She must never forget that Roger had robbed her of her vision, robbed her of her youth. She should never forget that the man who had taken her very life away from her was the same man who had sent Robert to her dark prison. If she forgot, Roger would win.
She sighed. It sounded simple but was so hard. It had been too long since she had been held, too long since she had felt the warmth of another’s concern. The forgetting was all too easy. Her reality seemed less real when she found herself drowning in Robert’s roughly tender charms.
And losing herself in that charm could prove deadly.
Robert walked up to the large desk in the center of the room. It was dusty from disuse, but the quality of the oak furniture was evident, he thought with some satisfaction, and he was making sure that the dust wouldn’t last long.
He had given his orders and he expected them to be obeyed. He wanted the Keep cleaned from top to bottom and he had made it painfully clear that there wasn’t one inch of his new home so insignificant that it wasn’t worthy of his inspection.
He looked after what was his.
He ran his hands over the oak table, trying to fire a flare of ownership, trying to find satisfaction in all that this morning’s vows had brought him, but instead a hollow feeling seemed to have lodged itself permanently inside of him.
That emptiness had flickered into life when Imogen had coldly rejected his help, and it had grown to crowd the day.
He had tried to fight it, tried to deny the sudden hollowness of his victory. He had called everyone in the keep together and issued their new instructions, had sorted out the arrangements for a suitable wedding feast that evening and had set about cleaning up the stables in preparation for the horses he had coming in easy stages from the Welsh borders.
Everything was being done as he had commanded.
Even now he could smell the succulent aromas of the feast being prepared in the great hall. No,
his
great hall, he corrected himself sternly, but the long-awaited concept was stillborn in his mind, swamped by the image of Imogen’s cold face as she had told him he was surplus to requirements. He had not been prepared for the dismissal, not after that all-too-brief kiss they had shared.
Just remembering it brought a pulsing heat to his loins. Holding her in his arms, feeling the innocent heat of her lips under his had shifted the universe. He had forgotten bargains, forgotten his name, and forgotten all but the bit of the world that he had enclosed in his arms.
And then she had turned from him, rejected him.
His mind relentlessly circled the memory. He couldn’t seem to let it go, even though he knew he was behaving like a half-starved dog with a bone.
“My lord,” Mary said quietly from the door that he had left half open.
She was obviously uncomfortable and not sure how to approach the lion in his den. Good, Robert thought savagely, even as a heated flush of embarrassment climbed his neck at being caught staring broodingly at a dusty table. He sat down on the chair behind the table and held his breath as the furniture creaked ominously, horrified at the prospect of being thrown onto his rump in front of this supremely dignified woman. His luck was in, however, and the chair held.
“What do you want, Mary?” he growled.
“I just thought you might like to know that my lady is having a rest before the feast.”
Robert raised his eyebrows in surprise. He never believed for a moment that Mary genuinely thought he needed to know such pointless information. She flushed under his scrutiny and started to shuffle her feet. Her very apparent embarrassment made her look a little more human.
“Is there something more important you have come to tell me, or have you just temporarily lost your mind?” Robert murmured.
It was the opening Mary had apparently been waiting for. She stepped fully into the room and closed the door firmly behind her.
“I just wanted to know if my lady had offended you too deeply.”
He shrugged his shoulders with a careful negligence. “No more than she intended to offend me, I am sure.”
Mary shook her head and frowned in exasperation. “She didn’t mean to be offensive, my lord. Can’t you see that she was reacting, not acting? She wasn’t thinking about you at all.” Her voice pleaded to be understood even as it lectured.
Robert smiled faintly. “I had gathered that much. Her indecent rush to leave the hall was, I felt, a fair indication of her extreme lack of interest in her husband.”
“No!” she said sharply. “That’s not it. You don’t understand. It wasn’t a rational thing. She was too afraid to be logical.”
“Afraid! What had she to be afraid of?” he snapped out bitterly. “I have yet to do anything to frighten anyone. I simply haven’t had time to make anyone afraid.” A feral gleam lit his eyes as he added ominously, “Yet.”
Robert felt momentarily in control until Mary smiled gently, clearly unperturbed by his playacted ferocity.
“It’s not you she fears, my lord, well, not yet, at any rate. Her fears come from a time long before she was threatened with this marriage.”
“Threatened! It wasn’t…”
Mary simply lifted a hand to still his blustering. “This isn’t about you, not yet. It is Roger who is the threat.”
The words had a chilling effect on his anger. “She fears her brother?” he asked coldly.
“Yes,” Mary said flatly. “I can’t claim to know all that’s between them, but I know that Lady Imogen is terrified of him. Every three months the Keep is emptied of all people while the brother visits his sister. When he leaves we return to find more expensive clothes and fashionable fripperies, and Imogen acting like she has been fatally wounded although there is no blood.”
“Why does he come here?” Robert asked calmly enough, but rage burned clearly in his eyes.
“No one but the two of them know for sure. She never seems to be physically hurt beyond a bruise or two, but whatever the truths of the matter, they remain locked together in some evil dance. No, not a dance. That’s not what Imogen calls it.” She paused a moment as she groped for the right word. “A game. She thinks they are playing a game and I don’t believe my lady holds out much hope of winning.”
Robert looked down at his hands and was surprised to see his knuckles white where they clenched the top of the table. Carefully he loosened his grip. “That no longer matters,” he said with deceptive calm. “I am her protector now and as such I will not let anything happen to her in this…game.”
“If she will let you. To Imogen, Roger sent you, and that now makes you a part of the game. She’s frightened that you are Roger’s winning gambit.” She leaned forward earnestly. “That’s why she fears you.”
“She talks to you about this?”
Mary hesitated a moment. “We talked before you came, but since, no. No, now she’s holding on to herself so tightly to stop from falling apart that she can’t let anyone share her fears. She’s isolating herself in her head and it is starting to frighten me.”
Robert stared off into the middle distance, not seeing. He took a deep, steadying breath, trying to gain control of the raw anger that had flared to unexpected life inside of him. He had never experienced a rage like it before, and was at a loss to explain its existence. Moreover, he couldn’t let it rule him now. He needed to be in control, needed calmness to devise a strategy to defeat the man who had suddenly become his enemy. He tried to remember everything he could about the man, even through his anger, a part of him understanding the vital importance of knowing the enemy.
His knowledge was scant at best.
Roger belonged to the lowest set at the court. He was one of the pack of mindless animals that now surrounded the king. As a group they were noxious and prone to all the vices that money could buy, but Roger’s particular perversions could only be surmised.
Robert narrowed his eyes. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to feed his rage. Roger Colebrook. That such a man could even think of using him for his private warfare was abhorrent, and Robert never doubted for a moment that it was indeed a war, for all their calling it a game. Anything that claimed real victims was a war as far as Robert was concerned.
Robert smiled savagely as he spotted Roger’s first mistake. Roger had faulted badly if he thought to use Robert in the collecting of Imogen’s defeat. Robert was not a man to be used by one of the court parasites, not against something he had taken for his own.
And that was the one truth that shone, even through the haze of his anger: Imogen was his, body and soul.
“You’ve given me much to think on,” Robert said slowly. “Thank you for taking me into your confidence. I won’t see that trust abused.”
Mary let out a long sigh of relief. “I’m glad you didn’t see it as an impertinence. I was so afraid that you would, but you needed to understand, needed to see a little of what Lady Imogen sees.”
Robert sat and steepled his hands. “Oh, I see a little now, but I intend to see a lot more. Soon.”
Robert’s easy shouldering of leadership had inspired everyone in the Keep to new heights.
By evening the main hall had been scrubbed till it glistened. Fresh rushes had been gathered hastily and laid, their meadow fragrance quickly masking the mustiness. Enough tables had been located to seat all of the guests, each festooned with holly and ribbons, creating something of a festive air. Over the central dais a canopy of red cloth had been hung and the two chairs that had been placed on it had been decorated with matching ribbon.
The men of the nearby village had spent the morning at the hunt, killing two boars, a young deer and other smaller game, which were given to the cook and some women from the village to dress. The cook had complained bitterly about people expecting miracles, but had still managed to produce any number of mouthwatering dishes with only the most basic of assistance.
Robert felt congenially pleased with the preparations. He should have felt every inch the expansive host as he watched everyone eat, drink and be merry. Everyone, except Imogen beside him, was enjoying themselves mightily, but that omission was the thing that irritated him the most. Imogen was silently fighting him and, damn it, she may even be winning.
Aware of her fear of crowds, Robert had intended to behave the chivalric knight and escort her, also intending to reassure her as best he could, just as Mary had wanted him to.
Imogen, however, had easily forestalled the small gallantry. As the first guests arrived, Imogen had floated regally into the hall, with Mary discreetly leading her. Even as he felt the heat of irritation flare on his face, the vision she presented nearly brought him to his knees. All rational thought dissolved, leaving Robert with nothing to do but stare like an idiot at a queen.
She had changed from her angelic pink into a red velvet robe, but it wasn’t the sultry color that Robert found himself objecting to. No, it was the way the tight lacing made the fabric almost lovingly cling to the curves of her body, and the neckline, which seemed scandalously low to Robert’s suddenly puritanical eyes. They had narrowed when he noticed that every male in the hall had focused his attention on the flimsy lace inset that covered the pale skin at the top of her breasts. She had carefully bound her hair with gold thread, and eschewed the mantle worn by the women of the court, leaving the line of her vulnerable throat naked and, for a moment, Robert was struck dumb with awe. It seemed almost impossible that such a being existed outside of heaven.
He had watched as she walked with a calm dignity toward the dais, obviously trying to hide that it was actually tearing her into small pieces. Only when she got closer did Robert become aware of the whiteness of her knuckles on Mary’s arm.
When the old woman carefully removed those fingers, Imogen dropped into a very correct curtsy in front of him. He, with ill-disguised eagerness, had got up and helped her up the steps of the dais.
Then she ignored him; ignored them all.
She now sat stiffly in her chair, her hands held tightly in her lap, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings. She had remained unmoving when the sumptuous food had been brought into the hall. When the grunts and murmurs of satisfaction filled the large chambers she seemed to draw into herself more tightly.
Robert could almost physically feel the strength of will radiating from the woman, as she deliberately made no attempt to sample the aromatic food just in front of her, but to look at her she seemed entirely unmoved. It was as though she had been turned into a very beautiful statue, as if she was denying herself out of existence—and that was what angered Robert so much.
Robert didn’t want a lady made of stone and willpower; he wanted the blood-hot woman he had kissed that morning. He needed her to be real. He would make her real, he thought with a small, grim smile of determination. Casually he leaned toward her.
“You do know that the food tastes even better than it smells, don’t you?” he asked with a lip-smacking, satisfied noise. “In fact the food is amongst the best I have ever tasted.”
“I’m sure it is,” she said stiffly.
“Then why don’t you try some? You might surprise yourself and actually enjoy it.” He lifted a fragrant morsel from his plate and placed it near her face. He dropped his voice suggestively. “But if it’s not the enjoying that you like, if you find your pleasure in pain and denial, well, then, as your husband I’m sure I can accommodate you.”
“I’m sure you can,” Imogen said through clenched teeth, “but I’m not abstaining for my own personal pleasure. I can’t see where the meal is to eat it.” She lowered her eyes and drew in a deep breath, wincing slightly as she was once more assaulted by the scents rising from the feast. “I haven’t eaten in front of anyone since the…accident. It’s not a pretty sight and I can’t say I have any desire to make a spectacle of myself in front of the whole district solely for your own perverse amusement.”
Robert’s languid cynicism died. He felt a flush of shame heat his face as he realized just how great a mistake he had made.
He hadn’t meant the dinner to be a torture. The hollow feeling of failure opened in his gut. She now not only thought of him as part of Roger’s plan, but also as the oaf who had brought her into a roomful of food to starve.