Page 33 of Forbidden

“Well?” she demanded.

“Well what?”

“One of those things is the truth.”

“Is it?”

Amber shrugged. “What else could you have been?”

“A serf or a sailor,” he said sardonically.

“No. You haven’t the calluses for it. Nor the thick head, though lately I begin to wonder.”

Abruptly, Duncan laughed.

Against her will, Amber smiled. “You see? Whatever I tell you isn’t the same asknowing. That you must do for yourself. No one can do it for you.”

Duncan’s laughter stopped. For the space of several breaths he said nothing.

The temptation to touch him and discover what he was feeling almost overwhelmed Amber. She fought her own hunger, her own need.

And she lost.

Her fingertips smoothed lightly over Duncan’s clean-shaven cheek.

Anger.

Bafflement.

A loss so great it couldn’t be described, only felt like thunder from a distant storm quivering through the air.

“Duncan,” Amber whispered painfully. “My dark warrior.”

He watched her with eyes that were narrowed, glittering, the eyes of an animal caught within a trap.

“Fighting yourself only wounds you more,” she said. “Let yourself grow used to the life you have now.”

“How can I?” Duncan asked in a rough voice. “What of the life I left behind? What if there is a lord expecting me to honor my vow? What if there is a wife? Heirs? Land?”

When Duncan spoke of lord and land, Amber sensed the dark seething of his memory. No such response came at the mention of wife or heirs.

Her relief was so acute that Amber’s knees weakened. The thought of Duncan bound by sacred vow to another woman had been like a knife turning in Amber’s heart. She hadn’t known how great her fear had been until it was banished by the unspeakable certainty that lay beneath Duncan’s elusive memory.

Pray God that his memory doesn’t return. The more he remembers, the more I fear.

Enemy, not friend.

Soul mate.

In shades of darkness Duncan came to me. In shades of darkness he must remain.

Or die.

And that thought was even more unbearable than Duncan alive and bound to another woman.

THEmerlin’s quick, shallow wing-beats brought it swiftly toward the lure Duncan was casting with smooth, powerful sweeps of his arm.

“Well done,” Amber said, clapping her hands in excitement. “You must have cast the lure many times before.”