Midnight Eyes Page 3

  He was trying desperately not to stare like some callow youth, and hoping against hope that she wouldn’t notice the red heat that had risen and swamped his face.

  She smiled bitterly. “Surprise must be one of the downsides of buying without first checking the stock.”

  He went absolutely rigid. He had expected politeness, been prepared for patronizing, but he hadn’t ever thought that she would be openly rude. That wasn’t his understanding of how ladies acted.

  His first instinct was to return like for like, but some part of his mind whispered about the vulnerability that lay beneath those bitter words and held him in check.

  That part of him understood it very well. It was the reaction of a wounded animal to lash out wildly. Instead of getting in range of the claws, he knew it was better to wait till the fear and pain had played itself out.

  “I don’t think of you as purchased,” he said tightly, “and I would prefer it if you also refrain from such merchant talk.”

  “I apologize.” She raised her chin an inch. “You are right, of course. I wasn’t purchased. It was my land you were bargaining for. I’m just the sting in the tail: the catch at the end of the bargain. It must be depressing to finally have your Keep, but to also have to take possession of Lady Deformed as well.”

  She smiled at him silkily. “And what a very brave knight you must be to accept a bargain that binds you in marriage to Lady Deformed.”

  His lips tightened, and he held his temper with the greatest difficulty. “I do not care for that name, and I will not have it mentioned again.”

  “What? ‘Lady Deformed’? That would be too harsh, Sir Knight. The poor women who look after the Keep lead such dreary lives that they have little else to talk of. Who are we to deprive them of such small pleasures?”

  “If their pleasures interfere with my honor, then I’m afraid I will have them stopped.” He leaned closer, trying to catch her gaze, but she stared resolutely over his shoulder. “Besides, I see no need for the name. I can see no imperfection to warrant such harshness.”

  Her hands gripped more tightly to each other, her nails drawing blood.

  He hadn’t noticed! It seemed incredible to her, the darkness too evident to be hidden.

  Perhaps he was attempting gallantry. Perhaps…but it didn’t make sense any way she shifted it about. Her brother hadn’t sent her a lover. He had sent her a punishment, and punishments didn’t entice with honeyed words. No, they pulled you apart piece by piece.

  There had to be some deeper game being played here, some tactical reason for claiming her imperfections invisible.

  Maybe he wanted to hear her declare her deformity. Maybe he was like her brother and enjoyed making her destroy herself. It had always made Roger feel like he was stronger than a god when he had brought her to her knees.

  She tightened her jaw. She was not ready to play dead for this man yet. “Knight, I’ve no patience for idle flattery. My deformities are plain for all to see and I will not be mocked. Our marriage may give the rights to my land and my body, but I will not give you my pride on a platter. So beware.”

  He raised a hand in supplication. “I meant no offence. I’m a blunt man and the subtleties you speak of are not in my nature. I was stating an honest puzzlement.”

  “You mean you really don’t know?” she asked incredulously. “You mean my brother hasn’t prepared you for the role he wants you to play?”

  Robert paused, trying to find the diplomacy that was normally lacking in his character. “Your brother and I do not move in the same circles,” he said carefully, not mentioning that he thought of Roger more as something that slithered out from under a rock than as a man. That didn’t seem to be the kind of thing that you mentioned to a man’s sister, however.

  Nothing makes any sense, she thought with some agitation. She stood abruptly and began pacing.

  “What does it mean?” she muttered darkly to herself, trying desperately to understand this latest ploy of Roger’s. In her agitation she forgot that Robert had moved the chair and his shout of warning came too late. She ran into the back of the chair and was beginning to topple over when strong arms grabbed her, steadying her against his firm chest.

  For a moment she forgot her fear, and gave herself up to this strange new experience. Never before had she stood so close to a man that she could feel the ridges of muscles beneath the soft spun wool of his tunic.

  So Robert had come to her dressed as a suitor after all, with no metal to hide behind. She wasn’t surrounded by the acrid smell of sweat-soaked metal; instead her senses were clouded with sandalwood, fresh air and another strange element that she couldn’t name, something unique to this man himself.

  It was intoxicating, just as was the warmth radiating from his large body. For the first time since she had been exiled to this cold north, she felt a warmth that actually seeped into her bones, warming her to the core. Her limbs felt like they were on fire, but it was a strange fire that excited rather than hurt. It rushed along her nerve endings, causing sensations she didn’t understand, but she already knew she never wanted them to end.

  It was a moment that seemed to both last forever and yet to end far too soon.

  Robert struggled with himself. Every fiber of his body screamed the rightness of this near-embrace. She fit against him like she had been made to rest there. It seemed against nature to let go. He longed to pull her closer; longed to raise a hand along the soft, smooth skin of her throat and cup her face; longed to lower his head…

  He tried not to think such things. Down that path lay madness. He closed his eyes for a second, but quickly opened them again. He didn’t want to lose one moment of this. He stared deep into her eyes, and almost lost control altogether.

  Her pale translucent skin was flushed, and her lips parted to reveal two rows of perfect white teeth. It was as if she could hear his lurid thoughts and was responding with a desire that equaled his own. He tried to read an invitation, a rejection or anything to stop this torment of indecision.

  Her eyes didn’t quite meet his.

  He wanted to howl to the moon. He wanted to kiss her till they both lost their senses. He wanted. He had never understood want until this moment. He pulled her closer for a fraction of a second. Then he let her go and stepped back, holding his hands ruthlessly to his sides.

  The end was cold, abrupt and complete.

  For a second she couldn’t work out where she was on her mental map. She seemed to float a little above the ground, her carefully crafted realities dissolving around her in the heat of this man. Without the warmth of his body she seemed to have no existence.

  She floated for a second but quickly pulled herself back together. She shouldn’t stand stunned before this man like some lovesick mooncalf. She wouldn’t show him such weakness. Unfortunately, despite her reluctance to show weakness, her knees no longer seemed strong enough to support her.

  “Can you please direct me to my seat?” If her voice broke a little, she could always blame it on the near collision, she decided desperately.

  “Sorry?” Robert asked, bewildered both by her apparent calm in the face of his own suddenly burning needs and the question itself.

  Imogen could feel the color leave her face. It seemed like the ultimate humiliation.

  “Don’t worry,” she snapped out. “I’ll find it myself.” She stretched out her hands, groping for a familiar object. She could have cried with relief when she felt the back of his chair.

  She moved her hand over the still-warm fabric and reached out to where she should have been able to grab the next chair. She could barely suppress the urge to stamp her feet. He had moved the chair. That was what had caused the chaos in the first place. She stood undecided. The two options before her were both equally unattractive. She either stood till the wretched man left, or she was going to have to crawl to her seat.

  Robert stared, stunned by the dawning understanding.

  “You can’t see?” he muttered, unable to hide his sho
ck.

  She let go of the chair and straightened her spine. The simple words belied all the pain of the reality.

  Robert was lost for words. He had braced himself for ugliness, had been prepared for it, even—but this, this was somehow more unjust. A perfection that couldn’t even glance into a mirror to see itself?

  His silence was beginning to grate along her nerves.

  “Say something,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “My lady, I don’t know what to say.”

  She made a frustrated gurgle in the back of her throat and threw up her hands.

  “By all that’s holy, you can’t be that shocked. You didn’t think I was called Lady Deformed on a whim did you? You bargained for damaged goods knowingly.”

  “I asked you not to use that insult,” he said carefully.

  For a second her mouth fell open. “You really meant it? Why ever not? That is how I’m known the length and breadth of the country. I find it strangely apt and I can’t see why I alone should stop using it.”

  “I care not about the rest of the people on this island, only my small corner of it, and in that corner I expect never to hear it again. Am I understood?”

  “No. It’s nonsense. And I won’t be dictated to this way.”

  “I’m your husband, and to a larger extent, my word is your law.”

  “You’re not my husband yet,” she muttered resentfully.

  “Why will everyone keep reminding me of that small, inconsequential fact?” he murmured enigmatically.

  “Because, fact it is.”

  “Well, not for much longer. I shall send word to the priest this night and we will be married by sunrise.”

  “We are still to be married?” she asked in a small voice, not entirely sure what answer she feared hearing the most. Inside her all was confusion, but the one thing she seemed to know for sure was that she was glad Robert hadn’t fled when he had found out about the first of her dark secrets.

  He smiled a little and stepped closer. He picked up her small hands in his larger one, engulfing it with his calloused strength.

  “I have pledged my honor on it. You are now my honor.”

  Her brow crinkled in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

  He lifted his forefinger and clumsily massaged the frown out of existence. “You don’t have to understand. It is fact.”

  She felt his warm breath on the back of her hand as he lifted it to his lips, felt the moisture as they brushed over it, and she realized with dawning amazement that in the welter of emotions that filled her there was no repulsion at this man’s touch. She was confused, excited, frightened and bewildered, but she felt no revulsion. She absorbed that realization with dazed amazement.

  “Until dawn, my lady,” Robert said with a gravely voice that played over her nerve endings. Then suddenly the room was empty, emptier than it had ever been before.

  She raised the back of her hand to her lips and felt her first kiss.

  “Oh, Brother dear, what is it you do now?” she whispered.

  Imogen spent the night before her wedding in vigil. After Mary had prepared her for bed, Imogen sat in front of the fire and waited.

  She waited for the terrors.

  They were almost like old friends, the terrors. They had always been her companion, even when she’d had sight. She had always been afraid of the dark.

  Nothing her parents had done could convince her that the dark held nothing that the light didn’t. Each night she would curl herself into a tight ball and wait for the sleep of exhaustion to finally claim her.

  Then came the day when a darkness descended that would never end. The terrors had stalked her day and night. At first she had been beyond coping, but time had taught her to keep them at bay, she had learned to shut her mind away from its own phantasms.

  Still the fears grew, joined by dark memories of pain and the causing of that pain.

  So now she waited alone in her room, waited for the memories to come. She curled up on the rug, feeling the fire on her face, smelling the smoke but remembering a place a lifetime away.

  Once more she was sixteen. A beloved child of loving parents. It seemed to be always summer, there seemed to be only laughter. Even fear was not so cold and destructive. Fear was a thing only of the night. She had been too young to see the dark hate in Roger’s face, too young to comprehend his twisted soul. She had danced around her dark sibling and had never noticed the threat: never saw the silent predator waiting in her summer youth.

  She hadn’t seen him that day as she had raced up the tower steps. They had been at their estate in Cornwall for weeks and she had barely noticed his brooding presence at all. It was too lovely a time to think about Roger’s bad moods and strange, hard, staring eyes.

  She had raced up those steps only to get a better view of the eagles.

  He had caught her in the tower room. Trapped her. Suffocated her.

  She had at first been too stunned to fight, but soon she had used her claws, used her teeth, to try and get him off her.

  He had stepped away enough to allow her air, and she had clung desperately to the cold stone wall. The smell of his blood hung heavily in the air between them as it streaked down his cold, dark face.

  “This is not the end, Sister dear,” he had hissed. “This will never end.”

  She hadn’t seen the blow before it landed, but she had felt the sickening crunch of her jawbone, felt the rush of air as the stone steps seemed to rise up to meet her, felt the first impact.

  Mercifully after that she had felt nothing.

  She had awoken to darkness and a fear that echoed with those prophetic words.

  It would never be over.

  Even now, safely hundreds of miles from him, his dark soul still stalked her. Every visit he came and renewed his vow. He had never yet tried to hurt her like he had in the tower. He was patient. He would wait till she came to him on her knees.

  But it would never be over while they both lived.

  Sometimes she wished that it would all end. Sometimes just the thought of another day in darkness made her retch into the chamberpot, but tonight her stomach felt strangely calm.

  She waited for a dawn that she would never see and tried not to think about the darkness. She found herself not thinking of ends. Instead her mind strayed to the warmth of Robert’s arms around her.

  It was the first night since the age of sixteen she didn’t scream.

  “Imogen Colebrook!” Mary exclaimed in horror. “Don’t tell me you slept there all night?”

  “No, I didn’t sleep at all,” Imogen murmured as she slowly straightened her cold, stiffened body.

  “I can tell that by the violet under your eyes.” Mary leaned over, took her face and held it up to the light of her candle, then let out an exasperated sigh. “Not that it makes much difference. You’re still an unearthly beauty, maybe just a might more fragile.”

  Imogen smiled slightly. “Don’t sound so disgruntled. You make a compliment sound like an insult.”

  “Well, I certainly meant no insult. You don’t insult a bride.”

  “Why ever not?” Imogen asked in puzzlement.

  “Because it brings bad luck,” she said authoritatively, and then ruined the effect by adding, “though God knows, most things seem to. To my way of thinking, what we be needing are things that bring good luck.”

  “Maybe if you’re nice to me, you might get a little bit of good luck.”

  Mary raised a brow but helped Imogen to a chair and began getting things ready for Imogen’s bath.

  “Did the priest arrive?” Imogen asked nonchalantly but couldn’t stop herself from stiffening.

  Mary didn’t answer for a second as she scrabbled to find the hairbrush.

  “Oh, yes, almost instantly,” she said finally. “Sir Robert can be a might forceful when he puts his mind to it. He had that lazy beggar Alice cleaning out the place, and setting up an altar table near the main room, and I don’t know what else.”

&nbs
p; Imogen froze for a second.

  “He plans us to be married downstairs?”

  “So it seems.” Mary’s voice was curiously neutral.

  “I can’t go down there, Mary.” Imogen’s voice rose in panic. “I’ve never seen down there. I can’t go down there.”

  She swung in her seat and made a grab for Mary’s hands. “You’ll have to tell him. Tell him. You must. We can be married here. It makes no real difference. Not to him.”

  “I don’t think he’s the sort of man you go telling things to. He’s the sort that seems to do most of the telling himself.”

  “Please,” whispered Imogen.

  Mary sighed, disengaging her hand. “I’ll give it a try once I’ve got you dressed.” She went to the chest at the end of the bed and began foraging for clothes. “But I don’t be liking my chances of achieving the impossible,” she muttered darkly.

  “No. I’m not getting married in some damn bedchamber.”

  Robert’s voice sounded calm enough, but Mary could clearly see the fury in his eyes. Still, she tried again.

  “I’ve told you that Lady Imogen never leaves her room, and she doesn’t understand why where you get married makes that much difference.”

  Robert stared into the black embers of the fireplace. He had spent his night sitting there near the hearth in his room, watching the fire slowly die. It had seemed like too important a night to just lose it to sleep. He had waited, and before the dawn had risen he carefully got dressed in the clothes he had bought especially for a ceremony that he had never thought to go through.

  As he had belted his simple black-and-silver-trimmed tunic, he had felt a peace descending. There was a rightness to this day that had been missing from every other, but that rightness also dictated he take Lady Imogen for his wife in front of her people. Their people, now.

  He turned to look at Mary.

  “The marriage will take place in the hall in one hour,” he said softly. “I will come and collect her just before.”

  Mary stared for a second, then bowed her head and left. She knew when a fight was lost. The time left would be better spent preparing Imogen.