Page 54 of A Constant Blaze

“You make it a question,” Halla observed.

“I suspect my motives are more selfish than chivalric, but at least the outcome is the same. Were you known?”

“Were you?” she countered.

“Only when I chose to be.”

He didn’t know her, didn’t trust her. “I am not the lady you rescued today,” she confessed.

“Ididn’t rescue anyone.”

She closed her eyes, feeling her way. “Why are you here?”

“For you.”

She squeezed her eyelids shut. If that was true, if he was—

“But perhaps your heart is given to another.” He spoke lightly enough, and yet surely, he cared for the answer. He wouldn’t otherwise have said it.

“I have no heart. It broke long ago.”

“So did mine. But it’s growing back.”

“Practiced words from a man who saw me once in the dark in oversized boy’s clothes. Run, before you realize you’re talking to the wrong woman.”

He didn’t reply, and her hand slipped down the tapestry to the cold stone balustrade. She hadn’t wanted to be right. She wasn’t who he thought she was. She hadn’t wanted to heap more pain on herself. He had indeed run, but at least her pride remained intact.

A movement in the growing darkness at last penetrated her misery, and she turned toward it with a gasp.

“Don’t,” breathed the blur, that was all she could see before warm hands closed over hers, pinning them to the balustrade, preventing her from facing him. “Please, don’t.”

“Why not? Can’t you take the truth?”

The whole length of his body touched her, hemming her in. Her face brushed the tapestry which smelled old and musty.

“What truth?” he breathed in her ear. “That you love another?”

“I’ve only ever loved one man in my life. I only ever will.” She twisted her head around, to prove she wasn’t afraid. “Why do you speak of it at all?”

“Why do you think?”

A beard scraped against her cheek, and then his mouth closed on hers in the darkness. Hot, hungry, dizzyingly tender.

Years, a lifetime fell away, and she knew beyond doubt. Her body, her every sense remembered. She couldn’t help the tears flowing silently down her cheeks and into her veil, her lips.Malcolm. My Malcolm.

He freed her hands. One tug of his swept back her veil. The circlet which had held it in place tumbled to the ground, and his fingers threaded through her hair, holding the back of her head. And then his lips and his body were gone, and the veil fluttered over her face. When she tore it off, there was only a blur climbing back through the side of the tapestry which had mysteriously become detached from the wall.

Only then did she hear what he had. Approaching footsteps from the main passage. Snatching up the fallen circlet, Halla whisked herself the short distance to her bedchamber and closed the door behind her. She leaned against it, stunned, for several minutes until the footsteps had passed and gone into the room next door. Mairead or her maid, Grizel.

It was funny. Truly, it was. Her own husband had tried to seduce her in a monastery, with no idea of who she really was. She didn’t know whether it was insulting or flattering. Considering the availability of Mairead in the next room, she opted for flattering.

She wished he’d taken her on the cold stone floor. She’d have let him. She wished there had been time. She wished she’d had the forethought to drag him with her into this cell and eject Astrid.

She closed her eyes and walked the two paces to the flickering candle. She blew it out and sank onto the bed, curling into a ball beneath the blankets. On the whole, it was as well none of that had happened.

Chapter Fourteen

“Idon’t likethis,” Donald said grimly, pacing the length of Brecka Hall while he flung words over his shoulder at Gormflaith. He’d come home only a couple of hours ago to the latest news of his parents’ separate departures and had personally questioned John, the Lady Mairead’s man who’d begun this chase. “I don’t like the timing, and I don’t trust it. Both of our parents are walking into a trap. Separately!”

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