Read Forbidden for Free Online Page B

that a complaint?”
    Amber sighed. “I'm sorry. I've slept little since you brought him. It was very difficult to call him from the darkness.”
    “Yes. I can see that in the shadows beneath your eyes.”
    She smiled wanly.
    “Amber? Is he friend or foe?” The blunt question was the very one that she had feared.
    “Friend,” she whispered.
    Then honesty and affection compelled her to add, “Until he regains his memory. Then he will be whatever he was before you brought him to me. Friend or enemy or free lance bound to no lord.”
    “Is that the best you can do in assessing him?”
    “He isn't a criminal or a beast to savage his own kind. He was gentle with me despite his fear.”
    Erik grunted. “But?”
    “But if he regains his memory, he might not consider himself our friend. Or he might be a long-lost cousin happy to find himself at home. Only he can say.”
    “If he regains his memory…”
    Silently, Erik stroked his peregrine's shining back while he considered the possibilities. A persistent sense of uneasiness threaded through his thoughts. Something was wrong. He knew it.
    He just didn't know what it was.
    “Will he regain his memory?” Erik asked.
    “I don't know.”
    “Guess,” he said succinctly.
    A chill went through Amber. She didn't like to think of what would happen if Duncan's memory returned. If he were enemy and soul mate in one…
    It would tear her apart.
    Nor did she want to think of what it would be like for Duncan if he didn't remember. He would be restless, savage, driven mad by names never remembered, sacred vows never honored, a man forsworn.
    It would tear him apart.
    Amber's breath froze in her chest. She wouldn't cause such dishonor and anguish even to an enemy, much less to the man who had stolen her heart with a touch, a smile, a kiss.
    “I…” Her voice died.
    “Little one?” Erik asked, troubled by Amber's haunted golden eyes.
    “I don't know,” she said in a shaking voice.
    “So much ill could come. So little good.”
    Rich life might grow, but death will surely flow.
     “Perhaps I had better take the stranger to Stone Ring Keep,” Erik said.
    “Nay.”
    “Why not?”
    “He wears sacred amber. He is mine.”
    The flat certainty in Amber's voice both surprised and worried Erik.
    “What if he regains his memory?” Erik asked.
    “Then he will.”
    “You could be in danger.”
    “As God wills.”
    A surge of anger went through Erik. The falcon cried and his horse moved restlessly and champed at the bit. Erik curbed his mount and soothed his falcon without looking away from Amber's steady gaze.
    “You make no sense,” he said finally. “I'll send my squires for the stranger as soon as we're through hawking.”
    Amber's head came up defiantly. “As you will, lord.”
    “God's teeth, are you possessed? I'm trying only to protect you from a man with no name.”
    “He has a name.”
    “You told me he didn't remember his name.”
    “He doesn't,” Amber retorted. “I gave him one.”
    “What is it?”
    “Duncan.”
    Erik's mouth opened, then snapped shut with a distinct sound of clicking teeth.
    “Explain,” he demanded.
    “I had to call him something. 'Dark warrior' suits him.”
    “Duncan,” Erik said neutrally.
    “Yes.”
    In the distance a horn blew, telling of hounds being sent after birds, scaring them into flight for the hawks that rode on the arms of knights. The peregrine on Erik's saddle keened restlessly, recognizing the call to a hunt that had left her behind.
    Overhead, a merlin's cry announced yet another hawk on the wing. Erik looked up, searching the brilliant sky with eyes that were the equal of any hunting bird's.
    A small, fierce falcon shot down like a dark bolt from the blue, trailing silver jesses that flashed in the sunlight. Though the falcon's stoop ended behind a rocky rise, Erik had no doubt about the outcome.
    “Cassandra will have partridge before I have mallard,” he said. “Maid Marian flies with her customary lethal