They both heard Garrick’s name shouted, and both reacted the same, with worry recalled, passion forgotten for the nonce. Garrick thrust himself instantly to his feet to see over the bank, easily done with his height. Brenna had to scramble up the same bank to see who had disturbed them, in time to hear the news she had prayed for.
“They sent word ahead. They arrive within the hour.”
“My son?” Garrick called back.
“With them.”
Garrick waved the man off and closed his eyes, his head dropping back on his mighty shoulders to face the clear afternoon sky. Brenna knew he was giving thanks to all the gods known to him, her own god included. She returned to wrap her arms around him, putting her head to his chest, the farthest it would reach. His arms came around her to squeeze. She braced herself to bear it.
Her relief was so great she felt tears gathering. That brought laughter, which they both shared for a time.
Finally, she ventured to ask, “Do you want to ride out to meet them?”
“I believe we have reached an age where it might be more dignified to await them at the hall.”
Her brows arched. “’Twill not take us an hour to return to the hall.”
“I know.” He grinned.
That quickly did she find herself back on the ground, and her laughter came for a different reason.
Chapter 17
SELIG WAS PUSHING his recovery. Though he was nowise ready to do so, he abandoned the wagon that third morning to ride double with Kristen. Convincing her that he was up to it had taken some doing. Keeping her unaware of his increased pain took even more. But he was determined. He was impatient. And he wanted to be firmly entrenched behind walls before Erika’s brother showed up with the demands she had convinced him would be forthcoming.
The walls would be necessary merely to hold the man off until Selig was well enough to face him. He didn’t want it coming to a battle of armies—if the brother had one at his disposal. A simple one-on-one confrontation would settle the matter, and he felt no qualms about killing the man, not when he would have been killed for the mere suspicion of spying had Ragnar Haraldsson been at Gronwood instead of only Erika, or so she had claimed.
He remembered her telling him that. Mention of being killed had a way of forging in one’s mind. He just wished the fever had not been strong even then and he could recall more of the questioning she had put him through, and the torture that had followed. But killing Ragnar would crush her hopes of rescue, which would suit his purposes just fine.
He had been enraged to see the blood on the wagon bed where her feet had been, that day she had walked behind it. The damned woman would bleed to death before she asked for assistance. As prideful as Kristen, but evil instead of good. He would see her arrogance ended and right quickly—once he was recovered.
In the meantime, he didn’t want pain or exhaustion bringing her to her knees. When the time came, he wanted complete, groveling surrender putting her there. Where would be the satisfaction if her body made her succumb but her mind still defied him? So it was not consideration for her that kept her from walking again. It was no more than his determination to get home the soonest.
“They came!” Kristen yelled with excitement.
Selig, sitting behind her on her great horse, had just been glad to see Wyndhurst finally before them. But at Kristen’s shout, still ringing in his ears, he squinted his eyes to make out their parents up on the outer walls, waving at them.
He groaned inwardly. They had said they might come this year, but under the present circumstances, he had been hoping they would not. And he had wanted coddling? He would get too much from his mother, and he could not gainsay her like he could his sister. She would have him to bed and he would stay there until she deemed him able to rise from it. And Kristen had already told him she refused to let him go to his own home until he had his weight back. She didn’t trust the women Ivarr had bought to feed him properly.
“Mayhap you could refrain from telling them how little is left of me?” he asked Kristen, his tone teasing, but still hopeful.
“Do not be silly. You can hide that sunken belly with a borrowed tunic, but your loss of flesh is just as noticeable in your face.”
He hadn’t realized that, but should have. “Not so handsome, then, am I?”
“So ugly I can barely stand it.”
She got a pinch, gave him back a giggle, then rode full tilt for Wyndhurst’s gate. Just what his throbbing headache needed. But Kristen wasn’t thinking of his condition now, and in fact, he had assured her he was fine.
He managed somehow to stay in the saddle without gripping his sister too hard. She was out of it the moment they were through the gate and running toward their parents, who were likewise hurrying toward them.
She reached Brenna first to hug her, lifting her off her feet in her exuberance. Their mother was not a small woman. By Celtic standards, she was actually tall. Yet her daughter topped her by half a foot. Garrick had his turn, and it was Kristen who was now lifted and swung around.
Selig stayed where he was. Actually, he didn’t think he could get off the horse by himself without falling flat on his face. He had been eating more food than he ever had in his life these past few days, but his strength was returning only by aggravatingly slow degrees, and the hours they had just ridden had sapped it again.
He took a moment to note where Erika was, and that the rest of their party were coming more slowly through the gate. Royce saw his difficulty and rode toward him, dismounting just before Selig’s mother reached him.
Brenna took one look at him and asked, “How bad is the pain?”
Selig sighed. He could lie, but she would see through it. “’Tis manageable,” he said.
“That does not tell me—”
“It does,” Garrick cut in, moving in front of Brenna to help Selig to the ground.
He was grateful for his father’s strong arm, but he was determined to walk into the hall without assistance, for his mother’s sake. He caught the hand she reached toward him and pulled her close for a hug, which was a mistake. He could not squeeze her as he usually did. She noticed.
“Are they dead?” was the first thing she asked in her blunt way.
Selig laughed. Beside them, Garrick and Royce both rolled their eyes over that bloodthirsty question. But Royce shouldn’t have been surprised.
He had first met Kristen’s mother in the dead of night with her dagger at his throat waking him, and he had little doubt she would have used it had he not given her the correct answers she sought. Soon after, he’d had to fight their Viking champion to the death. It was the eyes that told him who that champion was, the same aqua as Kristen’s. Knowing that, he couldn’t have killed him even had it been possible, which had never been quite established. But they were a close-knit family. You hurt one and the rest were your mortal enemies. He actually felt sorry for the Dane.
“’Twas thieves laid me low, Mother,” Selig was explaining, “and they are gone, slunk back to their dens. Only one of them would I recognize, so they will be hard to find.”
“That was only his first injury,” Kristen added. “He went to the Danes for aid and they imprisoned him. He was burning with fever and they lashed him.”
Brenna looked to her daughter. “Are they dead?”
“Nay, but the one responsible is there.” Kristen pointed unerringly in Erika’s direction. “And is Selig’s to deal with when he is able.”
“A woman?” Brenna and Garrick said at once.
Selig winced. “Must everyone find that so incredulous? I have not charmed every woman I set out to win. I have failed a few times, to keep my feet on the ground.”
A number of disbelieving snorts greeted that statement before Kristen said, with a potent glare for her brother, “He insisted on riding, though I see now ’twas a mistake. I am glad to turn the care of him over to you, Mother. I doubt me he will fool you with his assurances of being fine before he actually is.”
&nb
sp; Sister and brother were both glaring at each other now. Brenna, in full agreement with her daughter, began issuing orders. Selig looked to Royce for help. It might be his home, but Royce wasn’t about to argue with his mother-in-law, and his look said so. And then pandemonium broke loose as the women of the hall descended on Selig with a great many noisy tears.
Half were crying because he was alive, half because it was so obvious by the look of him that he had suffered. All of them wanted to assist in his recovery, and he was unable to convince them there was naught to worry over. None would listen to him. Even Kristen had trouble getting them to disperse without specific tasks sending them off, and there weren’t enough tasks for all of them.
Royce and Garrick stood back while Selig was carried off to the hall. Royce was amused, until he noted his father-in-law’s grim look.
“He will be fine once he has his weight back,” Royce said. “The pain in his head may take longer to go away. ’Twas a severe blow, I am told.”
“Who starved him?”
“The injury. ’Twas nigh a fortnight he was without consciousness.”
“Aye, that would do it,” Garrick said with a nod, then added, “I think I will go hunting this summer.”
Royce laughed. “Kristen said nearly the same thing, that Wessex has got itself too many thieves and ’tis time we rid ourselves of a few. But Selig wants revenge only against that one. ’Tis surprising how much he hates her.”
Garrick followed his look toward the Danish woman, who was being escorted into the hall behind the crowd. She was a bedraggled thing, though shapely, and might possibly be pretty if she were cleaned up.
“What does he mean to do with her?”
“What does any man do with a woman?” Royce countered with a shrug.
“Nay, not if he hates her.”
Royce was in a position to disagree. He had hated Vikings, which his wife had been. He had despised her for what she was, and thinking her a whore besides, had despised her even more. But having a woman like Kristen at his mercy had gotten beyond the hate right quickly.
But Kristen had never done him a personal injury, as Lady Erika had done Selig, and therein lay a world of difference.
Chapter 18
ERIKA SAT IN a corner of the bedchamber, unnoticed, on the floor, her wrists and ankles tied again to keep her there. “Until chains can be fashioned for you,” she had been told by Ivarr. She was in no hurry to see that done.
The activity in the room had not stopped since she had entered. Water was brought and taken away. More was brought and taken away. Food was brought and taken away before it cooled. More was brought hot to replace it.
The healer, an old woman with scraggly brown hair and a sharp tongue that was not discriminatory in whom it touched, was mixing herbs at a nearby table. Selig had been stripped down, examined, poked at. Several women had been present the while, and not one blush had Erika noted among them. She was to learn later that only the healer had not seen him naked before—aside from herself. And Erika was the only one blushing—and not looking.
The ocean of crying she had witnessed over him was disgusting. You would think all those women were his wives, yet she knew very well Saxons allowed only one wife, and he was living among Saxons. But not one woman there seemed to have the authority of a wife. The only one with authority was the black-haired older woman who tenderly applied a salve to his bruised back.
From what Erika had seen down in the bailey and previously learned from Kristen, she was afraid this was his mother. Another one of his family to despise her. She prayed she wouldn’t gain her notice, but wasn’t likely to for the while, since the woman’s full attention was on her son.
Erika leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes, trying to ignore what was happening on the large bed. Her thoughts drifted, as anxious as they had been since her capture. Nothing had occurred to relieve her fears. Arriving at such a well-fortified manor, with strong, high stone walls surrounding it, only increased them.
Turgeis wouldn’t be so close now. Gone was the hope that he could steal into camp late of a night and whisk her away to safety. The stone walls here would be amply guarded, the gates locked at night. And Turgeis wasn’t a man who could slip through gates unnoticed, day or night.
She could only wait for her brother now, and she knew not how long that might be. She wouldn’t tolerate the thought that Selig would kill him, as he had claimed. Ragnar would bring pressure to bear instead and she would be released. She had to cling to that hope.
There had been no more unnerving “talks” with her nemesis, nor had she been forced to ride in the wagon with him again. When they abandoned the conveyance that third morn, she had been made to ride behind Ivarr on his great charger. She wasn’t sure which was more unpleasant.
Even worse than Thorolf was Ivarr, in his cold condemnation of her. And riding with him had put a strain on every muscle she possessed, trying to keep from touching him. She had discovered that, as Thorolf was Kristen’s closest friend in this land, aside from her family, Ivarr was Selig’s. Knowing that, she supposed the hate he bore her was understandable. It just wasn’t very palatable for her.
That journey had not been an easy one by any means. Aside from the uncertain future which was so fearful, she had the constant worry that Kristen would abandon her completely to Selig’s supervision, especially once her husband joined them. Not so. Erika’s plea that first night had worked, and the Norsewoman continued to come and collect her each time she herself had to answer nature’s call.
One of those times Erika had even tried to reach through Kristen’s dislike of her to what common sense the woman must possess, to remind her of consequences yet to be met that could still be avoided.
“My brother will come for me,” she had told her. “Even if he and I were not close, he would come.”
“Aye, I suppose he will. But he will not have you back unless my brother chooses to release you. You may not want to go back by then.”
Erika had been able to think of only one reason she might not want to go home—a tarnished virtue. “You mean he will rape me?”
Kristen had snorted. “Rape a woman he hates? That is one thing you need not fear.”
“Then why would I not wish to go home?”
Kristen had shrugged. “Because ’tis likely you will come to love him.”
Erika not only had been incredulous, she had very nearly laughed at the absurdity of such a notion. “Love a man who means to harm me? How could you think it?”
“Therein would be a fitting punishment, would it not?”
“It cannot happen.”
“Do not say cannot. ’Tis more like you will not be able to help yourself. They never even try.”
“They?”
“All the women who love him.”
All the women who love him.
An unusual statement, until you considered how unusual the man was in his looks. Erika had no fear that she would come to be included in that “all,” but she was surprised to discover firsthand so many who were.
A number of them had been traipsing in and out of this very room. A few almost came to blows over who would fetch what for Selig. And yet this was a man with no warmth in him that Erika could see, no compassion or forgiveness, certainly no mercy. How could so many women be so shallow, to love a man merely for his handsomeness, even as remarkable as his was?
Only the mother and one elderly servant remained in the room when Erika took note of it again. Selig had been covered, was still on his stomach, with his eyes closed, possibly asleep, since the two women were now whispering. They were preparing to leave the room, gathering up the cloths that had been used to clean Selig, the bucket of water, the jar of soft soap, what food remained.
Erika held her breath, still hoping to go unnoticed. It was not to happen. In fact, both women came directly toward her, stopping at her feet. Obviously, they had been aware of her all along.
“I am Brenna Haardrad, Selig’s mother.?
??
Her voice was stiff. Her expression, of strong dislike, Erika was quite accustomed to by now. It was mirrored in the servant’s face.
“So I guessed,” Erika replied.
“He has told me what happened—and your part in it.”
“Did he say what his revenge is to be?”
“I would give you a lashing to equal the one you gave him—to begin with. Had I been there to see him when he was released, I would have killed you. But then, that is the way of hot tempers, is it not? Quick to act, with regrets come too late. I must commend my daughter for her restraint.”
The color had drained from Erika’s face, but it began to return with the word “regrets.” “Are you saying you will not kill me now?”
“The decision is not mine to make, but nay, I would not. Death, like tempers, is too quick after all.”
That sounded so ominous, Erika was not sure she should be relieved. “But what does he mean to do?”
Brenna shrugged. “He did not say, but do not be so eager to find out. You have a reprieve whilst he recovers, which is more than you deserve.” Having said all she cared to, she turned to the servant. “Take her down to the bathing chamber, Eda, and she will need new clothes.”
“Nay.”
The denial came from the bed, clearly stated. Selig had not been sleeping after all, had been listening to every word.
Brenna glanced toward him and answered with the obvious. “She stinks, Selig.”
“She can have the bath, but here. She does not leave my presence.”
“Why?”
“Ask me about anything else, Mother, but do not question me about her.”
His voice was cold, not meant to be argued with. It was the man speaking, not the son. Which would not have stopped Brenna, except she had already decided not to interfere.
All she said was, “I never thought to see the day you would hate a woman.”
“All things are possible with the right provocation,” he replied.