Excerpt
"And what if I destroy you instead, Brother?" Ramsay recovered and eyed him steadily. "I am the Knight of Death, the Chevalier du Morte, Master of the Key to the Bottomless Pit, Keeper of the Secret of the Philosopher’s Stone. I should think that would mean something to you."
"At this point, I believe it means more to me than to you though I do not understand why it is so. I must know. I will know. It is a risk I am willing to take," the Knight sounded detached, unemotional. "If you should attempt to destroy me, then I will know that you are a traitor as charged by your own free will. In fact, if you are guilty, it is your only recourse. Further, if you are truly a traitor, then I am destroyed already unless I can correct the damage you have done. Let us use another worn cliché. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. As I have said, you must submit to me or I will simply have to take your head home in a box."
"I have nothing to confess but my love for the ‘fair-haired one’ as you call her," Mark told him truthfully. "I can’t say that I truly buy into all of this Knight in shining armor stuff just yet. You and Valentino and the rest of them could be perpetrating some wild conspiracy to drag this so-called secret from me for all I know. Perhaps I am an heir to some fortune based on a secret formula or a secret family recipe for kippered Herring. Maybe I am a pirate with a treasure map locked in my head or tattooed on my ass. I don’t know and right now, I don’t give a damn.."
"That you would sit here and confess this to me with such impunity, with such innocent abandon is the very reason I have not struck you down thus far. It is not in your character to make up such preposterous hypotheses. Therefore, I must contemplate the possibility that you are not acting of your own accord. That you are not yourself, as it were. That you have, indeed, lost all or part of your memories. The Chevalier du Morte would never have said such a thing to me. To confess your love for this woman is not something that Mark Andrew Ramsay would do," the man leaned forward slightly and Mark saw a brief flash of anger in his dark eyes. "You are not yourself! I had you twice at my mercy and spared your life. Never would I have been able to catch the Chevalier du Morte so easily. Never would the Prince of the Grave allow himself to become an actor in this unholy play. I could have beheaded you and taken you back to Italy in a cask as Brother Beaujold intends to do.