Erinsong (27 page)

She didn’t feel anything.

It was like the day old
Seamus had his leg
severed in a battle
with the Connacht. Armed with a
rare
Spanish sword, his opponent had sliced off the
limb cleanly in a blinding moment. Men who’d seen
it happen said Seamus himself didn’t realize the
leg
was gone till he lost his balance and
fell.

Her father and his men had
rushed Seamus back to the keep, a strap of leather cinched tight to
the bleed
ing stump. The shock of the
injury numbed Seamus so he didn’t feel a thing until the spurting
wound was cauterized. Then he’d howled like a demon, shrieking and
raving.

Now her heart was numb,
just like Seamus’s leg.
At any moment, the
burning would come. She forced
herself to
inhale again, and along with the cool, moist
air, pain flooded her chest.

When she looked at Jorand,
a stranger peered back
at her through his
damnably beautiful eyes.

“Brenna?”

How could his voice sound
so unchanged, as if
nothing had happened?
As if the whole world hadn’t
just
collapsed around her?

She scrambled upright and
bolted from the circle
of light cast by
their campfire. Her feet flew toward
the
boat. In the moonlight, she groped for the knot tethering the
coracle to an overhanging hawthorn.
Bile
rose in the back of her throat, but she forced
her
self to breathe slowly and evenly. The
last thing she
wanted to do was disgrace
herself further by being sick. She heard Jorand thrashing through
the undergrowth after her, but didn’t look up till he grasped her
elbow.

“Brenna, say something.”

“And what would ye have me
say?” She jerked her
arm away, taking
refuge in anger to avoid feeling pain, and turned her attention
back to the double-clove hitch. The knot firmly resisted her
fumbling efforts. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Thorkill,
Master of Dublin. Oh, by the by, I’m your son-in-law’s new bed
warmer.”

“It’s not like that.”

If only she could shoot lightning from her
eyes. She’d reduce him to a smoldering pile in an instant.

“Suppose ye be after telling me how it is
then?” Brenna finally worked the tether free and flung it into the
boat, satisfied by the resounding thud of the heavy rope on the
hull.

“I never intended for this to happen,” he
said. “You know I didn’t remember anything of my past.”

“Aye, well, seems to me quite a bit slipped
your mind.” She put a shoulder to the prow and shoved. The boat
didn’t budge.

“You knew this was a possibility from the
first. Don’t you remember? Before we wed, you’re the one who
insisted we only handfast, just in case.”

Damn the man. Why does he have to be
right?

Brenna turned and pressed her back to the
pointed prow, hoping to gain some purchase, but Jorand had pulled
more than half the length of the coracle onto the spongy bank. She
groaned with the effort but only managed to move the sturdy boat a
few finger-lengths.

“Brenna.” His voice was ragged. “Look at
me.”

She drew a deep breath and let herself meet
his gaze. The pain she read on his face lanced her heart
afresh.

“I never wanted to hurt you, I swear it.”

Too late.

He reached for her, but she shrank back. His
pained expression told her he was hurt by her withdrawal. Her
natural impulse was to try to ease his suffering, but she couldn’t
bring herself to give him comfort, even though it broke her heart
to deny him a small kindness.

“What ye say is true, I
grant ye. I went into this marriage hoping ye had no past, yet
knowing in me heart ye might. Seems a good many things slipped me
mind as well.” She trembled, unable to control the shakes
threatening to take her. Suddenly a new thought struck her. “When
did it all come back to
ye then? I suppose
the sight of this Thorkill brought the remembrance of his daughter
to your mind.”

“No.” A deep cleft formed
between his brows. “I
won’t lie to you,
Brenna. It was the night you clouted me on the head. That’s when my
memory came back
entire.”

“But that was weeks ago.
We’ve come ever so
many leagues since
then. Ye let me make plans, the
things we
said and did together, it was all—” Her mind rolled over the events
of the recent past in a
new light. His
furious lovemaking had delighted her,
leaving her soul stripped bare and vulnerable but
unafraid. Now a tight knot formed in her
belly.

“Ye used me,” she whispered, hardly daring to
voice the sickening truth.

“No, princess, never that.”
He moved to embrace
her but she shoved him
away. “What passed between us was real, for both of us. Didn’t you
think it strange
that I changed my mind
and suddenly didn’t want to
come to
Dublin? It was because I love you, Brenna.”

Love.
How she’d longed to hear him declare it.
Now it rang false as a minstrel’s play in her ear,
even
though the voicing of it made
something inside her leap up in hopeless joy. She reined in her
surging heart. Why had he waited till now when the word meant less
than nothing?

“No, no, no!” she chanted,
falling against him and pounding her fists on his chest. “Ye have
no right to
tell me that. Not
now.”

He caught her wrists and
held her arms spread-eagle. “I do have the right.” His eyes blazed
at her,
fierce as a goshawk with a mouse
in its sights. “I love
you, I tell you.
I’m your husband, whether you like it
or
no.”

“That’s easily remedied,”
she countered, yanking herself free and attacking the coracle with
fresh vehemence. “I release ye from your vows with me
blessing. Go back to your Norse cow then. Ye
needn’t be bothered with the likes of me one moment
longer.”

“No, Brenna. Our agreement
was for a year and a
day.” His voice was a
low rumble, but she shivered at the core of hardness she heard in
the tone. What right
did he have to be
angry? “I’ll not settle for anything less.”

“Ye’ll settle for a great
deal less if ye want to live
out the rest
of the term.” Brenna knew she shouldn’t bait him. It wasn’t unheard
of for a husband to murder his wife for a scolding tongue, but she
was past caring if he killed her.

In fact, it might be a mercy.

She ducked under his arm
when he moved to capture her. “Don’t ye be daring to touch me. Not
while
ye have another woman who calls
herself your wife.”

She bit her lip as she
shoved against the boat again.
When it
wouldn’t give ground, she sank to her knees
in despair.

He raked a hand through his hair in
frustration. “What are you doing? Even if you could get her under
sail, where do you think you’d go?”

Home. Home to
Donegal.
She was suddenly overcome with
the need to see her family, to be surrounded by the people she was
sure loved her. She’d learned a fair bit about sailing during their
sojourn. Still, however much she might wish it, she knew it would
be impossible for her to navigate alone over the greenish-gray
waters encircling the isle.

“Why, by all that’s holy, did ye not tell me
sooner?” she whispered.

“For fear of this.” All trace of anger
drained from him and he knelt down beside her, close but not
touching. “Brenna, I’ve faced battle. I’ve escaped from a walled
city with an army at my heels. Before I washed up on your beach, I
spent a night adrift in the open sea. But I’ve never been more
afraid than when my memory returned and I realized I might lose
you.”

Her heart strained toward him, but she pulled
it back. No honey-tongued words could salvage the wreck of their
marriage.

“Ye cannot lose what ye never really had. How
is it possible for ye to have me, when I don’t have ye? Not all of
ye at any rate.” She worried her lower lip and let a single tear
course down her cheek unheeded. “Merciful Christ, what’s to become
of us?”

“Check your bearings and remember where we
are. This is a delicate situation, all right,” he admitted.

Brenna tossed a look back up to their camp,
where the four invaders had settled to empty her stewpot.
Evidently, they had no interest in Jorand’s domestic affairs.

“Fortunately, among my people, it’s not
uncommon for a man to have more than one wife,” she heard Jorand
saying.

She wished he’d slapped her instead.

Her vision tunneled and she had to remind
herself to breathe.

“I cannot live with that.”
She strained to hold back
the flood of
tears pressing against her eyes. Once
started, she feared she’d never stop. “If ever ye
cared
for me, even a wee bit, ye’ll not
ask it of me.”

Since he was able to broach
the possibility of keep
ing both of them,
it was obvious Jorand wouldn’t
give up
Solveig for her. And why should he? Solveig
was the chieftain’s daughter, obviously someone of importance
in his world. His dalliance with an Irish girl would be tolerated
and given no more impor
tance than if he’d
acquired a body slave.

Misere, Jesu
Christe.
Christ, have mercy.

How was it she was still
alive? Her chest continued to rise and fall, each breath a searing
blast from a kiln. But deep inside, she was hollow as a
gourd.
For the first time in her life,
Brenna understood why
some folk did away
with themselves in despair. She
wished she
could sink into the dark earth. It would
be silent and cool and still, and she wouldn’t have to
feel anymore. If Father Michael hadn’t pounded
the reality of mortal sin and the terrors of hell into her
head, she’d step into the black waters of the
Liffey and
let herself float to the sea
and oblivion.

“Take me home,” she begged.
“For the love of
God, take me back to me
father’s keep.”

“You want to leave without
getting what we came
for? Have you
forgotten the child? I still mean to get
that book back for you, and if I have to kill Kolgrim to do
it, so much the better.”

He ground a fist into his other palm and
Brenna imagined for a moment those strong fingers laced around
Kolgrim’s neck, squeezing the life out of the man who’d ruined and
ultimately killed her sister. Her chest constricted painfully. Even
the thought of retribution for Sinead wasn’t worth the indignity of
sharing her husband with another woman.

“
Brenna, I
swear to you, I’ll still
help you find your sister’s bairn. Do you not think you can bear me
company long enough to do that?”

The child. A soft throb
started inside her. The last good thing she could do for Sinead.
She could love her sister’s child. A sweet ache longed to be
assuaged by a pair of chubby arms around her neck.
Aye.
She’d come so far.
To turn back now for the sake of her own heartache seemed the
height of selfishness. She’d never have a better opportunity to
learn what became of Sinead’s bairn. She could bear much for the
sake of the child, even the indignity of seeing Jorand with his
first love. With the woman he might still love.

In answer, she rose to her feet and trudged
back to the camp, leaving him to tie up the coracle again lest the
rising tide pull it back into the Liffey during the night.

The other Northmen had made
themselves at home around Brenna’s fire and were fighting for the
last dollops of stew in the supper pot. As she walked across camp,
she felt their eyes on her, alien and probing, but she held her
head high and carried herself with the remembered dignity of a
daughter of
the house of Ui Niall. Her
Donegal pride was in tat
ters, but it was
all she had left.

Brenna crawled into the
lean-to and curled up in Jorand’s cloak, giving her back to the
fire. The bois
terous conversation that
had died when she emerged
from the brush
started afresh, raucous and crude to her ears. In a few moments,
she recognized Jorand’s voice joining them in that savage,
strangely modulated tongue.

Somehow she had forgotten
what he was. In the months leading up to their marriage, she’d been
fascinated by him, as deceived and entranced as if he were a
faerie king come to charm her into the hills with him. Since their
wedding, his nearness and the
treachery of
her own body had led her into the delu
sion that Jorand was, in truth, Keefe Murphy, her own
handsome sea warrior.

Now, hearing him in his
true element, surrounded
by his rough
countrymen, knowing he had a Norse
wife he
had no reason to leave, Brenna finally had to
face the truth.

Jorand was just a Northman, after all.