Page 118 of Forbidden

“Ah, but I enjoy doing so.”

“Do you?”

“But of course,” Cassandra said dryly. “’Tis the only time you listen to me.”

Laughter rose like a shout, for it was well known among the knights that their young lord was as headstrong as an unbroken stallion. Erik laughed the loudest of them all, for he knew himself better than they did.

Under cover of the laughter, Duncan bent down and spoke for Amber alone.

“Do you know what Cassandra knows?” he asked.

“Of your past?”

“Yes.”

“I know that she is rarely wrong.”

“Meaning?” Duncan asked.

“Meaning there is nothing in your past that will make you happy in the present.”

“Are you certain?”

“Ask yourself, not me,” she said.

“But I know nothing.”

“Nor do you wish to. Not now. Not when you are married.”

Duncan’s eyes narrowed. But before he could speak, Amber did.

“Do you want to spend your wedding night asking questions whose answers are sure to make you unhappy?” she asked.

“Are they?”

“Aye.”

The bleak certainty in Amber’s eyes sent another wave of coolness washing over Duncan’s spine.

“Amber?”

She put her fingertips over his lips, sealing in all the questions he hadn’t asked and she didn’t want to answer.

“Instead of asking questions neither of us wants to hear,” Amber whispered, “wouldn’t you rather take your bride to the privacy of the bedchamber and begin our future?”

14

WHENDuncan led Amber into the room that had been hastily, yet thoroughly, arrayed for their wedding night, she made a sound of pleasure and surprise.

“It is quite wonderful,” she said.

The chamber had been built for the lady of the keep and never occupied, for Erik had yet to take a wife. The exotic fragrance of myrrh pervaded the room, rising from the oil lamps whose bright, unwavering flames turned darkness into golden light. The hearth along the far wall burned with wood so hard and dry that there was barely any smoke to curl upward into the clever, narrow vent behind the logs.

“And quite grand!” Amber added.

Laughing, she turned around swiftly, making her gold dress lift and ripple as though alive.

With an effort, Duncan didn’t reach out to the graceful amber girl who burned more brightly in his blood than any fire. He knew he shouldn’t look at her, much less gather her close and bury his hard flesh within her softness again.