Forbidden

by Elizabeth Lowell

  And the kill.

  “Was Duncan captive?” Dominic demanded.

  “He wore no visible bonds, save Amber’s fingers laid against his wrist.”

  “Hardly enough to restrain a warrior of Duncan’s size,” Dominic said dryly. “Unless this Amber is a new Boadicea come to slay men with her mighty sword.”

  “The sword she used to slay Duncan—”

  “What?” Meg interrupted starkly. “You said Duncan was well!”

  Simon looked into Meg’s clear green eyes and wished himself anywhere else.

  “I know you have tenderness for him,” Simon said.

  Dominic looked grim. Despite his certainty of Meg’s love, Dominic found he had little liking of his wife’s affection for her childhood friend, Duncan of Maxwell.

  “But,” Simon continued grimly, “I fear the hell-witch Amber has taken Duncan’s soul.”

  “Is he dead?” Dominic demanded.

  “No. Nor is he alive, not in the way we knew him.”

  “Explain.”

  The quality of Dominic’s voice made Sven shift and look at his lord’s mantle uneasily. The eyes of the great pin glittered with reflected firelight as though intelligent, alive, and every bit as savage as the man who wore it.

  “It is as I told you,” Simon said distinctly. “Duncan remembers nothing of the time before he came to the Disputed Lands.”

  “Are you certain?” Dominic asked. “Could he not be like Sven, pretending to be someone he isn’t in order to spy out the land?”

  “I prayed that was the truth,” Simon said.

  Meg simply shook her head. Tears glittered in her eyes as she remembered Duncan’s forthright nature.

  “He is not like Sven,” Meg said, “an actor capable of many roles.”

  “A man may learn to act when his life depends on it,” Dominic pointed out.

  Meg closed her eyes for a moment. When they opened again, they were those of an unflinching Glendruid healer. It was the same when she spoke, her voice devoid of all emotion.

  “Continue, Simon,” Meg said. “I would hear more of Duncan’s transformation. I would hear everything.”

  Uneasily Simon looked at Dominic. There was nothing in Dominic’s face to comfort Simon.

  “I showed no sign I recognized Duncan,” Simon said, turning back to Meg. “He kept staring at me as though trying to decide if he knew me.”

  “How was he introduced to you?” she asked.

  “As a man whose memory was gone.”

  “What did they call him?”

  “Duncan,” Simon said.

  “Why?”

  “Because he is dark and a warrior. At least, that is what Erik said.”

  “Did they explain how Duncan lost his memory?”

  “Nay,” Simon said savagely. “Erik said he found Duncan in a storm, senseless and naked but for that amber talisman you had given him.”

  “Sven?” Meg asked.

  “I heard naught but what Simon did.”

  “The talisman saved his life,” Simon said.

  “How so?” Dominic asked.

  “Erik was expecting Duncan of Maxwell or his knights. A common stranger would have been killed as a spy or an outlaw. But a stranger wearing an amber talisman was different.”

  “They took Duncan to Amber the Untouched,” Meg summarized.

  Simon looked curiously at her, wondering how she had known.

  “Yes,” Sven said quietly. “It is said that all things amber belong to her.”

  “Yes,” Meg said.

  For the space of several slow breaths she looked into a distance only Glendruid eyes could see.

  “Did you know, small falcon?” Dominic asked Meg softly. “Is that why you gave the talisman to Duncan?”

  “I dreamed of amber,” she said. “And I dreamed that Duncan was going into great danger.”

  Dominic smiled slightly. “I knew about the danger while wide awake. ’Tis why I sent Duncan to secure Stone Ring Keep. Only a powerful warrior could take an estate in the Disputed Lands.”

  “And only a wealthy knight could hire enough fighters to hold such an estate,” Simon added.

  “Aye,” Dominic said. “’Tis why King Henry arranged a wedding with the daughter of Charles, the Baron of Deguerre.”

  “Don’t count on the marriage,” Simon said bluntly.

  “Why not?”

  “The people of Sea Home were making wagers on how soon Amber would wed Duncan the Nameless, the one man whom she could touch with pleasure.”

  “God’s teeth.” snarled Dominic. “Duncan must be mad. Lady Ariane arrived here three days ago!”

  Simon looked surprised. “I saw no strange men or servants in the bailey.”

  “She came alone but for a lady’s maid and three knights to guard her dowry,” Meg said.

  “The knights left as soon as they saw the dowry safely inside the keep,” Dominic added.

  “Hardly the way I would expect a great baron to treat his hounds,” Simon muttered, “much less his only daughter.”

  “The baron was much put out by having to marry his daughter to a Saxon,” Dominic said neutrally.

  “Then the baron may be pleased to get his daughter back.”

  “If Duncan jilts Ariane, he will have no means of supporting the knights he must have to hold Stone Ring Keep,” Dominic said flatly. “And I, along with my unruly vassal, would suffer the displeasure of both the King of England and the King of Normandy.”

  “All this,” Meg said quietly, “at a time when the last of the warriors you sent with Duncan are only now straggling back to Blackthorne Keep on foot, muttering about lightning from a clear sky that drove their horses mad.”

  “Are you quite certain,” Dominic asked Simon, “that Duncan hasn’t forsworn himself and cast his lot with Erik?”

  “Never!” Meg said before anyone could speak.

  “That is what I feared at first,” Simon said calmly. “It would have explained much.”

  “And?” Dominic asked.

  “Rather quickly, I decided it wasn’t a simple matter of betrayal. If it had been, Duncan would have given me away to Sir Erik.”

  Sven nodded, silently agreeing. “It would have meant Simon’s death.”

  “So you decided he was bewitched,” Meg said, “and truly didn’t know you.”

  “Yes. What else could it be?”

  “Sometimes,” Meg said, “a man who is kicked in the head by a horse or hit with a battle hammer…if they survive, sometimes such men lose all knowledge of themselves for a time.”

  “How long?” Dominic asked sharply.

  “Sometimes days. Sometimes months. Sometimes…forever.”

  Sven crossed himself and muttered, “You call it accident. I call it Satan, who knows more disguises than I do.”

  “Truly?” Simon asked innocently. “A bemusing thought.”

  Dominic ignored them and looked at Meg.

  “What do you say, Glendruid healer?” he asked.

  “I can’t know whether it is accident or bewitchment until I see Duncan.”

  “While Duncan and I fought—,” Simon began.

  “You fought?” Meg asked, appalled. “Why?”

  “Sir Erik wanted to know the temper of the two new warriors he had found,” Simon said dryly. “So Duncan and I fought to display our skills with the sword.”

  Dominic’s smile was as thin as the edge of a dagger.

  “I would like to have seen that,” he said. “Your quickness against his strength.”

  Simon’s black eyes gleamed with laughter and a warrior’s love of testing himself against another warrior’s skill.

  “It was like fighting you,” Simon admitted, “but every bruise was rewarded by the certainty that Duncan hadn’t betrayed his oath of fealty to you.”

  “How so?”

  “When I said the words ‘Blackthorne Keep,’ Duncan faltered as though at a blow. For an instant the darkness in his eyes lifted and he almost knew me.”


  “What happened next?” Meg asked intently.

  “I put him on his back in the field. Then I asked him if what Erik had said about his memory was true.”

  “And?”

  “Duncan said it was.”

  “You believed him,” Meg said.

  “Aye. He remembered nothing. The hell-witch has stolen his soul.”

  Meg flinched at the naked loathing in Simon’s voice. She knew he hated necromancy as few men hated anything.

  But she didn’t know why.

  “I now knew all that was required,” Simon said. “I made my excuses to Erik, found Sven, and set off for Blackthorne Keep as fast as our horses could carry us.”

  Absently, Dominic ran his fingertips over the cool silver of the Glendruid Wolf. Then he turned and looked at Simon and Sven with eyes whose icy clarity precisely matched those of the huge pin.

  “Rest for a time,” Dominic said. “When you are ready, the three of us will ride for the Disputed Lands.”

  “What will you accomplish with just three men?” Meg asked. “Stone Ring Keep can hold out for months against such a small force.”

  “To take any more warriors would endanger Blackthorne Keep.”

  Dominic’s expression softened as he smiled at his red-haired wife. He touched Meg’s lower lip with his thumb in a brief, sensual caress.

  “Besides,” Dominic added, “don’t you remember what I taught you about the best way to take a well-defended keep?”

  “Treachery,” Meg said huskily. “From within.”

  “Aye.”

  “What will you do?” she asked.

  “Somehow they stole Duncan from us. We shall steal him back.”

  “How?” Simon asked.

  “With a net,” Dominic said succinctly.

  “And then?”

  “We will teach Duncan who he is,” Dominic said. “Then we will send him back to Stone Ring Keep. When he is inside, he will open the gates for us.”

  Sven laughed softly.

  Simon simply smiled. “How like you, brother. Bold, yet bloodless.”

  “There’s little point to killing good men when better means are available,” Dominic said, shrugging.

  “We had best hurry to be about our treacherous business,” Meg said. “The sooner we—”

  “We?” Dominic interrupted.

  “Aye, husband. We.”

  All amusement and sensual indulgence vanished from Dominic’s expression.

  “Nay,” he said flatly. “You’re carrying the future of Blackthorne Keep in your womb. You will stay here.”

  Meg’s mouth tightened.

  “I am many months from birthing your heir,” she said. “I’m as fit as any of your knights to ride. I’m no frail lady unable to pick up a dropped shoe.”

  Her voice and expression were every bit as determined as her lord’s.

  “Nay,” Dominic said.

  Simon looked at his brother, cursed silently, and did what few men would have the courage to do when Dominic looked so fierce. Deliberately Simon cleared his throat, drawing his brother’s attention.

  And his ire.

  “What is it?” Dominic snarled.

  “If Duncan is injured, Meg can treat him. If he is enthralled…” Simon shrugged. “What one witch has done, another witch might undo.”

  “We were going to move the household to Carlysle Manor for several fortnights in any case,” Meg said calmly. “The Disputed Lands are but a few days’ gentle ride from Carlysle.”

  Dominic remained as silent and forbidding as a drawn sword. Then he lifted his hand and set it beneath Meg’s chin.

  “If God willed it, I could bear losing the babe,” Dominic said softly, “but not you. You are my heart.”

  Meg turned her head and kissed the scarred hand that held her so gently.

  “I have dreamed no Glendruid dreams of death,” she said, “and being parted from you is a kind of dying. Take me with you. Let me do what I was born to do.”

  “Heal?”

  “Aye.”

  There was a long silence. Then Dominic released his wife with a gentle touch and turned to Sven.

  “Inform the grooms to ready horses for dawn.”

  “How many horses, lord?”

  Dominic paused, looked at Meg’s unflinching Glendruid eyes, and knew what he must do whether it pleased him or not.

  “Four.”

  16

  THE flicker of a dying candle flame beyond the bed’s luxurious draperies made Duncan start from his uneasy sleep.

  Danger!

  He reached for his sword as he had so often in the twelve days since his marriage. Belatedly he realized he was only half awake and fully nude.

  Even as Duncan told himself it was but a dream that had disturbed him, he eased out of the bed and lit candles around the room until there were no shadows where enemies could hide. Only then did he go back to bed as silently as he had arisen.

  “Duncan?”

  He started again, then turned on his side toward the soft voice that was both familiar and oddly alien. Thoughts like black lightning raged through the shades of darkness that were his mind.

  She is not part of my past.

  Danger!

  I am surrounded by enemies.

  Danger!

  Yet even as part of Duncan’s mind cried of peril, his recent memories scoffed, for nothing but kindness and incandescent passion had come to him at Stone Ring Keep.

  Am I going mad?

  Will I be torn in two and die writhing while shades of darkness and amber light battle for my soul?

  The only answer that came to Duncan was an inner silence which seethed with contradictions.

  The unremembered past was taking shape in his mind as random threads and fragmented patterns, names and no faces, places and no names, faces and no places. He was a tapestry rent and shredded, unraveled as much as woven, threads all snarled and frayed.

  Sometimes, the worst times, he saw the shadows retreat, revealing his memory. And that was when he truly knew despair like black ice, freezing everything.

  He feared his returning memory.

  What is happening to me? God’s wounds, why do I fear the very thing that I long for!

  With a harsh sound Duncan grabbed his head in both hands. An instant later, fingers that were both gentle and insistent stroked his clenched fingers.

  “Dark warrior,” Amber whispered. “Be at peace.”

  If Duncan heard, he made no sound.

  Tears slid hotly down Amber’s cheeks as she shared Duncan’s anguish.

  And his fear.

  Like Duncan, Amber sensed the slow healing of his memory. She saw faces where only shadows had been, heard names where only silence had been, sensed time’s shuttle at work. The pattern which would weave all together was lacking, but it, too, would return. She was certain of it.

  And then she would know the wrath of a proud warrior who had been defeated in secret rather than allowed to fight as he had been born to do.

  It is too soon. Duncan has had so little time with me. A fortnight before we became lovers. Barely a fortnight since we wed. Not enough time to learn to love me.

  Dear God, not nearly enough time.

  Only love could forgive so great a deception. If he remembers too soon, he will never forgive me.

  Never love me.

  And great death will surely flow.

  Amber never knew whether she called Duncan’s name with her lips or with her heart. She knew only that suddenly they were holding each other so tightly she couldn’t breathe.

  “Precious Amber,” Duncan said in a raw voice. “What would I do without you?”

  Tears burned against her eyes and filled her throat.

  “You would fare better than I would without you,” she whispered. “You are the heart in my body.”

  Duncan felt the hot flow of Amber’s tears. Slowly he eased his grip on her.

  “Don’t cry,” he said. “It was but a dream I had, naught to distu
rb yourself over.”

  Amber knew with Learned precision just how little of what had gone on in Duncan’s mind resembled a dream, and she knew that he knew it as well as she did.

  Yet she said nothing about the gentle lie. She had no more desire than Duncan to search among the tangled, agonizing threads of his memory for the truth she feared more than she feared death itself.

  “Duncan,” she whispered.

  The sound was more a caress than it was a word, for she spoke with her lips pressed against the pulse that beat in his neck.

  Duncan’s body stilled for an instant before he shuddered and tightened with a different kind of tension than that of a warring mind. He felt an answering ripple of sensation pass through Amber and knew how clearly she felt his desire.

  Yet he knew now that it was also her desire. In the brief time of their marriage, she not only responded when he cast the sensual lure, she wanted him whether or not he was touching her.

  She came to him when he stood brooding and watching the rain through the keep’s narrow windows.

  If she awakened before he did, she curled against him, stroking her slender hands the length of his body and laughing softly when he rose to meet her touch.

  Each day before dinner she rode with him, sharing her knowledge of the forest and fields and the people of the keep.

  In the evenings she dismissed his attendant and bathed Duncan with great pleasure, teaching him the Learned way of purifying the flesh and then shivering with delight when he taught her how the Saracen sultans bathed.

  And always her eyes brightened when he came to her after hearing the complaints of serf and villein in the morning. She smiled with happiness when she turned and saw him standing in a doorway, watching her decipher ancient manuscripts.

  In a thousand ways she came to him, telling him how much she was pleased to be his mate.

  “You are sunlight when all else is rain,” Duncan said.

  More tears seeped from Amber’s eyes to glide hotly over Duncan’s skin. He shifted onto his back, pulling her close against his side.

  “Without you,” he whispered, “I don’t know how I could have survived the battleground that is my mind.”

  “Dark warrior…”

  Pain twisted in Amber, squeezing her throat shut more surely than tears. The words of love she wanted to give Duncan were fire burning within her silence.