Midnight Eyes

ZEBRA BOOKS

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

Mary’s voice halted abruptly and Imogen turned away from the inadequate fire to face the sudden silence, her eyebrows raised questioningly.

“M’lady, that is all of your brother’s message that is fit for human hearing,” Mary said slowly as she began screwing up the expensive parchment.

Imogen laughed softly. “Oh, Mary, you know you shouldn’t worry about things like that. When Roger visits, he says all manner of things that aren’t fit for human hearing to me. By reading the message in full you certainly won’t be telling me anything that I haven’t heard many times before.”

“Well, I’ve certainly never said such foul things before, and I don’t intend to start now.”

Imogen tried to smile as she turned her face back to the fire, hoping to hide her rising panic.

Roger had started the end game. She had always known that this day would come. On that small piece of parchment, which Mary refused to read out to her, he was giving her formal notice that the real war had indeed begun.

“Burn it, Mary,” Imogen murmured quietly. She shuddered almost imperceptibly when the smell of acrid smoke reached her heightened senses.

“Well, it doesn’t sound all bad,” Mary said encouragingly. “Those bits about your bridegroom sounded interesting anyway. Your brother did manage to say around the vitriol that this…Robert Beaumont is suitably impatient. He seems most anxious to claim his bride if he set out within the week, and I for one think that shows a very pleasing degree of eagerness.”

“But I doubt he is racing all this way just so that he can claim the infamous ‘Lady Deformed’ for his wife, don’t you?” Imogen said dryly.

Mary’s voice sank with embarrassment. “I didn’t know you had heard about them calling you that.”

Imogen smiled. “I’m blind, Mary, not deaf.”

Mary was silent for a second, then said bracingly, “You’re not deformed either, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“I’d be a fool to mind when you’re being nice.” She shook her head with a sigh. “But you seem to be forgetting that Robert Beaumont doesn’t actually know I’m not deformed. He is racing up here, eager to claim his land, not some gargoyle hidden away in a tower.”

Imogen got up and began to pace carefully around the room. Twenty-one paces one way, seventeen the other. Her bedchamber, her world. Sometimes, it felt as if the four walls were pressing in on her, suffocating her with the darkness that had held her so tightly for the past five years. There was a monotony to her days that ate into her, a sameness and isolation that threatened to destroy her.

If it wasn’t for Mary’s loyal presence, her destruction would have been completed years ago.

Imogen would never know what capricious whim had ruled Roger when he let Mary, their old nurse, stay with her when he had taken almost everything else she held dear, but she was pathetically grateful for that one small kindness.

She swallowed hard and tried to ignore the guilt that always rose to the surface when she forced herself to acknowledge that her gratitude meant she was as complicit as Roger in holding the older woman prisoner.

That Mary bore her exile with an admirable fortitude didn’t ease the heavy weight of shame Imogen felt. Abstractly, her acceptance actually added to Imogen’s burden till the pressure of it almost consumed her.

Sometimes she longed for the silence of death; sometimes it seemed like the only way to escape the loneliness and guilt, but at other times she longed for life with every fiber of her being. Especially at moments like now, when Roger and his dark threats were worming their way inside her, whispering of endings. When the threat of the end was so real that she could almost touch it, even her blind life became precious.

And no matter what Mary said, Imogen knew Roger’s threat was very real.

He wanted her, and he was prepared to destroy her completely to get what he wanted. Robert Beaumont was his weapon of choice. On his last visit, when she had been shivering while kneeling in front of him, he had made sure she knew all there was to know about Robert Beaumont, and now she knew why. Now she knew why Roger had gloated as he had told the story of how the bastard son of a Norman nobleman had risen from obscurity to be one of the best killers in all of England; how he had, with cold deliberation, sold his sword out for hire, not even pretending to fight for such illusory things as honor and integrity, but for cold, hard gold only.

As a mercenary, Robert Beaumont was second to none, and soon only the king himself had been able to afford him, for only he was able to promise the land and position that the warrior craved. Robert fought for the king, and the king was led by his lover, Roger.

Imogen could only too well imagine how her brother had calmly manipulated King William till everything was how he wanted it to be. She didn’t doubt for a second that it had been Roger who had seen to it that after four years spent fighting in the bloody border wars with Wales, Robert could claim his just reward only if he took the infamous Lady Deformed as his wife.

The last time Roger had been in the Keep he had bound her hands and hauled her to her feet. He had walked around her like an animal prowling after its prey, he had then stood so close behind her that she could feel the heat of him making her skin crawl and he had told her calmly that he was nearly finished playing games with her. His victory was now in plain sight. He had wanted her to know that, wanted her to know the man he had chosen to destroy her, wanted her to know that she had no way to save herself.

Knowledge, as she had learned through hard experience, was in itself a frustratingly inadequate weapon. After all, she had known his dark, twisted jealousies and brooding hatreds all of her life, but she had not been able to stop them from claiming her sight.

And now he was after her body and soul.

She had to stop thinking, knowing that in those memories lay a strange kind of madness. She turned toward the window, feeling the pale glow of the winter sun on her skin. God, how she wanted to live!

She sighed and raised her hand to her aching forehead. “I can’t stop him, Mary. I know what he plans, but I can’t see anyway that I can stop him.”

“Perhaps this is really the king’s plan, like Roger says.” Mary’s voice rang with a conviction that Imogen didn’t dare let herself believe. “Maybe it really is all about the cruel joke the king wanted to play on Beaumont.”

“I don’t know if I like being thought of as a cruel joke,” Imogen said dryly. She heard Mary’s embarrassed fluster and allowed herself a small, tight smile. She groped for her dear friends hands and when she found them, she also found comfort in their work-roughened familiarity. She took a deep, steadying breath.

“Mary, you must believe that the threat is real. I can hear the triumph in Roger’s letter. He is now a step closer to his goal of annihilating me and he has chosen Beaumont and the king to bring it about. They are ways and means only but never doubt that the threat is real, the outcome uncertain, and I will ask you once again to leave this accursed Keep.”

Mary gave Imogen’s hand a reassuring squeeze, silently communicating her loyalty and support, but Imogen refused to let herself give in to that offered strength.

“Roger’s hatred might not be appeased by merely tormenting me and, if not, it will spread, destroying all it touches. I couldn’t bear for you to be caught up in this. It is enough for you to have shared so many dark hours with me. I can’t let you end them with me.” Imogen drew another deep, shuddering breath. “Mary, please go.”

“I’m here because I want to be here and here I will stay. You can’t tell me to leave, my girl, because you never invited me to be here in the first place,” Mary said gruffly. “Besides, just where do you think I’m going to drag these old bones? No, I’m happy enough here by this piddling fire, thank you very much.”

“But Mary…”

“No buts. You won’t be rid of me that easily.”

Imogen smiled, tremulous with tears. “I know it’s selfish, I know it’s wrong, but I’m so relieved that you will stay. I fear the dark alone.”

“I think a little selfishness never hurt anyone much, and remember I’m being selfish too. I love you like a daughter, and I can think of nowhere I’d rather be and no one I’d rather be with.”

Imogen bowed and buried her head in the old woman’s coarse skirts. A warm hand covered her hair. For a moment neither of them needed to speak, and then Mary cleared her throat, trying to remove the huskiness.

“So, Imogen, what do we do now?”

Imogen rolled her head to the side but let it remain on Mary’s knee. “Now, Mary, we wait.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And we pray.”