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

“Sounds perfect. The castle you intend to build will need the odd head on its walls as decoration.”

“Tempting, isn’t it?” Robert’s eyes gleamed with the possibilities.

“Well then, go and be tempted, my friend.”

The morning air was brisk and the sun not quite risen when Robert walked Dagger into the courtyard. Despite the earliness of the hour, the Keep was already starting to wake, the sounds of life filling the air. Matthew waited for him in the courtyard, mounted a magnificent dappled warhorse. He sat slumped in his saddle, a look of belligerent resignation clear on his face.

Robert couldn’t help but feel the familiarity of the scene. Things seemed to have come full circle, here he was leaving the Keep and Matthew was in almost exactly the same spirit as he had been five months ago.

Robert shook his head. Five months didn’t sound right, somehow. It seemed at once like forever but also the merest blinking of an eye. Still there was no denying that in five months, everything had changed. He had traveled north with dreams of mortar and land, but he was leaving it without his heart. He was now more owned than owning.

Home. It was hard to remember how simple his ideas of home had been. To him it had meant only an abode, a roof to shelter under, but now the word was a rich tapestry woven with all the joy, fear, helplessness, protectiveness and desire that had come into his days.

His entire being was now entwined inexorably with the existence of this simple little Keep. He couldn’t explain it, but over the past months he had become a part of all the souls that found their shelter within his walls, especially with the fragile lady who unknowingly held his heart in her hands.

Not wanting to waste his last night at the Keep on sleep, he had lain in bed and watched over Imogen as she slept, but he hadn’t been content merely to look. No, for the first time in weeks, he allowed himself to reach out a hand and touch her. He had gently traced the sweep of her hair, ran a finger down her delicate nose, rubbed his thumb over the swell of her bottom lip. He had touched her so lightly that he had only just been able to feel her. It hadn’t been enough. His body had burned to do more, but he had been loath to disturb her. She had finally, after weeks of nightmare-filled nights, managed to find sleep and he wouldn’t wake her from that temporary escape from life.

Though perhaps she hadn’t slept that deeply.

He had seen the solitary tear glittering in the firelight as it slipped from under her lashes, watched as it slid silently over her temple and lost itself in her hair. He had wiped its path gently away, hating to think that she cried even in her dreams. The sense of helplessness seemed to have lodged itself permanently in his chest, and he couldn’t say that he was developing much of a taste for the emotion. It was also more than a little frightening to realize he would have been quite content to spend a lifetime just watching over her.

It had been hard to find the willpower to leave, but somehow he had.

He had leaned over and placed a chaste kiss on her forehead, whispering, “Be safe, Little One, and know that I love you.”

While the rightness of his love made him whole, it also left him exposed and vulnerable. He had risen swiftly from the bed and quietly got dressed. He had denied himself the luxury of looking back, knowing that if he did he might never be able to find the will to leave his home and his love.

“Well, are you going to actually get on that horse, or are you going to waste the whole day mooning about?” Matthew asked testily, breaking into Robert’s brooding thoughts.

“I thought age was supposed to make a man more patient,” Robert said with a smile as he ran a hand along Dagger’s mane.

“Hardly. There is a very limited time left to me and I have absolutely no desire to spend it frivolously watching you stare into space.”

Robert laughed as he mounted. “Well, come on, then,” he said, and spurred his horse forward and out of the courtyard, not once looking back.

There was no need, when he carried it all in the space where his heart had once been.

Chapter Twelve

Robert prowled around the room, the frustration that boiled restlessly inside him demanding a physical outlet. A week spent as the king’s “guests” and he felt like he had been static for an eternity. His muscles now demanded work, even if that work was only this pointless wondering.

As he paced, his mind seethed with an uncomfortable mixture of memories and questions.

No, that wasn’t honest. It wasn’t questions, plural, that haunted him but a single, solitary question. All of his curiosity could be rendered down to one simple, pure droplet of puzzlement: exactly what the hell was going on here?

Robert strode from one side of the room to the other, then back again as his bewilderment went round and round his mind with a dizzying speed, but still he could find no answer. Not that it should have surprised him. Nothing was as it should be.

In the time it had taken the king’s summons to reach Robert and for him to make his way down South, the king had decided to remove the court from Westminster Palace. Apparently, on whatever idle whim guided him, William had felt an overwhelming urge to inspect one of the many fortresses he was having built along the South Eastern coastline above the line of London.

Robert’s jaw clenched in frustration. God save him from the whims of monarchs! He had wasted valuable time in the pointless trip to Westminster, and had then been forced to make his way through