Midnight Eyes by Brophy, Sarah (well read books .TXT) 📕

the feast being prepared in the great hall. No, his great hall, he corrected himself sternly, but the long-awaited concept was stillborn in his mind, swamped by the image of Imogen’s cold face as she had told him he was surplus to requirements. He had not been prepared for the dismissal, not after that all-too-brief kiss they had shared.

Just remembering it brought a pulsing heat to his loins. Holding her in his arms, feeling the innocent heat of her lips under his had shifted the universe. He had forgotten bargains, forgotten his name, and forgotten all but the bit of the world that he had enclosed in his arms.

And then she had turned from him, rejected him.

His mind relentlessly circled the memory. He couldn’t seem to let it go, even though he knew he was behaving like a half-starved dog with a bone.

“My lord,” Mary said quietly from the door that he had left half open.

She was obviously uncomfortable and not sure how to approach the lion in his den. Good, Robert thought savagely, even as a heated flush of embarrassment climbed his neck at being caught staring broodingly at a dusty table. He sat down on the chair behind the table and held his breath as the furniture creaked ominously, horrified at the prospect of being thrown onto his rump in front of this supremely dignified woman. His luck was in, however, and the chair held.

“What do you want, Mary?” he growled.

“I just thought you might like to know that my lady is having a rest before the feast.”

Robert raised his eyebrows in surprise. He never believed for a moment that Mary genuinely thought he needed to know such pointless information. She flushed under his scrutiny and started to shuffle her feet. Her very apparent embarrassment made her look a little more human.

“Is there something more important you have come to tell me, or have you just temporarily lost your mind?” Robert murmured.

It was the opening Mary had apparently been waiting for. She stepped fully into the room and closed the door firmly behind her.

“I just wanted to know if my lady had offended you too deeply.”

He shrugged his shoulders with a careful negligence. “No more than she intended to offend me, I am sure.”

Mary shook her head and frowned in exasperation. “She didn’t mean to be offensive, my lord. Can’t you see that she was reacting, not acting? She wasn’t thinking about you at all.” Her voice pleaded to be understood even as it lectured.

Robert smiled faintly. “I had gathered that much. Her indecent rush to leave the hall was, I felt, a fair indication of her extreme lack of interest in her husband.”

“No!” she said sharply. “That’s not it. You don’t understand. It wasn’t a rational thing. She was too afraid to be logical.”

“Afraid! What had she to be afraid of?” he snapped out bitterly. “I have yet to do anything to frighten anyone. I simply haven’t had time to make anyone afraid.” A feral gleam lit his eyes as he added ominously, “Yet.”

Robert felt momentarily in control until Mary smiled gently, clearly unperturbed by his playacted ferocity.

“It’s not you she fears, my lord, well, not yet, at any rate. Her fears come from a time long before she was threatened with this marriage.”

“Threatened! It wasn’t…”

Mary simply lifted a hand to still his blustering. “This isn’t about you, not yet. It is Roger who is the threat.”

The words had a chilling effect on his anger. “She fears her brother?” he asked coldly.

“Yes,” Mary said flatly. “I can’t claim to know all that’s between them, but I know that Lady Imogen is terrified of him. Every three months the Keep is emptied of all people while the brother visits his sister. When he leaves we return to find more expensive clothes and fashionable fripperies, and Imogen acting like she has been fatally wounded although there is no blood.”

“Why does he come here?” Robert asked calmly enough, but rage burned clearly in his eyes.

“No one but the two of them know for sure. She never seems to be physically hurt beyond a bruise or two, but whatever the truths of the matter, they remain locked together in some evil dance. No, not a dance. That’s not what Imogen calls it.” She paused a moment as she groped for the right word. “A game. She thinks they are playing a game and I don’t believe my lady holds out much hope of winning.”

Robert looked down at his hands and was surprised to see his knuckles white where they clenched the top of the table. Carefully he loosened his grip. “That no longer matters,” he said with deceptive calm. “I am her protector now and as such I will not let anything happen to her in this…game.”

“If she will let you. To Imogen, Roger sent you, and that now makes you a part of the game. She’s frightened that you are Roger’s winning gambit.” She leaned forward earnestly. “That’s why she fears you.”

“She talks to you about this?”

Mary hesitated a moment. “We talked before you came, but since, no. No, now she’s holding on to herself so tightly to stop from falling apart that she can’t let anyone share her fears. She’s isolating herself in her head and it is starting to frighten me.”

Robert stared off into the middle distance, not seeing. He took a deep, steadying breath, trying to gain control of the raw anger that had flared to unexpected life inside of him. He had never experienced a rage like it before, and was at a loss to explain its existence. Moreover, he couldn’t let it rule him now. He needed to be in control, needed calmness to devise a strategy to defeat the man who had suddenly become his enemy. He tried to remember everything he could about the man, even through his anger, a part of him understanding the vital importance of knowing the enemy.

His knowledge was scant at best.

Roger belonged to the lowest set at the