"Duty? So it was an attack of conscience that made you go back to Hun?"
She stared at eyes that had known loss more brutal than it seemed possible to survive. Such a thing should not happen again. Not through her.
One person was already dead.
There was no other decision.
"Yes," she said. "It was conscience."
The bright flame in the gold eyes turned savage.
Her heart beat and the floor beneath her feet shifted like something living.
The saints give her the strength she needed for this.
"But even if I had not seen my duty at last, I would still have gone back to Hun." She did not blink. "Not because that is my rightful place, but because I choose to."
She tilted her head. The walls seemed to close in.
"I was wrong to let you take me away from him, wrong to run away with you. That is why I left you. I let you think I was dead so that you would not follow me. What we did was a mistake, just a mad, foolish, impulsive mistake."
Brand was ruled by impulse. He would see—
"I came to my senses. I knew Hun would be ready enough to welcome me back. Just as you must have known that."
Her head was tilted at the same arrogant angle. So many years of practice. But her feet were walking backwards. To escape him. Or to escape the deadly bale of falseness that now poured out of her mouth. She did not know.
How could she explain why she was in Wessex?
His stride followed her stumbling footsteps, pace for pace, crowding her in the small space of the crude bower. The burning eyes were relentless.
"I know well enough what was."
"Then—" Her mind was reeling, both from the shock of his presence and the hunted desperation of her thoughts. "Why—" Her voice choked.
Why are you here ? How much do you know ? Have you…have you caught out any of my lies?
What
was
. The sense of that word penetrated the hell inside her head. Her gaze fell to the sword resting on the table: the tempered blade, the gold-chased hilt carved with twisted snakes to give protection. Deadly.
The laws of revenge.
"You found Hun…" Her voice cut off and her gaze sought his, wild, cornered, desperate to discern how much he knew.
"Aye. I found him. What was he thinking, Alina? That a diplomatic mission to the south would keep him from me? Did he truly believe I would not follow him here?"
"Here?"
"What a mask of surprise. Was that what you believed, too, when you came to Wessex to be with him? That I would never find you here?"
Her mouth opened and shut, soundless, without a breath.
'It amazes me, what you and your lover must have believed. Hun did not even know King Osred of Northumbria was dead. He did not know his diplomatic mission in Wessex for his master was over. He was just as surprised as you look now."
But it was not surprise that made her look so, like a terrified madwoman. It was the rawness of shock. She had fled the length of Britain to be safe from Hun, and he had come south in her footsteps, without her knowing. Or him.
"Then—"
"You know the answer. There can be no other since I am here and Hun is not. The man you were betrothed to is dead. I killed him." The gold eyes flickered. "You must have been wondering why he was neglecting you."
The rawness swamped everything. But through it ran the twisting thread of another emotion: relief. It was wrong, a sin doubtless, especially in this place. But— Hun was dead. He would never be able to touch her again.
Her hands gripped the wall behind her to stop herself from falling.
Brand became quite still.
"You are truly shocked."
He did not understand why. She could see it in his face. Somehow he had failed to realize that Hun had had no idea where she was.
The luck was with her. All she had to do was keep her head. She would somehow come through. It looked so well. She had chosen to flee to Wessex and Hun had come south on some mission for his master, King Osred.
"I should have expected how you would feel."
The rough bitterness of Brand's voice seared her. Yet for all that, she could have fallen into his arms right then, just to hear his voice and feel his touch. Even if he killed her.
The nightmare of fear and loathing that had taken shape the day she had looked into the ice-coloured eyes of her lawful betrothed was over. Finished. Her breath shuddered.
Only Brand had been stronger than that fear.
"Alina…"
He would touch her. Her eyes caught the brief blur of gold as his hand moved. His protection. Like heaven's blessing. No longer hers. She jerked away before he could reach her. Instinct, pure, fast and unstoppable in its strength. She could not let him touch tainted flesh. Not with so much guilt on her. Not him.
"No, I will be well, perfectly well. It was a shock. I did not know—" She swallowed bile.
"How…how…" She tried to soften the question but she could not find the words. Probably because there were none. No acceptable way to ask the man you loved how he had come to kill the foul creature you had been given to, sold to.
But she had to know. If there was more harm, if there had been—
"How…"
"You want to know how I killed him?"
"Yes. I want to know how it was."
How you set me free.
She straightened. But that meant she found the deep honeyed-amber of his gaze, so strong, purer than melted gold. Hot. For a fractured moment, the heat of that gaze scorched through everything, every bitter, ugly catastrophe, so that only the pureness was left.
But then the moment broke because it could not live between them. The shadows claimed all.
She had not meant it to be so. None of it But life took no account of intentions. Only of what was.
"Then I will tell you what happened to Hun. But not now. Not here. Come. We are wasting time."
"Wasting—"
"Time." He moved, her dream creature, sliding his weight smoothly from the rough-hewn support of the wall and there was nothing left either in his eyes or his body but the warrior.
"It is a long ride to Bamburgh."
"Bamburgh? You cannot mean to take me back to Northumbria, to Bernicia, after all? Hun is dead. It…it is all over—"
"All over between us?" He leaned over her, holding her captive just with his size, big hands on either side of her head flat against the wall. "No. It is not. Not yet." Her heart clenched.
Vengeance.
She could see the width of his shoulders and the sleek, muscled fullness of his body.
But she could also see his eyes. She would look at nothing but his eyes. He had never harmed her.
But never before had she caused an unjust death.
"You will not take me. There is no reason to."
"What a defective memory you have."
She flinched. He did not move. There seemed nothing of joyous, impulsive, high-hearted man who had taken her before. The man whose heart was capable of pity.
His eyes scored straight through the defence of her plain nun's clothing, straight through to her skin, making her burn, even though there was nothing of the lover in that look, only the predator.
The strength in that warrior's body was absolute. She knew it. There could be no mercy in it. There was no reason for any.
She held his gaze. Tried to think, to work out what she could say.
"If Hun is dead, then it is finished. Done. There can be no reason to want me—"
"What a fool you must think me."
Lethal muscle gathered itself. His hand moved. She had one glimpse of his remorseless face.
His grip was like a band of tempered steel. Inescapable.
"I will not go with you."
Her arm, her whole slight body was wrenched against him. She thought she had known his closeness. She thought she was quite familiar with the measure of his strength. She had not even begun to realize.
He was huge. She could feel him breathe, feel the faint edge of his breath touch the delicate skin of her face, like a mockery of the lover's caress that had once been theirs. But now it was the breath that fed his rage, the overwhelming power of his strength. The fire.
His grip on her arm hurt. She did not think he even realized. The fire burnt too strongly.
She gritted her teeth. She would not make a sound.
But he knew, quite suddenly. The realization came and the terrible grip on her arm abruptly relaxed. So abruptly that her shaking legs would have let her drop. Except that he still held her. Very close. And although his grip no longer hurt her, she knew that she would never break it.
She forced words.
"Do not make me do this." Their breath, wildly uneven, was shared, so that her senses span out of control. Because of his nearness.
"Do you truly wish to stay here?"
She raised her head. The ugly wimple, jammed against his arm, tore, unleashing a swath of heavy, tangled hair. Dark, not Saxon blond, jet-black against coarse white linen.
There was nothing she could do. She could not move.
She watched his gaze fasten on the embarrassing display of what should be kept hidden, and the fire in his eyes took on a different edge. She should be afraid. She was.
Yet the fierce heat in him found its echo in her, the way it always had, unbidden, quite beyond her control.
He knew that. The flare of recognition, of hunger, in his eyes was quite familiar to her. Neither of them had ever been able to disguise it, whatever they wanted.
His hand slid down her arm.
His touch was as unsteady as his breath, heated and not quite controlled. But that did not diminish his strength. He would take her hand, touch her as though—
She jerked away from him. But it was not allowed. His grip fastened on the thin bones of her wrist.
"We made our choices, Alina. Now we must abide them."
Her hand was engulfed by his, buried in his heat. His fingers closed over her flesh and his touch was…gentle.
It was that which took her resolve, and her strength, all of it, so that her body swayed toward him as though she would fall. But he did not let her fall. His hands slid round underneath her arms, supporting her, smoothly, with the expert touch that belonged only to him. Only his touch could make her begin to melt from the inside so that her body seemed to dissolve, helpless against his.
His hands held her, slid across her waist, the small of her back, took her weight so that the sensation of floating intensified. His hands were warm and his strength was complete. He would never let her fall. He never had. His touch had been the only thing she had had in the world to put her trust to. His strength, his warmth could hold her. Against everything.
If she would let it.
"Were you afraid? Is that why you could not go through with it, living an exile's life with me? Is that why you came south instead?"
Oh, the seduction of that voice, no longer burning with such anger. Brand's voice. Laced through with the priceless possibility of understanding.
How easy it would be to say
yes
. She had been afraid of everything, even her love.
She could just admit her fear, here in the shelter of his arms, and perhaps he would forgive her. Perhaps it would open the door on the bright light of the present, the greater lightness of him. That light surrounded her. Her sight dazzled against the wild brightness of his hair that seemed to attract every shard of golden sunlight in the room, against the far greater wildness and brightness of his eyes.
Eyes like that lived. It was the only way to describe it. They saw through things. They knew and accepted all the passions and the hopes, all the inadequacies and the contradictions that had been poured into the creation of human beings. Perhaps they would even understand that other fear, the one she could hardly find words for: the fear she had of love, just as great as her longing.
To win that complete acceptance, to have it offered like the most generous of gifts, would be like wound balm over deadly hurts.
Touching him and looking at him, she could believe he would give it, even though he could no longer love her. If she had ever truly won his love. Such a thing did not seem possible to her.
But what then, if he did understand, if he did forgive her? Because he had such a finely balanced sense of honour the burden would begin all over again.
She could not allow that.
The shadows that lay behind the brightness and the strength in his eyes had been put there by her.
She watched him, and his warmth seeped through her bones.
"Aye. I was afraid," she drawled, "but not of Hun. I understood him and I should have stayed with him. The thing that made me afraid was the criminal folly of what I had done with you."
He did not say a word. Did not move. The eyes just stared at her, with a keenness that would draw blood.
"I…" But her voice stopped. Suppose he did not believe her? Even now? Suppose those eyes that saw so much could see through her deception?
She cast about frantically in her mind for something to say, something that would convince him. Something to show why he had found her cowering in an inadequately endowed Wessex abbey. Wessex. Hun.
"I came south to meet Hun." The slow, mocking sound of her voice formed the lie that would seal her fate. "And to get away from you."
The eyes shut off, closing her out. The gift, the possibility of understanding, was gone. All that was left was the frightening strength, the power that scorned all earthly restriction and would take everything.
He said nothing more. Just turned her around bodily and pulled her towards the door. His heavy booted feet scuffed the packed earth floor so that the meagre rushes flew. Her clumsy skirts, her feet, her whole weight dragged after him.
She fought him.
It was the only thing left, a matter of life-preserving instinct. She fought with a single-minded force that did not belong to her but to some maddened wildcat. She burst his grip. She actually burst his grip because she had surprised him and because there was a small and breathless instant when he held back.
She struck out with all the force that she had and his left arm slammed against the wall. It brought a sound of surprise, or pain. Pain. She had hurt him, more than she had thought. It was now. Now or she,
he
, would be lost.