It wasn’t possible, unless she had come to love him. And she couldn’t love him. How could she when she knew he was playing on Roger’s side? Playing Roger’s game, was Roger’s man.
But if it was true, if despite all logic she actually loved Robert, then Roger had won, just as he had always told her he would.
She drew an unsteady breath, smelling Roger’s gloating satisfaction in the air. When he caught up with her this time it would be worse than it had ever been. This time he would no longer have to wait. This time, he would stop only when there was nothing of her left.
This time. Would it start like it always did? Would she wake from her tortured sleep and know he was there? She knew the answer.
She would wake and find him waiting. There would be no warning, no time to plan. There would be nothing she could do to protect herself. “Run, Little Sister, I want you to run.” His voice would sound so normal that it only made what he said, what he was about to do to her, with her, all the more grotesque.
She would run. Her hands would be sweaty and she would struggle frantically with the bar on her chamber door. Eventually it would lift. It would be in the passageway that the walls of panic would press grindingly in on her. She would be slumped in a cowering heap when Roger found her.
His excitement would be a tangible presence as he touched her, hurt her. “Beg me, Little Sister. Beg me to take you. Beg me and all of this will stop.” She had heard his calm voice caress over those words so often that even though she was safely away from them for now, she covered her ears. It didn’t work. His voice was trapped in her head. “Well then, if you won’t beg, we will have to play a little more.”
And he would play, but this time he wouldn’t stop. This time he wouldn’t wait for her to beg. He would take her utterly and at that moment she would cease to exist altogether. That was the only way this torturous game could end. She had always known that.
But for a short, wonderful moment, she had dared to let herself forget that. That was why she hated Robert even as a small, traitorous part of her thought she might be in love with him. She hated him for showing her hope. She had actually dared to believe that at last the nightmares were truly over. But they weren’t and she was too weak to fight them now that they had returned.
Roger’s win would be pathetically easy, she realized listlessly, but instinctively crossed her arms over her middle. It was a gesture that proved she wasn’t yet as entirely resigned as she needed to be. She couldn’t be if she was actually trying to protect, however feebly, the heart that now beat under her own.
That small, living secret was the one thing that repeatedly managed to penetrate the fog that surrounded her. Under her cold palms there lived another soul struggling its way into life. It seemed impossible to imagine such a thing, but this unborn child would not be denied its existence just because it seemed impossible. It did exist, even if she didn’t.
That knowledge was startling in its newness. She had been standing like a lifeless doll as all of her gowns were altered to fit her changing shape. Her waist seams had to be let out, as everything else had to be taken in. Even then, she hadn’t seen the truth. It had taken Mary’s flat “You’re pregnant” for her to understand the changes taking place in her own body.
She had yelled at Mary, told her that she lied, that she had got it wrong, that she wasn’t to tell anyone, but even as she had denied the possibility, a growing sense of wonder had consumed her. For a moment, she had actually felt a quickening of life and hope in her own soul.
Of course, that died the moment she recalled that her child was not only a living symbol of just how close she had come to actually believing in Robert, but also another living hostage to fate. Roger was circling ever closer now and any child of hers would be destined to suffer her fate.
She couldn’t save it, any more than she could save herself.
Sometimes she felt disgusted that her body had betrayed her utterly and at other times the knowledge that the baby would experience her fate was a cold pain in her chest. But there was nothing she could do, so she ignored the child, ignored Mary’s concerns. Or, at least, that’s what she tried to do.
The contrary child seemed to take every opportunity to remind her of its existence, as if it was refusing to be denied out of being. Already, the child was too much like its father. She clenched her hands on her lap and bit down on her bottom lip. No matter how she hated it, hated him, all of her thoughts kept returning to him. The worst of it was that she couldn’t stop herself from softening a little as memories assaulted her.
She could almost hear the deep rumble of his infrequent laughter floating all the way from London to warm her as sunshine never could. She remembered his rough kindnesses and clumsy gentleness. She had even caught herself smiling at memories of his flaring temper. It was a smile that died as those harmless memories brought more dangerous ones with them, memories of the cleansing depths of their passion. In Robert’s arms she had felt herself washed free of all her brother’s corruption.
For a time she had actually dared to believe that somehow he had given her back all that she had lost when she had looked into Roger’s eyes that day in the tower and seen his perverse desires for the first time. But such beliefs were dangerous. They burned away a little of her numbness and no matter how she tried to fight it, Robert intruded. He had taken possession of her dreams. Each night, she dreamed dreams of once more being held securely in his arms as he woke her body to all the desires of the flesh. She half-remembered, half-imagined, the feel of his large body as it covered hers, his turgid erection scorching her with the intensity of his desire. When she woke she felt aching and hollow, her arms clutching nothing but cold, empty bedding.
It was a torture to know that her body and soul called out for a man who would betray her, but no matter what she did, hope kept sneaking under her guard.
It was hope that was going to kill, doubtlessly just as Roger had planned it would. There was nothing she could do to stop it.
Nothing at all.
She was dragged from a dreamless sleep by the sound of Mary breathlessly calling her name.
“What?” she managed to mutter groggily, trying to free herself from the hands that were ruthlessly pulling her into a sitting position as if she had no more substance than a lifeless doll.
“My lady, you must come at once!” Mary yelled frantically as she threw a robe over Imogen’s shoulders and began pulling her to her feet. “It’s an emergency.”
Imogen was hustled out of the chamber’s doorway before she even had time to protest.
Not that protesting would have done her any good, she thought sleepily as she was propelled barefooted over the Keep’s cold floors. Mary had obviously run mad.
She held on to Imogen’s hand tightly as they ran down the stairs, but even as Imogen’s dazed mind screamed that this was madness, weeks of mindless acquiescence had robbed her of any ability to fight it.
Mary dragged her into the silent hall, then let go of her hand, leaving her stranded and bewildered. For the first time in an age she felt rage boil sluggishly to life inside her. She straightened her shoulders, and tried to marshal the calm that she wasn’t quite feeling right at that second.
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, Mary? Why, exactly, am I not in my bed?” she asked through gritted teeth.
“I’m afraid that is my fault, my lady. Gareth didn’t think it was a good idea for me to present myself to you in your bedchamber. He seemed to think it might be compromising somehow. God knows why, I don’t think I remember even how to compromise a lady anymore.”
Imogen quickly pulled her robe more securely around her shoulders before turning to the decidedly masculine voice she couldn’t identify through her confusion.
“Who’s there?” she demanded, her voice rising to a squeak on the last syllable.
“I’m deeply hurt, my lady. I’ve only been gone a relatively little while and already you seem to have forgotten me. How fickle art woman!” the voice chided softly.
“Matthew?” she asked hesitantly, then a warm rush of welcome filled her as she felt her cold hands being held in his arthritic ones. “Matthew!”
Robert had come home, she realized with bewildered confusion. She hated him, she told herself sternly, but even as she thought it, her foolish heart skipped a beat.
“My lady,” Matthew said solemnly as he placed a kiss on her knuckles and she could tell by the cracks of his protesting joints that the old man knelt before her.
She reached out a hand and groped for his shoulder. “No, no, please don’t do that,” she said, hauling him back to his feet.
“We don’t have time for this folly,” Gareth ground out with exasperation. “We have to get her out of here as quickly as possible.”
Imogen’s brows furrowed in confusion. “Gareth, you’re here too? Just what is going on? What are you talking about? Are you here, Robert?”
An embarrassed silence was her only answer.
Gareth looked quickly to Matthew, who shook his head to the unspoken question, then cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Matthew can explain it all to you.”
Ignoring Matthew’s ironic “Thanks very much!” Gareth walked quietly over to Imogen and, placing his arm around her shoulders, he guided her over to a seat near the hearth. The embers of a fire still glowed gently and Gareth made sure she was settled comfortably before moving to stand behind her. He barely resisted the urge to place his hands protectively on her shoulders, but to do so wasn’t his right.
His jaw clenched and he folded his arms over his chest instead. He would have given everything he owned for Imogen not to have to face the blow that was coming. He would have taken it himself if he could have. She looked so fragile, sitting there, lost in the large chair, and he couldn’t stop from worrying that perhaps she didn’t have enough strength left to survive this after she had survived so much else.
“Well?” Imogen asked hesitantly. “What is going on?”
Matthew dropped stiffly into the chair opposite hers with a small groan and he stared deep into the embers, trying desperately to find the words to say what had to be said. How did you tell a woman that her husband had probably already been executed for treason? A quick, clean cut seemed to him the best way to inflict such a cruel wound.
“Your brother has accused Robert of treason and the king believes him. He has been imprisoned and is now awaiting execution.” The old man sighed before gruffly adding, reluctantly, “For all we know the deed has already been done.”
“No,” she whispered, her horror dawning. Her face became a mask of confusion. “No. He can’t be dead. That’s not the way it’s supposed to happen. That isn’t the way of it at all.”
As Matthew listened to her strangely stilted, un-shocked reaction, the guard’s blithe words about Imogen’s probable complicity in Roger’s schemes suddenly reappeared unbidden in his mind.
“Care to explain to us, lass, just how much of this you already knew?” he asked darkly, his voice cold with suspicion.
Gareth took a protective step closer to Imogen and glared warningly at Matthew, but she didn’t even notice the threat inherent in Matthew’s words, her mind too absorbed by the devastating implications of what they had just told her.
It was unbelievable!
In her agitation, she got up and began pacing the room, words tumbled out unchecked. “Roger wouldn’t do this. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s me that’s supposed to be destroyed by his games, not Robert. For God’s sake, Robert is his man in this. He can’t destroy Robert. Why would Roger do that? It just
doesn’t
make sense…unless Robert was innocent, unless Robert never meant to hurt me. If that’s so…”
If that was so, then it was she who had betrayed Robert, not the other way round. If that was so, then the world Robert had shown her, the laughter and smiles he had shared with her, the passions he had built in her, they had all been real.
And she had thrown it all away, thrown him away. She had hidden behind her fear, her hate, her pain, and closed herself off from the one good thing to enter her life. She had sent him into danger and not once given him the only thing he had ever asked of her, although he had never put it into words. All he had ever wanted was her love and she had held herself back. It didn’t matter that she had every reason to doubt, not when none of those reasons had anything to do with him.
And that was Roger’s ultimate victory, she realized bitterly. She had been in his dark games for so long that she had not even been able to reach out and take the hand of the man who had wanted to do nothing more than take her into the light.
Now that loving man was going to die and that too would be her fault.
She buried her head in her hands, her thin shoulders visibly shaking.
“I can’t let him die for me,” she whispered, her voice breaking.
Matthew’s suspicions dissolved as his agile mind quickly began to make sense of her garbled ramblings. “It’s not your choice to make,” he said gruffly, trying to ignore that part of himself already grieving for the man he would have been proud to call his son. “What’s done is done and we must move on and start planning for the future. Robert told me to get you out of England, and that is just what I intend to do.”
“Did he say where he wanted us to go?” Gareth asked, his voice thoughtful as he quickly began sorting in his mind all that needed to be done before they abandoned the Keep.
Matthew shook his head. “He didn’t have time to go into specifics. Anywhere out of the reach of the king of England should do the trick. Somewhere warm and Mediterranean, I think.”
Gareth narrowed his eyes. “We could do that. My brother has lived in Italy for the last five years, fighting for a Florentine nobleman. I’m sure he would be able to take us in, help us get Imogen established.”
“Sounds perfect.”
“What will you do about money?” Mary asked practically, already doing mental inventories of everything in the Keep, trying to work out just what Imogen would need. “And I doubt whether either of you realize just how much time it will take to pack up a household this size.”