The Stolen Brides 02 -His Forbidden Touch (28 page)

Ciara’s eyes burned with tears. She slid her
fingers down his back, took his left hand in hers, and let him keep
talking, reliving the memories of a sweeter, more innocent
time.

“They even tried to put the flowers on the
hounds once.” The shadow of a smile tugged at his mouth. “Said that
everyone at Ferrano should be pretty because it was spring.”

She entwined her fingers through his,
closing her eyes, feeling a tear fall.

“One summer, my younger brother and I were
arguing and he pushed me off the bridge into the moat. I had to
swim to shore, covered with muck. I swore I would never forgive
him….”

She glanced up at Royce as his fingers
tightened around hers, and wished she could find words to comfort
him. Instead she rested her forehead on his shoulder, telling him
without words that he was not alone. Not anymore.

He inhaled, then let the air out slowly, his
breath soft against her cheek. “This is the first time I have been
back, the first time …. since …” His voice became a hoarse
whisper. “After the war started, I could not get through the enemy
lines, even to …”

She felt him tremble, did not know whether
it was from the grief that wracked him or from weakness caused by
his wound. The crossbow bolt had been buried deep in his arm—so
deep that he had instructed her to push it through the rest of the
way in order to get it out. He had endured the horrifying ordeal
stoically and had refused to stop and rest even once today, though
he had lost a great deal of blood.

Worried, she lifted her hand to his cheek
and found his skin too warm, his eyes too bright. “Royce, you need
to rest,” she murmured gently. “You need sleep.”

He nodded. “We should be safe from the
rebels here,” he said hollowly. “In truth, we are in Thuringia now.
Daemon claimed all the lands here in the southern range, though he
never spared the coin to repair the castles he had destroyed.” He
glanced up at the deserted remnants of the once grand fortress. “So
it has been left as it was seven years ago.”

Tugging on the horse’s reins, he started
forward, his gaze dropping to the lowered drawbridge at their feet.
“Daemon’s forces overran them so quickly, they never even had time
to raise the drawbridge.”

Ciara kept her fingers wrapped tightly
through his as they crossed the causeway, side by side. The mare’s
hooves clattered on wood, then on stone as they passed beneath the
gatehouse.

On the other side of the moat, they moved
through a second gatehouse, this one part of the curtain wall, and
into the castle’s outer bailey. Royce left her for a moment to
enter one of the guard towers.

She heard what sounded like the creaking of
a lever and pulleys and metal chains—and miraculously, the
drawbridge rose, at the same time that an iron-reinforced
portcullis slid downward in each of the two gatehouses, blocking
anyone from following them over the bridge.

“A device of my father’s invention,” Royce
explained when he rejoined her a moment later. “He was a brilliant
military tactician.”

Ciara looked up at him, not knowing if the
dampness on her cheeks came from her tears or from the cold rain
that had started to spatter down from the evening sky. “I am sure
he was the best of men and the finest of knights.”
Like his
son.

Royce did not reply, his attention claimed
by a small grove of trees on the opposite side of the bailey.

Ciara followed his gaze, wondering how even
a single tree could have survived untouched when the outbuildings
on either side had been reduced to ashes. It seemed unaccountably
strange to see an oasis of green, of life, here in this devastated
place.

“Saints’ breath,” Royce murmured, his eyes
narrowing, “where did those come from?” He started toward the
grove.

Ciara almost called out to stop him, for she
did not want him to stay outside in the rain when he was already
unwell. But she knew that trying to stop Royce once he set his mind
to something would be futile.

Leaving the mare at the gate, she hurried to
follow him. When they reached the little orchard, she realized it
was not an orchard at all, but a half-circle of evergreens, planted
in a protected corner near the keep, in what had once been the
castle’s garden.

Six evergreens … encircling six flat,
white headstones of the finest marble embedded in the earth.
Someone had created a peaceful sanctuary, a tranquil resting place
here amid the ivy and other greenery that had started to grow back.
Violets dotted the ground beneath the trees, bright spots of purple
pushing through the melting snow. And between the pines stood a
statue of the Savior, hand raised as if in blessing over the
markers.

Royce sank to his knees in the center of the
stones. “My brothers …” he whispered brokenly, looking at the
names chiseled into the pale squares of marble. “My sisters … my
parents. But how … who …”

Ciara came to stand behind him, resting one
hand gently on his shoulder. “This must have been done by someone
who loved your family very much.”

“But who?” he repeated in bewilderment. “It
tore me apart that I was never able to return and give my family a
proper burial. All those loyal to us were from Châlons—and no one
from Châlons could have gotten through the enemy lines.”

“Mayhap you had an unknown friend in
Thuringia.”

“What friend could
I
have in
Thuringia? What Thuringian could care enough to do
this
and
afford such fine marble …” Royce lifted his gaze to the statue.
“Mathias,” he said in a stunned whisper. “It must have been Prince
Mathias.”

“Daemon’s brother?”

He nodded slowly. “We came to know one
another during the first peace negotiations, four years ago.”
Shaking his head in wonder, he glanced up at her as she knelt
beside him. “Mathias is a year older than Daemon, and by right he
should have become regent when their father fell ill, but he
refused in favor of his younger brother. He is a deeply spiritual
man, and he was studying to join the priesthood….”

“He sounds very different from his
brother.”

“Aye. Two men could not
be
more
different.” Royce glanced down at the white markers, rain soaking
his hair and clothes. “It was Mathias who initiated the first peace
negotiations. He wanted an end to all the violence and death. And
he must also have seen to this, for me. For a man he had met only
briefly. An enemy.” His jaw tightened. “That is how different he is
from Daemon. If it were Prince Mathias you had been betrothed
to”—he paused, glancing at her, his mouth curving ruefully—”I still
would not like it,” he finished softly.

Ciara slid her arms around him. “I am sorry
for all you lost, Royce.” She rested her head on his shoulder,
unable to hold back her tears any longer. “I am so sorry.”

He buried his face in her hair and drew her
close, and they knelt there together, holding one another in the
small sanctuary his friend had created, while the rain pattered
down around them.

“This helps, Ciara,” he whispered after a
long silence. “To know that they were cared for … and having you
here. It … helps.”

She looked into his eyes, grateful to this
enemy prince she had never met for helping to ease Royce’s pain. He
had lived with it for so many years, mayhap he had not believed it
could ever truly heal. “I am glad, Royce. I think your family would
have wanted you to hold on to your memories and your love for them,
but not the sorrow.”

“Aye, little one.” He caressed her cheek
with his fingertips. “As Christophe would have wanted for you.”

She nodded, warmed by his concern for her
when his own grief was so great.

But as she lifted her hand to his face,
worry lanced through her. Despite the cold rain, his skin was hot
to the touch. “Royce, you have to go inside. You must rest.”

“Are you watching over me now, milady?”

She brushed the wet hair from his forehead.
“Aye.”

His eyes darkening with emotion, he held her
a moment longer. Then he rose, taking her hand to help her to her
feet. And when he glanced down at the stones once more, the anguish
in his expression had lessened.

Threading his fingers through hers, he led
her back to the entrance of the keep, and together they went
inside.

Ciara braced herself for the worst, but they
found no bodies, no trace of human suffering; it seemed that Prince
Mathias had seen to it that all who lost their lives here were
given a decent Christian burial.

Which left naught but the empty, silent
shell of what had once been a magnificent castle, torn asunder.
Sections of the roof were open to the sky, which had allowed seven
years of rain and snow to clean away some traces of the devastation
that had taken place. But blackened piles of wood and stone and
other debris remained, jumbled throughout the great hall and the
towers she and Royce explored. Only the ground floor was still
intact, water pooled here and there on the stone. The wooden beams
supporting the floors above had given way.

They found odd bits and pieces that had
escaped the Thuringians’ savagery: a tapestry with its lower half
burned away, metal plates and goblets, a wooden chandelier hanging
from the ceiling of one chamber, its candles untouched, as if they
had been replaced on the day of the attack.

That made Ciara’s heart clench more than
anything else they saw, for the fresh candles made it agonizingly
clear that the people here had had no warning of what was to come.
They had been calmly going about their daily lives when death had
swept down upon them from the east.

She could not bear what it must be like for
Royce, seeing this place he had loved brought to ruin. Only one
thing they found eased the stark pain in his eyes: in the great
hall, above the hearth, hung a shield and sword on display. They
were blackened with soot but undamaged.

He climbed over some debris to reach them,
took the sword in his hand, and wiped it clean with the edge of his
damp tunic. She could see a bright blade beneath, a gold hilt.

“Royce, it looks just like the sword you
carried.”

“It is my father’s sword,” he said hoarsely,
climbing down to rejoin her. “A twin of the one that I …” He
paused, glancing from her face to the hearth. He went still,
staring as if he could see flames that were not there.

“Royce? Are you all right?”

“It was here that I saw you,” he
whispered.

She touched his arm, concerned that he was
becoming fevered, delirious. “I do not understand.”

“I had a dream of you, the night before last
… and it was here. You were here.
We
were here …”

“Royce,” she said softly, gently. “It was
only a dream. We were not here when the fire happened. We are all
right.”

He looked down at her and shook his head,
started to explain further—then stopped, apparently changing his
mind.

“You are right, little one.” His voice was
heavy, sad. “It was only a dream. And will never be more.”

She gazed up at him, perplexed. She wiped a
black smudge from his stubbled cheek, wishing she could as easily
soothe the frown from between his eyes. “You were telling me about
the sword,” she coaxed.

“Aye.” He lifted the gleaming steel blade in
his left hand. “It is the twin of the one I lost in the avalanche,
the sword my father gave me on the day I was knighted. When I left
here at eighteen and went to serve your father at court, I took two
things: the sword my father had given me, and my mother’s
ring.”

Ciara raised her left hand to her heart,
touching the gold band she wore. “Then the ring
is
an
heirloom.”

“Aye. What did you think it was?”

“I thought …” She blushed, dropped her
gaze. “I worried at first that it might be a token of love from
some lady you left behind in France.”

He reached out to tilt her head up, his
brown eyes sparkling. “Nay, Ciara, I left no lady behind in France.
My father gave that ring to my mother on the day they promised
themselves to one another, when she was but fifteen. After they
married, she wore it next to her wedding band, until the day I left
for court. She gave it to me because she felt certain I would find
some lady at the palace who would steal my heart, a lady I would
want to make my bride.”

Ciara felt her eyes burn as their gazes
held, especially when he finished with three simple words.

“And I did.”

She leaned into him, her fingers curling
into his tunic. “But it happened all wrong, Royce. It was never
meant to be this way.”

Royce set the sword aside to wrap his arms
around her. “But my mother was right. A lady at the palace did
steal my heart—”

“The wrong lady.”

“Nay, the right lady. The perfect lady. In
all the years I have had that ring, I never met the woman I wanted
to give it to. I thought I never would.” He threaded his fingers
through her hair, tilted her head up again. “But now I know the
inscription is true, Ciara.
You and no other.
” He finished
in a whisper, “I know what it means now.”

She ached to give in to the feelings in his
eyes. To forget everything and everyone outside this keep, to part
her lips for his kiss, stay here in his arms forever.

Instead she withdrew, trembling from his
touch and from the riot of emotions inside her. “Your arm needs to
be tended. Let us see if we can … find a place where we can …
draw some water and change the bandages.”

She could not bear the look in his eyes, but
he offered no protest when she pulled away from him. He clearly
knew as she did that they dared not steal even a single kiss.

Their feelings for each other had become too
strong, the pull of honor and duty too tenuous, like a rope that
had frayed to a single thread. One more tug and it would snap.