“I was confused by it, but then Lutian told me that when a man knows what he’s doing—”
He cringed and cursed at her words. “You spoke to Lutian about it?”
“Was that wrong?”
“My humiliation knows no boundaries.”
“You are overreacting, Christian. Lutian explained that it is oft times painful for a woman her first time, but that afterwards it is better.”
Christian wanted to kill both her and Lutian over this. “You shouldn’t be speaking to another man about such matters! ’Tis indecent.”
That set off her temper. “Don’t you dare call me indecent. I have done nothing wrong.”
Aye, but she had. “You have unmanned me before your fool and I have unmanned myself before the rest. I should have known better.” Cursing, he snatched his surcoat off and would have burned it if it hadn’t belonged to his father. “I shall never dress like this again,” he snarled under his breath.
“Why did you dress yourself like this?”
“Because, I…” Christian stopped himself before he told her the answer. It would serve no other purpose than to give her and Lutian more room to mock him.
“Because why?”
“Just leave me.”
“Nay, not until you answer.”
He turned to leave, only to find her blocking his way. “I will not allow you to flee until you answer me.”
“I will give you no more reason to mock me.”
“I don’t want a reason to mock you, Christian. I want a reason to love you.”
Christian went ramrod-stiff at that. His heart leapt at her words, which both terrified and elated him. “You don’t want love. You want a king. You said it yourself.”
“Everyone wants love, Christian, especially those of us who have never had it. Have you ever loved anyone?”
He glanced away from her as he shook his head nay.
“I have,” she whispered tenderly as she reached out to run her hand along his arm. “He was a little boy with a generous smile who laughed with my brother as they ran in play. Since that day I have dreamed of having a house full of golden-haired children who aren’t afraid of me while I’ve been tormented with dreams of them one day trying to kill me in my sleep. I, too, am scared of marriage. I’m scared of being used. But I am willing to accept you, my lord. To trust that you won’t kill me or imprison me.”
Her words tore through him. She was laying herself bare to him and it made him ache. “It seems to me, Adara, that you and I are both haunted by the same image.”
“And that is?”
“My parents’ love.”
“Aye,” she whispered. “They were beautiful together. I never knew anyone could be so happy as they were together and with you. I always yearned for my father to look at me just once the way your father looked at you, with pride and love shining in his eyes. For my mother to brush her hand through my hair and kiss my cheek as your mother did you.”
No one had ever loved him since. There had never been another tender touch or word of praise.
In truth he missed it more than he ever allowed himself to admit.
“Let me love you, Christian. Let me give you the comfort of home and wife.”
“Why do you wish to give me that?”
“Because I know that you are capable of the same love that your parents shared. The little boy in my palace glowed from the fire of it and I know that it still exists somewhere inside you.”
He met her gaze levelly and hoped he could make her understand the truth of him. “That boy died a long time ago, Adara. They locked him inside a cold, dismal hell that extinguished that light. He is barren now. The embers are long dead. There is nothing left to spark that flame. Nothing.”
She gestured toward the cot where his surcoat lay. “Then why has that man forsaken his robes for his father’s finery to please the bride he denies?”
“Because he is trying to atone for what he did to you.” He locked gazes with her. “I don’t want love, Adara. I don’t. Ever. What I had with my parents was paradise and I loved the life we had together. It has haunted me every day of my life. I still remember when they left me at the monastery. They promised that they would only be gone until morning and they never returned. In the blink of an eye, everything I knew, everything I had was stolen from me and I was cast out into a cold hell where there was nothing for me but pain.”
He looked away as he let the agony of that moment wash through him anew. “I don’t ever want to hurt that badly again. All I suffered at the hands of the monks, at the hands of my enemy was nothing compared to the way my heart shriveled and died with them. I will not allow anything to hurt me like that again. You yearn to have what you have never known, but take my word for it, you are far better off not knowing the beauty and then the horror. I refuse to lose something like that again. Do you understand?”
Adara’s throat tightened in sympathetic agony for him. “You would deny yourself love because you’re afraid of being hurt?”
“Nay. I deny myself nothing but more pain to be had. I am tired of hurting and of grieving. I only want peace from my past.”
Adara placed her hand to his lips. “Let me inside you, Christian, and I will give you the peace you crave.”
He shook his head before he stepped back, away from her touch, and donned his monk’s robe. “I took your virginity and your choice. For that I am sorry. I will try and be a good king for you, but I will never allow you to love me, Adara. Nor will I ever love you.”
And with that, he turned and left the tent.
Adara wanted to scream out in frustration. She went to the opening and watched as he made his way through the men who had returned to work.
A few cast an amused look at him, which his grimace and growl effectively quelled.
Without looking back, he seized his banner and jerked it from the ground. And as he did so, a realization came to her. He had agreed to stay and be her husband, but not to love her.
Adara’s mind raced with that. He had budged a little in their war.
Smiling, she watched as he headed for Ioan’s tent. “I’m going to make you love me, Christian of Acre. Mark my words and heed them well.”
She wasn’t sure how. Not yet. But some day she was going to find the path to his heart and make it beat solely for her.
Eight
It was late when Adara went to find Phantom in his gray tent. As she entered, he had his back to her. He’d stripped to his waist and was washing his face.
She paused as she saw that his body was riddled with as many scars as Christian’s, if not more. “Velizarii?”
For once he didn’t castigate her for using his name. Grabbing the towel that was folded near the washbasin, he turned and wiped his face. “Aye, Adara?”
She was struck by his remarkable good looks. Like Christian, he was well muscled and lean. Where Christian’s chest was bare, Velizarii’s was lightly dusted with short black hairs. He was as dark as Christian was fair and no less handsome. But it was her husband she wanted.
“Tell me what happened to my husband in the Holy Land.”
“I told you, Adara, you don’t want to hear those stories.”
“Please. I have to understand him if I’m to have a marriage with him and to help him heal those wounds that seem to be ever raw. Why is he so closed to me?”
Phantom sighed wearily as he headed toward a table where a flagon and goblets rested on a tray. He poured two goblets.
“Not so much,” Adara said as he filled the bowls.
“Trust me, Adara, you will have need of it before I finish…as will I.”
Handing her the full goblet, he indicated for her to take the chair across from his. Adara sat down immediately before he changed his mind.
Phantom sighed even more heavily as he sat down, then leaned back in his chair to look at her with a hooded expression. His long legs stretched out before him as he rested the goblet on his stomach. “Christian had already spent six months in
the prison when I was taken there by the Saracens.”
“How did you end up there?”
His eyes turned dull, haunted. “The same way any man ends up in hell. I was damned by my own deeds.”
He took a deep draught of mead before he continued. “I wasn’t expecting kindness of any sort from anyone. Having already spent a year in an Elgederion prison, I was feral, waiting to have to fight my fellow inmates for peace and for survival. I was shoved into a dark hole and as I lay there bleeding, beaten, and in absolute agony, these two boys came to me.”
By the look on his face, she could tell he was recalling that instant with crystal clarity. “One was dark, the other fair, and both looked as if they’d been ground up on a butcher’s block.” He twisted the goblet around in his hand. “‘Welcome to our Brotherhood,’ the fair-haired boy said as he started to bandage my wounds. ‘I am the Abbot and this is the Widowmaker. We will take care of you.’”
“The Widowmaker?”
“Stryder of Blackmoor. He was our leader in prison. It was he and Christian who came up with the idea of the Brotherhood of the Sword.”
“How so?”
“Christian said his father used to tell him stories of men who were born in the time of barbarian invasions and conquests. They came from all over the world to fight together against injustice and barbarism. Their leader was a king named Arthur for the bear banner that he carried, and Arthur’s motto was that might should never make right. Right should make right. The duty of knights and men is to fight for those who can’t fight for themselves. And that is what our Brotherhood is built upon. Whenever one of us is weak, the others protect him.”
Adara smiled at their oath and their courage. “It sounds wonderful.”
He laughed bitterly. “There was nothing wonderful about being tortured and starved. We were prisoners of war and our guards made us pay for every Crusader who had come to Outremer to fight them.”
Clenching his teeth, he let out a long, deep breath. “Christian’s role was doubly hard. He was the closest thing to a priest that we had and the boys and men rallied to him for help and for salvation. He was only a child and yet he became their confessor. The dying called for him constantly and it was he alone who held their hands as they left this world and said Last Rites over them.”
Adara’s throat tightened as she imagined all he must have heard and seen.
“I never understood his strength. No matter the illness or injury, he would pray with them and comfort them with priestly words, even though I knew he’d long since lost the faith himself. Not that I blame him. How can you believe in God and His mercy when mere children are being killed for nothing more than sheer meanness? Our worlds had been destroyed, our lives no more than that of a petty insect. And when we were finally free of our hell, Christian spent the first three years traveling to the homes of the dead to pass on their final words and wishes to their families.”
That was something she wouldn’t have expected of him, and yet it seemed oddly fitting. “How kind of him.”
“Not really. He was an idiot, in my opinion. You can’t imagine the grave responsibility it is to tell someone that their loved one is gone and that they died horribly, aching for the comfort of home and family.
“I was with him one night when he told a Burgundian lady how her son had perished of illness. She cursed and slapped him for surviving while her precious son lay dead. She said many hurtful things to him and her venomous words echo in my ears even now. I can only imagine how they must echo in Christian’s. For every person who thanked him for telling them, three more cursed him for it.”
“Then why did he do it?”
Phantom drained his cup and poured more. “Because he never got to say good-bye to his parents. There was no one there to comfort him when they died. No one to tell him that their final thoughts were of him and his welfare, and he had promised the dying that if he survived, he would carry their words to their families no matter what.”
Adara sat quietly as she thought about that. Few men would honor their words to the dead when it gained them nothing and cost them so much.
“Your husband is a lost man, Adara. It’s easy to recognize the species when you’re one yourself. After our escape from prison, with only a handful of exceptions everyone headed for home. Christian had no home or family to head to.”
“He had you. Why didn’t you tell him you were cousins?”
Bitterness glowed in his pale eyes. “Truthfully?”
“Aye.”
When he answered she wasn’t sure what chilled her more, his cold stare or his harsh words. “Because I was sent into that prison to kill him. I didn’t think that knowledge would endear me to his good graces.”
She was stunned by his confession. “What?”
Phantom leaned forward and spoke in a low, sinister tone. “You want my guilty secret, Adara? I traded my life for Christian’s. After you and your father demanded a body and they couldn’t find one, Selwyn learned that the Saracens he’d hired to destroy the monastery had taken a lone survivor into their prison. I was scheduled to be executed, so Selwyn offered me a bargain. He would send me into Christian’s prison and if I killed Christian and survived, I could return home and my many crimes would be expunged.”
“What crimes?”
He snorted at that. “Theft. Murder. General mayhem. They are too many to recount.”
“Then why didn’t you kill Christian and go home?”
He laughed. “I’m not stupid. Selwyn would never have suffered me to live. He would have killed me the instant I returned. As for Christian, I realized that he was what our people needed. A king who was compassionate. One who wouldn’t turn his back on those who suffered, no matter how much it hurt him. I knew one day he would return and I pray only that I live long enough to see the look on Selwyn’s face when his retribution comes calling.”
Adara felt for the man. Who would have ever guessed that the little boy who used to play war with her and her brother would have come to this pass?
If she could, she would ease both him and Christian. They didn’t deserve what life had given to them. She couldn’t change what they’d been through, but she would make sure that both their futures were far kinder than their pasts.
“How do I reach my husband, Velizarii? Can I make him love me?”
He scoffed at that. “Love. Now, there’s a word I despise with every part of me. Love is a disease that gets inside you and poisons the heart and mind. Do yourself a favor, Adara, stay away from Christian. Have his children, rule his lands, but never, ever allow yourself to care for him.”
“I’m sorry that you feel that way, Velizarii, but I don’t want to be alone anymore. I thought I could be queen without emotion. But I can’t. I want Christian’s heart and I won’t rest until I have it.”
“Then you are even more damned than I am, Adara, and for that I am truly sorry.”
Christian sat alone on his cot as he listened to the men outside who were still packing their wares to leave in the morning. He grimaced while he held a cloth to the wound on his rib, which was bleeding again.
Leaning his head back against the post that was behind him, he closed his eyes. As his thoughts drifted, they focused on the face of his tormentor. Only this wasn’t the tormentor from the past. It was the one from his present.
Adara. Queen, lady, temptress, dungeon mistress. Indeed, she might as well learn to use torture devices—they would hurt no less than the wiles she used on him.
“You’re bleeding again?”
He opened his eyes to find said temptress in his tent, nearing his cot. He shrugged. “It’ll stop or it’ll kill me—either way is a winning proposition from my way of thinking.”
“You’re not amusing me, my lord.” She brushed his hand aside to examine his wound. “It looks to be gaining an infection. You need a poultice to draw it out.”
“How is it a queen knows so much about healing?”
She wiped the blood away with his clot
h. Her touch was so gentle that it didn’t even scrape the wound. “I have many interests and we have some of the finest Arab physicians at my court. I love to listen to them talk about their science. It fascinates me.”
“And what is it they talk about?”
She left his bed to travel to the table where the leech had left his bandages and herbs. “Well, Omar says that the idea of the body’s humors isn’t right. He doesn’t believe in bloodletting as a way of preserving the balance between them. He thinks the whole concept of the humors is incorrect and that the blood circulates through the body and touches all the major organs of it.”
Christian welcomed the intellectual diversion that took his thoughts away from the pleasurable curve of her backside and on to something less disturbing. “Galen said nothing of blood circulation, nor did Plato.”
She looked at him with a smile. “You’ve read Galen and Plato?”
“Aye, and Constantinus Africanus, Aelfric, Aristotle, and many others.”
By her face, he could tell that thrilled her. She poured some of the herbs into the bowl on the table, then brought it forward. “You are amazingly well studied.”
He scoffed at that. “I grew up in a monastery. There wasn’t much else to do except transcribe and illustrate manuscripts. Brother Ambrose always said that the great works should be preserved for future generations.”
She took the wine from his hand and poured some into her bowl so that she could make a thick paste. “So you can draw, then?”
He nodded as he took the cup back. “I was forever getting into trouble in those days. I would become so fascinated by what I was transcribing that I would forget to copy it and I would start reading instead. Monseigneur Foley would turn bright red in his face, which would make his fluffy white brows stand out like the devil’s horns before he gestured at me to get back to work. Afterward, I would have to stand in the refectory while the other monks ate and I contemplated my lazy ways and prayed for forgiveness.” He watched as she spread the cold, lumpy paste over his wound. It burned a bit, but he could feel it drawing the poison out of his body already.
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