Dark Champion 4 by Jo Beverley

Author:Jo Beverley [Beverley, Jo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-03-05T01:51:13.593000+00:00

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

“On your wedding day. What devotion.”

She closed her eyes briefly. “Hardly a normal wedding day.”

The silence built in the room like a nest of blades, painful every way she turned.

She met his eyes. “I’m going to marry Stephen.”

He stood. “It will be for the best.”

She thought he was going to kiss her, and hungered for it, but he just looked at her for a moment, and then was gone.

Madeleine swallowed tears and collapsed down on the stool where he had sat, and stared besottedly at some drops of his blood on the rush mat.

She reminded herself he was the man who had toyed with her; the man who had caused her deep grief.

He was a traitor to his king and his knightly vows. She couldn’t break her heart over a man like that. She couldn’t.

And yet he had always been gentle, even in his anger. Today, when he had wanted to hurt and repulse her, he had not been able to carry it through. Now that she knew the allegiances which pulled at him, she could even understand his fractured loyalties. How would she behave in a similar situation? She did not know.

He was a good man, kind and brave; a better man by far than Odo or Stephen. Still, she would not marry him. She’d be a fool to bind her fate to such a man, but more importantly, trapping him here could lead to his destruction. She had promised not to do that, and she was a woman of her word.

Sunlight flashed off his bracelet. She picked it up, cold now but still heavy, smeared with dried blood.

She slipped it onto her right wrist, and with some difficulty squeezed it until the split edges joined to make a closed, flared cylinder. It hung clumsily loose, which brought to mind the shape and feel of his muscular arm.

The bracelet was valuable, and she should take it to him immediately, but she could not bear to be with him when she could not have him. She slid her arm out of the band of gold and put it away in her own jewel chest.

Tomorrow she would marry Stephen de Faix; the day after, everyone would go away and leave her in peace. Except Stephen. He’d be with her for the rest of her life.

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