Medieval 02 - Forbidden

remedy.”
    “He is neither unskilled nor a brute,” Amber said.
    A long breath of relief was Erik’s first response. Then he smiled.
    “I begin to understand,” he said.
    “I’m glad one of us does.”
    Erik hid his smile.
    “I’m told that a maid’s first time is rarely her most, ah, memorable,” he said.
    “Nay,” Amber said huskily. “I shall remember it until the day I die. Feeling ecstasy pulse throughmy dark warrior into me was…extraordinary.”
    A hint of color that had nothing to do with the hearth fire showed on Erik’s high cheekbones. Then he tilted back his head and laughed.
    “You give as good as you get, lass,” Erik said.
    At first Amber didn’t understand. When she did, she laughed despite the color burning on her cheeks.
    “I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” she said.
    “I’ll survive,” he said dryly. “Now set your hair and clothes to rights before I call the priest to the solar. You will marry at a midnight mass.”
    Amber’s smile faded. “That cannot be.”
    “Why?”
    “Duncan has remembered a woman’s name.”
    “Ariane?” Erik asked casually.
    For a moment, Amber was too shocked to say anything.
    “You knew?” she asked, whispering.
    Erik nodded.
    “How?” she demanded.
    “Because your dark warrior is Duncan of Maxwell, the Scots Hammer.”
    Amber swayed as though she had been struck.
    “You knew?” she whispered.
    “I wondered. Then I hoped. Then I knew.”
    “Then you also know why I can’t marry Duncan,” she said.
    “I know no such thing.”
    “Duncan is married to this Ariane, despite his certainty that he has never married.”
    “Nay. He is betrothed to a Norman heiress whose face he has never seen and whose name he has heard but once, when Dominic le Sabre informed Duncan of the arrangement.”
    “Duncan is vassal to Dominic le Sabre,” Amber said in a shaking voice. She closed her eyes. “To marry me would be a betrayal of his vow of fealty.”
    “God’s wounds,” Erik snarled, his voice like a whip. “How can you be so blind? Wipe the tragedy from your eyes and look at me!”
    The cold authority in Erik’s voice shocked Amber as nothing else could have.
    “God has sent you the one man whom you may touch without pain,” Erik said. “God has sent me the one man whom I need to hold on to Lord Robert’s besieged estates.”
    “But—”
    “And God has sent the means of transforming a foe into an ally,” Erik continued relentlessly. “Wed to you, Duncan will be my vassal, not Dominic le Sabre’s!”
    The silence stretched until it vibrated like the string of a bow too tightly drawn.
    “It is wrong,” Amber said. “Duncan came to the Disputed Lands a knight with wealth of his own, a promise of an estate, and a noble wife to bear him heirs.”
    “Not so,” Erik countered savagely. “Duncan came to Stone Ring Keep more dead than alive, with no more memory than a babe, and you saved his life. He is newly born, and he is mine .”
    “His memory is returning,” Amber said unhappily. “Piece by bright piece, the shadows are diminished.”
    “Aye.” Erik’s smile was grim. “That is why you will marry by midnight.”
    “Nay. The prophecy—”
    “Hammer the prophecy,” Erik said harshly. “You’ve made your bed, now you will lie in it as Duncan’s wife.”
    “Cassandra will—”
    “Accept what she can’t alter,” Erik said ruthlessly, cutting across Amber’s protests again.
    “Two parts of the prophecy have been fulfilled. Does that mean nothing to you?”
    “It means you had better guard your soul most carefully.”
    There was a taut silence before Amber shook her head.
    “I cannot,” she said. “I cannot betray my dark warrior thus.”
    Erik’s face changed, all softness gone. The topaz blaze of his eyes was colder than a winter sunset.
    “You will marry the Scots Hammer at midnight—”
    “Nay!”
    “—or before the twelfth hour is struck, you will see Duncan hanged .”

13
    “Y OU look downcast for a maid who just became her lover’s wife,” Cassandra said, pitching her voice to be heard above the feast’s noise.
    Amber said nothing. Her golden eyes were fixed on Duncan, who stood on Erik’s right, receiving the congratulations of the assembled knights. Even among fighting men, Duncan stood out, taller than most, harder, yet with a laugh that no one could hear without laughing in return.
    Many toasts had been drunk, many stories told, and much food eaten. Now jugglers and rhymers moved