Medieval 02 - Forbidden

as headstrong as an unbroken stallion. Erik laughed the loudest of them all, for he knew himself better than they did.
    Under cover of the laughter, Duncan bent down and spoke for Amber alone.
    “Do you know what Cassandra knows?” he asked.
    “Of your past?”
    “Yes.”
    “I know that she is rarely wrong.”
    “Meaning?” Duncan asked.
    “Meaning there is nothing in your past that will make you happy in the present.”
    “Are you certain?”
    “Ask yourself, not me,” she said.
    “But I know nothing.”
    “Nor do you wish to. Not now. Not when you are married.”
    Duncan’s eyes narrowed. But before he could speak, Amber did.
    “Do you want to spend your wedding night asking questions whose answers are sure to make you unhappy?” she asked.
    “Are they?”
    “Aye.”
    The bleak certainty in Amber’s eyes sent another wave of coolness washing over Duncan’s spine.
    “Amber?”
    She put her fingertips over his lips, sealing in all the questions he hadn’t asked and she didn’t want to answer.
    “Instead of asking questions neither of us wants to hear,” Amber whispered, “wouldn’t you rather take your bride to the privacy of the bedchamber and begin our future?”

14
    W HEN Duncan led Amber into the room that had been hastily, yet thoroughly, arrayed for their wedding night, she made a sound of pleasure and surprise.
    “It is quite wonderful,” she said.
    The chamber had been built for the lady of the keep and never occupied, for Erik had yet to take a wife. The exotic fragrance of myrrh pervaded the room, rising from the oil lamps whose bright, unwavering flames turned darkness into golden light. The hearth along the far wall burned with wood so hard and dry that there was barely any smoke to curl upward into the clever, narrow vent behind the logs.
    “And quite grand!” Amber added.
    Laughing, she turned around swiftly, making her gold dress lift and ripple as though alive.
    With an effort, Duncan didn’t reach out to the graceful amber girl who burned more brightly in his blood than any fire. He knew he shouldn’t look at her, much less gather her close and bury his hard flesh within her softness again.
    It was too soon. He was too harsh, too much a warrior for Amber’s delicate flesh to take. If he took her again, and again saw her blood bright on his body, he didn’t know what he would do.
    Duncan’s silence and grim expression dimmed Amber’s pleasure in the luxurious room.
    “Do you dislike it?” she asked anxiously, waving her hand around.
    “No.”
    “You look so harsh. Is it…are you remembering?”
    “Aye.”
    A lance of fear impaled Amber.
    It is too soon! If he remembers now, all will be lost .
    And I will be lost with it .
    “What are you remembering?” she asked in a low voice.
    “The sight of your blood on my body.”
    Her relief was so great that Amber felt dizzy.
    “Oh, that,” she said. “It was nothing.”
    “It was your maidenhead!”
    “I’ve given more blood to a leech,” Amber said, smiling as she remembered Duncan’s dismissal of his own wound. “And so have you, dark warrior. You told me so yourself.”
    Unwillingly, Duncan smiled in return. Saying nothing, he looked around the room, but his eyes kept returning to the marriage bed.
    It was big enough for a man of Duncan’s size—or Erik’s. The bed was canopied and curtained with rich cloth in shades of gold, green, and indigo. A luxurious fur blanket lay over sheets of linen so fine that they were softer than the down that filled the mattress. The border of lace on the sheets was extraordinarily fine, as though countless snow-flakes had been woven into a pattern that no hearth fire could melt.
    “Have you ever seen such finery?” Amber asked, noting that Duncan was looking at the bed.
    The instant the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to call them back. The last thing she wished to discuss now was Duncan’s memory.
    Or lack of it.
    “’Tis very rich,” Duncan agreed. “Erik is a generous lord. This room is more suited to the lord’s quarters than to those of his seneschal.”
    “Erik is pleased by our marriage.”
    “Aye. ’Tis a good thing.”
    “Why?” she asked, startled by the thread of steel in Duncan’s voice.
    “Because I would have married you with or without his leave, with or without my vow concerning your maidenhead. And he knew it. He could fight me or he could give you into my care.”
    Duncan turned away from the bed in time to see the stricken