Dream of Me/Believe in Me

wrong with him. Without warning he smiled, a big flashing grin. “I don't think I really could feel any better. Well, no, that's not true, there is one thing that would help.”
    Krysta looked a little alarmed. He didn't mean buying her more gifts, did he? Cautiously she asked, “What's that?”
    He took the cup from her and set it on the table, then took both her hands in his very gently, looked deeply into her eyes, and said earnestly, “Getting married, right here in Winchester, as soon as you're able. Father Asser can do the honors, Alfred and Eahlswith will be delighted, and we can return to Hawkforte as man and wife.”
    Krysta's heart skipped. She felt cold, then hot, then nothing at all, so consumed was she by the sudden vision of her future thrust before her. Yet old fears lingered. “My mother—”
    “Was a fine woman, I'm sure. If she were here, I have no doubt she would tell you we should be married without any further delay.”
    He spoke emphatically, with unshakable certainty. The lure of his confidence was all but irresistible. Only honesty prevented Krysta from succumbing at once.
    “Hawk … there's something I have to tell you.”
    “Something else?” He looked surprised, then alarmed. Her servants … her mother … what
else
could there possibly be? “It's not anything about your father, is it?”
    “Oh, no, he was a perfectly normal man. But that's the problem, you see.”
    He tried, he truly did, but failed. “What's wrong with him being normal?”
    Krysta took a deep breath and held on to his hands.
    “He was a normal man and men don't always seem to feel the same emotions that women do. Perhaps it's because you're raised as warriors. My mother loved him but he wasn't able to love her in return. She couldn't stay here in this world without the bond of love to hold her. Just as she could call beings from the other realm into this one, she in turn was called there.”
    Hawk frowned and she could see he was struggling to understand. Quickly, before she could think better of it, she said, “I didn't tell you the truth about why I came to Hawkforte disguised as a servant, or at least not the whole truth. I did think that if I could get to know you first I could be a better wife, but I wanted to be the best wife possible so that you would fall in love with me.” Her voice dropped, becoming little more than a whisper. “That way, wouldn't have to worry about suffering the same fate as my mother.”
    Slowly, Hawk nodded. “And now this troubles you because … ?”
    Really, was the man so dense? If he couldn't see that she yearned for his—
    “I don't believe it!” Hawk jumped up, paced a few yards from the bed, whirled, and glared at her. “I absolutely don't believe it! After all that's happened, you can lie there and claim you don't know that I love you? God's blood, woman, are you deaf, dumb, and blind? You have turned my life upside down, made me doubt my own reason, yet I accepted all without complaint. I asked you days ago if you wondered why that was. Did you have no thought to what I meant when you yourself had said you had more care for my honor than I did because you loved me? Did you not think for even a moment that I would have more care for you
for the same damned reason?”
    As romantic declarations went, it lacked poetry. Yet Krysta heard him out with heart pounding and eyesaglow. He loved her? He loved her! How could she have been so foolish? Surely, had he not loved her, he would have wrung her neck by now.
    She gave a little shriek of joy, scrambled off the bed, and launched herself into his arms. Hawk caught her with a look of horror.
    “What are you doing? You're bruised from head to toe. Why are you jumping out of bed? For God's sake, woman, you'll turn my hair white before my time.” With great tenderness, he laid her back down but continued to hold her. Krysta snuggled against him, overwhelmed with happiness. She could think of nothing but the storms they had weathered, born of her own conscience and Udell's lack of one. But now they had come to safe harbor, they were together, and the future lay before them golden with promise.
    With a contented sigh, she turned in his arms. Her hand lay against his broad chest. She loved the strength of him, so different from her own strength yet complementing it perfectly. How she had missed him, longed for him, needed him. Unconsciously, she moved her hand over the granite bone and muscle lightly covered by fine linen.