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

face and reassure himself that her demons had indeed fled. Her face was red and her eyes a glassy pink, but the fact that she tried to smile up at him made her the most beautiful being he had ever seen.

He wiped away her last tears with the pad of his thumb. He stared at the droplet of saltwater that beaded on his skin briefly before rubbing them in thoughtfully. He tried to find words of comfort and reassurance, but they eluded him.

He mightn’t know how to be softly caring, he thought with a silent sigh, but years of training boys to be men had taught him to be practical in the face of others’ raw emotions.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked quietly.

She sucked on her bottom lip and shook her head.

He took a deep, fortifying breath. “Sometimes these things don’t seem so bad if you talk about them. They shrink a little if you bring them into the real world.”

“No, they don’t,” she said, her voice roughened with her tears. “Sometimes you talk about them forever, yet they are still big enough to destroy you.”

Robert hesitated for a moment, but couldn’t push her. Perhaps with time, she would share her scarred soul with him, would give him the chance to kiss her wounds as she had kissed his. Until then, he would have to be patient.

He ran his palms down her arms till he was holding her hands. “Would you like me to stay with you?” he asked in a carefully neutral voice, afraid to show just how much hope he attached to her answer.

For a moment Imogen couldn’t breathe. She hadn’t even realized that she wanted him to stay until she heard him say the words, and a part of her shrank from the whole idea of letting a man into her bed, especially with the dark nightmare still chilling her skin. That fear was drowned out by her far-greater need right now for the cleansing comfort he offered. Hesitantly she reached her hand up to the middle of his chest. “Yes. Stay. Please stay.”

Robert didn’t hesitate in case she changed her mind. He wrapped his arms around her back and gently leaned forward till they were both lying on the bed with him outside the covers. It wasn’t the way he wanted to share her bed, but he could sense the nervousness underlying her boldness and he didn’t trust himself enough to crawl in beside her. When she immediately curled her body into his as though she belonged there, he knew that he was doing the right thing.

He closed his eyes and savored the perfection of their simple embrace. It didn’t matter that his body was chilling down rapidly in the cool chamber, not when the warmth of her trust was enough to heat him. It also didn’t matter that only an absolute terror had driven her to accept him in her bed. The fact that he was there was a thing he hadn’t dared hope for yet. It didn’t matter that the closeness of her body was swiftly re-igniting his unfulfilled desires, causing an ache in his body that was as much pain as pleasure. There would be time enough for him to indulge those desires, soon.

All that mattered was that Imogen was curled up trustingly in his embrace and was sleeping peacefully there.

Home.

He was finally home.

Chapter Five

Imogen stood with hands on hips, her face flushed with anger.

“He’s gone where, exactly?” she bit out.

Mary raised her hand, but quickly dropped it with embarrassment, realizing it wasn’t terribly astute to try and pacify a blind person with hand signals.

“I said, he’s gone to the stone tower with a few of the men. They’re going to see what can be done with that pile of rubble, if anything.” Mary tried to ignore the look of fury on Imogen’s face, adding quietly, “It’s actually a very sound idea, Imogen.”

“Oh, most sound,” Imogen snapped. “Everything he has done around here is most sound, most wise or just plain, bloody messianic.” She threw her hands into the air, growling with pure irritation as she stalked over to the window. She wrapped her arms tightly round her middle to try and stop herself from breaking something. There was no point breaking inanimate objects when it was his head she longed to crack like an eggshell.

The sunlight streamed cheerfully through the open window and it seemed to have a little more warmth in it today. Perhaps the long, unrelenting winter might be finally coming to an end. Or perhaps it was the lavish fires Robert had insisted be lit in all of the Keep’s rooms that generated the added warmth that was causing Imogen’s face to flush.

She ground her teeth, angered by something that should have made her happy.

She might have hated the cold dankness of the Keep but she couldn’t stand it that all Robert had to do was wave his magic wand and everything was put to rights. This was her Keep, goddamn it, and she honestly felt that she had looked after it as best she could.

The Keep had become sadly neglected, true, but that had never been Imogen’s choice. It was Roger who decided how she lived in her prison, and he had preferred it to be an all-female prison, forbidding all but two males from serving at the Keep. Duncan functioned as the Keep’s groom, come shepherd, come gardener, come anything else that might possibly be required. Really, he did a remarkable job, for a sixty-four-year-old.

The cook’s son, Lucas Ross, on the other hand, worked in the Keep itself, trying to do any of the small jobs that defeated the women, and at seven years of age he had become a surprisingly good rat catcher.

Imogen felt a growing sense of justification replacing her feeling of incompetence. Which of these two fine examples of masculine strength had Robert actually envisaged as the master woodsman? Imogen thought snidely. While their wood supplies had