Enchanted Read Online Free PDF Page B

a sky that held neither stars nor moon.
    “Boys are controlled by passion,” Simon
said distinctly. “Men are not.”
    “Aye. Yet men are passionate all the
same.”
    “There is a point to this catechism, I
presume.”
    Dominic’s mouth turned down at one corner.
Though he was Simon’s older brother and his lord, Simon had
little patience for advice. Yet a more loyal knight had never
lived. Dominic was as certain of that as he was of his wife’s
love.
    “I have discovered,” Dominic said,
“that a passionate marriage is a pearl beyond
price.”
    Simon grunted and said nothing.
    “You disagree?” Dominic asked.
    The impatience in Simon’s shrug was repeated
in the flat line of his mouth.
    “Whether I agree or disagree matters not one
bit,” Simon said.
    “When you rescued me from that sultan’s
hell—”
    “ After you gave
yourself to the sultan as ransom for me and eleven other
knights,” cut in Simon.
    “—I came out of it a lesser man,”

Dominic said, ignoring his brother’s interruption.
    “Truly?” Simon asked in a biting tone.
“The few Saracens who survived your sword afterward must have
been relieved.”
    Dominic’s mouth shifted into a smile that was
every bit as hard as his brother’s.
    “I wasn’t discussing my fighting
skills,” Dominic said.
    “Excellent. For a time I feared that your
sweet witch-wife had addled your brain.”
    “I was discussing my lack of
passion.”
    Again, Simon shrugged. “The whore Marie never
complained of anything lacking in you before her marriage to
Robert. Afterward, she complained of little else.”
    Dominic made an impatient sound. “Do not play
theslackwitted serf with me, Simon. I know too
well just how quick your mind is.”
    Simon waited.
    “Lust is one thing,” Dominic said
flatly. “Love is quite another.”
    “To you, perhaps. To me, both mean a singular
stupi—um, vulnerability in a man.”
    Dominic’s grin was wolfish. He knew quite
well how Simon felt about men who loved women. Stupid was the least
insulting word he had heard Simon use.
    But it had not always been thus. Only since the
Holy Crusade and the Saracen dungeon.
    “Nothing I learned among the Saracens led me
to believe that a vulnerable knight was a wise one,” Simon
concluded.
    “Love isn’t a war between enemies to be
won or lost.”
    “For you, yes,” conceded Simon.

“For other men, no.”
    “What of Duncan?”
    “Nothing I have seen of Duncan recommends
love to me,” Simon said coolly.
    Dominic looked surprised.
    “God’s teeth,” Simon snarled.
“Duncan nearly died in that hellish Druid place where he
found Amber!”
    “But he didn’t die. Love was
stronger.”
    “Love?” Simon grunted. “Duncan
was simply too thick-skulled and stubborn to let feminine witchery
defeat him.”
    The Glendruid Wolf looked broodingly at the
handsome, sun-haired brother whom he loved more than anything on
earth save his wife Meg.
    “You are wrong,” Dominic said finally,
“just as I was wrong when I came out of the sultan’s
hell.”
    Simon started to argue, thought better of it, and
shrugged instead.
    “Aye,” Dominic said, “you do
understand what I am talking about. You were the first to see the
difference in me. I had no warmth.”
    Again, Simon didn’t disagree.
    “Meg brought warmth to my soul,”
Dominic said. “And then I noticed something that has troubled
me ever since.”
    “Weakness?” Simon asked ironically.
    A wolf’s smile flashed and vanished.
    “Nay. It is you, Simon.”
    “I?”
    “Yes. Like me, you left all warmth in the
Saracen land.”
    Simon shrugged. “Then the cold Norman heiress
and I are well matched.”
    “That is what worries me,” Dominic
said. “You are too well matched. Who will bring warmth to you
if you marry Ariane?”
    Simon speared another piece of meat.
    “Do not worry, Wolf of Glendruid. Warmth will
be no problem for me.”
    “Oh? You sound quite certain.”
    “I am.”
    “And how will you achieve