Christina Phillips - [Forbidden 02] (29 page)

And that blood had rejected the idea that love wasn’t foul simply because it crossed between one class and another.

If she knew his true lineage, she’d be more revolted than ever by his perceived transgression. At least he’d had the presence of mind to dilute his heritage. Perhaps she’d be more forgiving, thinking he possessed only a drop of noble blood.

What did he care for her good opinion?
The question pounded against his temples, demanding an answer. She was nothing to him but a good fuck. A warm body in the heat of the night. A woman who, despite the circumstances of their initial encounter, never deferred to him or cowed in his presence.

Morwyn. The first person, male or female, he’d been able to fully relax with in years. He didn’t know how or why, only that somehow she’d peeled back the icy armor protecting the core of his wounded psyche and slid inside. Illuminating his darkness with her quick tongue and the incandescent beauty of her radiant smile.

A dull pain twisted through his chest. She had stayed with him so far because it suited her to go to Camulodunon, to visit her Roman friend. She had remained with him because he’d given her safe passage back to Cymru.

He couldn’t fathom, now that he considered it, why she’d returned to the lodgings this night. She could have escaped, somehow, back to her village. She wasn’t like Eryn, who would never have attempted such a dangerous journey by herself.

If Morwyn wanted to leave, she would have. But she’d returned. And that was why he’d just spilled his stinking guts to her.

Had he expected sympathy? Understanding? He deserved neither. Would receive neither. And couldn’t comprehend why the knowledge seared the remnants of his shriveled soul.

“They didn’t kill her?” Morwyn’s voice vibrated with revulsion but her eyes were locked with his and it wasn’t disgust he saw glittering in those enigmatic dark depths. It looked like fear.

His gaze sharpened, and now he saw the way she leaned across the table toward him, her body taut, her face drawn. As if, far from condemning him, she was waiting for absolution.

“No.” But he was distracted, trying to comprehend her strange reaction. There was no reason why Morwyn should empathize. He was seeing emotion where there was none.

Yet still she gazed at him with that incomprehensible illusion of fear and anticipation.

“Then . . .” She hesitated, clearly confused. “You despise them because they couldn’t save her life?”

She appeared strangely preoccupied with details, when he expected slighting words over his choice of wife. In truth he’d hoped her years in slavery, no matter how pampered she’d been, had broadened her mind.

He’d been wrong. She’d looked furious. But now his conviction wavered.
Had
she been disgusted by his confidence? Or had he misunderstood her initial reaction?

Had she, instead, been trying to hide her shock at his vitriolic outpouring against the Druids? As a member of the chieftain class, she would have been brought up to respect those cursed conduits of the gods.

“No,” he said and again was distracted by the woman sitting opposite him, when until now the only woman who had ever distracted his mind had been Eryn. “They didn’t try.” And then the horror of that eve slashed through him, crippling with its brutality, and his chest constricted. “They let her bleed to death. She was unworthy of their sacred skills.”

Morwyn blanched, as if he’d just physically assaulted her. As if she took the Druids’ callousness personally.

“Did she perish in childbirth?” Her tone was so filled with anxiety it took a heartbeat for her actual words to penetrate.

Childbirth? How had she reached that conclusion? For a moment he was blinded by her stupidity, and then reason punched through the ancient, simmering rage. He sucked in a deep breath. Why had he thought it a good idea to try to share a sliver of his past with Morwyn? His past was foul. He was beyond redemption.

He didn’t want to discuss it anymore. Because every word he uttered could only condemn himself further in her eyes.

She reached across the grimy table and curled her hand around his fist. Her touch was light yet firm. Completely unexpected.

“Tell me.” Her voice was soft, compelling. “How did your wife die, Gaul?”

Gaul. How would it feel to hear his true name on her lips? He didn’t want to contemplate it, because it would never happen. He’d always be her Gaul and, gods, that was fine because anything was better than hearing her call him
Dunmacos
.

“We were attacked at night.” He’d been returning from a gathering of tribes in Gaul, where he’d represented his father. After three years of marriage his kin had finally, with varying degrees of reluctance, accepted his choice of wife, and once again he was involved in the political machinations of retaining his family’s remorseless grip on the power they retained beneath the Roman Empire.

For no other reason than to prolong their time together away from the mantle of disapproval that still lingered in their home village, he’d decided to stay overnight in a hamlet. Nestled on the slopes of an inconspicuous valley, total population scarcely twelve, the danger of attack hadn’t even crossed his mind. Neither did it cross the minds of the two warriors who’d accompanied them on the journey, as they offered no protest when he told them to continue onward.

Morwyn’s fingers tightened around his, as if in silent sympathy. She wouldn’t offer such solace if she could see into the evil pit of his soul.

“They burned the hamlet to the ground. Murdered the men, raped the women and children and took whatever they didn’t kill as slaves.” Bren should have died that night, along with Eryn. But by the malevolence of the gods and the cursed ministrations of the Druids, he’d survived.

Morwyn didn’t speak. But she didn’t look away either. He threaded his fingers through hers, rested his jaw against their joined hands.

“Someone escaped. Roused the local rulers.” His kin. And they’d sent a contingent of warriors and two of the most highly skilled Druids.

It had been too late. Drifting between this world and the next, he’d fought the Druids, his hoarse voice pleading with them to attend Eryn. To save his beloved.

But they’d ignored him. And used their powers to harness his maddened spirit, to wrench it back into his corporeal body, to anchor him once more on the mortal plane.

He was the one they had been sent to save. And by the time they finally deemed him capable of being moved, there was no one left in that ravaged hamlet who could benefit from their formidable skills.

“Is it possible . . .” She hesitated, as if unsure whether to continue. “Perhaps your wife was beyond their help before they arrived.”

Smashed to a bloodied pulp, unable to move and scarcely able to draw breath into his damaged lungs, he’d still heard Eryn’s every terrified cry as the attackers had brutalized her. When he’d finally pushed his broken body onto his side to try to protect her, one of them launched a spear in his direction. And the world turned scarlet.

Later, the Druids had proclaimed that the gods had guided the weapon, sparing his life, and he’d believed them. How else could he have survived such blood loss unless the gods wanted to keep him alive for their further vindictive pleasure?

He rubbed her knuckles across his roughened jaw. Focused on her dark eyes, so full of compassion. He could almost allow himself to believe she felt something more than lust for him.

“Perhaps she was.” It was the first time he’d ever acknowledged the possibility aloud, even though the thought had tortured him incessantly over the years. “But they had no intention of even trying. They ignored her as if she were nothing but a piece of bloodied meat.”

Morwyn didn’t answer right away. Her other hand cradled his face, a tender gesture devoid of sexual overtones. As if all she wished to give was comfort.

She whispered words in a language he didn’t know. Yet eerie shivers snaked along his spine, as if somewhere deep inside his subconscious he recognized the foreign incantation. But before he could grasp their significance she trailed her fingers through his hair and the sensation splintered.

And then she spoke. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Back in their room Bren watched Morwyn light two lamps and place them beside the bed. The ache in his heart was still there. Would always be there as a constant reminder of how he’d failed Eryn. But somehow, since sharing that small, vital segment of his past with Morwyn, the pain no longer crippled every breath he took.

Unease slithered deep in his gut. He didn’t deserve even that modicum of peace. He searched his mind for Eryn’s face, focused on the fragile memory and heard once again her agonized cries as he’d struggled against oblivion.

But the familiar guilt-soaked pain didn’t rip through his chest and tear open his heart. Instead, the hazy image of Eryn smiled at him, a tender smile, as if she forgave him for being unable to save her that night.

The smile he saw so often during his tangled nightmares. Her unequivocal forgiveness, a shining star piercing his blooddrenched existence. The forgiveness he’d refused to acknowledge for so many torturous years.

He couldn’t allow her to forgive him. Because he could never forgive himself.

“Gaul.” Morwyn’s voice dragged him back to the present. She was standing in front of him, tall and proud, her dark braid snaking over her shoulder to her waist. Her gaze caught his and didn’t waver. “Within these four walls . . . do you trust me?”

He trusted her enough to tell her something he’d not told another soul in six years. He’d trusted her not to poison him in Camulodunon, or thrust her dagger through his heart when they arrived back in Cymru.

Did he trust her?

“As much as you trust me.”

A small smile quirked the corners of her lips, but vanished in an instant. With a stab of surprise he realized she wasn’t as confident as she appeared. He wrapped his hand around her braid and tugged gently, tracing the knuckles of his other hand along her jaw.

“I trust you more than perhaps I should.” Again she smiled; again he caught the flicker of uncertainty behind her words. “I fear it crept upon me unawares.”

How easy it would be to tell her the truth. Morwyn was strong, brave. She’d know the necessity for silence. For stealth. She could even assist in his cover, provide alibis for when he needed to meet with Caratacus.

The vision glowed bright in his mind for one glorious moment before turning to ash.

He would never put her in such danger. The life he’d chosen was a solitary one, and the fewer people who knew of his true identity, the safer they all were. Besides, he’d promised to escort her back to her home village. He wondered why she hadn’t reminded him. He wouldn’t offer. Perhaps she’d decide to stay in the town.

For a while.

“Within these four walls,” he said, “I trust you with my life.”

She cradled his face in a tender gesture, as if she were holding something infinitely precious. He savored the sensation, relished the thought, even as cold reality seeped through his consciousness.

Morwyn had no such finer feelings for him. And even if she did, should she discover the depths to which he’d sunk, the atrocities he’d committed, her affection would wither and pollute her soul.

Another reason why he could never allow her to discover who he truly was.

“I don’t want your life.” Her voice was soft and her fingertips grazed his throat, hovered as if fascinated over his pulse. “I only want to look at you. As you have looked at me.”

Instinctively he tensed. “No.” It was harsh. Nonnegotiable. The thought of her recoiling from the hideous sight of his body caused his guts to clench in denial.

She rested the palms of her hands against his shoulders, and her heat seeped through the material of his tunic and branded his flesh.

“Please.” Her voice was a breathy whisper. “Just this once. Just for this night. Let me see you as you are.”

“That’s the one thing you never want to see, Morwyn.”

She gave an oddly vulnerable smile that caused a strange pain deep in his chest. “I’ve seen the scars of battle before, Gaul. For a warrior, you’re astonishingly vain about preserving the illusion of your beauty.”

A short laugh huffed from his mouth. Unexpected. He didn’t mean to laugh. Except when he was with Morwyn he couldn’t seem to help himself.

“I have no such vanity with regard to my beauty.” What an extraordinary choice of words she’d used. “But these aren’t battle scars. They’re—” The words choked his throat. Because they were his scars of shame. Of degradation. The scars that reminded him every moment of every day that
he had survived
.

Something flickered in her eyes, as if she knew what he could never say. As if she had known from the moment she’d made her request how much capitulation would cost him.

Silently he pulled back from her and removed his belt. As he undressed, Morwyn didn’t break eye contact and didn’t offer to help. She simply looked at him, and as he ripped his undertunic from his body and tossed it across the floor he glared at her, daring her not to flinch or shudder or turn away in disgust.