The Conqueror

And it was his too.

“I am sorry,” she said dully.

The dark head beside her lifted. He’d been resting his chin on his outstretched arms and staring across the plains, but at the sound of her voice, he turned.

“Sorry for what?”

“For all of this.” She swept her hand in a wide arc, indicating the world around them.

He paused. “For the nighttime, or just the fields?”

His gentle jest confused her. “For the wars, for the taking and losing.” She waved her hand. “For what was done to you, because you had to leave this beautiful place.”

A tear spilled over and sped down her face.

“Why, lady,” he said in surprise, stepping closer. “’Tisn’t your fault. I mayn’t act it at times, but I do know that much.”

“But if ever I was forced to leave,” she explained through the tears that were now tumbling down her cheeks, “I would be so heartsick I think I might die.”

He looked at the tears, then back into her eyes. “Indeed, I thought I might. But I didn’t, and I am home again.”

“And I am glad,” she said almost viciously, gritting her teeth. To snatch one small moment of happiness amid all the sorrow of the world was but a small victory, but good, and she felt possessive of it as she had towards Jerv earlier, only this was more primal.

“You are glad?”

“I am glad,” she vowed in a harsh whisper. “In all this wreck of a world, that one man can return to his home, ’tis a thing goodly beyond imagin

ing, and I am glad.”

Grey eyes roamed her tear-stained face. “Well, lady, you have astonished me once again.”

“Again?”

“Again. As you did outside London, as you did in the bailey, as you did at dinner. I have known you for the length of two days, and you have already given me more to think about than a year of campaigns.”

She gave a watery laugh. “Mayhap that is because there is not much to think about in a battle. Strike here, trample there. Let me see,” she pretended to muse, resting her chin on her curled fingers, “would it be better to cut his heart out, or stick his head on a spike?” She dropped her hand. “These are not the kinds of things I would think would greatly tax one with a mind.”

“But you,” he said, reaching out to run the pad of his thumb along her jaw, “will tax me greatly, I suppose.”

“I will try not to.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t?”

He shook his head, a dark swing in the night air. “Just be what you are. I think I will enjoy getting to know you.”

Whoever I am is changing swiftly, she decided, for I have never felt like this before. Except when I was with you.

His beautiful, chiseled features were dark and dangerous, the scar slashed across his cheek even more so. Whenever he moved the slightest bit, a ripple of rock-hewn flesh disturbed the soft material of his tunic. But this she had steeled herself against when he first arrived, his raw masculinity. It could never have turned her heart. It was his eyes that were her undoing. His battered, beautiful eyes.

“Griffyn. I did not…”

“Did not what?”

She stared out over the battlement wall. “Did not mean for them to capture you.”

He absorbed this in silence. Then, “What?”