Temptress Unbound (9 page)

For all his other faults and ignorance, the man did at least know what to do with a weeping woman. He came around the table and scooped me up, carrying me to the narrow cot against one wall where he sometimes napped. He lay down with me and I clung to his chest, burrowing my face into it as his hands stroked down my back.

“You remember what happened the last time I consoled you,” he said.

On Mona. Yes, I remembered. That cool, languid desire that had a power and a life all its own, and came to us whether we wished it or no—it had swept away all remnants of sorrow and left passion in its place. “Don't touch my bare skin,” I snuffled, “and it won't happen.”

His palm skimmed down over my side and hip, a gentle caress that gradually soothed me. The tears died away and I sighed, closing my eyes and relaxing in his embrace, my head resting in the dip of his shoulder. I laid my hand on his chest and felt the warmth and firmness of his body through the cloth; I rested one leg over his long one and wiggled closer, feeling safe.

Safe
.
A smile pulled at the corner of my mouth. Six months ago I would never have thought to put that word together with being pressed up against Maerlin.

“I don't want you to go,” Maerlin said, his voice so soft I barely heard it.

“That's kind of you to say.”

His hand stopped on my hip. “It's not
kind
to tell the truth.”

I lifted up on one elbow so I could see his face. He was glaring at me. “Your pardon,” I said. “I had no idea a small nicety could enrage you so, oh mighty wizard. Will it appease you if I say, ‘How truthful of you,' or will you smite me with your fearsome powers anyway, for my insolence?”

His lips tightened further. “Are you teasing me again?”

I blinked prettily at him.

His glare turned to a scowl. “Why do you do that? Why don't you take me seriously?” He scrambled off the bed, leaving me to flop onto my stomach. “Why am I such a source of fun for you?”

He seemed truly distressed standing there panting down at me, and it upset me that I might have been the cause of it. I sat up, leaning on one arm, my legs folded to the side. “Maerlin, I'm sorry. What's wrong? I never meant anything; I was being playful, as friends often are.”

“
Friends
.” He spat the word.

“I do consider you my friend,” I said in confusion.

“Yet you would leave me. Is that what friends do? Abandon each other?”

“My leaving is about going
toward
something else. It has nothing to do with you.”

“You would have stayed for Arthur.”

“Because I was
in love
with him.” I got to my feet and stabbed a finger at his sternum. “Love makes people do stupid things, against their own best interest. So yes, I would have stayed for Arthur. But since that's not an option, I'm doing what's best for me and leaving.”

“You said ‘was.' ”

“What?”

“Are you still in love with him?”

“I'm doing all in my power not to be.” I'd had a month to come to terms with Arthur never being mine. All that had saved my sanity during that time was the intense preparation for presenting Skalibur. All that had saved my heart from utter desolation was that Arthur had been so careful for us to keep our distance, and so I had not grown accustomed to him. I had never expected him in my bed at night, or to be greeted by him in the morning. He had not sat beside me while we dined, or walked with me in the evenings. The longing had been terrible, and I had thought him foolish, but I understood his wisdom now.

“He wasn't right for you, you know. You wouldn't have been happy.”

I snorted. “Suddenly you are an expert on affairs of the heart.”

“Even someone as hopeless as me could see that he would never understand you. You'd have had to shrink yourself down to fit within the limits of his morals, and you'd live your life according to
his
sense of duty. Pursuing
his
goals, which aren't his to begin with, but those of Ambrosius.”

“I thought you loved your brother,” I said in surprise. “Where does all this bitterness come from? This sneering at a good man?”

“It's truth, neither kind nor bitter. And never sneering. Arthur is all that is good in
this
world, here. Britannia. He is the Britons' best hope for a better future. But you are not of this place, Nimia. You are not a Briton, and your life is not limited to this damp, distant corner of the world. Sooner or later you would have seen it, and love would have become a chafing harness.”

“Or it would have transformed me into something better than I am.”

He grabbed my shoulders and gave me a shake. “ ‘Better' can never mean being other than you what are meant to be.”

“Who's to say what that is? The more I learn about the Phanne, the more I question if they are such a good thing to be a part of. You, Tanwen, Akantha, even poor Una, and
me;
there's not a one of us who is half as good a person as Arthur. This quest of mine, to develop my powers and find my mother and, now, the labyrinth . . . The more I pursue my ends, the worse I feel. What's the point of it all?” I cried, my voice rising. “I'm chasing shadows, and each time I catch one I feel the darkness grow greater inside me. So, yes, I
liked
the idea of being with someone I knew was good, who had honorable goals. Someone who made me feel that if I devoted myself to him, I could be good, too. And
you've
done exactly the same.”

His eyes lit with triumph. “You weren't in love with Arthur. You were in love with the idea of who you'd be with him.”

I took a step back. “Love should make you into a better person.”

“Not a different person,” he countered, moving forward. “Nor can you take the easy path of clinging to the hem of Arthur's tunic and letting him pull you along. You have darkness in you? So do I. So does everyone. It's up to you to wage your own battle with it. Don't make a man do it for you, and then call it love instead of cowardice.”

“What do you know of love?” I shouted at him, backing up as he pursued me. “Who have you ever given up everything for? If you've never wanted to, it's because you've never been in love! Don't lecture me on how I should feel, when you don't feel at all. You're as cold as one of Ambrosius's marble statues.”

“I wish to all the gods that I still was. At least then it was quiet in my own mind. I could think. I could spend weeks working on a question of astrology, or the blending of metals, and not even a full hunt with baying hounds riding past my door could distract me.
Now
look at me,” he said, flinging his hands out to encompass his workshop, which looked no different to me than it always had. He, however, seemed to be coming undone, his hair disheveled, his clothes hanging crookedly. “I can't string together the simplest thread of logic because every time I try, all I can think of—” He cut himself off.

“Thinking,” I said. “It's always thinking with you.”

“All I can
feel
,” he said, glaring at me, “is how much richer my life has become since you came. I don't want you to leave, Nimia, because—yes—you are my friend, and because you understand me.”

“Not half as well as you apparently think I do.”

“I don't want you to leave because for the first time, I can imagine having a woman at my side with whom to go through the years. With whom to share ideas, and even with whom to travel and explore beyond the shores of Britannia.”

“You don't need a woman for that. You've gotten along quite nicely with Brenn, up until now.”

His skin turned red and his neck muscles tightened. “Why are you making this so difficult?”

“Tell me what
this
is, and maybe I can answer!” Although I had a suspicion what he was trying to say, I couldn't believe it. I had to hear it from his own lips, and even then I didn't know if it would be credible. I could only think he'd worked himself into an irrational, uncharacteristic state: Arthur's marriage was giving him strange thoughts about his own life. He had felt so little for so long, even a boyish infatuation would feel overwhelming to him.

“I'm trying to say that I want you to stay with me. I don't want to be alone again.”

“Find yourself a basket full of cats, if you don't want to be lonely.”

“
Nimia!
I—”

I put my hands on my hips and stared at him, waiting.

“I—”

“You must not feel strongly about it, if you can't muster the energy to say it.”

He gave me a dirty, angry look. “I think I might be in love with you.”

“Then you think wrongly. No one who uses ‘think' and ‘might' in a declaration of love truly feels it.”

“You scared me into saying it that way. I meant to say ‘I love you,' and to say it with great force.”

“
Scared
you? Me?”

“You're not reacting how you're supposed to,” he grumbled.

I flung out a hand in invitation. “Please, do instruct me.”

True to himself, he took me at my word. “You were supposed to be quiet, and blush, and look meek and hopeful. Then, maybe, cry. Just a little.”

I burst into laughter.

He turned his back to me and stomped to the worktable, where he made a show of tidying up and ignoring me.

“Maerlin.”

He flinched, and kept tidying.

“Maerlin,” I repeated, and came up behind him. I laid my hand on the small of his back and softened my voice. “I'm sorry I laughed. It wasn't at you; it was at the image of me as meek and quiet.”

“It was a very pleasant picture I had drawn in my mind,” he mumbled.

“You would never have thought you wanted me, if I were meek and quiet.”

He spun around and grabbed my forearms, his face alive with emotion as I had never seen it before. The glowing green of his eyes stood out against the flush of his skin, and his mouth was pulled in a tortured grimace as if the passions of his heart were too great and too unfamiliar to be spoken through the rough messaging of his expression. “I don't
think
I want you. I know I do. I've wanted you since I first heard of you, from Fenwig.”

“Impossible.” I pulled against his grip, and found myself unable to escape. Held so easily in his hands, without any visible effort on his part, I was reminded of how very strong he was despite his lithe appearance and light-footed grace of movement. Held this close, I felt his height and the broadness of his shoulders, and knew the slender, almost androgynous impression he sometimes gave for the illusion it was.

“I knew it from the first words he spoke: ‘My king's lady is of a strange beauty, with long black hair and spiral tattoos, and she plays the cithara as if her hands were guided by the gods. She was most grieved by being parted from her infant son, and in her desolation has fled from my king and gone in search of her family.' ”

“You could know nothing from that.”

“I knew you were Phanne; I knew you had intelligence and patience if you had mastered the cithara; I knew you had a loving heart. I knew at long last that here was the woman who was meant for me.”

“These ‘knowings' mean nothing, Maerlin. I felt that Clovis would be of great importance to me when I first saw him, and what did it get me except heartache? Arthur felt something similar about me, and what did that bring him? Again, nothing but heartache.”

He gave me a little shake. “All you do is prove I'm right. You
have
been ‘of great importance' to both of them. Without you, Clovis would not have all the power he does, nor would he have a son. Without you, Skalibur would not exist. Knowing someone will be ‘of great importance' is a different feeling from knowing when you've met the only person you could ever love.”

“But . . .” I realized he meant it, and that he knew what he was saying, what he was feeling. I stood there gape-mouthed as a fish on land, trying to understand how the marble statue had come to life and chosen
me
. “But you treated me so terribly, for so long.”

“I did not!”

“You acted like you didn't care what happened to me. You let Mordred
have
me. I thought all that mattered to you was that you got the chalice.”

“This will come as a great shock to you, Nimia, but—I'm not comfortable showing people how I feel.”

I lowered my brows at him. “See that I am not fainting at this stunning news.”

“Are you teasing me? You're teasing me again, aren't you?”

“Do you
feel
teased?”

He squinted one eye and looked off up into the corner. “I don't know. Maybe. That's the other problem, of course. I don't often know what I feel, until my actions reveal it to me.”

“And what actions revealed to you your feelings for me?”

“I went to the Isle of Mona for you—though I didn't understand at the time that that's why I did it.”

“You went because I wouldn't help with calling the wind, otherwise.”

He slid his hands up to the top of my arms, his thumbs stroking the sensitive place where arm joined body. “I could have persuaded you to help; I could have found something else you wanted. No, I must have gone to Mona because it meant so much to you, and it meant we would be alone together on the journey. I must have taught you to swim and spent so much unnecessary time on the presentation of Skalibur because, again, I wanted to spend time with you. It's the only thing that makes sense.”

“You still don't sound like you're sure of your own heart.”

“Because I've only just now realized what my own choices meant. When you said you were going to leave Britannia . . . I felt like someone had slashed my belly and my guts were falling out. That's what love feels like, isn't it?”