13 #2
The moment Duncan’s flesh met Amber’s, pleasure rippled through her. The lines of strain that had drawn her smiles as fine as a knife’s edge vanished like mist beneath a fiery sun. Her mouth softened, shadows retreated from her eyes, and she gave Duncan a smile that squeezed Cassandra’s heart.
“Now do you understand?” Erik murmured in Cassandra’s ear. “She needs her dark warrior even more than I do.”
“I understand everything save what you will do when he awakens Duncan of Maxwell and kills her—”
“Nay,” Erik interrupted in a low voice.
“—touch by touch, her heart bleeding—”
“Silence!” he hissed.
“—from ten thousand cuts no one else would have felt,” Cassandra finished relentlessly. “What will you do then, mighty lord?”
“Duncan will love her in spite of all! How could a man not love a maid who looks at him with such transparent joy?”
“‘He will love her in spite of all,’” Cassandra mimicked with icy sarcasm. “This from the sorcerer who believes only in lust between a man and a woman? I would laugh at you, but I fear my soul would break at the sound.”
“Duncan will love her. He must.”
“Could you love a woman who had betrayed you?”
“I am not Duncan.”
“You are a man. So is Duncan. When he understands how much Amber has cost him, he will hate her.”
“What would you have done in my place?” Erik demanded in a low voice.
“I would have surrendered Stone Ring Keep to Dominic le Sabre.”
“Never,” Erik said flatly.
“That is pride speaking.”
“What good is a man with no pride?”
“Ask Duncan,” Cassandra said scathingly, “for you seem to believe he has none.”
A chorus of shouts made Erik turn toward the revelers. Amber had one hand around Duncan’s neck and she was whispering in his ear. Whatever she was saying made Duncan smile with a sensual heat that blazed as brightly as the fire.
Then Duncan lifted Amber’s hand from his neck, kissed her fingers tenderly, and smiled at her once more. It was a different smile, for it promised safety as well as passion, caring as well as burning, peace as well as ecstasy.
“Look at them,” Erik demanded in a low voice. “Look at them and tell me how I could have kept them apart short of death.”
There was a savage silence followed by a sigh. Cassandra’s fingers touched Erik’s clenched fist.
“I know,” she said softly. “That is why we rage at each other. It gives us the illusion we were once in control of Amber’s destiny—and we chose wrongly—when in truth we never had that kind of control at all.”
Hand in hand, Duncan and Amber approached Erik.
“We ask your leave, lord,” Duncan said, “to seek our rest.”
A roar of laughter went up from the knights.
“Rest?” Erik asked, covering his smile by smoothing his beard with his hand. “By all means, Duncan. If you aren’t to bed soon, the cock will be up well after dawn.”
More laughter gusted through the knights.
Erik’s smile changed as he looked at Amber. He reached out to her, but stopped just short of touching her cheek.
“Be joyful in your marriage,” Erik said.
Amber’s smile was incandescent. It didn’t dim even when she deliberately turned her head so that her cheek brushed against Erik’s fingers.
The surprise that murmured through the gathered knights was reflected in Erik’s expression.
“Thank you, lord,” Amber said softly. “Your kindness to me has been that of amber itself, pieces of sunlight shining no matter how dark the day.”
Erik’s smile was both sad and so beautiful that Cassandra felt pain twist through her. The love Erik had for Amber was as clear as the tawny color of his eyes. Yet it was a love that held no sexual desire, despite Amber’s beauty and Erik’s forthright masculinity.
Abruptly, fear replaced pain in Cassandra.
He knows. By all that’s Learned, he knows!
Is that why he risked so much? Is he trying to repay her for what was taken from her at her birth?
No answer came from within the well of serenity that held Cassandra’s Learning.
“Will you give me your good wishes?” Amber asked, turning to Cassandra.
“You are my daughter in every way that matters,” Cassandra said. “I would give you Paradise if I could.”
Smiling, Amber glanced at her husband from beneath her long lashes. Though she said nothing, the fire reflected in Duncan’s eyes burned higher.
“Thank you,” Amber said, looking at Cassandra again. “Your good wishes mean a great deal to me. I love you as a daughter would.”
With her free hand, Amber touched the other woman’s cheek. The murmur of surprise was repeated throughout the gathered knights and ladies. Despite the clear affection between Amber, Erik, and Cassandra, never had the people of the keep seen Amber touch the lord or the Learned woman.
Tears glittered once more in Cassandra’s eyes. She turned to look long and hard at the dark warrior whose fingers were interlaced with Amber’s.
“You have been given a gift beyond price,” Cassandra said distinctly. “Few men are privileged to know its like.”
The splinters of darkness that lay deep within the clarity of Cassandra’s eyes made coolness ripple down Duncan’s spine. His instincts stirred, warning him that danger lay within this woman as surely as night lay within sunset’s vivid colors.
Then realization came. It wasn’t menace that lay darkly within Cassandra. It was knowledge.
And it was dangerous.
“May I embrace the husband of my daughter?” Cassandra asked.
If Duncan was surprised, the rest of the people were shocked, including Erik.
“Of course,” Duncan said.
Cassandra stepped forward. Full scarlet sleeves rippled and flared over the forest green of Duncan’s shirt as she placed her hands on his shoulders. Though Cassandra was a tall woman, she had to stretch on tiptoe in order to bring her face close to Duncan.
“This is the truth of the past,” Cassandra said, kissing his left cheek.
A moment later she kissed his right cheek.
“This is the truth of the present,” she said.
Then Cassandra’s palms rested on Duncan’s cheeks, holding him as surely as chains.
“Your life lies stretched between past and present,” she said in a low, distinct voice.
Intently Duncan watched the Learned woman, feeling her cool hands like brands on his face while her silver eyes compelled everything within him to listen to her. Even the shadows.
Especially the shadows.
“To deny the truth of the past or the present will destroy you as surely as cleaving your head in two with a sword,” Cassandra said.
A ripple of movement went through the knights as they crossed themselves.
“Remember what I have said when the past returns and seems to make a lie of the present,” Cassandra commanded. “Remember it.”
When she would have withdrawn, Duncan’s hand chained one of her wrists.
Instantly Erik stepped forward, only to be warned off by a glance from clear silver eyes.
“What do you know of my past?” Duncan asked in a low voice.
“Nothing that would bring you ease.”
Duncan glanced toward Amber. Though he said not one word, she put her hand on Cassandra’s captive arm.
“What do you know of my past?” Duncan demanded again, softly.
“Nothing that would bring you ease,” Cassandra repeated.
Duncan waited.
“She speaks the truth,” Amber said.
Duncan’s hand opened, freeing Cassandra.
The smile she gave him was both compassionate and coolly amused at his arrogance in questioning a wise woman’s honesty.
“You are canny to listen to your wife,” Cassandra said bitingly. “See that you remain so when past and present are both known.”
Cassandra looked at Erik.
“With your permission, lord,” she said, “I have a newly born babe who needs me more than a newly wed couple.”
“Of course, Learned one,” Erik said. “You need not ask my permission.”
“Ah, but I enjoy doing so.”
“Do you?”
“But of course,” Cassandra said dryly. “’Tis the only time you listen to me.”
Laughter rose like a shout, for it was well known among the knights that their young lord was as headstrong as an unbroken stallion. Erik laughed the loudest of them all, for he knew himself better than they did.
Under cover of the laughter, Duncan bent down and spoke for Amber alone.
“Do you know what Cassandra knows?” he asked.
“Of your past?”
“Yes.”
“I know that she is rarely wrong.”
“Meaning?” Duncan asked.
“Meaning there is nothing in your past that will make you happy in the present.”
“Are you certain?”
“Ask yourself, not me,” she said.
“But I know nothing.”
“Nor do you wish to. Not now. Not when you are married.”
Duncan’s eyes narrowed. But before he could speak, Amber did.
“Do you want to spend your wedding night asking questions whose answers are sure to make you unhappy?” she asked.
“Are they?”
“Aye.”
The bleak certainty in Amber’s eyes sent another wave of coolness washing over Duncan’s spine.
“Amber?”
She put her fingertips over his lips, sealing in all the questions he hadn’t asked and she didn’t want to answer.
“Instead of asking questions neither of us wants to hear,” Amber whispered, “wouldn’t you rather take your bride to the privacy of the bedchamber and begin our future?”