After a few sharp protests, the falcon surrendered and came to Amber’s wrist.
“Don’t sulk, little beauty,” Amber murmured as she smoothed the jesses so that they hung evenly over her gauntlet. “You did very well.”
“Well enough to earn a true hunt?” Duncan asked.
She smiled. “You sound as eager as a falcon.”
“I am. I’m not used to being shut up in a cottage with only a wary maid and my own thoughts for company—or lack thereof,” he added ironically.
Amber winced.
Duncan had shown little interest in her prescribed course of rest, food, and more rest. When the cold rains came, it wasn’t difficult to keep Duncan indoors, for all that he paced like a caged wolf.
But today, when the sun poured down until mist lifted in great silver flags from the land, keeping Duncan inside hadn’t been possible.
“I was afraid,” she said.
“Of what? I’m not ice to melt in sunshine or rain.”
“I feared enemies.”
“Who?” he asked swiftly.
“The Disputed Lands are…disputed. Landless knights, ambitious bastards, second and third sons, outlaws. All of them roam, seeking prey.”
“Yet you went to Stone Ring Keep alone to bring clothes for me?”
Amber shrugged. “I don’t fear for myself. No man will touch me.”
Duncan looked skeptical.
“’Tis true,” she said. “It is known throughout the Disputed Lands that Erik will hang the man who touches me.”
“I have touched you.”
“Besides, you grumbled so about having to wear bed covers, like a Saracen…” Amber said, changing the subject.
Duncan said a few profane words in the language he had learned in the Holy Land.
“What does that mean?” she asked curiously.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Oh.” She sighed. “In any case, I wanted to make sure you were healed from all the effects of the storm before you went out.”
“All?” Duncan retorted.
“Almost all,” Amber said tartly. “If I waited for your temper to mend, I would be wrapped in winding sheets and on my way to the grave.”
Duncan shot her a glittering hazel glance, but had the grace to realize she was right. He had been in a foul temper since morning, when he had awakened from dreams that seethed with shadows and sensual heat.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Bad enough that my memory of the past is gone. But having the past stand in the way of my present and future is more than I can bear with a smile.”
“There is a future for you here, if you want it,” Amber said.
“As a freeholder or squire?”
She nodded.
“That’s generous of you,” Duncan said.
“Not I. Erik. He is lord of Stone Ring Keep.”
Duncan frowned. He had yet to meet the young lord, but doubted that they would do well together. Amber was too fond of Erik for Duncan’s ease.
As always, the depth of his possessiveness toward Amber bothered Duncan, but he was helpless to change it. Just as he was helpless to know why he felt as he did.
We must have been lovers. Or wished to be.
Duncan waited, testing his response the way a tongue tests a sore tooth. Cautiously. Relentlessly.
Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing.
He felt neither a sense of right nor of wrong, as had been the case when he noted the absence of a sword, and the certainty that he had never felt so strongly about a woman before.
“Duncan?” Amber said softly.
He blinked and came back from his thoughts.
“I don’t think I would be happy as a freeholder or a squire,” Duncan said slowly.
“Then what do you want?”
“Whatever I lost.”
“Dark warrior…” she whispered. “You must let go of the past.”
“That would be like dying.”
Unhappily, Amber turned aside and hooded the merlin. The bird tolerated it calmly, satisfied for the moment by the recent flight and taste of blood.
“Even the most fierce falcon accepts the hood without great complaint,” she said.
“It knows the hood will be removed,” Duncan retorted.
Amber turned and walked toward the mews that were nestled along one side of the cottage.
Squire Egbert, more boy than man, came slowly to his feet, stretched, and opened the door for her to enter.
When the merlin was safely inside, Amber shut the door behind her and waved the red-haired Egbert back to his idle counting of clouds.
As soon as she and Duncan were beyond the reach of the squire’s eyes, Amber turned to her companion. Delicately she put her hand on his.
“If you can’t have the past,” she asked in a low voice, “what do you most want?”
The answer was immediate.
“You.”
A stillness came over Amber. Joy and fear warred within her, shaking her.
“But that won’t be,” Duncan continued evenly. “I won’t take one maid without knowing what I might have vowed to another.”
“I don’t believe you are joined to another woman.”
“Nor do I. But I was born of an adulterous union,” he said distinctly. “I’ll leave neither bastard son to beg his way through the world, nor bastard daughter to become a nobleman’s whore.”
“Duncan,” Amber whispered. “How do you know?”
“What?”
“That you were born a bastard. That one of your parents committed adultery.”
Duncan’s mouth opened but no words came. He shook his head sharply, as though to banish a blow.
“I don’t know,” he groaned. “I don’t know!”
But he had known. Just for an instant. Amber had sensed it as clearly as she sensed the heat of his body.
For a moment the shadows had lost some of their power. A few bright stars had glimmered through the dense night that shrouded Duncan’s past.
“Why can’t I remember?” he asked savagely.
“Let it be,” Amber said softly. “You can’t batter down shadows. You can only slide between them.”
She sensed the tension leaving Duncan before he did. Taking her hand from his, she gave him a bittersweet smile and opened the cottage door. Before she could cross the threshold, Duncan pulled her back.
Startled, Amber turned to him. His hard hand fitted beneath her chin with surprising delicacy. She closed her eyes for a moment to savor the sweetness pouring through her from Duncan’s touch. His concern for her was like spring sunlight, warming without burning.
And the passion just beneath his concern was a wild torrent of fire.
“I didn’t mean to make you unhappy,” Duncan said.
“I know,” she whispered, opening her eyes.
Duncan stood so close that Amber could see the shards of green and blue, gold and silver that made up the hazel of his eyes.
“Then why do tears cling to your eyelashes?” he asked.
“I am afraid for you, for me, for us.”
“Because I can’t remember?”
“No. Because you might.”
His breath came in sharply. “Why? What could be wrong with that?”
“What if you are married?”
“I think not. Surely I would feel its absence as I do my missing sword.”
“What if you owed fealty to a Norman lord?” Amber asked desperately, trying to quench the passion in Duncan’s eyes.
“What would it matter? Saxon and Norman are at peace.”
“That could change.”
“The sky could fall, too.”
“But what if you are Lord Robert’s enemy? Or Sir Erik’s?”
“Would Erik have brought an enemy to you?” Duncan countered.