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

but somehow she managed. She moved quietly through the day, and the only satisfaction to be found in it was that she survived.

She even managed to survive the cold formality that had descended between Robert and herself.

She knew that the walls between them were of her own construction, but she lacked the strength to even attempt to tear them down. Not that Robert seemed prepared to scale them either. He retreated behind them, silently waiting like a predator in the shadows.

The evening meal had been a torture of courtesy and politeness. Gone was all laughter and tenderness. In their place stood a cold nothing, and it was a coldness that was infesting the whole Keep, subduing all of the occupants. They all watched their lord and lady warily, puzzled by the sudden rift that had sprung up between the couple overnight. They all went about their duties as if there had been a death.

In a way, there had been. Imogen felt as if she was dying, disappearing a little more with each passing day.

Even the escape of sleep was now denied her. Each night they lay only inches apart and she did nothing to bridge the gap and very quickly the inches became miles. She was alone, just as Roger wanted her to be, and surely he gloated over it with increasing relish in each new message that arrived at the Keep.

The second one arrived not even twenty-four hours after the first, Robert bringing Roger’s messenger up to their chamber midmorning. Imogen had been propped up in bed, trying to swallow a few mouthfuls of bread to stop her stomach’s strident protests. The little bit she had managed to ingest turned to lead when Robert had ground out bitterly, “This idiot refuses to give me the message even though I have solemnly promised to have it read to you.”

“I have my orders, sir,” the messenger said stiffly, obviously offended by Robert’s belligerent attitude.

This time, the messenger was an older man, and Imogen wondered dispassionately what had happened to the child of yesterday as she heard Robert’s growl of, “Well, get on with it, then!”

“Robert, if you would leave us,” she said softly, smiling bitterly as she realized she was now as eager as Roger to banish Robert.

Not that Robert seemed to mind.

He left without even a token protest this time, Imogen realized absently. Roger had been right. The loving husband had been an act. A faultless, unbelievably tempting act. She was almost grateful for that insight, as it helped to numb her. She listened to the messenger’s light voice with a growing fatalism:

My dearest first love,

I hope you have enjoyed the small token I sent you. Giving it to you now seems almost like completing the pledge I made to you all those years ago in the tower room at home. Do you remember that tower, Sister, dear?

I had thought to come for my normal visit, but have decided to wait till Robert has had more of a chance to do his job. Is he still suiting you, dearest one? I think of him as my little gift to you. I watch the two of you with much anticipation and I’m sure neither of you will disappoint. It wouldn’t be a good idea to disappoint me. Remember, the king stands with me. Lies with me as well, which I find terribly convenient.

I shan’t tell you how close to you I am at the moment. I do not want to deprive you of the pleasure you will get out of trying to guess, though here is a small clue: I am as close to you as your last breath.

This time he claimed to be her “loving brother.”

She quickly dismissed the messenger, wanting to be alone with her self-disgust. He knew he’d won. His gloating was clear in the anonymous voices of the messengers he was sending her, and she was letting him. There was nothing she could do about it. All of the battles she had won in the last months came to naught if they could be lost so easily.

And there was nothing she could do about it.

She had always known it would come to this even as she had tried to deny it, had always known the happiness she had found with Robert was an illusion designed to crush her utterly. It had all been part of Roger’s plan. It was this certainty that chilled her to the bone, freezing the scepter of hope that had till then been staying tenaciously alive.

It was like losing her sight to those cold stone steps all over again. Just as Roger had known it would. That damn man knew her too well, Imogen realized as she leaned over the bed to retch the pieces of bread into the chamberpot. He knew her so well that her destruction was a certainty, and he planned to kill her with memories and tantalizing glimpses of what could have been.

She sat bolt upright in bed as she realized with a dawning horror that he had told her that years ago, although she hadn’t understood it. He had told her not with words but with stone. The tower. She had always assumed he had built a replica of the stone tower that had claimed her sight as a cold testament to his power over her, as a cold memorial to all of her pain, but it was more than that, she finally understood. It was the key to her ultimate destruction, Roger’s macabre way of letting her know the method of her own demise.

He was always going to win, and Imogen couldn’t help but admire his skill even as she felt herself ceasing to exist. He played an amazing game, and played to win.

Always.

Chapter Eleven

Robert swung the axe violently down, barely noticing that the log obediently split in two as he mechanically reached for another. Then another, and another.

At some point he had absentmindedly discarded his tunic and the sweat