Midnight Eyes (9 page)

Gareth might not produce in her the rush of strange emotions Robert did, but his simple, easy manner was a balm to her badly battered pride.

“Lucas, you must learn to give up a lady gracefully,” Gareth said with mock severity. “Especially when your rival is several times your size.”

“But Mary said I was to go with her.”

“Well, now I say I have to.”

“I’ll tell Mary on you.”

“Well, I’ll tell Robert on you,” Gareth countered, flourishing the winning stroke with relish.

“Stop teasing the boy,” Imogen said sternly, but a smile gentled the words.

“Who was teasing?” Gareth growled threateningly. “The boy certainly wasn’t when he threatened to set that harpy on me.”

“Mary’s not a harpy,” Imogen said with a smile, “anymore than I am, despite how we both might appear from time to time.”

She turned toward Lucas’s voice. “Of course you can come along if Mary said you must. How about carrying the basket and making a path through the snow for us to follow?”

“Making a path?” he pondered. “That’s kind of like being a scout, for an army, isn’t it?” He was still deeply suspicious, but his excitement at the thought of being near food and having a status was evident.

“You bet it is,” Gareth said, with the authority of many wars behind him.

“And you can feel free to liberate a titbit or two from what I suspect is one of Mary’s overstuffed baskets,” Imogen said coaxingly, reluctant to be parted just yet from a man who simply made her smile.

Lucas considered every aspect of the deal for a moment. “All right,” he said, then ran to see what exactly Mary had put in the basket.

Gareth smiled as he hooked his arm through Imogen’s and they followed slowly.

“Do I get to sample from the basket too, even though I don’t get to be a scout? Or do I just get stuck with the beautiful lady?” Gareth asked innocently, his voice full of guile.

“You may sample the delight of the basket only if you are a very good boy,” she said with mock hauteur.

“Oh, I’m always a good boy,” he said nicely, his face splitting into a decidedly wolfish grin. “Always.”

Robert stepped gingerly over yet another fallen stone.

“…or we could always just paint it in your colors and stuff your banner on top…” Matthew said gleefully.

And while his face might have appeared serious and earnest, Robert was only too well aware that his eyes were dancing. When he had first suggested this excursion, Matthew had grumbled loud and long at the earliness of the hour, then at the cold, then at the riding required.

Robert had shrugged his shoulders and ignored him just as he usually did when Matthew got into one of these moods, but he had also known that Matthew would manage to extract his revenge at some point, both for being dragged from his warm bed and for being ignored.

Matthew didn’t like being ignored.

Robert sighed loudly and cast a puzzled eye over the tower. Matthew’s revenge had been too easy, really. No matter from which angle you looked at it, this derelict stone tower in the middle of nowhere was an absurdity, and Matthew was relishing pointing out that fact as the two of them walked slowly round it ostensibly to see if there was any logic to be found on the other side.

“…and I really think it is a marvel for a tower to have no entrance, but to have windows near the top. Had you noticed that, Boy? Extremely clever, I think,” Matthew yelled, by now almost jogging to keep up with Robert’s lengthening stride.

“I can’t say that it had entirely escaped my notice,” Robert muttered in reply, hoping against hope that that would be the end of it.

“Clever lad!” Matthew beamed with expansive pride. “We will make a builder out of you yet, what with that eye for detail and all. The next observation that I really think you should take note of is the fact that it seems to be falling down,” he said as he daintily sidestepped one of the larger boulders.

Robert stopped and turned on the old man, his gauntleted hands crossed over his chest.

“Come on, Old Man, spit out all the rest of your spleen and have done with it. Just what are you getting at?”

Matthew raised an innocent twice-gloved hand to his narrow chest. “Oh, great master, what do you accuse me of?”

“You mean accuse you of besides being a meddlesome pain in the rear?”

“Yes, besides that.”

“You’ve been laughing at me ever since we got here, yet, for the life of me, I can’t see what you find so funny.”

“Don’t suppose you do,” Matthew murmured. He looked up at the stone tower, his face suddenly serious. “I just find it strange that you rose at the goddamn crack of dawn from a perfectly warm bed, a bed containing, I hasten to add, a beautiful woman, and found yourself with an overwhelming desire to cover miles of snow-covered ground to see a tower that we already knew was falling down before we got here. A falling-down tower that doesn’t even seem to have a door, on closer inspection. Call me crazy, but I find that extremely funny. It’s either that or tragically sad.”

“It’s not as odd as all that,” Robert said defensively.

A raised brow was all the answer he got.

“Well, you didn’t have to come,” Robert said, irritatingly aware that he was beginning to sound like a petulant child, but he seemed unable to be anything else.

“My boy, I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. There is nothing I love more than freezing my balls off at sunrise and blistering my arse on a horse’s back. It’s very good for your soul, I’m sure, if of dubious worth for your manhood.”

That drew a reluctant smile from Robert. “Well, if we hurry in our inspection of this tower, then the men will have got the fire started by now.”

“That’s another thing I find odd,” Matthew continued as if Robert hadn’t even spoken. “Why the hell do we need to light a fire when there is a perfectly warm Keep just over the way? A Keep that you can quite confidently call your own.”

Robert shrugged his shoulders, a red flush rising up his neck, “Just seemed like a good idea if we were going to spend the whole day here we will use it to cook at least one meal.”

He braced himself for the explosion, and Matthew delivered on cue.

“All day!” he spluttered. “What the hell would we want to spend all day out here for?”

“I thought we could see if anything can be done with the tower, and then perhaps we could do some hunting for the Keep’s stores.”

“For God’s sake, Boy, I’ve never heard such a load of nonsense. And it’s a lie. Can’t you at least tell me the truth when you’re so determined to freeze me to death?”

“That was the truth.” Robert couldn’t quite meet Matthew’s eyes and was embarrassed to find himself shuffling his feet like a naughty schoolboy.

Matthew’s snort was almost elegant in expressing his patent disbelief. “Robert, you’ve been like a bee in a bottle for two weeks. Running from sunup to sundown, longer some days, I expect, though I’m not entirely sure. I can’t watch you all the time, as at my age you actually need sleep.” His eyes narrowed knowingly. “It’s clear as day to me that you’re running from something. Today you have just managed to get a little farther than normal.” Matthew stepped up and placed a hand on Robert’s shoulder. “Can’t you at least tell me what the hell is going on here?”

The gentleness in Matthew’s usually brisk tone burnt away the last of Robert’s defenses. He turned and walked a few steps away from the old man, staring unseeingly at a chunk of stone.

“The truth is, Old Man, that I don’t know any longer what is going on.” He threw his hands into the air and turned around. “I’m being tied in knots. Everything is so…complex. It used to be simple. So damn simple. I wanted land and title, so I slaughtered my way across the country to get them.” His mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “And I was very good at it. No one could have been a better murderer than me.”

“I always knew that you weren’t a warrior, not at heart,” Matthew said quietly. “A true warrior never looks on such things as murder. You always had a gentle soul underneath that rusty armor.”

“You should be careful how you bandy around words like gentle, Old Man,” Robert said wryly. “Another warrior might take it into his head to prove to you how gentle they aren’t. It could get messy.”

Matthew shrugged his shoulders. “If they would slice an old man in two for saying something they didn’t like, then I hope I have the intelligence not to call them gentle in the first place.”

Robert raised a brow. “There is a certain logic to that nonsense that I wouldn’t dare try to unravel.” He walked slowly over to one of the fallen stones and sat down, his face turning serious once more. “Gentle or no, I did what had to be done and did it damn well.” His eyes locked with Matthew’s. “Simple.”

Matthew pulled his furs more tightly around his thin shoulders and found a boulder of his own. He grimaced as he sat on the cold, unforgiving surface, but resigned himself to the fact that it would be a while before he would be warm again.

“And, I take it, it’s not so simple now?”

“No,” Robert said and lifted his face to the gray and blue sky. “I have what I have always wanted, and it’s not enough. Nowhere near.” His hands clenched impotently by his side.

“And what will be enough?” Matthew asked, but he already had a good idea what the answer would be.

Robert’s black eyes leveled to Matthew’s. “I’ll only know enough when I see it.”

Matthew let out a low whistle through his teeth. “Boy, you have got it bad.”

Robert didn’t even have to ask what “it” was.

“Old Man, you don’t know the half of it.” He paused, then surged to his feet and began to pace restlessly.

Matthew shook his head and stood slowly. “Well, my boy, it would seem that you have managed to make a simple thing complex in the extreme.”

Robert stilled his pacing for a moment and shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “The complexities were there already, I’m just an inheritor of them. I manage to fight one off and another seems to grow in its place.”

“So what do you intend to do?”

“I intend to keep running, Old Man, till it’s time to turn and fight.”

As they started off around the tower once more Matthew said gently, “Don’t think much of that as a plan, Boy.”

“Nor do I,” Robert agreed amicably, trying to roll some of the tension out of his shoulders as he walked. “I may end up improvising and improving on it as I go.” They walked on in silence for a moment and then a grin broke on Robert’s face that was almost boyish. “Actually I’m beginning to find I’m quite good at improvisation. Take this little jaunt. Pure, unadulterated spur-of-the-moment improvisation.”

Matthew hunched his shoulders. “And you think this a good example of your skills, do you?”

“Compared to some of the other ideas I had, I think it was a stroke of pure bloody inspiration.”

“Just goes to prove, too many blows to the head really can addle a man’s wits.”

“It’s a fine line between addled and inspired,” Robert said loftily, drawing slightly ahead of the older man.

Matthew grunted. “There is also a fine line between smug and insane, my boy,” he said to himself, “and, to my thinking, you are a unique combination of the two.”

Robert looked round. “Did you mutter something, Old Man?”

Matthew opened his eyes wide. “Would I dare mutter in the presence of my glorious leader?”

Robert thought for a moment. “Yes.”

Matthew buried his chin in his furs and muttered about a lack of respect for one’s elders and Robert’s laughter on the wind was almost carefree.

“Careful,” Gareth said as Imogen stumbled yet again. He placed a steadying arm around her shoulders. “Maybe we should stop for a moment?” he asked softly, the worry plain in his voice.

“If you say that again, I may decide to poke one of your eyes out,” she said through labored breaths. She knew she was behaving like a shrew and for a second it felt good. Unfortunately, guilt quashed the slight triumph to be found in being horrible.

“Sorry, Gareth,” she mumbled. “I guess Mary was right when she said I’d gotten too soft and lazy for this.”

“She actually said that?”

“Almost.”

He gave her shoulders a little squeeze. “Soft, maybe, but a very nice kind of soft.”

“Flirting won’t make me feel better,” she said briskly. “I was well past being enamored with your repartee over an hour ago.”

“But I wasn’t flirting,” he said innocently. “I was merely stating cold, hard facts.” He laughed at her snort of disgust. “Oh, Imogen, you’re being far too serious. This is the most fun I’ve had in a long time.”

“What can your life have been before this little…excursion?” she asked dryly.

“Perfect,” he said with a wave of his hand. “I just have the good taste to prefer this.”

“It would seem I’ve been sent abroad in the world with a man who has gone moon-mad.”

“A madman
and
a sick little guide.” Gareth looked behind them to where Lucas brought up the rear, dragging the nearly empty basket behind him. “And you have only yourself to blame for the illness of your smallest protector. You did say that he could eat anything that tickled his fancy.”

“How was I to know that he would take it as a challenge?” Genuine concern crept into her voice as she leaned closer to Gareth and whispered, “Is he starting to look any better?”

Gareth cast a critical eye over the small, dejected figure. “Well, since emptying his stomach behind a tree, he has stopped looking green.” Imogen began to chew on her bottom lip in concern and Gareth said soothingly, “Really he’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Look, when a boy eats his body weight in food in less than fifteen seconds flat he’s bound to feel a little unwell. After a bit, the effects will wear off enough for him to do it all over again.” He ran a critical eye over her pale face. “It’s you we should be worrying about. Are you sure you don’t want to stop for a rest?”

“I warned you what I would do if you asked me that again,” she said sternly, then she sighed, her easy mood evaporating. She ran a weary hand over the bridge of her nose. “How much further do you think?”

Gareth looked critically up to the sky, painfully aware of the shadows that were forming already. Soon it would be dark and they still had a long way to go. “Not far,” he hedged.

She nodded her head silently, too tired even to reply, concentrating instead on the putting of one foot after the other.

The next time Imogen stumbled Gareth wasn’t quite quick enough. She fell on her knees into the snow. She clenched her fist in the icy slush, her breath coming in ragged bursts.

Gareth fell into the snow beside her immediately and gathered her close. “I knew we should have stopped,” he said angrily to himself, then reluctantly he loosened his hold and slowly drew her to her feet.

He led her to a relatively dry rock and knelt in the snow at her feet, chafing her hands back to life. His breath caught painfully in his chest at the sight of a solitary tear falling slowly down her smudged cheek.

She tried to wipe it away, but others quickly followed. “Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn!”

“Oh, Imogen, it’s not that bad,” Gareth whispered, his voice catching in his throat. He grabbed the corner of his woolen cloak and began clumsily wiping her tears away with the coarse fabric.

Her sightless eyes looked disconcertingly beyond his shoulder, fighting with shadows only she could see. “I so wanted to do this, so wanted to stop him ignoring me,” she said brokenly. “I wanted to prove, oh, I don’t know, wanted to prove that it didn’t matter that I was…am blind. I wanted to prove that I was still a normal woman.” Her jaw tightened painfully. “But I’m not. I am some oddity who should be locked in a room for her own good, just like Roger said. I knew I couldn’t do it. I knew it, but for just the smallest of moments it seemed so, so
possible.
”

No longer caring about the rights and wrongs of it, Gareth gathered her into the warmth of his embrace once more.

Lucas staggered up to the rock and plopped himself down into the snow near them, rolling himself up into a ball. He didn’t care about the snow or cold or the strange sight of Lady Imogen crying into Sir Gareth’s surcoat. All that mattered was that they had finally stopped and he could die in peace.

Gareth began rocking Imogen back and forth, trying only to comfort her, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from greedily storing up the memory of holding her slight body close. He had never before counted himself a fool, but no matter how often he told himself sternly not to be deluded by the sweetness of holding her and that she wasn’t his, he couldn’t stop his heart from filling with her, even as he knew it was all an illusion. She didn’t want him. She never would be his, not when every word she spoke was of another, for another.