Page 10 (2/2)

He could grovel

He could drop to his knees and bow before her, beg for forgiveness He could and he would--

Until this iveness

He was near the balcony now, tre Was he nervous or excited? He’d come this far, and still he didn’t knohat he would say A few lines of a poem formed in the habit’s corner of his heart …

Let no face reside in mind

But the face of Rosaline

No--this here he’d gotten into trouble with her before: She didn’t need bad poetry She needed bodily, reciprocal love

Could Roland give that to her now?

The red curtain rustled in the wind, then parted at the bold touch of his fingers He concealed hiaze entered the bedroom where he used to sit with her

Rosaline

She was glorious, sitting in a wooden chair in the corner, singing under her breath Her face was older, but the years had been kind: She had grown fro wo

She was spectacular

Yes, Roland knew he had reen at love and foolish, cynical and unsure that what they had could last Too quick to heed Cam’s bitter pronouncements

But look at Luce and Daniel They had shown Roland that love could survive even the harshest of punish up until thisto help Shelby and Miles, riding past Rosaline’s old castle--had happened for a reason

He was being given a second chance at love

This tih the open …

But wait--

Rosaline was not singing to herself Roland blinked, looking again She had an audience: a s Rosaline was a mother

Rosaline was some asp escaped his lips He should have been relieved to see her looking so well--the happiest she’d ever looked--but all he felt was powerfully lonely

He rolled heavily away froainst the tower’s curved wall What kind of man had taken the place Roland never should have left?

He dared another look inside, watched as Rosaline got up from the chair and laid the baby in its wooden cradle Roland closed his eyes and listened to her footsteps fading like a song as she padded out of the room and down the hallway

This couldn’t be the way it ended, his last sight of love

Fool Fool to coh alone

Instinctively, he followed her, crawling along the turret’s shallow ledge to the nextHe gripped the ith his abraded fingers

This chamber, next to the roo to her brother, Geoffrey But when Roland leaned in to peek through the curved pane, there o by the

He heard a man’s low voice, and then--in reply--Rosaline’s

A young e of a damask-covered bed When he turned his head, his profile was handsoly so S nose

A woman lay sprawled across him on the bed, her blond head nestled in his lap in the casual way of two people ere as comfortable with each other’s li

She was Rosaline

"But why, Alexander?"

When she raised her tear-streaked face to look at hiht in his throat

Alexander--her husband--stroked his wife’s tangled blond hair "My love" He kissed her nose, the last place Roland would have gone had he had access to those lips "My horse is saddled The men await htfall to join theripped the white sleeve of his undershirt and sobbed "My father has a thousand knights who can take your place I pray you, do not leave ht"

"Your father has already been too generous Why should anotherand able? It is o When our crusade is done, I will return to you"

She shook her head, her cheeks pink with fury "I cannot bear to lose you I cannot live without you"

Roland’s heart stuttered at the words

"You won’t have to," Alexander said "I give you my word: I shall return"

He rose fro his wife to her feet Roland noticed with renewed jealousy that she was pregnant with another child Her belly protruded under the fine ruched gown She rested her hands on it, despondent

Roland would never be able to leave her in a state like that How could this o off to war? What war ations?

Any heartache she o paled in comparison to this, because this man was not only her lover and her husband--he was also the father of her children

Roland’s heart sagged He could not abide this He thought of all those years between this medieval heartbreak and the present he’d co lost through its crags and pocks, abandoning his duties, just trying to forget he had ever seen her He thought of the void of time he’d surrendered inside the portal that connected July to Septe the way he had abandoned Rosaline