Medieval 02 - Forbidden

longer touched her sleeping husband. Eyes open, staring at the darkness, Amber drank to the last bitter drop the knowledge of what she had done to him and to herself.
    The Glendruid Wolf had truly seen into Duncan’s soul. Beyond all doubt, beyond all temptation, Duncan was a man of his word.
    And his word had been given to Dominic le Sabre.
    Amber knew it now.
    Too late.
    If Duncan lets himself love me, he cannot permit our marriage to be set aside. He must turn his back on honor and on Dominic le Sabre .
    Duncan of Maxwell, the Forsworn .
    If he turns his back on honor, he will hate himself .
    And me .

20
    T WELVE days later, Cassandra entered the luxurious room that served as Amber’s prison.
    Amber looked up from the manuscript she had been trying to decipher. Trying, and failing. Her mind was on one thing and one thing only.
    Duncan.
    “Ariane is here,” Cassandra said bluntly. “Duncan requires your presence in the solar.”
    For a moment Amber became as still as death. Then she let out a long, soundless breath and looked around the luxurious bedchamber with eyes that saw only a thousand shades of darkness.
    “Simon brought a Norman priest along with the Norman heiress,” Cassandra continued. “There is no doubt that your marriage will be set aside.”
    Amber said nothing.
    “What will you do?” Cassandra asked.
    “What I must.”
    “Do you still hope that Duncan will allow himself to love you?”
    “No.”
    But the flare of emotion in Amber’s eyes said yes .
    “Does he still come to you in the darkest part of the night, when he can bear his own hunger no longer?” Cassandra asked.
    “Yes.”
    “And when the hunger is spent?”
    “Then comes anger at himself and at me and at the lies and vows that have trapped both of us. Then he doesn’t touch me again. It hurts too much.”
    “At least he has that much tenderness for you.”
    Amber’s smile was worse than any cry of pain would have been.
    “Yes,” she whispered. “Though he doesn’t know it, my pain hurts him, too.”
    “You still hope he will someday come to love you?”
    Long lashes swept down, concealing Amber’s eyes.
    “Each time we touch,” she whispered, “there is more torment beneath the passion, more darkness. Surely where so much emotion is, there is also a chance…”
    “You will stay as long as you have hope,” Cassandra said.
    Amber nodded.
    “And then?” Cassandra asked. “What will you do when hope is gone and only a thousand shades of darkness remain?”
    There was no answer.
    “May I see your pendant?” the Learned woman asked.
    Amber looked startled. After a moment of hesitation, she reached inside her robe to pull out the ancient pendant.
    Transparent, precious, golden, it hung from the glittering chain. Yet for all its beauty, the amber had changed in ways so subtle that only a Learned person would see…darkness drawing a veil over light.
    Cassandra touched the pendant with a fingertip that displayed a very fine trembling despite her best efforts at concealing the grief that raged beneath her Learned calm.
    “You know that Duncan is destroying you,” the older woman said.
    Silence was Amber’s only answer.
    “Drop by drop, bleeding in secret,” Cassandra whispered, “until there will be nothing left of light and life in you, only darkness.”
    Again Amber said nothing.
    “It is destroying Duncan as well,” Cassandra said flatly.
    Only then did Amber cry out, denial and pain and the same rage that Duncan knew. For she was trapped with him, and each day was another shade of darkness wrapped around them. Day after day, until there would be nothing left of light and life.
    Only darkness.
    “He must not set you aside,” Cassandra said fiercely. “I have never wished death on anyone, but I wish death to the Norman bitch who—”
    “Nay!” Amber said sharply. “Don’t drag your soul into darkness over something I have done. You taught me to make choices and to live with those choices.”
    “Or die.”
    “Or die,” Amber agreed. “In any case, if it were not this heiress, then it would be another. We can’t be slaughtering hapless maids, can we?”
    Cassandra’s laugh was as sad as her eyes.
    “No,” agreed the Learned woman. “There aren’t enough rich maids in the world to slay before your thick-skulled lord will awaken to the riches that lie within his grasp.”
    Not touching, yet close in every other way, the Learned woman and her chosen daughter went down to the lord’s