Midnight Eyes Read online

  Robert squeezed his eyes more tightly shut as a wave of pure, white-hot longing washed over him. He was on fire. Her words were almost as seductive as her small hand, but he didn’t want to be seduced, or to be a seducer.

  It wouldn’t be enough, he realized, not now when he sensed that there was so much more than a brief, physical pleasure at stake.

  “I’m glad you were enjoying it,” he said as evenly as he could and rested his chin on her silky hair. He opened his eyes and stared into the orange flames of the fire, searching deep inside himself for the strength he was going to need to turn down what she offered so sweetly. “I want you to always enjoy what we do together and to that end, I think we—I, should go more slowly.”

  “You think I’ll enjoy it more if we go more slowly? You want to go slowly?” she asked doubtfully.

  He smiled, more than a little gratified by her obvious impatience. “I want many things, and slowly is the way I’ll get all of them, not just some of them. For tonight all I want to do is to hold you for a while, if you will let me.”

  She gave a small shrug, trying to manifest an acceptable level of unconcern. That her body was still on fire she tried to ignore. After all, if he could, then so could she.

  “Does this ‘going slowly’ mean that after you are finished holding me for a while, you will return to your own rooms?” she asked as calmly as she could.

  His arms tightened around her almost painfully for a moment before he was able to deliberately relax them a little. “No,” he said firmly. “From now on we sleep in the same room. Always. That is part of the going slow.”

  She experienced an almost overwhelming desire to slap his dictatorial face at that moment, her passion changing like quicksilver into anger. She struggled to get out of his lap.

  “Well, I hope you like the floor,” she said imperiously, moving with confidence that she wasn’t quite feeling to where she knew the bed to be. She dragged off the top fur and threw it in his general direction.

  He caught it easily without conscious thought, momentarily stunned by her sudden flare of temper.

  A part of him could laugh at her feeble attempts to control him. Didn’t she realize that he was entirely beyond her control? All he had to do to shatter all her illusions of being in control was stride over there and physically drag her into the bed. One small woman could hardly be expected to hold her own in any physical confrontation against him.

  But he didn’t laugh.

  The fear and uncertainty that had fueled her outburst was painful for him to see and that pain killed any desire to laugh, cold. So much had changed so quickly that all she could try and do was to stop it spinning totally out of her control.

  He looked at her standing defiantly beside the bed and a wave of protectiveness washed over him. She stood there, trembling like a wild animal caught in a trap to which she knew there was no escape, but at the same time she fought so bravely for that fear not to show.

  Fear was the last thing he wanted her to feel. Somehow he knew that she had already known so much of it in her life that he didn’t want to create any more for her. He wanted her strong and whole of spirit and if that took letting her think she had him cowered, then so be it.

  “As my lady wishes,” he said simply, the ghost of a smile playing over his lips. “Although the floor doesn’t look too inviting. I think I will stay where I am. The chair might make an acceptable bed,” he ended doubtfully.

  She listened, with bewilderment, as he calmly prepared to take his rest in the chair. She had been expecting an argument at her angry challenge, and was half disappointed that he hadn’t given her one.

  In no time the room was settled into silence and Imogen panicked a little. “You’re not going to sit there while I change and get ready for bed, are you?” she asked stiffly.

  “I can close my eyes if you like,” he rumbled mildly, as if the mere idea of her being naked before his gaze hadn’t inflamed his senses. He pulled the fur up to his chin, trying to deny his body’s reaction, even to himself.

  “How can I know that I can trust you?” Her eyes narrowed. “You might look.”

  “Little One, you’re just going to have to learn that I am a man of my word. If I say I’m going to do something, then I do it.” He yawned loudly. “Besides, I’m too tired to look tonight. Good night.”

  She glared furiously into the darkness, trying to gauge if he mocked her or not.

  “Robert, are you awake?” she whispered, but silence was her only answer.

  She hesitated for a moment before beginning to undo the gown’s lacing, clumsy at the unaccustomed task but reluctant to call for Mary’s help. There should be no need for help on a wedding night and Imogen’s pride demanded that the fact she did need help had to be kept private.

  Robert’s eyes squeezed tightly shut and his hands clenched into painful fists. This self-denial would surely make him a candidate for sainthood, he thought savagely. He ground his teeth together, causing a satisfying shaft of pain. It was the hardest thing he had ever had to do. The temptation to open his eyes and enjoy the sight of her body almost overpowered him.

  The knowledge that she would never know if he looked or not tormented him. The pleasure he would feel at the sight of her would almost be worth the guilt he would feel over his small deception. At least it would if lust was all that was at stake, if he could be satisfied by brief carnal pleasure, but it wasn’t and he couldn’t.

  So instead he listened.

  He listened to the sound of her strained breathing as she tried to undo the more difficult fastenings. He listened to the small, satisfied sigh she gave as the dress finally came undone and slid from her body in a quiet whoosh of fabric.

  He knew she was now naked.

  Sweat broke out on his upper lip and he quickly licked it away as he strained to hear more. He listened as she shook out the dress and threw it over the trunk and was barely able to stop himself from groaning out loud in protest as he heard her slipping a chemise over her tiny form.

  He dared open his eyes again only when he heard the bedclothes shift as she snuggled down under the covers. The dying fire cast a warm glow over the room. In it he could just see her head above the furs, her unbound hair spread out in a dark cloud around her head, hiding the pillow from his view.

  “Did you look?” she whispered suddenly, breaking into his thoughts.

  He felt a glow start in his chest. Despite the strangeness of their all-too-new, arranged marriage, she trusted him to answer such a question truthfully. It proved that his decision to slow things down had been right. By waiting, he wouldn’t find himself caught with just a pale shadow of a true marriage.

  “No, Little One, I didn’t look.”

  She yawned, her eyes closing as sleep slowly stole over her. The last words she spoke before sleep finally claimed her kept Robert awake long into the night.

  “I don’t think I would have minded all that much if you had looked just a little.”

  Robert shifted uncomfortably in the chair. His sleeping mind roamed over battlefields, making him frown.

  In the dream, the killing was done, and he’d been sent to count the dead.

  He was wounded; blood streaming forth till everywhere he looked was covered with it. The bodies on the field were endless and to count them, he had to reassemble them.

  He was covered in their gore, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to finish the task. There seemed to be no end to the corpses. There was field after field of the dead.

  It was a nightmare he knew well and it always continued until he managed to shake his mind free from the coils of sleep.

  Robert twisted uncomfortably in the chair again; his brow furrowing as the silent battlefield of his dreaming filled with a whimpering. His dream self tried to hunt for the living amongst the dead, but despite his increasingly frantic efforts he couldn’t find anything alive in this familiar nightmare world; couldn’t find the source of the sound of living pain.

  It was a
sharp, ear-piercing scream that finally dragged his mind back to full consciousness.

  By now, the fire had gone out entirely, and the cold had started to seep its way into his bones. At his age sleeping in a chair was no easy thing, he thought morosely, and he couldn’t quite contain the strangled sound that escaped as he tried to struggle upright.

  The scream had died and the whimpering returned.

  Imogen lay in her bed, tossing and turning, her limbs flailing as she tried to fight off her own night demons. In seconds he was by her side. He pulled her up into his arms as he called her name sharply, his voice infused with a cold panic he had never felt for himself.

  Her skin through the chemise was cold to his touch, but a thin film of sweat covered her face.

  “Imogen,” he called again, more loudly, shaking her as gently as his fear would allow. She moaned, thrashing her head from side to side but remained in the world of her own imagining. Ice clutched at Robert’s heart, filling his voice with a desperate need.

  “Imogen. Imogen. For God’s sake, Imogen, wake up.”

  She suddenly opened her eyes wide and screamed. She lifted her hands to her face as her body was racked by loud, heaving sobs.

  It no longer mattered to Robert whether she slept or woke; her pain was all too shockingly real either way. He gathered her fragile body to his and rocked her back and forth, running his hands up and down her back to soothe her pain. He found himself babbling words of comfort that even he didn’t fully understand.

  Imogen woke in the sheltered warmth of his fierce embrace.

  For the first time in longer than she cared to remember, she didn’t shed her night tears forlornly into her pillow. No, they were being absorbed into the blood-warm skin of Robert’s chest and matted into the hair there. It was Robert’s muscular arms that held her gently tight, the rumble of his deep voice seeping into her bones, dulling her lingering fear.

  Robert waited patiently for her to cry herself out but still he couldn’t let her go when calm descended.

  Now he was holding her for his own comfort and reassurance.

  He needed her close, needed to know that she wouldn’t break in two if he let her go. The sound of her gut-wrenching sobs had torn into him, leaving him helpless in the face of her raw, open grief. Many moments passed before he dared to move her slightly away from him so that he could look into her face and reassure himself that her demons had indeed fled. Her face was red and her eyes a glassy pink, but the fact that she tried to smile up at him made her the most beautiful being he had ever seen.

  He wiped away her last tears with the pad of his thumb. He stared at the droplet of saltwater that beaded on his skin briefly before rubbing them in thoughtfully. He tried to find words of comfort and reassurance, but they eluded him.

  He mightn’t know how to be softly caring, he thought with a silent sigh, but years of training boys to be men had taught him to be practical in the face of others’ raw emotions.

  “Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked quietly.

  She sucked on her bottom lip and shook her head.

  He took a deep, fortifying breath. “Sometimes these things don’t seem so bad if you talk about them. They shrink a little if you bring them into the real world.”

  “No, they don’t,” she said, her voice roughened with her tears. “Sometimes you talk about them forever, yet they are still big enough to destroy you.”

  Robert hesitated for a moment, but couldn’t push her. Perhaps with time, she would share her scarred soul with him, would give him the chance to kiss her wounds as she had kissed his. Until then, he would have to be patient.

  He ran his palms down her arms till he was holding her hands. “Would you like me to stay with you?” he asked in a carefully neutral voice, afraid to show just how much hope he attached to her answer.

  For a moment Imogen couldn’t breathe. She hadn’t even realized that she wanted him to stay until she heard him say the words, and a part of her shrank from the whole idea of letting a man into her bed, especially with the dark nightmare still chilling her skin. That fear was drowned out by her far-greater need right now for the cleansing comfort he offered. Hesitantly she reached her hand up to the middle of his chest. “Yes. Stay. Please stay.”

  Robert didn’t hesitate in case she changed her mind. He wrapped his arms around her back and gently leaned forward till they were both lying on the bed with him outside the covers. It wasn’t the way he wanted to share her bed, but he could sense the nervousness underlying her boldness and he didn’t trust himself enough to crawl in beside her. When she immediately curled her body into his as though she belonged there, he knew that he was doing the right thing.

  He closed his eyes and savored the perfection of their simple embrace. It didn’t matter that his body was chilling down rapidly in the cool chamber, not when the warmth of her trust was enough to heat him. It also didn’t matter that only an absolute terror had driven her to accept him in her bed. The fact that he was there was a thing he hadn’t dared hope for yet. It didn’t matter that the closeness of her body was swiftly re-igniting his unfulfilled desires, causing an ache in his body that was as much pain as pleasure. There would be time enough for him to indulge those desires, soon.

  All that mattered was that Imogen was curled up trustingly in his embrace and was sleeping peacefully there.

  Home.

  He was finally home.

  Chapter Five

  Imogen stood with hands on hips, her face flushed with anger.

  “He’s gone where, exactly?” she bit out.

  Mary raised her hand, but quickly dropped it with embarrassment, realizing it wasn’t terribly astute to try and pacify a blind person with hand signals.

  “I said, he’s gone to the stone tower with a few of the men. They’re going to see what can be done with that pile of rubble, if anything.” Mary tried to ignore the look of fury on Imogen’s face, adding quietly, “It’s actually a very sound idea, Imogen.”

  “Oh, most sound,” Imogen snapped. “Everything he has done around here is most sound, most wise or just plain, bloody messianic.” She threw her hands into the air, growling with pure irritation as she stalked over to the window. She wrapped her arms tightly round her middle to try and stop herself from breaking something. There was no point breaking inanimate objects when it was his head she longed to crack like an eggshell.

  The sunlight streamed cheerfully through the open window and it seemed to have a little more warmth in it today. Perhaps the long, unrelenting winter might be finally coming to an end. Or perhaps it was the lavish fires Robert had insisted be lit in all of the Keep’s rooms that generated the added warmth that was causing Imogen’s face to flush.

  She ground her teeth, angered by something that should have made her happy.

  She might have hated the cold dankness of the Keep but she couldn’t stand it that all Robert had to do was wave his magic wand and everything was put to rights. This was her Keep, goddamn it, and she honestly felt that she had looked after it as best she could.

  The Keep had become sadly neglected, true, but that had never been Imogen’s choice. It was Roger who decided how she lived in her prison, and he had preferred it to be an all-female prison, forbidding all but two males from serving at the Keep. Duncan functioned as the Keep’s groom, come shepherd, come gardener, come anything else that might possibly be required. Really, he did a remarkable job, for a sixty-four-year-old.

  The cook’s son, Lucas Ross, on the other hand, worked in the Keep itself, trying to do any of the small jobs that defeated the women, and at seven years of age he had become a surprisingly good rat catcher.

  Imogen felt a growing sense of justification replacing her feeling of incompetence. Which of these two fine examples of masculine strength had Robert actually envisaged as the master woodsman? Imogen thought snidely. While their wood supplies had never been plentiful, that they had had wood at all should be seen as no mean achievement.

  And it wasn’t
as if Robert was making all these grand achievements in household management by himself, Imogen thought with a scowl. Far from it. The Keep was now bursting with his people. His male people.

  Life had changed for everyone in the Keep since their wedding night, but for her most of all.

  She had awoken early the next morning and, turning instinctively to Robert, had found only his cold furs. She had tried hard not to brood too much about his desertion, telling herself that it was only to be expected, but feelings of betrayal still lingered.

  However, the greatest betrayal was that of her wayward heart and body.

  For a moment she had held close the pillow that had cradled his head through the night and had bathed her senses in the echo of scent he’d left behind. Even when she had then put the pillow firmly from her, his scent haunted her.

  She couldn’t let that show, however. Haunted or not, she wouldn’t have people pitying her for being an unwanted bride. She had gone about her days as usual, telling herself that all was as it had always been, but it didn’t work. There was now a loneliness to her days that surpassed even that of her years of isolation.

  It was a loneliness that bit deepest in the rare moments Robert breezed into her days.

  On that first morning he had arrived in her chambers around midmorning and had brought with him all the bracing scents of a brisk winter’s day. Her heart had skipped a beat at the sound of his voice, even if it was only mouthing polite nothings, and the wonders of the night before rose up before her, starting her wanting him all over again. So powerful was the feeling, it took her a moment to realize that he wasn’t similarly affected.

  He stood before her with all the joy of a man facing his executioner.

  In those all too precious minutes he found just time enough to tell her that his horses had arrived. They had been traveling in relatively easy stages from Wales, accompanied by the knights that had fought under him in the recent wars on the borders. He had then muttered something about eating in the hall with his men, but understanding that she would prefer to eat in her rooms.