Medieval 02 - Forbidden

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