Midnight Eyes Read online

  “Almost.”

  He gave her shoulders a little squeeze. “Soft, maybe, but a very nice kind of soft.”

  “Flirting won’t make me feel better,” she said briskly. “I was well past being enamored with your repartee over an hour ago.”

  “But I wasn’t flirting,” he said innocently. “I was merely stating cold, hard facts.” He laughed at her snort of disgust. “Oh, Imogen, you’re being far too serious. This is the most fun I’ve had in a long time.”

  “What can your life have been before this little…excursion?” she asked dryly.

  “Perfect,” he said with a wave of his hand. “I just have the good taste to prefer this.”

  “It would seem I’ve been sent abroad in the world with a man who has gone moon-mad.”

  “A madman and a sick little guide.” Gareth looked behind them to where Lucas brought up the rear, dragging the nearly empty basket behind him. “And you have only yourself to blame for the illness of your smallest protector. You did say that he could eat anything that tickled his fancy.”

  “How was I to know that he would take it as a challenge?” Genuine concern crept into her voice as she leaned closer to Gareth and whispered, “Is he starting to look any better?”

  Gareth cast a critical eye over the small, dejected figure. “Well, since emptying his stomach behind a tree, he has stopped looking green.” Imogen began to chew on her bottom lip in concern and Gareth said soothingly, “Really he’s fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Look, when a boy eats his body weight in food in less than fifteen seconds flat he’s bound to feel a little unwell. After a bit, the effects will wear off enough for him to do it all over again.” He ran a critical eye over her pale face. “It’s you we should be worrying about. Are you sure you don’t want to stop for a rest?”

  “I warned you what I would do if you asked me that again,” she said sternly, then she sighed, her easy mood evaporating. She ran a weary hand over the bridge of her nose. “How much further do you think?”

  Gareth looked critically up to the sky, painfully aware of the shadows that were forming already. Soon it would be dark and they still had a long way to go. “Not far,” he hedged.

  She nodded her head silently, too tired even to reply, concentrating instead on the putting of one foot after the other.

  The next time Imogen stumbled Gareth wasn’t quite quick enough. She fell on her knees into the snow. She clenched her fist in the icy slush, her breath coming in ragged bursts.

  Gareth fell into the snow beside her immediately and gathered her close. “I knew we should have stopped,” he said angrily to himself, then reluctantly he loosened his hold and slowly drew her to her feet.

  He led her to a relatively dry rock and knelt in the snow at her feet, chafing her hands back to life. His breath caught painfully in his chest at the sight of a solitary tear falling slowly down her smudged cheek.

  She tried to wipe it away, but others quickly followed. “Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn!”

  “Oh, Imogen, it’s not that bad,” Gareth whispered, his voice catching in his throat. He grabbed the corner of his woolen cloak and began clumsily wiping her tears away with the coarse fabric.

  Her sightless eyes looked disconcertingly beyond his shoulder, fighting with shadows only she could see. “I so wanted to do this, so wanted to stop him ignoring me,” she said brokenly. “I wanted to prove, oh, I don’t know, wanted to prove that it didn’t matter that I was…am blind. I wanted to prove that I was still a normal woman.” Her jaw tightened painfully. “But I’m not. I am some oddity who should be locked in a room for her own good, just like Roger said. I knew I couldn’t do it. I knew it, but for just the smallest of moments it seemed so, so possible.”

  No longer caring about the rights and wrongs of it, Gareth gathered her into the warmth of his embrace once more.

  Lucas staggered up to the rock and plopped himself down into the snow near them, rolling himself up into a ball. He didn’t care about the snow or cold or the strange sight of Lady Imogen crying into Sir Gareth’s surcoat. All that mattered was that they had finally stopped and he could die in peace.

  Gareth began rocking Imogen back and forth, trying only to comfort her, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from greedily storing up the memory of holding her slight body close. He had never before counted himself a fool, but no matter how often he told himself sternly not to be deluded by the sweetness of holding her and that she wasn’t his, he couldn’t stop his heart from filling with her, even as he knew it was all an illusion. She didn’t want him. She never would be his, not when every word she spoke was of another, for another.

  Even if she didn’t yet know it, for her there was only Robert.

  Gareth felt that truth almost like a physical pain, but he had to close his mind to that pain for now, concentrating instead on the way even her chaste embrace burned through his body.

  As if she could sense the tumult inside him, Imogen gently pushed herself free from his embrace. She quickly wiped her face on the back of her hands and tried to smile. “I must look a mess.”

  “Yes,” Gareth confirmed softly, his voice a mere husky whisper.

  She let out a watery chuckle. “Not very gallantly said, but the truth, I suspect.”

  Gareth cleared his throat uncomfortably, trying to sound as normal as possible. “I think we should rest before proceeding,” he said firmly.

  “But—”

  “No buts. The tower isn’t going anywhere and can certainly wait a little longer for us. Besides,” he continued forcefully, “our young companion was so bored by your womanly display of tears that he seems to have gone to sleep and I certainly don’t plan on carrying his dead weight the rest of the way.”

  Imogen hesitated a moment before nodding her head. “We’ll stop if you think it’s for the best. I don’t particularly want to be seen by Ro…by anyone…looking all red and blotchy.” Not again, she added silently.

  Gareth stood briskly, carefully putting some distance between himself and temptation. “I’ll see if I can find some dry wood for a fire.”

  “But we won’t be stopping that long, surely,” she protested. “And I barely feel the cold.”

  “Ah, but it is not for you. I’m the one that isn’t used to this cold land. It will only take a moment, and it might slow down the freezing of my body a little.”

  She didn’t believe him for a moment. She had just been close to the heat of him and not for a moment could she believe that he was suffering from the cold. “I’ll wait here,” she murmured and wrapped herself more firmly in the cloak as she settled herself more comfortably on the rock.

  Within seconds she was asleep.

  Gareth’s face softened as he looked at Imogen’s small sleeping form. For the moment she was his alone to protect, he thought with an unsettling sense of satisfaction, and he decided in that moment not to investigate this strange emotion too closely. Instead, he went off in search of wood, determined to simply enjoy the fleeting pleasure it brought him.

  It was all he would ever have.

  It was coming on dusk and Robert could look back on a successful day’s hunting.

  While the men had been more than a little perplexed by their seemingly pointless excursion, they had all stopped grumbling at the mention of hunting. Matthew, however, hadn’t been so easily impressed. Muttering that if he was going to waste a day, he might as well be warm doing it; he volunteered to stay near the fire to keep it alight till the last of the hunt parties returned or until two hours before dusk. Then he would return to the Keep to grumble there.

  Robert had barely hidden his smile of relief. He needed to spend time alone with his thoughts and the last thing he needed was Matthew’s all-too-knowing presence. There were so many things that seemed lodged in his soul with nowhere to go that he needed to sort them into a comprehendible order before he crumpled under their weight.

  Matthew might have a ready ear for confidences, but there was
so much that Robert couldn’t tell the man he thought of as a father. How could he describe all of the strange new emotions that boiled inside him, that burned in his once-frozen heart? How did he speak of this new sense of belonging, the feelings of owning and being owned? How could he explain, even to himself, nights spent chastely holding the one woman he had ever needed more than he needed life itself?

  Just thinking of it made him uncomfortable, made him realize just how low Imogen had made him sink.

  It was beyond even his comprehension, but each night he found himself lingering over his cups to give Imogen time to get to sleep, and yet each night the disappointment was sharp and new as he stood beside their bed and looked down on her as she slept.

  In the light of day he could tell himself sternly that it would be wiser and certainly less painful for him if he slept in the chair and waited for her to call him to her bed and into her life, but each night wisdom was lost to darker desires. He couldn’t seem to stop himself from shedding his clothes and crawling in beside her. And each night he felt a near fulfillment as she curled herself trustingly into his arms as if she belonged there.

  It was an exquisite, addictive torture.

  It was impossible for him to have her so close and not touch her; not kiss her soft skin; not bury his face in the fragrance of her hair. He stopped only when his arousal became too intense to be endured. Then he had to be content just to hold her close, to watch over her as she slept in his arms. And each morning he forced himself to leave her before she awoke.

  Matthew’s right, he thought grimily. He was mad, or at least soon would be.

  He hadn’t meant it to be like this. On waking beside her that first morning, he’d had no thought other than wooing and winning his wife. He had watched as she slept beside him and ran his thumb over her soft lips with something akin to wonder. It was that very wonder that had made it impossible for him to stay idle in bed waiting for the sun to rise, but he had soon found an excuse to be by her side again.

  He laughed at himself as he ran up the stairs two at a time to tell her of the arrival of Gareth and the horses, all the while knowing that it was only a feeble excuse to be with her again. He had rushed into her room and been stopped short as the cold hand of reality had slapped him in the face.

  Reality was the elegant gentlewoman who had sat staring blindly at the clumsy oaf who had dared to barge his way into her life without her consent. The world of togetherness that he had been able to construct in the darkness crumbled into nothingness.

  How could he even begin to tell her about the strange feelings inside him when he wasn’t sure that he was worthy to breathe the same air as his lady?

  He’d run away rather than face the cold, harsh realities. Damn Matthew to hell for being right, Robert thought darkly.

  A rustling drew his mind from his hopeless contemplations. Instinctively he dropped into the undergrowth while his eyes scanned the forest around him, trying to find the source of the sound, his bow slipping easily into his hand.

  A deer nosed its way cautiously forward, its hide glistening as it moved majestically through the undergrowth. Suddenly, it stood absolutely still, presenting a perfect target, but Robert lowered his arrow from the bowstring. With twenty men out on the hunt for the better part of the day, this one animal would not be missed from the table, and something about its fragile bravery reminded him of Imogen.

  It stood still, seemingly staring directly at Robert’s hiding place with an idle curiosity, then suddenly it turned its head to the south. Robert watched its delicate nostrils flare as it caught the scent on the wind of something it didn’t like. It paused tensely for a moment before bounding off in the other direction, agile despite the snow.

  Robert drew his brows together as he slowly stood and he too lifted his face to the wind and inhaled deeply, the faint scents of smoke tickling his senses.

  It was in the wrong direction for the tower fire and far too strong to be from the Keep’s distant chimneys. As Robert’s men would know better than to light a fire to warn the prey of their presence, it could mean only that there was someone else in his forest, and Robert intended to find out who the invader was.

  Walking softly, he began stalking this new prey.

  It took half an hour for him to reach the fire. He remained crouched low in the undergrowth, as he cautiously scanned the scene before him. His eyes narrowed as he recognized the man feeding the fire. Gareth had been told to guard the Keep, Robert thought with growing anger, and he had better come up with something brilliant to explain such flagrant disobedience of a direct order.

  He stood swiftly and strode over to the fire, the light of battle clear in his eyes.

  A twig snapped, and Gareth looked up immediately from his solemn concentration on the flames. He seemed remarkably unsurprised at seeing Robert. Instead, his face registered only a strange, melancholy acceptance.

  Robert opened his mouth to speak and was mildly stunned when Gareth lifted a hand to hush him. Gareth stood up in one easy, catlike move and motioned Robert over to a group of trees just in view of the fire.

  Robert’s brows rose, but he followed.

  He crossed his arms over his muscular chest. “Well, I hope your explanation for ignoring my instructions is good,” he said, his voice vibrating with his irritation.

  Gareth smiled winningly. “I must admit to quite liking it. I think it might be one of my better efforts.”

  Robert remained stonily silent, refusing to be cajoled. He wanted answers.

  Gareth let out a deep sigh. “Actually, I think that, technically, I haven’t actually disobeyed you.”

  Robert’s eyes widened, disbelief patent on his face. “I believe I asked you to protect my home. I don’t remember mentioning that you could go and play in the woods if you felt like it. Of course it is entirely possible that I’m wrong,” he said sardonically.

  “You are, as it happens,” Gareth said with a small smile. “You actually asked me to keep Imogen safe, and that is exactly what I’m doing.”

  “Imogen?” Robert asked dangerously, not quite liking something about the way Gareth said his wife’s name. “Explain yourself.”

  Gareth smiled properly for the first time, totally unintimidated by Robert’s open jealousy. “Easy done. That bundle of rags on the rock is your wife and I’m gallantly keeping this wet wood alight in a vain attempt to stop us all from dying from exposure while she takes a well-needed rest.”

  “You dare jest,” Robert shouted, but found his eyes eagerly turning to the bundle anyway. At first he could barely discern any kind of human form under the rags, much less identify it as Imogen. It was only when she, disturbed by the shouting, stirred restlessly in her sleep, spilling her hair over the rough edges of the rock, that he recognized her. No other person alive could have hair like that, Robert thought reverently, the air suddenly trapped in his lungs.

  “How the hell did she get out here?” he hissed.

  Gareth shrugged his shoulders with deceptive casualness. “Apparently, the allure of your own sorry hide was so great that she decided to give both you and the tower a personal visit.” His voice dropped, as he smiled fondly at her. “She was so determined to get to you that she walked herself into exhaustion because you and your men had taken the only decent horses.”

  Robert turned from the tempting sight of Imogen sleeping, just in time to catch the look of open admiration on Gareth’s face.

  Something started a slow burn in Robert’s gut, a something that felt disconcertingly like jealousy. His eyes narrowed again. “You mean you have dragged my lady wife halfway across the country in winter, unchaperoned.” He wasn’t even really sure which was the point of protest, but he’d be damned if he’d try to make sense of it. Gareth had just better come up with the right answer.

  “Oh, it all sounds so salacious when you put it like that,” Gareth said with a mock leer, enjoying deliberately baiting Robert.

  “Well, it better only sound salacious,” Robert muttered
, his fists clenching ominously.

  Gareth sighed theatrically. “Sadly, if you look a little to your left you will notice the second bundle of rags less discerningly curled up in the snow. That was, and is, our chaperone.”

  Robert walked directly over to the previously unnoticed second sleeping form, finding himself not quite trusting Gareth for the first time in their long acquaintance. His brow rose. “Lucas?”

  Again Gareth shrugged his shoulders. “Best I could do, I am afraid.”

  “What’s wrong with him? He looks a little pale.”

  “You should have seen him a couple of hours ago; he was as green as grass. I’ve never seen anything like it before.” Gareth looked dispassionately down at Lucas. “As to what is wrong with him, greed is his complaint. He ate too much and is suffering the rather colorful consequences.”

  Robert walked over to the fire, staring blindly into its depths as he thought, his mind full of the knowledge that she had come to find him.

  “It is nearly dusk,” Robert said softly so as not to wake the sleepers. “You can take the child and head back to the Keep.”

  Gareth grimaced. “Nothing like ending a long, cold day by being thrown up on,” he said wryly. “And while I’m facing such grave danger, what will you be doing?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Robert said, a smile of contentment dawning on his face. “Feeding the fire, I suppose.”

  Gareth sighed silently, unable to stop himself regretting that it wasn’t his right to wait on Imogen. “Do I send men if you aren’t back at the Keep in a couple of hours?” he asked quietly.

  “No. We will make our own way back.”

  Gareth started at him hard for a moment before he turned and scooped up the slightly damp Lucas, who barely protested the disturbance. He hesitated visibly for a moment, then quickly turned back to Robert, his face darkly serious.

  “Be worthy of her,” he said fiercely. “Be worthy of her, or I’ll cut your heart out.” Then, embarrassed by his display of unexplainable emotion, he quickly turned and disappeared into the forest.

  Brows drawn, Robert crouched down by the fire. He threw on one of the small green branches Gareth had gathered and watched as it spluttered for a moment before sluggishly catching alight. A rational part of him supposed that he should awaken Imogen so they could head for the Keep and the warmth it offered.