Midnight Eyes Read online

  Or, worse still, pull away from him.

  To lie next to her and not be able to touch her was a pain beyond pain. He longed with every fiber of his being to pull her close, longed to hold her against his heart again, but her icy withdrawal frustrated all such longings. It left him restless. He prowled around the Keep more like a caged animal than a man. He was beginning to notice the wary glances from his men. They were treating him like he was a wild beast, and a wounded one at that.

  He grinned bitterly at the description. It was disturbingly accurate. He felt like a wounded beast deprived of its mate, and that primitive part of him would have liked nothing more than to howl his pain to the endless skies.

  He could only hope that his men would understand and could forgive him this display of human weakness.

  Of course they understood, he thought with a wry twist of humor. Most of them were feeling something very similar themselves. He had already noticed the worried concern that appeared in their eyes as they too watched Imogen’s transformation into a lifeless mockery of what she had been.

  And they had every right to be worried, Robert thought darkly as he moved yet another block into place. Hell, Robert was so filled with fears and torments that he thought he would explode, but at least he could find some small consolation in the fact that he knew who was to blame. His enemy had a name: Roger.

  That alone wasn’t enough. Robert had long since stopped trying to intercept the bastard’s messages. Imogen’s cold demand to hear each new note alone stilled his hand. So instead, he was forced to stand aside and wait to find out just how much collateral damage had been inflicted with each one.

  The axe whistled through the air and landed with a satisfying crack.

  He was seriously considering slaughtering the next of Roger’s toads who dared to darken his doorstep. He was only barely managing to hold off doing just that by the merest thread of sanity. Instinct might demand that he protect the woman he loved, but logically he knew the messengers were not his real enemy.

  Sadly, Roger was no fool. He stayed comfortably out of reach, hiding behind the king. The cunning little rodent knew that there he was safe from Robert’s anger and could continue to play this little game with complete impunity. There was just no way to get at the man without bringing the full force of the monarch’s anger on his own head.

  No, Robert had to wait and see exactly how the game was being played, wait until the prey dared to reveal itself out in the open before he could extract his revenge. It had to happen eventually and hopefully before Imogen was broken entirely. When it did, Robert would remove every last trace of the man from the face of the Earth.

  All threats to Imogen had to be annihilated utterly and this sick little game ended absolutely.

  He rolled his eyes in disgust when he realized that they had got him doing it now, calling this abomination between brother and sister a game, when it was nothing of the kind. Games didn’t take live hostages, didn’t have body counts, didn’t leave behind victims. That was war, a deadly war that Imogen was losing and there was nothing he could do about it.

  His hands were tied till Imogen trusted him enough to tell him what the hell was actually going on here.

  Robert lifted the axe high and brought it down with all the force at his disposal.

  “You do realize, of course, that you have a veritable army of people whose job it is to chop your wood?” Gareth asked lightly enough.

  But Robert’s teeth were bared as he lifted his head. His eyes narrowed as he caught sight of the man leaning casually against a wall.

  “What do you want?” Robert spat out tersely.

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Those are not the words of a happy leader,” Gareth murmured, levering himself off the wall and ambling over to the woodpile. “And need I ask whose head you envision as you abuse those poor, innocent logs?”

  Robert’s smile was almost feral. “They’re messengers. Each and every bloody one is some liveried bastard’s head.” He brought the axe down again, imagining that instead of wood, the cutting edge was burying itself into flesh, sinew and bone.

  Gareth’s brow shot up. “Well, you had better not mention that to the bandy-legged man who is uncomfortably standing near the main fire as we speak. The poor man is of that unpopular profession and might lay an egg if he had a glimpse of your—uh, wood-cutting frenzy.”

  Robert groaned as he leaned wearily on the axe handle. “Good God, won’t that man ever run out of parchment? That would make it four in five days.” Robert shoved his hair out of his eyes again, feeling heartsick at the thought of losing yet another piece of Imogen. “Have you sent for Imogen yet?” he asked quietly.

  “No, can’t say I have,” Gareth said nonchalantly, reaching up a finger to scratch his roughened cheek. “It wouldn’t be the sensible thing to do at all, especially when you consider that the messenger isn’t for her.”

  “It’s not?” Robert asked blankly.

  “Nope.”

  Robert waited a moment before grinding out in exasperation, “Well then, who the hell is it for?”

  “Why, just for novelty value, the messenger is actually for the master of the Keep, not our little mistress.”

  “Well, why didn’t you just say so?” Robert asked without heat, too busy absorbing the relief that washed through him. Strange, but it almost felt like a reprieve. He buried the axe blade in the cutting block and grabbed his tunic off the pile of logs where it had landed.

  “Any idea where this messenger comes from?”

  Gareth’s smile was devilishly amused and Robert almost groaned, knowing from long experience that could mean only bad things. Gareth’s humor was always at its best when it was at someone else’s expense.

  “Well,” Gareth drew out, “judging by the livery and our man’s general air of pomposity, I’d have to most certainly say that this one comes straight from the king himself.”

  Robert stood still midstride. “You’re kidding!”

  Gareth shook his head, his smile only growing.

  “Well, what the hell could he want?”

  Gareth leaned closer and whispered, “Well, I thought you might ask me that, so I asked him, and he said that our beloved monarch has been so lonely without you, he has decided to recall you to court.”

  Robert stared openmouthed for a second, hoping against hope that this was one of Gareth’s perverse jokes, but it wasn’t.

  “Shit!” he said succinctly.

  “So when do you leave?” Imogen asked politely.

  “Early tomorrow morning,” Robert said stiffly, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from drinking in the sight of her even as he mouthed mindless pleasantries. “We will have to travel hard if we’re to be back before planting, and I certainly intend to spend as little time as possible on this folly.”

  She smiled and nodded, but her expression remained blank. It was like she had already dismissed him from her presence and from her mind.

  His hands clenched at his sides. She was so close, yet she might as well have been one hundred leagues from here for all the good it did him. He could no more touch her than he could the moon. He watched the early spring breeze ruffle her hair as she stood by the window, her hands held tightly together, her spine resolutely straight. His eyes saw her serenity, her apparent regal acceptance, but that wasn’t what his heart knew to be true.

  In his heart he heard her soul’s endless screams of pain. He had only to look at her to know that for all her apparent strength and resolve, she was slowly being crushed by a great weight. It chilled him to the core that she might be so easily destroyed. In all his life he had never seen anything that frightened him more than Imogen’s living death.

  It hurt him just to look at her, hurt to see her passiveness in the face of her own destruction. It hurt so much that it angered him. He wanted to slap her, shake her, kiss her or perhaps all three at once—anything that might bring her back to life, back to him.

  His hands remained by his sides.

  Sh
e sat bathed in sunlight and it harshly illuminated the suffering that had started to dig its way into her face. Her eyes were sunken in the sharp bones of her face, her once gently rounded cheeks were harsh angles that stretched her skin till her cheekbones were angry slashes across the sides of her face. The black-violet shadows under her eyes were the only color. Even the rose-pink of her lips seemed now to be just another shade of white.

  It was a face that haunted him even as he searched his brain for some way to draw her away from the demons that were eating her alive; draw her toward him.

  But he had no answers. He had to look away from her before he could find his voice.

  “You’re not eating enough,” he said gruffly. “That dress looks like its hanging on a corpse, not a woman.” He couldn’t help but smile a little grimly at the lie. She had lost weight and it worried the hell out of him, but not for one moment did he think she looked like a corpse. She would always be the most beautiful woman Robert had ever seen.

  She shrugged her shoulders carelessly. “I’ve not been hungry.”

  “I don’t care if you are hungry or not,” he roared, his anger igniting in a second, a grim reminder of just how close to the end of his tether he really was. “You will eat properly or I’ll tie you down and force-feed you myself.”

  “How very husbandly you sound. Roger would be pleased,” she said sneeringly, her smile darkly amused.

  And that was the ultimate problem, Robert realized with sudden certainty. She thought he was Roger’s man and nothing he said or did would penetrate the shell she had built around herself while that viper whispered his poison into her ear. He began pacing, his hands clenched helplessly by his sides.

  “I don’t just sound husbandly, Imogen, I am your husband, your lord and master, if you prefer. As such, I want you to eat more than the sparrow portions you have been subsisting on. By my return, I will expect you to have put on all the weight you’ve lost. No, I want you to have put on more than that. I want you to be so fat that I will never have to worry again. Am I being understood?” His anger reverberated around the room.

  “Of course,” she said silkily and Robert knew she hadn’t heard a word. She was set on going to hell her own way and not a thing he said would make one jot of difference to her.

  He paced back to the fire.

  “I’m only taking Matthew with me,” he said tersely. “Gareth will be left in charge of the garrison.”

  She nodded her head mutely and they lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. He longed to say something. Or perhaps he just longed to hear her say something voluntarily to him or even longed for her to come over to him and let him hold her in his arms for a moment.

  But longings were not reality, Robert thought hollowly, as she serenely dismissed him with a quiet, emotionless, “God speed, Sir Robert.”

  He should have been used to it by now; her rejections should have long since lost their sting. They hadn’t. A fresh flash of pain struck him deep in his gut as she cast him aside once more. He bowed formally over her hand. Her skin felt icy cold under his warm lips, her face carefully blank when he looked into it, drinking in this last sight of her before turning and leaving the room.

  Once the door closed behind him he couldn’t stop the fury that built up inside him like an inferno, demanding an outlet. A volley of swearing filled the hall.

  “I’ll take that to mean that you two haven’t sorted anything out,” Mary said dryly as she walked toward him.

  “There is nothing to sort out, apparently,” he snorted derisively, knowing it for the lie it was. “I can’t remember a time when I have ever been subjected to such politeness before.”

  Mary’s brow dropped in concern. “Aye, but there is a wealth of pain behind that politeness.” She shook her head. “I’m worried sick, I don’t mind telling you. I have never seen her like this, never this bad. Oh, he’s hurt her before, but this time”—she shrugged her shoulders helplessly—“it’s like he’s destroying her.”

  Before Robert could say anything, she poked a finger into the center of his chest. “And what I would like to know is: what are you going to do about it?”

  Robert gave a shout of bitter laughter. “Mary, you seem to have mistaken me for an active player in this farce. I’m just a very bewildered member of the audience, like you.” He shook his head and rubbed a tired hand over his eyes, trying not to notice its slight tremble. “Quite frankly, Mary, I don’t have a clue as to what I should be doing.”

  “Neither do I, but I’d like to suggest that running to London ain’t the answer,” she said stoutly.

  “I’ve been summoned, and there is sod all I can do about it,” he muttered, feeling strangely defensive in the face of Mary’s righteous indignation. He would never understand how this one old woman always managed to put him on the defensive.

  “Well, take her with you, then. I don’t want her left alone, not while she is this fragile.”

  “Hardly alone,” he said wearily, but Mary just ignored him.

  “She was alone in this Keep for years,” she said earnestly, “regardless of how many people lived here. She was like a sleepwalker. Till you came along. You made her alive. She was starting to return to what she had been before she lost her sight and it did my old heart good to see it. If you did it once, surely you can do it again, if only you would try.” She grabbed his arm. “Please try.”

  He looked down at the old woman’s determined face as he gently extracted his arm from her tight grip. “There is nothing I can do. Imogen won’t let me help, and I have been summoned to London by the king. I must go.” He awkwardly put a hand on her shoulder, trying to comfort her. “Perhaps it is for the best. Perhaps the distance will help Imogen deal with all that she needs to deal with,” he finished lamely. The platitudes lacked conviction even to his own ears.

  She shook herself free from his hand and glared up at him accusingly. “I don’t like it, and no good will come of it,” she muttered darkly, then, with her head held high, walked into Imogen’s chamber.

  Robert felt his own shoulders slump wearily.

  “I don’t like it either, Mary,” he whispered into the darkened hall. “I don’t like any of it.”

  “Can you think of anything I might have left out?” Robert asked as he looked to where Gareth lounged in a comfortable sprawl on the chair by the hearth.

  “Well, you did fail to mention anything about exactly how many logs should be on the main hearth at five in the afternoon, but other than that small oversight, I must say I found you disturbingly thorough.” He gave Robert a lopsided smile. “I shouldn’t have to think for the entire time you are gone.”

  Robert grimaced. “A bit over the top?”

  “Only a shade. Don’t worry, it is only an old Saxon Keep, it will be fine. You have left me to look after entire armies with fewer orders so I’m sure that I can manage one small Keep with such a wealth of information at my disposal.”

  Robert stood and walked to the window. “I never felt quite like this about any of my armies.” He clenched his fist and thumped it down on the ledge. “Damn. I don’t like this, Gareth. It just doesn’t feel right.”

  He looked out the window at the land that had come to mean so much to him, and couldn’t shake the terror that had lodged itself inside of him, that somehow he was in very real danger of losing it all. It wasn’t rational, but everything suddenly seemed under threat.

  He took a deep breath. He had to concentrate on countering any threat, not on his fear of losing everything.

  “You think that the summons is part of some kind of plot against you?” Gareth’s voice might have sounded reasonable and calm, but Robert could well hear the thread of steel that ran through it.

  Robert shook his head. He turned and leaned his hip against the window ledge, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “Who knows? It might just be as entirely innocent as it sounds. Perhaps the king is preparing for more wars and simply wants to hire me and my men as mercenaries.”

  “
Are we still for hire?”

  Robert shook his head decisively. “The only battles I’m going to fight from now on are going to be for the express purpose of protecting what is mine, not to help our greedy little monarch grab more of this island.”

  Gareth smiled faintly. “You make him sound like a fat little boy chasing after sweetmeats.”

  “Well, you must admit there are certain similarities.”

  “An impressive boy.”

  “The sweetmeats aren’t exactly insubstantial either. Any child would have to be a little impressive to want them.”

  They both smiled for a moment, but their smiles faded quickly as the ever-present worry returned.

  “And if the summons isn’t just an innocent request for a pet warrior?” Gareth asked quietly.

  “Then there is going to be some serious trouble,” Robert said grimly, visions of looming disaster crowding his head. “That’s why I have left you in charge.”

  Gareth lifted an eyebrow sardonically. “Well, I suppose I am more than amply qualified to deal with trouble. After all, I’ve spent a good deal of my life making it, so spotting it shouldn’t be hard. Your home will be safe with me.”

  “That isn’t what concerns me now. Everything I’ve said thus far boils down to one solitary task, and if you don’t succeed at that task, then I’ll kill you, even if I have to come back from the grave to do so.”

  “I almost believe you would too,” Gareth said with a dry chuckle, “and that can only mean one thing: Imogen.”

  Robert’s jaw tightened painfully. “She is all that matters to you from now on. You protect her, you keep her safe, and to hell with the rest of the world. Is that understood? I don’t care what you have to do, or how many heads you have to break to do it, just see that it’s done.”

  Gareth let out a low whistle of admiration. “You really do love her, don’t you?” he forced himself to say, deliberately ignoring the pain he had no right to be feeling about another man’s wife.