7 #2
For a moment Duncan became so still that it seemed as though his very heart had stopped beating.
Amber’s had. Then it lurched and beat frantically.
“Duncan?” she asked, nakedly pleading. “Won’t you come now with me to the fen?”
He didn’t answer for the space of one breath, two breaths, three…
Then he made a low sound. His fingers clenched on the hammer until it seemed that steel must give way before flesh.
“Aye, lass,” Duncan said in a low voice. “I will go with you.”
“It may storm before sunset,” Erik warned.
Smiling gently, Duncan touched a lock of Amber’s hair.
“With Amber nearby,” he said, “I never lack for sunlight.”
She smiled in return, though her lips trembled with a fear for him that was so great she was afraid she would scream.
“Won’t you leave that behind?” Amber asked, pointing to the hammer.
“Nay. Now I can defend you.”
“It isn’t necessary. There are no outlaws this close to Sea Home.”
Ignoring the others in the room, Duncan leaned down until his lips all but brushed Amber’s hair. He inhaled her scent deeply and looked into her anxious golden eyes.
“I won’t take a chance with you, precious Amber,” he murmured. “If someone cut you, I fear I would bleed.”
Though the words were very soft, Simon heard them. He looked at Amber with an anger that was difficult to conceal.
Cursed hell-witch. To steal a man’s mind and smile!
“Duncan,” Amber whispered.
The sound was as much a sigh as a name. She took his hard hand between hers, ignoring the cold weight of chain.
“Let us hurry, my dark warrior. I have already packed a supper and sent word for two horses to be made ready.”
“Three,” corrected Erik.
“Are you going?” Amber asked, surprised.
“No. Egbert is.”
“Ah. Egbert. Of course. Well, we shall just ignore him.”
DUNCAN shifted carefully and then looked over his shoulder, not wanting to cause the nervous horse any alarm. They had crept away from the picnic, leaving Egbert asleep with his own horse and Duncan’s grazing nearby. Amber had insisted that they take only her horse when they stole away to the fen.
The trail out of Sea Home’s gentle fields had quickly become rugged, especially for a horse carrying double.
There were places they had ridden over that had made Duncan blink.
At first glance the way looked impassable.
But a few steps aside from the obvious path, another look, and there was always a surprisingly easy course to follow.
It was enough to make a man nervous. Apparently the horse wasn’t happy about it, either. Or perhaps the animal was simply uneasy about carrying two riders.
“No sign of him,” Duncan said, looking forward once again.
“Poor Egbert,” Amber said, but she sounded more amused than alarmed. “Erik will be quite put out.”
“‘Poor Egbert’ is asleep on the other side of that ridge,” Duncan muttered. “He lies at ease in a field warmed by a sun that doesn’t know summer has fled. Is that such a harsh fate?”
“Only if Erik discovers it.”
“If the squire is half as clever as he is lazy, he won’t tell Erik that he fell asleep.”
“If Egbert were that clever, he wouldn’t be that lazy.”
Duncan gave a crack of laughter and tightened his right arm around Amber’s supple waist. His left arm held the reins. Amber’s hands rested on his arms as though she enjoyed the simple warmth of his body.
“In any case, we left your mount with him,” Amber said. “And instructions to wait for us.”
“Are you certain the lad can read?”
“Better than he can write, according to Cassandra.”
“Does he write?” Duncan asked, surprised.
“Badly. Erik despairs of ever making him skilled enough to tally a keep’s crops, animals, and taxes.”
“Then why doesn’t he send the boy back to his father?”
“Egbert has none,” Amber said. “Erik found him by a cart road. His father had been killed by a falling tree.”
“Does Erik make it a habit to pick up and care for stray people?”
“If they can’t care for themselves, someone must.”
“Is that why you cared for me?” Duncan asked. “Duty and compassion?”
“Nay.”
Amber remembered what it had felt like when she first touched Duncan, a pleasure so great it shocked her into snatching her hand back. Then she had touched him again.
And lost her heart.
“It was different with you,” Amber said in a low voice. “Touching you pleased me.”
“Does it please you still?”
A telltale wash of color across her cheeks silently answered Duncan’s question.
“I’m glad,” he said. “Very, very glad.”
With subtle pressures of his arms, Duncan gathered Amber even closer to his body. The hunger for her that was never far beneath his thoughts flooded his body with anticipation, even as his conscience railed him.
He shouldn’t seduce her until he had more answers to the dark questions from his past.
Unknown vows haunted him.
And yet…and yet.
It was surpassingly sweet to ride through an autumn land with slanting yellow sunlight warming his face and an amber fairy relaxed within the circle of his arms.
“The sun,” Amber murmured. “What an unexpected glory.”
She lifted her arms and pushed the wool cowl from her head. The indigo cloth fell in folds over her nape and shoulders, allowing the gentle golden warmth of the sun to bathe her.
“Aye,” Duncan said. “It is indeed glorious.”
But it was Amber rather than the sunlight that Duncan praised.
“Your hair,” he murmured. “’Tis a thousand shades of golden light. I’ve seen nothing more beautiful.”
Amber’s breath caught as a fine shiver went over her body. The hunger in Duncan summoned her. She wanted nothing more than to pull his strength around her like a living mantle, shutting out the world, giving herself to him in a secret silence that no other person could violate.
Yet she must not give herself to him.
Heart and body and soul.
“Amber,” Duncan whispered.
“Yes?” she said, stilling a shiver of response.
“Nothing. I simply like whispering your name against your bright hair.”
Pleasure expanded through Amber. Without thinking, she lifted her hand to touch Duncan’s cheek. The faintly rough texture of his skin where beard lay just beneath the surface pleased her. The strength of his arm around her waist pleased her. The heat and resilience of his chest pleased her.
Duncan pleased her to the center of her soul.
“There is no man like you.”
Amber didn’t know she had spoken the thought aloud until she felt a tremor ripple through Duncan’s strength.
“Nor is there a woman to equal you,” he whispered as he kissed the palm of her hand.
When Duncan bent to put his cheek against Amber’s hair, the delicate scent of sunlight and evergreens swept through him. She smelled of summer and warmth, of Scots pine and a clean wind.
The fragrance was uniquely Amber. He could not get enough of it.
Amber heard the hesitation in Duncan’s breathing, sensed the piercing pleasure that he took from her simple presence, and longed to be free of prophecy.
But she was not.
“A pity the warmth won’t last,” Amber said raggedly.
Duncan made a questioning sound as he nuzzled a wisp of hair that lay against her neck.
“Erik was right,” she said, her voice quick, almost frightened. “A storm is coming. But it simply serves to make the sunlight more precious.”
Reluctantly Duncan lifted his head and looked to the north. A thick line of clouds loomed there, held back by a southerly wind. Overhead, the sky was a sapphire bowl arching above fells whose rocky peaks wore a pearly cowl of cloud.
“It won’t storm by sunset,” Duncan said.
Amber said nothing.
“Perhaps by moonrise,” he added, “but I think not.”
Duncan looked over his shoulder once more. Behind them a narrow crease cut into the rugged highlands that rose between Sea Home and Stone Ring Keep. The crease was the beginning of Ghost Glen, named for the pale-barked trees clinging to its steep sides, and for the haunting wail of autumnal winds.
No other rider was following Duncan and Amber down the ridge they had just descended. No other rider was visible ahead, where land and sea mingled to make Whispering Fen. The way they would take to the fen was unmarked, known only to the amber girl who fitted so perfectly in Duncan’s arms.
There had been no sign of habitation at all on this side of the ridge.
No cart road, no smoke lifting above a clearing, no plowed fields, no drystone fences, no deer parks, no mark of axe on trees.
Small, steep-sided, stitched together by the fey conversations of a brook, Ghost Glen held neither hamlet nor farm nor walking paths.
It was a place of ancient forest and primeval silence.
The land was both savage and oddly innocent, removed from the strife of the Disputed Lands. Had Duncan not seen standing stones grouped in solitary glades, he would have sworn no other person had ever passed this way.
Yet people had lived here once. Some named them Druids. Some named them sorcerers. Some named them not men at all, but devils or gods.
And some—the few who might know—called those vanished people Learned.
“Egbert won’t follow us,” Amber said as she felt Duncan twist to look behind once more.
“How can you be sure? He is lazy, but not blind. We left a trail.”
She hesitated, wondering how to explain to Duncan the combination of knowledge and instinct that made her so certain they were safe from intrusion here.
“Egbert can’t follow us,” Amber said. “Even if he weren’t afraid, he wouldn’t be able to see where we went.”
“Why not?”
“He isn’t Learned,” she said simply.
“What does that have to do with it?”
“Egbert would see obstacles and turn aside, certain that no one could pass the way we did.”
A cool breath blew down Duncan’s spine as he remembered how impassable parts of the trail had looked…at first.
“That’s why I made you leave your horse,” Amber added.
“It wasn’t Learned?” Duncan retorted dryly.
She laughed and shook her head, making sunlight gleam and run like liquid amber through her hair.
“Whitefoot is used to my ways,” Amber said. “She goes where I guide her.”
“You see a path,” Duncan said.
It wasn’t quite a question, but Amber answered anyway, shrugging.