Her heart heard his query…and answered him as well.
Aye, you are, my dearest.
He was, and in the most wondrous of ways.
For a long moment, she stood gazing at him before she gave him a wistful smile and eased the covers over his shoulders. Fine, wide-set shoulders, powerful and braw, but not quite sturdy enough to carry the weight of the ghosts plaguing her.
Her very worst dragons.
And it was those beasts she had to flee, not him, for their presence in her bedchamber, even in the inky shadows of the corners, proved more than she could bear.
As quickly and quietly as she could, she dressed, eager to escape before the stinging heat at the backs of her eyes could turn to tears.
At the door, she cast one last glance toward her sleeping husband, then wished she hadn’t, for the accursed shadows in the corners had shifted…their darkness stretching across the room to engulf the bulk of her bed.
Lifting her chin, she turned her back on them and raised the drawbar. “You will not besiege me,” she whispered as she opened the door. “Nor will you make me cry.”
Nor will you ruin his life, she added, the words silent, written in the blood of her heart.
Then she squared her shoulders and waited for Leo to join her. When he did, they slipped from the room. And all the way down the dimly lit passage, she struggled against her tears.
But she needn’t have, for someone else shed them for her.
A darker, more solid shadow than her dragons.
And not nearly as ominous.
Only sad.
Standing vigil in the corner, her cowled robes drawn tight against a cold more chilling than any icy wind to ever lash at Dunlaidir’s walls, the beautiful woman waited patiently until the other shadows faded.
Until their menace moved away fromhim.
And when at last they did, she gave a little sigh he would have credited to the wind, and, wiping the dampness from her cheeks, she, too, faded away.
Chapter 47
She was gone.
Sir Marmaduke knew it even before he came fully awake.
Blessed – or ill-wished, depending – with an uncanny knack for simply knowing things at times, this proved an occasion when his gut instinct sent his heart plummeting.
His blood pumping in his veins, not hot and thick as only hours before, but icy cold and thin with dread, he snaked the flat of his palm across the bed sheets, and knew true alarm at the cold that met his fingers.
Nary a hand-span of lingering warmth remained where she’d lain so sweetly beside him.
Of where they’d loved.
And she hadn’t simply slipped away to tend certain early morning necessities. His perfect-for-him bride,his heart, had vanished in the small hours of the night.
All his doubts and regrets massed together and sat on his soul. A cold and heavy weight even one as hard-muscled as he couldn’t shoulder away.
So he frowned.
Scowled up at the heavily carved ceiling of her bed and wondered if he’d dreamed the glories of the night they’d shared. Had she truly writhed beneath him, sighed her bliss, and called out his name?
Invited him to take her?
