12 #3
Amber closed her eyes and released Duncan’s wrist. Yet in the very act of letting go of him, her fingertips caressed the veins where the force of his life surged just beneath his skin.
Erik sensed Amber’s sorrow as clearly as he sensed her love for the dark warrior who watched her with haunted eyes.
“Duncan,” Erik said, “leave us.”
“Nay,” Duncan said savagely. “I’ll not have you shame Amber for what wasn’t her fault.”
Erik looked directly into Duncan’s eyes and knew that the other man was walking on a knife-edge of control. Erik wondered what memories were returning, how quickly; and how much time he had before Duncan awakened and knew himself as the Scots Hammer.
Erik’s enemy.
Amber’s lover.
Betrothed to a Norman heiress whom he had never seen.
Vassal to Dominic le Sabre.
A savage impatience flattened Erik’s mouth as he thought of how little time remained, how much could go wrong, and how great the stakes were.
They must wed.
Immediately!
“I would no more humiliate Amber than I would my own sister,” Erik said carefully. “She is much cherished by me. She is also well known to me.”
He turned to Amber. “Do you wish Duncan to stay while we talk about…wedding arrangements?”
Amber’s smile was even sadder than her tears. Slowly she shook her head.
Without a word Duncan turned on his heel and left the lord’s solar.
Erik waited until the last harsh echo of Duncan’s footsteps had faded into the hiss of the fire. But even then Amber didn’t speak. She simply stood unmoving, slow tears turning her pale cheeks to silver.
Uneasiness rippled through Erik. He had seen Amber many ways, in many moods, but never had he sensed such unremitting sorrow in her.
As though something cherished had died.
“If it wouldn’t cause you pain,” Erik said, “I would take you onto my lap and rock you like a child.”
Amber’s laugh was little different from a sob.
“There is only one person who can hold me thus without discomfort,” she whispered.
“Duncan.”
A look of profound loss shadowed Amber’s face.
“Aye,” she whispered. “My dark warrior.”
“You will be wed to him before the chaplain chants morning mass,” Erik said. “Why, then, do you grieve?”
“I cannot marry Duncan.”
“God’s blood, was he that great a swine with you?”
At first Amber didn’t understand. When she did, a blush tinted her pale cheeks.
“Nay,” she said.
Her voice was so soft that Erik could barely hear it.
“Are you certain? Some men are vicious when lust takes them,” Erik said bluntly. “No matter how badly I need Duncan as my own, I’ll not condemn you to spend your life lying beneath a rutting beast who is twice your size.”
Amber put her hands to her suddenly hot cheeks. “Stop!”
Erik cursed beneath his breath, stood abruptly, and came to stand as close to Amber as he could without touching her.
“Look at me, Amber.”
A combination of regret, tenderness, and concern was mixed together in Erik’s voice and in the expression on his face.
“Did Cassandra never talk to you about the ways of men and maids?” Erik asked.
Amber shook her head.
Erik sighed. “It must be that she believed you would never be able to touch a man’s hand without pain, much less hold part of his body within you in the marriage bed.”
A small sound escaped Amber as she looked away from the tall lord she had known all her life.
Yet never had they talked like this.
“Nay,” Erik said. “There is no need to be embarrassed about the way in which men and women unite. It is a gift of God. Did you find it…distasteful?”
Amber shook her head.
“Hurtful?” he asked.
She shook her head again.
“Then he didn’t take you too quickly?” Erik pressed. “He’s not unskilled?”
“Erik,” Amber said faintly. “We should not talk of such things!”
“Why not? You have neither mother nor sister, and Cassandra has never experienced a man. Or would you rather talk about such things with a priest who has never experienced a woman?”
“I’d rather not talk about it at all,” Amber muttered.
The returning life in her voice sent a surge of relief through Erik. He didn’t know what would happen to Amber if she believed Duncan lost to her.
Nor did Erik want to know.
“You must talk about it,” he said, “if only this once.”
A sideways look convinced Amber that Erik wasn’t going to be turned aside. Reluctantly, she nodded.
“If Duncan is unskilled in the arts of love,” Erik said matter-of-factly, “it can be remedied. If he is a brute, there is no remedy.”
“He is neither unskilled nor a brute,” Amber said.
A long breath of relief was Erik’s first response. Then he smiled.
“I begin to understand,” he said.
“I’m glad one of us does.”
Erik hid his smile.
“I’m told that a maid’s first time is rarely her most, ah, memorable,” he said.
“Nay,” Amber said huskily. “I shall remember it until the day I die. Feeling ecstasy pulse through my dark warrior into me was…extraordinary.”
A hint of color that had nothing to do with the hearth fire showed on Erik’s high cheekbones. Then he tilted back his head and laughed.
“You give as good as you get, lass,” Erik said.
At first Amber didn’t understand. When she did, she laughed despite the color burning on her cheeks.
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” she said.
“I’ll survive,” he said dryly. “Now set your hair and clothes to rights before I call the priest to the solar. You will marry at a midnight mass.”
Amber’s smile faded. “That cannot be.”
“Why?”
“Duncan has remembered a woman’s name.”
“Ariane?” Erik asked casually.
For a moment, Amber was too shocked to say anything.
“You knew?” she asked, whispering.
Erik nodded.
“How?” she demanded.
“Because your dark warrior is Duncan of Maxwell, the Scots Hammer.”
Amber swayed as though she had been struck.
“You knew?” she whispered.
“I wondered. Then I hoped. Then I knew.”
“Then you also know why I can’t marry Duncan,” she said.
“I know no such thing.”
“Duncan is married to this Ariane, despite his certainty that he has never married.”
“Nay. He is betrothed to a Norman heiress whose face he has never seen and whose name he has heard but once, when Dominic le Sabre informed Duncan of the arrangement.”
“Duncan is vassal to Dominic le Sabre,” Amber said in a shaking voice. She closed her eyes. “To marry me would be a betrayal of his vow of fealty.”
“God’s wounds,” Erik snarled, his voice like a whip. “How can you be so blind? Wipe the tragedy from your eyes and look at me!”
The cold authority in Erik’s voice shocked Amber as nothing else could have.
“God has sent you the one man whom you may touch without pain,” Erik said. “God has sent me the one man whom I need to hold on to Lord Robert’s besieged estates.”
“But—”
“And God has sent the means of transforming a foe into an ally,” Erik continued relentlessly. “Wed to you, Duncan will be my vassal, not Dominic le Sabre’s!”
The silence stretched until it vibrated like the string of a bow too tightly drawn.
“It is wrong,” Amber said. “Duncan came to the Disputed Lands a knight with wealth of his own, a promise of an estate, and a noble wife to bear him heirs.”
“Not so,” Erik countered savagely. “Duncan came to Stone Ring Keep more dead than alive, with no more memory than a babe, and you saved his life. He is newly born, and he is mine.”
“His memory is returning,” Amber said unhappily. “Piece by bright piece, the shadows are diminished.”
“Aye.” Erik’s smile was grim. “That is why you will marry by midnight.”
“Nay. The prophecy—”
“Hammer the prophecy,” Erik said harshly. “You’ve made your bed, now you will lie in it as Duncan’s wife.”
“Cassandra will—”
“Accept what she can’t alter,” Erik said ruthlessly, cutting across Amber’s protests again.
“Two parts of the prophecy have been fulfilled. Does that mean nothing to you?”
“It means you had better guard your soul most carefully.”
There was a taut silence before Amber shook her head.
“I cannot,” she said. “I cannot betray my dark warrior thus.”
Erik’s face changed, all softness gone. The topaz blaze of his eyes was colder than a winter sunset.
“You will marry the Scots Hammer at midnight—”
“Nay!”
“—or before the twelfth hour is struck, you will see Duncan hanged.”