“I thought you were ill,” she heard herself explaining. “I got up to see if you had a fever, but I…I…stumbled, and I lost my balance just as I realized that you were only suffering a nightmare.”
Her cheeks burned with the falsehood, but she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing she had yearned to comfort him in his troubled sleep; she was his estranged lover, not his wife in any real sense. Yet even now, though she tried not to stare, she could not help glancing again at the scars that were visible once more through his open shirt.
She wasn’t quick enough. He caught her glance and looked down to where it had strayed, terrible awareness spreading over his expression as the full import of what she had seen sank in. He did not move for the space of several breaths, except for the muscle that jumped at the side of his jaw, but when he raised his face again, his eyes burned with a depth of remembered pain that tore at her heart.
A swell of sympathy and anger over all he’d endured rose up in her, and she found herself murmuring, “I am sorry, Damien, that you suffered so.”
He remained silent, his barren expression revealing that what had happened to him was too much to think on, much less speak about. At last he pushed himself to his feet, being careful to hold the edges of his shirt together as he did. Half-turning away, he refastened it.
It wasn’t until he completed that action that he responded quietly, “Aye, well, it is over and done with now.” He stared out the window, dragging one hand through his hair as he added, “And thanks be to heaven, it is almost dawn. Late enough that none should find cause to think it suspicious that I’ve left the wedding chamber.”
“Morning mass will be in little more than an hour,” she reminded him softly as she stood also. “Will you not wait until then?”
“Nay.” He looked back to her, his expression still careful and composed, and it sent a twinge through her.
She studied him for a moment in silence, deciding that if the next six months were to pass in any kind of acceptable manner, it would be in her best interest to know all she could about this stranger who had once held her heart in his hands.
“I could not help noticing yesterday that you did not genuflect when we entered the chapel,” she said evenly. “Or kneel in prayer at any point during our time there.”
He met her stare with his own, unyielding. “You are correct; I did not.”
“Why?”
The directness of her question seemed to startle him. Some dark emotion shadowed his face before he mastered himself again in an impressive show of strength—making her feel almost intrusive to have asked at all. But it was too important to let pass without knowing the answer.
“In our time together, I never knew you to enter a church without praying,” she persisted. “Did you refuse to do so yestereve because you did not wish to appear to sanction our agreement, even in that way?”
A bitter smile glanced across his mouth. “Nay—though that seems as good a reason as any, if it suits you.”
Alissende flushed, irritated that he was making light of her question. “I would not find it so strange had you not also been living previous to this under the rule of an order that observed strict hours of prayer numerous times a day.”
When he did not speak, she paused for a beat, giving him a look that, along with what she was about to say, could not help but goad him into responding. “Of course, perhaps I am mistaken, and what I have heard about the decline of Templar morality is true.”
Damien glowered at her then, his jaw set in a mutinous line.
“Templar laws never altered,” he answered at last, his voice harsh and his tone deliberate. “The order is a noble one, and I acknowledged all precepts upon my initiation, striving to obey every rule without fault, even that which commanded me to give my life in protection of the Brotherhood if called upon to do so.”
He paused, glancing away, and when he looked back at her, her breath caught at the stark pain in his eyes, even more wrenching than what she had seen there before.
“You remember my brother Alexander, do you not?” he asked.
There was no possibility that she could have forgotten. Her memory of Damien’s brother and of the time they had all lived together at court—of the scandal involving Alexander and the Earl of Welton’s daughter, Lady Margaret, and what had come afterward, which had cost herself and Damien so much—still burned after all this time. But she did not let Damien see it. She could not.
Instead, she settled for nodding and answering softly, “Of course I remember. He was sent away to become a Templar shortly before you left for the same purpose.”
“Aye. We served together for five years, until the night of the arrests, when we were both taken in France. After a time, I was separated from Alex in our imprisonment, and part of my torment came in not knowing how he fared. My captors used it against me. In their efforts to make me refute the Brotherhood, they were only too eager to tell me of the agonies my brother suffered. And eventually, they took great pleasure in relating how and when he paid the ultimate price of our Templar vows.”
Damien’s voice was hollow when he finished, “He died alone, Alissende.Abandoned,as was every Templar in captivity, cast away to hell by the very people for whom we had fought and bled.”
Alissende blinked back the stinging in her eyes, and a swell of emotion filled her so that she could not speak.
“Alex died for a cause I once believed was God’s will made evident on earth,” Damien continued. “I survived, only with a bone-deep realization that the Templar Order is lost to me forever, as is—”
He stopped himself short, seeming to reconsider how he wished to phrase the rest; he was frowning, grief still masking his expression. “As is much else.” He looked away for an instant before meeting her gaze again. “That is why I did not pray yestereve.”
“I see.”
“Nay, you do not,” he countered quietly. “Not the full of it. And yet what you have heard is all I can offer right now. Or perhaps ever.”
