Forbidden

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Is Cassandra one of those whom you call Learned?” Duncan asked, changing the subject before Amber could pursue it.

  “Yes.”

  “Is that a tribe or a clan or a priesthood?”

  At first Amber wondered if Duncan were toying with her. Any man who was found inside the Stone Ring asleep at the foot of the sacred rowan was certainly one of the Learned!

  The thought was like a balm. She had heard many things about Duncan of Maxwell, the Scots Hammer, but never had it been so much as hinted that he was one of the Learned.

  Whatever or whomever the stranger she had named Duncan had once been, he was now a different man, riven from past Learning by a bolt of lightning.

  Frowning, Amber tried to find the words to describe her relationship with Cassandra and Erik and the few other Learned whom she had met. She didn’t want Duncan to look at her with superstition or fear, as some of the simple folk did.

  “Many Learned are related by blood, but not all,” Amber said slowly. “It is a kind of discipline, like a school, but all those who attempt to learn aren’t equally apt.”

  “Like hounds or horses or knights?” Duncan asked after a time.

  She looked puzzled.

  “Some are always better than others at what they do,” he said simply. “A few, a very few, are far better than any.”

  “Yes,” Amber said, relieved that Duncan understood. “Those who can’t be taught say that those who can learn are cursed or blessed. Usually cursed.”

  Duncan smiled wryly.

  “But we aren’t,” she said. “We are simply what God made us to be. Different.”

  “Aye. I have met a few people like that. Different.”

  Absently, Duncan flexed his right hand as though to grasp a sword. It was a movement made without forethought, as much a part of him as breathing. He didn’t even notice the act.

  Amber did.

  She remembered what she had heard about the Scots Hammer, a warrior who had been defeated in battle only once, and that by the hated Norman usurper, Dominic le Sabre. In exchange for his own life, Duncan had sworn fealty to the enemy.

  It was rumored that Dominic had defeated Duncan with the help of his Glendruid witch-wife.

  Amber remembered the face she had glimpsed through Duncan’s thick veil of forgetfulness—hair of flame and eyes of an unusually intense green.

  Glendruid green.

  Dear God, could he be Dominic le Sabre, Erik’s sworn enemy?

  Staring at Duncan’s eyes, Amber tried to see them as gray, but honestly could not. Green, perhaps. Or blue. Or brown. But not gray.

  Amber let out a long sigh and prayed she wasn’t deluding herself.

  “Where did you meet these unusual men?” she asked. “Or were they women?”

  Duncan opened his mouth, but no words came. He grimaced at the fresh evidence of his lack of memory.

  “I don’t know,” he said flatly. “But I know that I have met them.”

  Amber went to Duncan and put her fingers over his restless sword hand.

  “Their names?” Amber asked in a soft voice.

  Silence answered her, followed by a curse.

  She sensed Duncan’s raw frustration and growing anger, but no faces, no names, nothing to call forth memories.

  “Were they friend or foe?” she asked quietly.

  “Both,” he said hoarsely. “But not…not quite.”

  Duncan’s hand clenched into a heavy fist. Gently Amber tried to soothe the fingers into relaxation. He jerked his hand away and pounded on his thigh.

  “God’s blood!” he snarled. “What kind of dishonorable cur can’t remember friend or foe or sacred vows?”

  Pain twisted through Amber, pain that was both Duncan’s and, eerily, her own.

  “Have you made any such vows?” she asked in a low voice.

  “I—don’t—know!”

  The words were almost a shout.

  “Gently, my warrior,” Amber said.

  While she spoke, she stroked Duncan’s hair and face as she had through the long hours when he had been lost in an odd kind of sleep.

  At the first touch, Duncan flinched. When he looked into Amber’s troubled golden eyes, he groaned and unclenched his hands, allowing her gentle caresses to soothe him.

  “Sleep, Duncan. I can feel your exhaustion.”

  “No,” he said grimly.

  “You must let yourself heal.”

  “I don’t want to go into that fell darkness again.”

  “You won’t.”

  “And if I do?”

  “I’ll call you forth again.”

  “Why?” he asked. “Who am I to you?”

  Amber hesitated at the blunt question, then smiled an odd, bittersweet smile as Cassandra’s prophecy echoed like distant thunder.

  He will come to you in shades of darkness.

  And he had.

  She had touched a man with no name and he had claimed her heart.

  Amber didn’t know if she could bend events so that life as well as death flowed from her reckless action. She knew only one thing, and she knew it with a certainty greater than that of the sun’s burning progress across the sky.

  “Come heaven, come hell,” Amber said in a low voice, “I will protect you with my life. We are…joined.”

  Duncan’s eyes narrowed as he realized that Amber had just given him a vow that to her was every bit as binding as any that lords might make among themselves. The fierceness with which she was prepared to defend him against the darkness that had claimed his memory both reassured Duncan and made him smile.

  She was so fragile-looking, a handful of sunlight and softness, a fragrant breeze, a sweet warmth.

  “Are you another ruthless Boadicea, to lead men into battle?” Duncan teased gently.

  With a small smile, Amber shook her head. “I’ve never held a broadsword. They look like great, clumsy things to me.”

  “Fairies weren’t meant to wield swords. They have other weapons.”

  “But I am not a fairy.”

  “So you say.”

  Smiling, Duncan traced the long fall of Amber’s unbound hair.

  “Odd to think that you are mine and I am yours…” he murmured.

  Amber didn’t correct Duncan’s misunderstanding, for there was a curious difference in his touch now. It sent tendrils of sweet, secret fire through her.

  “Only if you wish it,” she whispered.

  “I can’t believe I would forget such a fey, beautiful creature as you.”

  “That’s because I’m not beautiful,” she retorted.

  “To me you are as beautiful as dawn after a long winter’s night.”

  The genuine belief in Duncan’s voice and eyes was reinforced by his touch. He was not paying her courtly compliments. He had spoken what was to him the simple truth.

  Amber shivered as Duncan’s thumb outlined the curve of her parted lips. He felt her response and smiled despite the headache that had returned with the renewed beating of his blood. The smile was nakedly male, frankly triumphant, as though he had been given an answer to a question he hadn’t wanted to put into words.

  Duncan’s other hand slid deeply into Amber’s hair, both caressing and chaining her. Strange sensations coursed from his touch. Before she could put a name to them, she found herself stretched across his chest, her lips against his, and his tongue within her mouth.

  Surprise overcame the other feelings racing wildly through Amber. Instinctively she struggled against Duncan’s heavy embrace.

  At first his arms tightened. Then slowly, reluctantly, he loosened his grip on her just enough so that he could speak.

  “You said you were mine.”

  “I said we were joined.”

  “Aye, lass. That’s what I had in mind. Joining.”

  “I meant—that is—”

  “Yes?”

  Before Amber could answer, the excited yaps and howls of a pack of hunting dogs burst into the clearing that surrounded her cottage.
She knew without looking that Erik had come to check on the stranger who had been left in her care.

  Erik would be furious that Amber had disobeyed him and untied the man who had no name.

  3

  DUNCAN sat up in a rush, then groaned at the hammer blow of pain behind his eyes.

  “Lie back,” Amber said quickly. “’Tis only Erik.”

  Duncan’s eyes narrowed, but he did as she asked, giving way to the firm pressure of her hands on his shoulders.

  An outraged squawking and screeching from the yard announced that Erik’s hounds had discovered the chickens. As Amber opened the front door, the hound master blew on his horn, calling the dogs back to order.

  The youngest hound in the pack didn’t come to the command. The half-grown dog had just discovered an old goose. Certain of an easy rout, the hound romped forward with delighted barks. The gander arched its long neck, lowered its head, spread its wings, and hissed menacingly.

  The hound kept coming.

  “Erik,” Amber said, “call him off!”

  “It will do him good.”

  “But—”

  The rangy, rough-coated dog attacked. The gander’s right wing came down in a blur of motion. The hound was knocked off its feet. Crying in surprise and pain, the dog scrambled upright and raced back to the pack, tail tucked low.

  Erik laughed so hard it upset the peregrine riding on a perch on the pommel of his saddle. Silver bells on the trailing ends of the jesses jangled harshly, telling of the bird’s disturbance. The falcon flared its narrow, elegant wings and gave a sharp, piercing cry.

  Erik’s answering whistle was as high and wild as the falcon’s. The bird cocked her head and whistled again. This cry was different, as was Erik’s whistled response.

  The falcon folded its wings and was quiet once more.

  Swift glances passed among the squires and knights who were hunting with Erik. His uncanny way with wild beasts was a matter of much speculation among the people. Though none called Erik sorcerer to his face, men whispered it among themselves.

  “Be easy, my beauty,” Erik said softly.

  He stroked the bird with his bare hand. His other hand wore a thick leather gauntlet for protection when the falcon rode his wrist.

  “Robbie,” Erik said to the hound master. “Take the hounds and my men off to the forest. You’re disturbing Amber’s peace.”

  Amber opened her mouth to say that wasn’t true. A glance from Erik silenced her. Without a word, Amber waited until the hounds, horses, and men rode back into the forest in a flurry of noise and motion.

  “How fares the stranger?” Erik asked bluntly.

  “Better than your hound.”

  “Maybe next time Trouble will come when Robbie sounds the hunting horn.”

  “Doubtful. Half-grown males have much passion and little brain.”

  “I’d be insulted if I weren’t fully grown,” Erik said.

  Amber widened her eyes. “Are you? Since when, my lord?”

  A smile flashed and faded on Erik’s handsome face. Silently he waited for Amber to speak of the fully grown male who lay within her cottage.

  “He is awake,” she said.

  Erik’s right hand settled on the hilt of the sword he always wore.

  “His name?” Erik demanded.

  “He doesn’t remember.”

  “What?”

  “He remembers no names from his past, not even his own.”

  “He is as cunning as a fox,” Erik said flatly. “He knows he is in enemy hands and—”

  “Nay,” Amber interrupted. “He knows not whether he is Norman or Saxon, serf or thane.”

  “Is he bewitched?”

  Amber shook her head. The sudden weight and shimmer of her hair falling around her shoulders reminded her that she hadn’t yet managed to bind the locks properly. Impatiently she tossed her head and pulled the mantle’s cowl over her hair, concealing it.

  “There is no feel of compulsion about him,” Amber said.

  “What else did you sense?”

  “Courage. Strength. Honor. Generosity.”

  Erik’s eyebrows rose.

  “A saint,” he said dryly. “How unexpected.”

  Color showed along Amber’s slanting cheekbones as she remembered Duncan’s distinctly unsaintly desire for her.

  “There was also confusion and pain and fear,” she said crisply.

  “Ah, he’s human, then. How disappointing.”

  “You’re a devil, Erik, son of Robert of the North!”

  His smiled. “Thank you. ’Tis nice to have my true character appreciated.”

  Amber laughed despite trying not to.

  “What else?” he asked.

  Her amusement faded. “Nothing.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  The falcon’s wings flared in swift reflection of its master’s irritation.

  “Why is he in the Disputed Lands?” asked Erik in a clipped voice.

  “He doesn’t remember.”

  “Where was he going?”

  “He doesn’t know,” she said.

  “Does he owe fealty to a lord or is he a free lance?”

  “He doesn’t know.”

  “God’s wounds,” Erik hissed. “Is he a fool?”

  “Nay! He just doesn’t remember.”

  “Have you questioned him with your touch?”

  Amber took a deep breath and nodded slightly.

  “What did you sense?” Erik pressed.

  “When he tries to remember, there is confusion. If he pursues, there is a blinding light, harsh pain…”

  “Like lightning striking?”

  “It could be,” she said.

  Erik’s eyes narrowed into amber slits.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked after a moment. “You’ve never been so uncertain before.”

  “You’ve never brought me a man found senseless within Stone Ring before,” she retorted.

  “Is that a complaint?”

  Amber sighed. “I’m sorry. I’ve slept little since you brought him. It was very difficult to call him from the darkness.”

  “Yes. I can see that in the shadows beneath your eyes.”

  She smiled wanly.

  “Amber? Is he friend or foe?”

  The blunt question was the very one that she had feared.

  “Friend,” she whispered. Then honesty and affection compelled her to add, “Until he regains his memory. Then he will be whatever he was before you brought him to me. Friend or enemy or free lance bound to no lord.”

  “Is that the best you can do in assessing him?”

  “He isn’t a criminal or a beast to savage his own kind. He was gentle with me despite his fear.”

  Erik grunted. “But?”

  “But if he regains his memory, he might not consider himself our friend. Or he might be a long-lost cousin happy to find himself at home. Only he can say.”

  “If he regains his memory…”

  Silently, Erik stroked his peregrine’s shining back while he considered the possibilities. A persistent sense of uneasiness threaded through his thoughts. Something was wrong. He knew it.

  He just didn’t know what it was.

  “Will he regain his memory?” Erik asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Guess,” he said succinctly.

  A chill went through Amber. She didn’t like to think of what would happen if Duncan’s memory returned. If he were enemy and soul mate in one…

  It would tear her apart.

  Nor did she want to think of what it would be like for Duncan if he didn’t remember. He would be restless, savage, driven mad by names never remembered, sacred vows never honored, a man forsworn.

  It would tear him apart.

  Amber’s breath froze in her chest. She wouldn’t cause such dishonor and anguish even to an enemy, much less to the man who had stolen her heart with a touch, a smile, a kiss.

  “I…” Her voice died.

&n
bsp; “Little one?” Erik asked, troubled by Amber’s haunted golden eyes.

  “I don’t know,” she said in a shaking voice. “So much ill could come. So little good.”

  Rich life might grow, but death will surely flow.

  “Perhaps I had better take the stranger to Stone Ring Keep,” Erik said.

  “Nay.”

  “Why not?”

  “He wears sacred amber. He is mine.”

  The flat certainty in Amber’s voice both surprised and worried Erik.

  “What if he regains his memory?” Erik asked.

  “Then he will.”

  “You could be in danger.”

  “As God wills.”

  A surge of anger went through Erik. The falcon cried and his horse moved restlessly and champed at the bit. Erik curbed his mount and soothed his falcon without looking away from Amber’s steady gaze.

  “You make no sense,” he said finally. “I’ll send my squires for the stranger as soon as we’re through hawking.”

  Amber’s head came up defiantly. “As you will, lord.”

  “God’s teeth, are you possessed? I’m trying only to protect you from a man with no name.”

  “He has a name.”

  “You told me he didn’t remember his name.”

  “He doesn’t,” Amber retorted. “I gave him one.”

  “What is it?”

  “Duncan.”

  Erik’s mouth opened, then snapped shut with a distinct sound of clicking teeth.

  “Explain,” he demanded.

  “I had to call him something. ‘Dark warrior’ suits him.”

  “Duncan,” Erik said neutrally.

  “Yes.”

  In the distance a horn blew, telling of hounds being sent after birds, scaring them into flight for the hawks that rode on the arms of knights. The peregrine on Erik’s saddle keened restlessly, recognizing the call to a hunt that had left her behind.

  Overhead, a merlin’s cry announced yet another hawk on the wing. Erik looked up, searching the brilliant sky with eyes that were the equal of any hunting bird’s.

  A small, fierce falcon shot down like a dark bolt from the blue, trailing silver jesses that flashed in the sunlight. Though the falcon’s stoop ended behind a rocky rise, Erik had no doubt about the outcome.

  “Cassandra will have partridge before I have mallard,” he said. “Maid Marian flies with her customary lethal grace.”

  Amber closed her eyes and let out a soundless sigh of relief that Erik was no longer pursuing the uncomfortable subject of the stranger whom she had named Duncan.