18 #2
“Go back to your post.”
Egbert hesitated, then turned and sped away, wondering what had caused Duncan’s expression to be as bleak as a stone carving of hell.
Motionless, Duncan watched Dominic le Sabre canter up to Stone Ring Keep, his Glendruid wife at his side.
“Was there any difficulty?” Dominic asked.
Duncan shook his head.
“For a man who has just secured his own keep without bloodletting, you look quite grim,” Dominic said, dismounting.
“Not my keep, lord. Yours.”
“No longer. As of this moment I give you Stone Ring Keep outright, without let or hindrance. You are lord here, Duncan, not my tenant-in-chief.”
Smiling, Dominic watched understanding sink slowly into Duncan. Born a bastard with no name, no estate, no prospects other than his strong right arm and a burning need for land of his own…and now Duncan had that land.
Dominic understood the complex emotions exploding in Duncan, for Dominic, too, had been born a bastard with no prospects other than his skill with a sword.
And he, too, had won wealth and land because of that skill.
“My own keep,” Duncan said oddly.
He glanced around the keep as though it were new to him. In a sense, it was. He had never looked at it as his own before.
“It hardly seems real,” Duncan said softly. “To go from a man with no name to this, all in a day…”
A lifetime’s dream had come true. It was as solid as the cobbles beneath his feet, the weight of a sword by his side, and the smell of food from the kitchen in the bailey.
Stone Ring Keep was his and his alone, held in fief for no other man. The keep and all its lands and people were Duncan’s as long as he could hold them with his sword and his wisdom. He was no longer Duncan of Maxwell.
He was Duncan, Lord of Stone Ring.
“’Tis a great gift you have given me,” Duncan said, turning back to Dominic.
“’Tis a great gift you have given me,” Dominic countered softly, dismounting.
“I? What have I given you save a long ride and doubts of my worthiness?”
“You have given me what I crave above all else. Peace for Blackthorne.”
“Peace?”
“You returned alone to Stone Ring Keep. Had you wished it, you could have drawn up the bridge and told me to go forthwith to hell and take my knights with me.”
“I would never—” Duncan began.
“I know,” Dominic interrupted. “Beyond all doubt, beyond all temptation, you are a man of your word. And your word was given to me.”
Duncan let out a long breath, feeling as though a huge weight had slipped from his shoulders.
“With you on my north,” Dominic said, “I will never need to fear for the safety of my Carlysle estates.”
“You have my oath on it.”
“And you have mine, Duncan of Stone Ring. If you ever need help to defend what is yours, send word to Blackthorne. The Glendruid Wolf will come to fight by your side.”
Clasping sword hand to sword hand, the two men sealed their vows as equals.
“I fear that I won’t be long in claiming your aid,” Duncan said. “As soon as Amber gets to Winterlance, Erik will be on his way with more knights than I have men-at-arms.”
“Amber?”
“Aye,” Duncan said bleakly. “The witch will waste no time crying the word of your coming and my true name throughout the countryside.”
“Turn around, Duncan. Tell me what you see.”
Puzzled, Duncan turned—and saw Amber riding up to Stone Ring Keep, surrounded by the keep’s men-at-arms.
Relief and rage warred within Duncan. He waited until the small party was across the bridge and through the gate. Then his gauntleted hand clamped around Whitefoot’s reins, bringing the mare to a stop.
“Go about your tasks,” Duncan told the men curtly.
The men-at-arms left without a backward look. Their speedy departure said more clearly than words that they would be quite pleased not to be within sight or sound of Duncan when he looked so fierce.
Even Amber, braced for Duncan’s rage, knew a chill when he looked up at her with eyes as hard as agates.
“Why did you come here?” he demanded.
“Where else would a wife be but with her husband?”
Duncan became utterly still.
“Or had you forgotten we are wed?” Amber asked with a bittersweet smile.
“I have forgotten nothing, witch.”
The chill she had felt returned doubly, becoming fingernails of ice along her spine.
“Then, husband, release Whitefoot so that a groom may see to her comfort.”
Duncan turned his head just enough to see Dominic without taking his eyes off Amber.
“Dominic,” said Duncan distinctly, “I trust your months as Lord of Blackthorne Keep have not caused to you forget how to close gates and lift a drawbridge?”
The Glendruid Wolf laughed.
“Good,” Duncan said. “If you would be so kind as to see to those small tasks for me…”
Before Duncan had finished speaking, Dominic was working the mechanism that lifted the draw-bridge until it fit like a heavy barrier across the opening to the keep.
Bolts thumped home one after another, mating the bridge to the thick stone walls.
The inner gate soon followed, closing with thick sounds of timber on timber.
It seemed very dark in the bailey without sunlight slanting through the gate.
“You should have run while you could,” Duncan said silkily to Amber.
“To what purpose?”
“To bring Erik, of course.”
“Then death would surely come as well,” Amber said. “As long as I am within the keep, Erik won’t attack.”
“Let him come!” Duncan snarled.
Amber looked past Duncan to the man who wore the Glendruid Wolf.
“Is that what you want, lord?” she asked. “War?”
“What I want is of little moment,” Dominic said. “The keep and all that comes with it are Duncan’s, not mine. The decisions that pass here will also be his.”
Amber’s breath caught swiftly.
“You gave it to Duncan?” she asked, stunned.
“Aye,” Dominic said, walking forward to stand next to Duncan.
“And to his heirs, without let or hindrance?”
“Aye.”
“You are a man as generous as you are shrewd, Dominic le Sabre,” she said. “’Tis no wonder Duncan’s unremembered oath to you caused him such unease.”
“If you knew going back on his oath was causing him so much distress,” Dominic said coolly, “why didn’t you help him to remember?”
Shadowed golden eyes looked from one man to the other. Both men looked very much alike at the moment. Tall. Powerful. Fierce.
Proud.
Drawing a hidden, shaking breath, Amber forced herself to meet the savage, disapproving eyes of the Glendruid Wolf. As she did, she remembered the way those eyes changed when Dominic looked at Meg.
It gave Amber hope. Not much, but a spark seems brightest when all else is dark.
“If you knew a time was coming when your wife would look at you with loathing,” Amber said, “what would you do to delay that day?”
Dominic’s eyes widened fractionally, then narrowed into opaque slices of silver.
“Meg said as much on the ride in,” Dominic muttered, “but I find it hard to believe.”
“What is that?” Amber asked.
“That a woman can love a man, yet not love his honor, too.”
Amber’s skin became even more pale, until even her lips were bloodless.
“Then you believe as Duncan does,” she said, “that it would have been better to let him hang.”
“It would have been better not to force the marriage in the first place,” Dominic said bluntly.
“Yes,” she tonelessly. “But Erik forestalled that possibility, too.”
“What?” demanded Duncan and Dominic as one.
“I have had much time to think since you left me at the cottage,” Amber said.
Duncan grunted.
“Men call Erik a sorcerer, but I think often that he is simply shrewd in the way the Glendruid Wolf is shrewd,” Amber said.
“Meaning?” Dominic asked her softly.
“Meaning that he understands what moves people and what leaves them unmoved.”
Stillness came over Dominic. “My brother said as much.”
“Simon?”
Dominic nodded and asked, “What did Erik know that he used against Duncan?”
“He knew that Duncan didn’t love me.”
Duncan didn’t deny it.
Amber hadn’t expected him to, but his silence stung like salt in an oozing wound. She drew another hidden, shaking breath and was grateful Meg wasn’t there to measure her distress with Glendruid eyes that saw too deeply, too clearly.
When Amber spoke again, it was to Duncan rather than to the Glendruid Wolf.
“Erik knew you wouldn’t marry me if you remembered,” Amber said with aching calm. “And he knew how much you desired me. He knew I wanted you…dawn after a lifetime of night…”
Her voice thinned into splinters of silence.
“So he left us utterly alone but for his most foolish squire,” Duncan finished savagely, “and all the time you allowed me to believe you weren’t a maiden.”
“Nay,” Amber said fiercely. “That was your own doing, Duncan. Erik and I both swore otherwise, but you didn’t listen. You didn’t want to know the truth, because if you believed me a virgin you wouldn’t have allowed yourself to take me.”
“Aye,” he said in a cold tone.
“‘Aye,’” she mimicked. “Or maybe nay, Duncan of the broad shoulders and thick skull! Maybe you wouldn’t have been able to stop yourself even if you knew. Then you would have hated yourself for breaking your vow!”
Memories arced like summer lightning between Amber and Duncan, the wild instant when he had taken her beneath the sacred rowan with a single, unexpected thrust of his body.
“’Tis much easier to hate me than yourself, isn’t it?” Amber asked.
She yanked on the reins, freeing them from Duncan’s grasp before he could recover. Whitefoot backed up in a frantic clatter of metal shoes on cobblestones, taking her rider beyond Duncan’s reach.
“The bridge is drawn up,” Duncan said savagely. “It’s too late to run.”
“I know. I’ve known it since I first touched you. Now you know it, too.”