A Knight To Remember - UNCUT R18

Chapter 31 - UNCUT

His jaw flinched and I could tell he was still struggling to find the right words.

“I have done a lot of things that I am not proud of Maeb.  There is much I owe you Maeb.  But I love you and I want acknowledge our child.”

“What?” I turned to him with held breath and wide eyes.

“I want to take responsibility for fathering our child.”

“No!”

“No?   But Maeb it is what I want.  I want to stand by your side and have everyone know that I am proud of what we have made.”

“No! No, no you cannot do that!”

“But I want to.”

“No! I will deny it.”  I shook my head as my throat constricted and my chest was so tight that it hardly allowed me to breath.

“Why?  Are you ashamed of me?” he asked in a small voice as his eyes flash with pain.

“Ashamed of you?  Why would you think that?”

“For the same reason I did not return when Douglas found me.  I am nothing Maeb.  I am not worthy of you. I hurt you numerous times and in the most appalling manner.  And then I am a fraud which will be obvious to all when I stand in front of everyone and the lie that was Lord Torc will be revealed.  Instead I will be Jonathan, the bastard son of a disgraced Lord.  I am illegitimate and therefore I am unworthy of claiming the title without sanction.  And of course, I am not the great warrior I believed myself to be.  I have no special gifts.  I am a gullible man."

 I watched his head drop and I reached for him as he started to turn from me.

“Jonathan, you are a great man.  You were never anything less.  You did not need your gifts to be a great warrior.  Everything you have achieved thinking you did so with magic to guide you, was done by your own merits.  Jonathan, you are a hero to men and someone to be admired.  No magic made you that man and none can take it away.” 

“Yes Maeb and no magic made me the beast I became.”

“You believed something so adamantly that it became the truth for you.  I am not ashamed of you but of myself.”

“No Maeb, you were not at fault.”

I shrugged, "Every year I give the speech to the young unmarried girls of the court.  Everyone knows this.  Every year I help those who have lost their virtue to the men who return.  I feel like I have failed them.  I can no longer stand before these women as spout words that I myself paid no attention to.  I cannot stand tall in my own hall.   In betraying my husband I have betrayed all the women and myself.  I could not control my own lusts so how I am I to command my subjects, to ask for their respect?  I am a hypocrite and unworthy of the position I hold."

"Maeb, that is not true, there were other factors.  This was more my fault than yours.  And they King played a large part as well."

"Yes, but this is my body.  I took you willingly to my bed.  Even without the coercion of the King, I still would not have denied you.  I still would have fallen pregnant."

"Maybe but that does not exonerate me for what I did to you.  It does not justify my behavior.  I am a man and what I did was unacceptable.  I will never cease to be ashamed of my behavior Maeb but I will never be ashamed of the outcome of my actions.  I am proud to be the father of the child.  I want to spend the rest of my life proving to you that my love for you is true and not just a vehicle to entice you to have sex with me.  I want to be the man I should have been from the start."