Damien didn’t respond right away; the dangerous emotions that had been at play as the pieces here began to fall into place prevented him from speaking at first. Instead he met Michael’s gaze head-on, feeling a surge of dark satisfaction as the young cleric seemed to recoil, his cheerful expression fading in response to the warning he clearly read there.
“I may look much the same,Father Michael,” Damien at last answered in a deceptively mild tone, “but you will soon discover how deeply I have changed if you do not cease with these niceties and tell me who is behind this proxy union that has been foisted upon me.”
Michael paled even further and Ben looked taken aback, yet before either man could do or say anything, Damien heard a whispering of silk behind him. He stiffened, his gaze shifting just slightly away from them. Yet he could not bring himself to turn around and face the person who was approaching them. He would not.
Holding himself as still as he might, Damien braced himself. He struggled to maintain some semblance of control, aware even as he did so that it wouldn’t be enough. Nay, not for what he realized, now, was coming.
The light tread of footsteps came closer, closer…and then the delicate scent reached him, a subtle, enthralling blend of sweet woodruff and ambergris sweeping up to fill his senses. He closed his eyes, the power of the memories it unleashed twitching through him, tender and aching to the point of pain. Sweet Jesu…
He did not need to turn around to know it was her.
“Please, Damien, you must not threaten Michael. You will learn all that you wish to know.”
Please, Damien…
Alissende’s melodic voice echoed, strumming his soul as it had in the thousand dreams he’d endured in the years since last he’d seen her. He opened his eyes, and stiffly he turned his head, trying to call up a stronger blaze of anger to combat the tide of feelings he knew would stab deep when he looked upon her once more. But it did no good.
He met her gaze, and his breath stilled with the intensity of what swept through him. Alissende, who had been both his lover and his curse…the woman who had made him want her with a fierceness that had nearly killed him, standing before him now in a seeming mockery of all that had come before.
Damien grasped at the threads of his bitterness and disillusioned anger, subduing the hurt by dint of pure will as he forced a sardonic smile to his lips, embellishing it with a slight nod. He noted that her mother stood just behind her, but he made himself continue gazing upon Alissende in the same way he might constrain himself to keep still through the agony of cauterizing a bloody wound. She was as exquisite as ever, with her skin of cream and roses and that rich, dark hair, the sheer veiling she wore over it powerless to conceal its luster in the wash of sun spilling through the chamber.
But it was her eyes that plucked most at the wounded shreds of his heart. Her gaze pulled him in, drowning him in violet-blue depths that were full of anguish, longing, and something more that he would not allow himself to contemplate if he was to remain strong, as he must.
As he must, heaven help him…
“I am the one to whom you are bound in proxy marriage,” Alissende murmured, her expression open and vulnerable.
“Why?”
Damien rasped the question before he could stop himself. But she knew what he was asking…she knew better than anyone. What had happened between them at court five years ago made this circumstance nigh on impossible to comprehend, and yet here he was, reeling with the truth she had just offered:Shewas his proxy bride. She, Lady Alissende de Montague, who had shown him what it was to feel love beyond all reason and then left him bleeding and broken in the aftermath.
“The reasons are…complicated.” She frowned slightly, he noticed, and struggled not to break her gaze with him.
He could not find his voice to respond, found himself paralyzed by it all, even though he had once allowed himself countless reveries about what he might do and say—about how he might feel—if he chanced to meet her again. His spine felt stiff and his neck ached as he finally managed to say, “Do not concern yourself with expounding upon them, lady, for in truth, I do not need to hear them. I cannot be bound in marriage to anyone, and I had already resolved to tell the one responsible as much. That the person in question is you makes no difference.”
His mouth tightened with the lie, but he pushed on. “This proxy union cannot proceed without my participation in the remaining steps that would sanctify it. And as I must decline,” he nodded once more, managing to execute a gallant, if rigid, bow in the style of the charm he’d once possessed, “you will allow me to bid youadieu.”
He straightened and had half-turned toward the door, intending to escape the chamber before his memories and Alissende’s wounded gaze froze him like ice to the smooth wooden floor, when Michael called in challenge, “What, sir—will you allow your pride to govern you and flee before you hear the full truth of what brought you here?”
Damien stiffened at the barb. Every muscle in him screamed for the release to be found in dealing out a satisfying dose of bone-crunching violence to anyone misguided enough to continue trying to stop him, but somehow he found means to restrain himself. For the time being, at least.
The leashed anger radiating from him, however, was apparently sufficient to make the young priest’s voice crack as he finished, “If nothing else, my cousin’s actions on your behalf have earned her the right to be heard in full this day. You owe her that, at least.”
“He is right, Damien,” Ben echoed. “You should hear what brought this all about before you make any final decisions.”
“You knew more about this than you let on, I see.” Damien shifted a stony glare to the man he had considered his friend.
“Only a little,” Ben admitted, “but I remained silent for fear of the very reaction you have shown here today.”
“Oh, enough,” Lady Blanche broke in, waving her hand at them all imperiously. “Let us simply admit that what we face here is unsavory for everyone involved, and be done with it.”
Wonderful…now her mother was stepping into the fray as well.
Damien realized that he felt like a cornered animal as he looked round at the three conspirators hemming him in: Ben, Lady Blanche, and Father Michael. But not Alissende. Nay, she remained in the background looking restrained and somber.
Though it was almost painful to do so, he allowed his gaze to linger on her again a bit longer than was necessary, noting that her face was pale and that she was keeping her gaze trained to her hands, now clasped tightly in front of her. If he didn’t know better, he might be deceived into thinking she was as uncomfortable with this little reunion as he was.
“You should know, Sir Damien, that my daughter resisted our efforts to initiate this proxy with you,” Lady Blanche continued, both startling him and pulling his attention back to her again. “In fact, until Michael made it clear that you might well perish under the questioning of your inquisitors, she would not hear of it.”
