Medieval 02 - Forbidden

then?”
    “We will teach Duncan who he is,” Dominic said. “Then we will send him back to Stone Ring Keep. When he is inside, he will open the gates for us.”
    Sven laughed softly.
    Simon simply smiled. “How like you, brother. Bold, yet bloodless.”
    “There’s little point to killing good men when better means are available,” Dominic said, shrugging.
    “We had best hurry to be about our treacherous business,” Meg said. “The sooner we—”
    “We?” Dominic interrupted.
    “Aye, husband. We.”
    All amusement and sensual indulgence vanished from Dominic’s expression.
    “Nay,” he said flatly. “You’re carrying the future of Blackthorne Keep in your womb. You will stay here.”
    Meg’s mouth tightened.
    “I am many months from birthing your heir,” she said. “I’m as fit as any of your knights to ride. I’m no frail lady unable to pick up a dropped shoe.”
    Her voice and expression were every bit as determined as her lord’s.
    “ Nay ,” Dominic said.
    Simon looked at his brother, cursed silently, and did what few men would have the courage to do when Dominic looked so fierce. Deliberately Simon cleared his throat, drawing his brother’s attention.
    And his ire.
    “What is it?” Dominic snarled.
    “If Duncan is injured, Meg can treat him. If he isenthralled…” Simon shrugged. “What one witch has done, another witch might undo.”
    “We were going to move the household to Carlysle Manor for several fortnights in any case,” Meg said calmly. “The Disputed Lands are but a few days’ gentle ride from Carlysle.”
    Dominic remained as silent and forbidding as a drawn sword. Then he lifted his hand and set it beneath Meg’s chin.
    “If God willed it, I could bear losing the babe,” Dominic said softly, “but not you. You are my heart.”
    Meg turned her head and kissed the scarred hand that held her so gently.
    “I have dreamed no Glendruid dreams of death,” she said, “and being parted from you is a kind of dying. Take me with you. Let me do what I was born to do.”
    “Heal?”
    “Aye.”
    There was a long silence. Then Dominic released his wife with a gentle touch and turned to Sven.
    “Inform the grooms to ready horses for dawn.”
    “How many horses, lord?”
    Dominic paused, looked at Meg’s unflinching Glendruid eyes, and knew what he must do whether it pleased him or not.
    “Four.”

16
    T HE flicker of a dying candle flame beyond the bed’s luxurious draperies made Duncan start from his uneasy sleep.
    Danger !
    He reached for his sword as he had so often in the twelve days since his marriage. Belatedly he realized he was only half awake and fully nude.
    Even as Duncan told himself it was but a dream that had disturbed him, he eased out of the bed and lit candles around the room until there were no shadows where enemies could hide. Only then did he go back to bed as silently as he had arisen.
    “Duncan?”
    He started again, then turned on his side toward the soft voice that was both familiar and oddly alien. Thoughts like black lightning raged through the shades of darkness that were his mind.
    She is not part of my past .
    Danger !
    I am surrounded by enemies .
    Danger !
    Yet even as part of Duncan’s mind cried of peril, his recent memories scoffed, for nothing but kindness and incandescent passion had come to him at Stone Ring Keep.
    Am I going mad ?
    Will I be torn in two and die writhing while shadesof darkness and amber light battle for my soul ?
    The only answer that came to Duncan was an inner silence which seethed with contradictions.
    The unremembered past was taking shape in his mind as random threads and fragmented patterns, names and no faces, places and no names, faces and no places. He was a tapestry rent and shredded, unraveled as much as woven, threads all snarled and frayed.
    Sometimes, the worst times, he saw the shadows retreat, revealing his memory. And that was when he truly knew despair like black ice, freezing everything.
    He feared his returning memory.
    What is happening to me? God’s wounds, why do I fear the very thing that I long for !
    With a harsh sound Duncan grabbed his head in both hands. An instant later, fingers that were both gentle and insistent stroked his clenched fingers.
    “Dark warrior,” Amber whispered. “Be at peace.”
    If Duncan heard, he made no sound.
    Tears slid hotly down Amber’s cheeks as she shared Duncan’s anguish.
    And his fear.
    Like Duncan, Amber sensed the slow healing of his