Duncan lay there, with his hand on her head, planning out his last weeks, knowing much of what he could do for her was dependent on her trusting him. Since she did not, for she trusted no one he could think of save Gunna, he could not take her into his confidence and share his plans with her.
Gunna had spoken with him about Isabel several times since she had arrived and he knew Gunna would help however she could. In spite of never having known a day in her life when she was not valued and loved, Gunna understood Isabel’s pain better than he did and urged him to see to her future regardless of how things ended between them.
And he would, once he discovered her truths.
Without emotions to shade his view or protect him from the grim realities of his situation, Duncan found it easier to make decisions and plans involving all those who depended on him. He spent the rest of the night until sleep finally claimed him setting out the tasks he must attend to before the next full moon.
When he woke again, it was night once more, but he had the strength to get out of his bed. Looking around the chamber, he noticed Isabel was not there. Stumbling a bit as he gained his balance, Duncan made his way to the main room and found her there. Wrapped in a blanket and sitting in a large chair by the hearth, she slept. She’d clearly positioned the chair so she could see into the bedchamber, but no doubt the cozy warmth of the fire burning low had made her drowsy.
He crouched down before her and watched her. When no frown marred her brow and no sadness filled her gaze, she was a beautiful woman. Even without the artificial coloring she’d worn those first few times to make her lips look fuller and her eyes darker and wider, her beauty shone through. Noticing, too, the smudges beneath her eyes, he knew she had not slept well.
Sigurd’s methods had trained her not to sleep when with a man, so she found it difficult to relax, he knew. She startled easily and slept lightly, when at all, and it had taken many nights before she would seek her rest before he did. Duncan reached out to touch her cheek, but hesitated to wake her. As he looked more closely, he also saw tiny red speckles that were evidence of the violence of her sobbing.
He paused, realizing how much he wanted to feel her skin and be aroused by the sight of her. He wanted to feel pity and sadness that she’d cried so hard. He wanted to be angry at the man who’d left marks on her neck and fear in her gaze.
Something was quite different from before without her. He was emptied, aye, but not as completely burned out as last month. Though he could not yet feel anything, he wanted to and that was more than he’d expected. He stood, trying to decide if he should move her to his bed. She opened her eyes, and he read confusion in her gaze. He stepped back to give her room to stand.
“Why did you not sleep in the bed, Isabel?” he asked.
“I did not wish to disturb your rest.” She pushed her hair out of her face, quickly gathering and tying it behind her head. Smoothing her gown and tunic down, she stood and moved away from him. He watched as she put distance between them, stepping to the other side of the table.
“You should know by now that when I am tired, I sleep and nothing keeps me from it.”
She took a step away as he walked around the table toward her.
“You are afraid of me.” Duncan stopped and moved back, surprised.
“I-I,” she stuttered. “So many things have happened, I was not certain . . .” She shook her head and shrugged, still not moving nearer to him.
“You need not fear me.” He reached out his hands to her. “I am just a man now, Isabel. My hands are just hands.” He held them out closer to her. “Touch them.”
Her hands trembled as she did as he bade her to do. Though he saw her touch him, his skin did not feel it at all. “Are they hot?”
“Nay, no longer,” she said. “Do they hurt?”
“Nothing hurts. Nothing aches. Nothing feels at all,” he said. “But it will.”
Isabel watched his every step, every turn, much as she did when she expected some kind of retaliation for a misdeed or error. As she had in the first days with him.
He changed the topic of their discussion. “How late is it? Is Ornolf still about?”
“Forgive me, Duncan. I was supposed to tell you that he would speak to you as soon as you are able. I forgot—”
“Come here, Isabel.”
Silence filled the room and he recognized the dread in her eyes at his command. Yet, as always, it was his will and not hers that would prevail between them. She walked around the table and came to him.
“You saw much that disturbed you in the barn. Many things happened and we should discuss them,” he explained, all the time noticing the frown lines across her forehead and the way she twisted her hands together.
She opened her mouth to say something, but a knock on the door interrupted her. Ornolf pushed it open and nodded to him. “Ah, so you are awake, Duncan.” The older man stepped inside and closed the door, glancing from Duncan to Isabel and back again, realizing he interrupted something. “I will wait for you outside,” he said quietly. With a nod to Isabel, he left more quickly than he’d entered.
“What must you tell me?” Duncan saw guilt flash in her eyes and sadness and resignation there, too. She did not step back, but he could see the tension in her stance that spoke of someone prepared to run.
“Harald will tell you,” she began, looking away and not meeting his gaze. “When I left the barn, Sigurd’s man caught up with me . . .” She trembled and tried to explain, but soon the shaking became too great.
“I did not want you to see the ritual. I told you not to leave here because I could not be with you and I knew someone was following you.” He sat down on one of the stools, trying not to intimidate her so much. “So, you told him about what you’d seen?”
She let out her breath and nodded. “I am sorry, Duncan. I was terrified and he hit me and . . .” Tears fell once more from her beautiful green eyes and he opened his arms to her. She ran to him, kneeling in his embrace, and begged for his forgiveness. “I did not want to know your secrets, because I knew I must tell Sigurd. I could not refuse him. I wanted to, but I could not.”
“Isabel,” he said softly to gain her attention. When she looked up at him, he explained. “I knew why he let you come with me. It was never about the outrageous amount of gold I paid him. I knew he wanted you to spy for him and take back information he could use to gain my cooperation.”
Her face lost all its color, becoming a ghastly, ghostly whiter shade of pale. “You knew?”
“I have watched men like Sigurd as they use their way to power and wealth. They target those weaker and climb on top of them as they claw their way to their goals. He is not the first to use a woman nor the last.”
“What will you do with me now that you know?” she asked.
She expected the worst from him. It was clear in her voice and in her body. After what she’d endured, her response was no surprise to him.
“I’ve always known, Isabel, and it hasn’t changed anything between us. We will keep to our arrangement for the time being and Sigurd will think all is well.” While he set his own plans in place for a completely different result.
He read the suspicion in her gaze as he stood, bringing her to stand at his side. Seeing the mistrust in her eyes would hurt him when he could feel such things again, but he ignored it and led her to the bedchamber. “I will join you after I have spoken to Ornolf.”
“You will?” She searched his face for the truth, so he gave it to her.
“I am not yet recovered from the ritual, so, aye, I will seek my rest soon.”
It was easy to speak the truth when no emotion clouded his mind. Even easier was to see where his path would lead.
Isabel would be safe.
He would be dead.
Sigurd would pay first.
Once she’d settled under the bedcovers, he left to meet Ornolf and give him the first task to complete. The one upon which all else would depend. Duncan would trust no one but Ornolf to s
ee it done. The man had been his loyal servant, nay friend, since before his powers began to manifest themselves seven years ago and he’d sworn to be at Duncan’s side when all was finished.
It would take Ornolf several days to find the information he needed before Duncan could return to Duntulm for the next step. He needed to speak with Harald as well but that could wait until morning. He bid Ornolf a good night and returned to his bedchamber, all the while being drawn there by something he could not explain.
Empty as his soul was, he knew it was not desire or longing that drew him to Isabel that night. His body felt nothing, neither cold nor heat, and he had no appetite for pleasures of the flesh. What could it be that urged him to be with her.
Unable and unwilling to examine his motives more closely, he undressed and climbed into bed with her. She turned immediately to him and he wrapped his arms around her as she lay against him. Soon, only the soft sounds of her even breaths could be heard in the chamber. Just as he began to drift to sleep, the tinkling sound of eerie laughter echoed around him, making him question all he thought he knew about Isabel and her place in his life . . . and his death.
Chapter Sixteen
As she carried out the tasks Gunna asked of her, Isabel kept her eyes open and her ears alert for the sight or sound of anyone nearby. Determined not to be surprised by Godrod again when he returned, and he would return, she was ever watchful when she was more than a few paces from any of the buildings or the main yards of Duncan’s farm. Though she enjoyed accompanying Gunna to Uig, she’d stopped walking with her because she feared his reappearance.
Isabel knew she would pay for his injury. One way or another, it would become her fault and her sin to bear. No amount of explaining would lessen the punishment, so she tried to avoid being caught by him. Duncan repeatedly told her she was safe from Godrod, even bringing in six very stout men as additional guards around his lands.
But she understood what he did not—as long as Sigurd had Thora, Isabel would go back to face his anger and accept whatever punishment he doled out. Until Thora was married and away from Skye, Isabel would obey him and be his pawn. It was only a matter of time before Sigurd called her to him.
A week had passed since that terrible night and Duncan still could not feel. At their evening meal the previous night, he’d sliced a deep gash in his hand and never knew it until the others noticed his blood spilling from it. Two days before he’d stepped into the bath she’d arranged before she could add the cold to temper the steaming water . . . and he’d not noticed until she dipped her hand in and burned it.
She hoped and prayed each day and night he would regain his ability to feel not only pain and pleasure, but also the emotions that had been burned from him. Isabel would have sought the comfort of his body, but he did not respond to any of her caresses or kisses. Her own body did not understand the absence of physical relations after weeks of constant and abundant passion and she found herself tossing and turning more than one night, unrelieved and unable to ignore her restlessness.
Ornolf had slipped up and revealed that two weeks passed after the last ritual before Duncan felt anything, but Isabel kept hoping it would not take that long. Though he talked and ate and walked like himself, Duncan was not the man she’d come to care for. The man she was beginning to love.
That thought occurred to her as she was carrying a basket of wash across the yard to hang it to dry in the breezes and she stumbled and almost dropped it. Righting herself, she closed her eyes and tried to banish such foolishness from her heart. Not wanting to dwell on such a thing for too long, she returned to her task and walked to the place where the rope was strung. She put the basket down.
It cannot be. It cannot be. It cannot.
Isabel chanted the words to herself over and over as she wrung out each piece of clothing and linen and threw it over the rope. She tried to find her way to that empty place inside her soul that used to be her refuge when she could not bear what was happening to her, but she could not find it. Her heart spoke the words she feared the most.
I love him.
Isabel knew she should have listened to the warnings long ago when it came to the man. He’d broken through every defense she’d set up to avoid those softer feelings. He crushed them and pushed through barrier after barrier until she could not keep him out. He did not want her love, he only wanted to use her body to ease the weeks when the power within him surged and needed release. He’d told her that over and over and yet her heart had led her down a hopeless path.
Unlike keeping the memories of their passion for colder, bleaker days, this could not end well no matter what. Isabel only hoped she could keep herself from shattering long enough to reach her only goal.
Seeing Thora happily married.
She finished hanging the wash and stepped back, pushing the hair that had come free from her braid out of her face. The winds grabbed her hair and blew it wildly around her as she tried to gather it all. Laughing at the strange sight she must be, she turned and found him there, staring at her with that empty gaze.
Duncan.
It was too soon on the heels of her heart’s revelation. She looked away from him and took a deep breath. She had to fight it, for letting him know gave him another weapon against her. She’d believed herself in love with a man before, believed his words about freeing her from Sigurd, and her heart and spirit had been crushed by betrayal. She could ill afford such a distraction and such emotional ties at the moment. Isabel heard the dirt crunching behind her and knew he approached.
“Are you well, Isabel?” he asked in that empty voice. He said the appropriate things but only from rote and knowing what was expected.
She had claimed to be a good whore, one adept at pretending as need be and she drew on that ability. She needed to pretend he did not affect her as he did. She needed to pretend their arrangement was all that connected them and her heart had not just proclaimed . . .
“Isabel?” he asked once more, closer by several paces.
She needed to face him before her emotions got more out of control. Ill-prepared for anything but casual conversation and trying to keep her true feelings out of her eyes, she nodded and smiled and turned to speak to him.
Their gazes met and he stopped as though struck. His eyes flashed and flared the color of hot coals in the hearth, then his body shuddered. She thought he was having a fit or that his power was pushing through, for another face glimmered over his for a scant moment before disappearing. His eyes became his own, staring at her with all the desire and emotion she’d seen before the ritual had burned all response out of him.
He had the same expression he’d worn the first time they’d met in Lord Davin’s hall. The night that ended in breathless, exhausting pleasure and began to tether them together in some unholy, inhuman alliance she could not understand.
He crossed the few paces between them and she expected him to take her in the yard, as their mutual sexual needs erupted, overwhelming their sensibilities. He took her by the shoulders and pulled her to him. Her body answered the call of his blood and his heat as it had so many times before. But unlike the other times when the ravenous hunger tore through their control, the kiss he offered was so gentle tears filled her eyes.
Though their bodies trembled as the desire flowed between them, that kiss was the barest touch of their mouths. His lips tasted hers, his mouth hovered close to hers and she could feel his breath in her mouth. Then he tilted his face and took possession of her, beginning once more with her mouth.
Stunned by what he’d seen shining from her eyes, Duncan felt the power surge within him, pushing its way free, pushing its way to her. Someone else flowed through his mind, something otherworldly, something potent, in that second when he recognized the love in her gaze. Never believing he would be loved as other men were, he allowed it in to warm his soul before she tried to hide it from him.
Fear. Overpowering fear flowed from her and he absorbed it, too, tried to pull it from her, until she put
up that wall in her soul that kept him from helping her. As he’d walked to her, his heart and soul were released from the void once more. She had no idea she had been the one to release him from the hell of emptiness, but he knew it. The love in her gaze tore him open.
His body hungered for her, for air to move in his lungs, for the feel of his blood pumping through his veins, for all that had been missing the last days.
He wanted to strip off their clothes and lie skin to skin, plundering every inch of her and feeling the exquisite torture as she touched his hungry skin . . . and his soul with her love.
Moments, minutes, hours might have passed as he kissed her over and over, drawing on her strength, accepting the love she offered even if she did not call it that, feeding on her arousal and controlling his. He wanted her, he wanted to be in her, surrounded by her body, part of her.
Duncan lifted his mouth away and watched as she opened her eyes. He’d not been mistaken, love gazed back at him. He bent down and lifted her into his arms, his intentions clear. As he walked toward the house, he realized the yard had emptied of everyone who’d been working there. Good. They saw and understood, and made themselves scarce. He reached the house, kicked the door open, then closed it the same way. The latch dropped and he carried her into his bedchamber, to his bed, and laid her there.
He stepped back and her eyes followed him. He pulled his shirt off and loosened his trousers, letting them fall. Stepping out of them he let his desire flow, feeling heat in every inch of his skin and in the muscle and sinew of his body. It brought him to full arousal.
Isabel licked her lips and stared at his flesh with lust in her gaze. Would he take her now?
No, he shook his head, answering both her and him at the same time. Her response was to draw her knees up, open her legs, and gather her skirts out of the way, inviting him in an openly carnal manner.
He laughed and shook his head again. “Touch me, Isabel. I need to feel your touch,” he begged.
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