A month to the day that Accolon had appeared at the library door, I was up and enjoying the honeysuckle breeze through my bedchamber window as he sat dressing on the edge of our bed. He leaned down, retrieving his linen shirt from the floor with one elegant hand; with the other, he caught hold of my fingers, glancing up and smiling as if it were the first time seeing me that day. It was then I knew.
“This cannot end,” I said.
He regarded me in curiosity. “What do you mean?”
“We should be together. Somehow. Always. If it’s what you want.”
Tossing his shirt on the bed, Accolon leapt up and took me into his arms. “Come away with me,” he said. “To Gaul, to my manor there. It’s beautiful, fully moated—like our own island. Anything you wish for, I can now provide. We can make a home, live the life we were meant to have.”
The thought was sweet, dreamlike, futile.
“We can’t,” I replied. “My son is here. I cannot be a sea away. But there’s a path for us, a place. Fair Guard, my mother’s manor that I told you of—we can live freely there.”
He brightened. “Then that’s where we will go.”
“This won’t be easy, Accolon,” I warned. “My life is complicated. I am still married by law, and I have a place by my brother’s side. Then there’s your quest, the year you’ve promised to Arthur. None of this is straightforward. It’ll be dangerous, and difficult, and imperfect.”
Accolon leaned his forehead against mine. “It’ll be worth it,” he said. “Because it is you.”
From his silver tongue, it all sounded so simple. His arms tightened around me and I kissed him, his surety making me want to enfold him back into our bed, our love, and prevent him from leaving even for a short while.
“I should go,” he said. “Before anyone finds my bed unslept in.”
“Or stay,” I suggested. “And the Devil take it all.”
He kissed me again, bestowing his smile on my lips. Somewhere beyond, brisk footsteps and the distant cry of hinges declared Camelot somewhat alive.
“The sooner I go, the sooner I come back,” Accolon said. “Then we will drink wine, sit beneath the sun and make plans for our future.”
Still I held him. “I love you.”
“And I love you, mon coeur. But if I don’t go now, I never will.”
He slipped free, retrieving his shirt and pulling it over his head. Playfully, I caught its edges, tickling my fingers across the taut skin of his abdomen and making him laugh. More footsteps sounded nearby, closer than they should have been.
We barely had time to glance at one another in confusion before the interior door flew open, admitting a sudden draft and a tall, long-skirted figure.
“Morgan? We’re b–– By Almighty God!”
Alys froze, eyes wide as an arrow-shot deer. Accolon and I leapt apart, him rapidly tucking his shirt into his unbelted breeches, as if doing so would look any less damning.
“Alys, I can explain,” I began.
“Why is he here?” she said. “Tell me this is not what I think I’m seeing.”
“Dear heart, I cannot lie to you,” I said as calmly as I could. “This is exactly how it appears.”
She stared at Accolon, still half-dressed across our rumpled bed. “For how long?”
“Since the hunting trip left. We—it happened just before.”
“That’s over a month!” She pointed a shaky finger at Accolon. “You were in the hunting party—I saw you ride out.”
He offered the faintest of shrugs. “I came back for her.”
If there had been a blade to hand, I might have feared for him then, such was Alys’s look of wrath. I went towards her, but she swerved out of my reach.
“How can you say you wouldn’t lie to me?” she said. “You insisted you were staying to rearrange the library.”
“I did!” I replied. “This wasn’t planned.”
She huffed in disbelief, and I ducked my head, which made it look like a lie. Maybe it was; when I watched Accolon ride away after our night together, perhaps part of me had known he would come back, that he would choose me over everything.
“Lady Alys, I beg your pardon,” Accolon put in. “But this is not Morgan’s doing. She never knew I would ride back.”
“Do not speak to me,” she snapped. “I cannot bear to hear your lying voice.”
“Alys,” I said in a cautionary tone.
“No, Morgan. Of all the people—after what he did to you.” She thrust her hand out in disgust. “Him?”
A prickle of defensiveness ran across my skin, mixed with the overwhelming urge to throw my arms around Alys and explain until she understood.
I turned to Accolon. “Go. I will find you later.”
He gave me a long look, projecting love where he could not say it, then picked up his boots and left. Alys jumped when he passed outside my bedchamber window, heading for his secret escape route.
“My God,” she exclaimed in renewed outrage. “He hasn’t been coming and going by climbing the terrace? You are fully grown people with real lives and responsibilities, not a pair of lovelorn youths in a troubadour’s ballad. What possessed you?”
The scorn in her voice pierced me. “Do you truly want an explanation, Alys? Or do you just want to hold forth on how dreadful you think I am?”
“Not dreadful—foolish,” she replied. “Do you even know why we’re back? The hunting party is returning today, on King Arthur’s orders. Tressa and I arrived faster, but imagine your brother’s reaction if he discovered his married sister’s moral lapse with his tournament champion. Mother of God, the risks you have taken, and to be with him!”
I stiffened; she had never once commented on my supposed morals before. Since the day we first met at the nunnery, Alys had only ever judged by what she felt was good and true in her heart.
“That’s what it’s about, isn’t it?” I said. “Not the risks, not the morality of it all. You never cared about my going to bed with Sir Guiomar. You’re angry because it’s Accolon I’ve been with.”
“What of it? I have spent the last nine years hating that feckless Gaul for what he did to you, what you endured in his wake.” Her eyes met mine, wide and glassy. “He left you, Morgan. You trusted in his love, his word, and he left you a chess set, his petulance, and broke your heart. I can never forgive him for that.”
“Alys,” I said with a sigh, but there were no words I could offer, no justification, because everything she said was true. Her amber eyes pleaded with me to agree, to concede, so she could move on to forgiveness. How much easier it would be if I could give her what she wished for, but for him; but for the truth.
“I would never ask you to forgive him,” I said. “What you feel is inarguable and there is nothing I can do to change it. But in turn, you must accept that my feelings also cannot be changed.”
“No,” she said. “I won’t hear it, and you shouldn’t say it.”
“I love him, Alys. We love one another. The moment I laid eyes on him I knew that he still lived within me, even when we were at odds. This is not weakness, or a madness, or a return to youthful infatuation. When I look at Accolon, I see love—he is love. I forgave him. I chose him. He is part of the future I want.”
I gathered her hands in mine; they were cold, and I held them to my chest.
“Dear heart, you know love—you have love. We can no more change how we feel than we can extinguish the stars in the sky.”
“Then why can I not imagine ever doing to Tressa what Accolon did to you?” Alys shook her head, pulling her hands away. “When life became challenging, that knave cared only about himself, and it’s more than your heart at stake this time. Can you really trust him to bear the weight of your reputation, your complications, our entire lives?”
I stared at her, my insides chilled. Earlier with Accolon, wrapped in the warmth of our love and intimacy, I had believed in everything, down to his quick assurances that our difficulties were of no consequence. Yet we had been here before: the paradise of an empty castle; our youthful, passionate haze; the important questions we had failed to discuss. He was due on a year’s quest at any moment, and we had barely given it a thought.
“I know my own mind, Alys,” I said. “I know who Accolon is.”
“I sincerely hope you do, Morgan. For your own sake.”
I caught the flicker of feeling in her voice before she left me standing alone in the room, with nothing but the ghost of Accolon’s presence imprinted upon the empty bed.
The Royal Household arrived as Alys said they would, late that same afternoon. I managed to catch Accolon long enough to confirm that the King expected him to leave for his quest the next day, and agree that for safety’s sake we should keep apart.
But that night, as I tried to lie still, I felt the hum of my blood, singing through my greedy heart and filling my body with restlessness. There was only one way for my soul to be soothed.
“Sacredieu, what are you doing here?” Accolon exclaimed as I slipped through his chamber door. He was still awake, polishing his sword by the window under the light of candles and a high yellow moon.
“Come back for me,” I said. “Swear that you will.”
He regarded me as if he had considered nothing else. “I will, mon coeur. Even if I have to walk the roads barefoot and swim the violent seas. One year and I’ll be back, then I’ll never leave you again. Trust in that.”
“I trust you.” I exhaled, pausing. “Shall I go?”
Slowly he stood, taking in my impetuous, contradictory presence, my fingers still gripping the door handle. His elegant hands slid his sword into its scabbard and leaned it carefully against the wall.
Then, as so often it did, his recklessness rushed forth to match my own, and he was across the room, pressing me hungrily against the door, his arms, his mouth, his body all around me, as if we were long overdue.
“Stay,” he said, and inside I felt myself give; even as I said “I can’t” and he said “I know”; even as I kissed him and we gave ourselves over anyway.
By the time I awoke in my own bed late the next morning, with my skin still sparking from his last caress, Accolon had cleared Camelot of all traces of his presence and was gone.