The Pirate Bride (22 page)

Guthrom, who was still brooding over being shot by an arrow from a woman’s quiver, had his barely wounded leg propped on a barrel. He advised Thork, “ ’Tis past time for you to leave this barmy place, lest you find yourself trapped by the women’s wiles.”

Several women seated nearby gasped with outrage. One of them, probably Elida, who had been subjected to Guthrom’s constant scorn, looked at his brother and said, “Do not fear, Lord Full-of-Himself Viking. No wiles will be directed your way.”

Lady Alinor pounded her fist on the table and stood suddenly. Addressing Thork with narrowed eyes, she asked, “Is Medana with child or is she not?” She had on her do-not-fool-with-me-son! expression.

“I do not know.”

“Pfff!” his father said again.

“
Could
Medana be with child?” his mother persisted.

“Mayhap.”

“Wiles, I tell you. Beware of the wily traps,” Guthrom warned.

Tykir, standing to his full impressive height, glared down at Guthrom. “Go walk off your miserable, mead-sodden state.”

“I cannot walk with this gimpy leg,” Guthrom complained.

“Then limp it off,” his father said in a roar that brooked no argument.

His mother gave his father a little smile of thanks for his intervention. Then they all turned back again to Thork, who had the good sense to stand as well, preparing to go after Medana and make amends, if he could.

“Mayhap?” His mother tilted her head at him. If possible, the freckles stood out even more on her pale face, a sure sign that she was not happy with him. “Explain yourself, son.”

Thork shook his head. “This is a matter for Medana and myself to resolve. You will get an explanation only if, and when, Medana deems it wise.”

On those unexpected words and five gaping mouths, he stormed off to find the pirate maid who might or might not be carrying his child. He found her leaning against the back wall of the cow byre, chomping away on a carrot.

A carrot?

Uh-oh!

Women had odd cravings for food when they were pregnant, didn’t they? He seemed to recall his mother saying that she ate so many blueberries when she was carrying Selik, it was a wonder he wasn’t born blue.

Should he remark on that fact to Medana?

Not if he valued his skin!

She put the carrot in her mouth and glanced sideways at him through half-lidded eyes.

He almost swallowed his tongue. Thus, it was in a choked voice that he said, “Please accept my apology, Medana.”
And would you mind if I replace that carrot with something else?

She took a huge bite off the end of the carrot and crunched away.

Ouch!

“Go away.”

Instead, he walked up and leaned against the byre wall beside her. “I really am sorry.”

“For what? Ruining my life?”

I would not go that far.
“For embarrassing you.”

“I told you to stop staring at my belly.”

“I cannot help myself.”
Eat some more carrot, sweetling.

“Because you are suddenly anxious to be a father?”

How many times do I have to tell her that sarcasm ill suits a lady?

Mayhap now is not the time to remind her of that fact.

“Nay, I am not anxious to be a father. Not at this time, leastways.”

“At least you are honest. About that.”

The implication being that he was dishonest in other regards. He would overlook that insult for now. “You did not let me finish. I would not choose to have planted my seed in you—”

“Me? That is what riles you most, is it not? That your first child might be born of a lowly female pirate?”

There is naught lowly about you, Medana. If you only knew!

“Your mother told me about your blood ties to the Norse royal family.”

He laughed. “Medana! Those ties are so long and twisted and broken. I do not consider myself of that status and, truth to tell, I would not want to be. What a family of vipers! Now, if you would stop interrupting me, wench,” he growled with mock ferocity, “I could finish what I started to say.”

“Go on.”

“While this is not the best of times to be contemplating fatherhood, or motherhood, I find myself more and more fascinated by the prospect. That is why my eyes are drawn to your stomach so often. Is it possible that a tiny son, or daughter, is already growing in there?”

“Well, drawing attention to my belly is not going to make it true, or untrue,” she sniped, then put a hand to her face before commenting, “Your mother must consider me a harlot.”

“Are you serious? Rumor is that my mother and father rutted like rabbits before they were married, and I know for a fact that I was already a growing seed afore the wedding.”

That seemed to make her feel better. So he took a chance and linked his hand with hers, the one not still clutching a carrot. Raising the double fist to his mouth, he kissed the back of her hand and said, “I know you are worried about being with child. Nay, let me finish. And I know you are worried about your island and how your secret location is now vulnerable to attacks. But I want to assure you that I will not abandon you.”

“You mean, if I am increasing?”

He shook his head. “Either way, I will find a way to protect you.”

She remained dubious.

He unlinked their hands and moved in front of her. Bending his knees so he was on eye level with her, he tipped her chin and entreated, “Trust me, Medana. Can you do that?”

“I have trusted only myself for a long time. I do not think I could place my fate in another’s hands.”

“My family then. My parents. They are outrageous and betimes a bit barmy, but they treasure honor above all else. Do you think they would leave you here without protection?”

“Well, I could probably trust your mother,” she said, “but only because she now thinks I might be carrying her grandchild.”

“You do not know my mother. Yea, she yearns for grandchildren and fears none of her four witless sons will ever produce any for her afore she is feeble and unable to lift a tiny squalling body. But she cares very much about the abuse of women. Ask her sometime about the three husbands she was forced to take, and buried, afore she wed my father. Ask her about her brothers, if you think you are the only one with greedy, grab-land, vicious siblings.”

“Really?” She tried to smile.

He took that for a good sign. Putting his fingertips to the pulse beating in her neck, he gave her a soft kiss to seal his pledge of protection. Then he kissed her a little harder, to show he was sincere. Finally, he gripped her head, tunneling his fingers in her hair, and kissed her deeply, because he could. And because she was not shoving him away.

Her skin carried the aroma of roses, from the soap she’d used to bathe, no doubt. He had used the pine-scented one. Together they would complement each other.
Evergreen roses
, he thought with an inward smile. He would have to tell Medana, later, to try that combination in soap making. It could be their signature soap.

Good gods! My brain must be melting if I am fantasizing about soaps when my cock is having altogether different fantasies.

He took the carrot that still dangled from one hand and tossed it over his shoulder. Then he hitched her body up so that her feet were off the ground, and her legs must needs wrap around his hips for balance. Placing her arms around his shoulders, he settled his open mouth over hers and kissed her for a totally different reason. Because he was hungry for her.

“You are a troll,” she murmured at one point, and nipped at his bottom lip.

“Kiss me hard enough, my dear pirate, and I will turn into a glorious god.”

She tried to laugh but his tongue got in the way.

A madness of sorts overtook him then as his mouth seduced hers with wicked intentions he hadn’t even known he harbored. Leastways, sex had not been his intention when he’d come after Medana. Well, there were different kinds of apologies, he supposed.

His hands roamed everywhere, reacquainting him with all her parts . . . her breasts, her back and shoulders, her hips and buttocks.

When she moaned into his mouth, he moaned back into hers. They anticipated each other’s needs and wants in ways he had not imagined were possible. Sometimes she mirrored his actions, sometimes she initiated delicious ones of her own.

Somehow, and he would swear later that he didn’t know how it happened, he found his braies at his ankles, and her braies at her ankles. He put his fingers to her cleft and she anointed him with her woman-dew. That was all the encouragement he needed to place himself at her slick entrance.

With eyes half blinded with the glaze of arousal, he begged in a voice so husky he scarce recognized himself, “Let me, Medana.”

Her eyes, too, seemed unfocused. But she must have heard him because she nodded, and took his phallus in hand guiding him inside her, bit by agonizing bit. The whole time her inner folds were clenching and rippling around him in welcome.

It was short and incredibly satisfying. One, two, three thrusts and it was over. But in the process she bit his shoulder to hold back her cries, and he murmured incoherent sex words against her neck.

Once they had reached their mutual peaks and were sated, he slipped out of her body, and they both drew their breeches back up. As they were trying to relace themselves, Medana said, “Now you have really done it.”

“
We
did it,” he corrected.

“It matters not who did the doing. You did not pull out. Again.”

That shocked Thork. He was meticulous about spilling his seed outside his partner’s body. Fifteen long years he’d practiced that kind of control. Now he’d failed to do so. Not once, but twice. “Well, I guess it does not matter if you are already pregnant.”

“You idiot! What if I wasn’t pregnant? What if you made me pregnant this time?”

Oops!
he said to himself, but would not dare to say aloud.

“ ’Tis obvious that I am unable to resist your charms. Your kisses obviously bestir my passions. One touch of your calloused fingertips, and it is like spark to tinder,” she admitted. “So, in future, you must stay away from me.”

A wash of inordinately intense pleasure swept over him at her words. “Sweetling! You should not tell me that. Now I will be unable to stay away.” Not that he could, anyway.

There was no time to say more because his mother was looking for them. “Thork, where are you? Medana, we must talk.”

He put a forefinger to his lips to warn Medana to remain silent. Into her ear, he whispered, “Stay here while I distract my mother.”

She nodded.

He kissed her quickly then and murmured, “Remember. Trust.”

Sauntering around the corner of the byre, he called out, “Mother, have you found Medana? I cannot imagine where she might be hiding.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk!” She sniffed the air, and Thork winced. His mother could pick out the musky scent of sex at twenty paces when her sons had been boys. Why would it be any different now? “What have you done, Thork?”

He was not going to discuss
that
with his mother. “Trust me, Mother. I will make everything aright.”

“I am not the one you need to convince.”

He knew that.

“Do you love her?”

Thork flinched. It was a question he hadn’t expected and truthfully hadn’t even considered. Tentatively, he replied, “I do not know.”

“You should come back to Dragonstead with us, or go to Hedeby. Just leave the poor woman alone.”

“I cannot.”

“Well, that is your answer then.”

Chapter Twenty

Did the Brady Bunch have family meetings like this?  . . .

M
edana thought she couldn’t be any more embarrassed, but sitting in a meeting with Tykir, Alinor, and Thork to discuss her intimate condition was beyond humiliating. Medana had agreed to sit down with them in the rush of exhilaration on learning that Thork’s parents would be leaving Thrudr that evening . . . and hopefully Thork would accompany them.

They were sitting on benches at the far end of the hall of one of the smaller longhouses, sipping at wooden cups of Lady Eadyth’s delicious mead. Thork sat beside her, and his mother and father faced them from the other side of the table. His father wore war braids intertwined with crystals in his dark blond and gray hair. A beautiful star-shaped amber pendant on a gold chain hung down over his leather tunic. Alinor looked equally impressive in a deep green
gunna
. Her bright red hair with a small smattering of silver threads was held off her face with a twisted silver fillet in the shape of writhing dragons. They made a handsome couple and their affection for each other was a palpable thing. How could Thork have avoided such a loving family for so long?

And speaking of . . . well, thinking of Thork, he looked more than presentable himself. He, too, was wearing war braids today, interspersed with amber beads. He had a thunderbolt earring in one ear only, giving him a rascally look. He was close-shaven and smelled of pine soap. Nigh irresistible, she had to admit.

“These cups are remarkable,” Alinor said, examining the fine carving on the one in her hands. This particular set had animals on them with a forest background. Deer, squirrels, birds, and such.

“Tofa, our mistress of woodcarving, makes those. Aren’t they incredible? You should see the work she does on chair backs. We can sell as many as she makes in Hedeby.”

“I think I met her yesterday. The woman with long black hair worn in a coronet about her head?”

Medana nodded.

“She had the most adorable little girl with her.”

“That would be Rikva. She is four years old. Mistress of turnips, we call her. ’Tis her job to pull out neeps in the garden.”

Everyone smiled at that.

“There is not one single person here who does not have a job and a title,” Thork bragged, as if he had a proprietary interest in the island.

Medana looked at Thork with surprise.

“Now, let us be forthright here, Medana,” Tykir said. “Are you or are you not with child?”

Medana looked to Thork for help. He just shrugged.

“As I have told Thork repeatedly, I will not know for days yet, mayhap as much as a sennight. I ne’er had reason to keep exact track of such things in the past.” Medana didn’t think her face could get any hotter.

She was wrong.

“There are early signs betimes,” Alinor mused. “Do your breasts feel overly full and overly sensitive?”

“How would I know, with all the handling by calloused fingers they have been subjected to of late?” Immediately, Medana regretted her impulsive outburst. But it was too late, of course.

Thork was grinning like a preening peacock as he turned his hands over to expose his calloused palms and fingers. His father was chuckling with pride. His mother was eyeing the two of them speculatively.

“Well, there are other signs, as well. Like moodiness,” Alinor continued.

“She snaps my head off every time I get near her,” Thork told them.

“I did that from the first time I met your irksome self,” Medana said.

Again, Thork grinned with ill-placed pride.

“And piss. My lady wife had to piss all the time when she was carrying,” Tykir disclosed.

Medana had been visiting the privy a lot, but she’d attributed it to nervousness with all the people about.

“Of course, a sure as certain sign is that the nipples and aureolae, those rings around the nipples, get darker in color.” This intimate detail from Tykir again.

“Father!” Thork chided with a laugh.

“Lackwit!” Alinor slapped Tykir on the arm.

“What? ’Tis the truth.”

“You do not discuss female parts in public,” Alinor explained.

“This is not public. This is family,” Tykir grumbled.

Me? Family?

Alinor turned her attention to Medana with a questioning expression on her face.

“I have not looked there lately,” Medana said, with an even hotter face. Any more blushing, and the skin on her cheeks would catch fire.

“I could check for you,” Thork offered.

She
was the one slapping
Thork’s
arm now.

“How about food cravings?”

She exchanged a glance with Thork, whom she knew was recalling the carrot last night. Which brought other images to mind. She could tell they had like minds when he winked at her. The rogue! “None that I can think of,” Medana lied.

“Remember the time you caught me eating gammelost and honey, heartling,” Alinor said to her husband. “That is how you knew I was carrying Thork.”

Thork made a gagging sound, and Medana wasn’t sure if it was at the idea of stinky cheese and honey, or the prospect of his parents getting nostalgic.

“Well, whether you are increasing or not is not really the issue, Medana. You are a highborn lady compromised by a highborn man, and that requires a marriage,” Tykir declared.

“Nay!” she and Thork said at the same time.

“Let us not rush things,” Thork said.

The insensitive rat!

His mother gave Thork a look that would melt a rock.

“I did not mean—” Thork tried to hedge.

“I would not marry the loathsome lout if he knelt on burning coals and begged me,” Medana proclaimed.

Alinor smiled, and Medana realized that she’d slipped by calling Thork a “loathsome lout.”

“We have decided that you should come back to Dragonstead with us,” Tykir said in a voice that brooked no argument. “We will leave some men behind for protection of Thrudr. That way your concerns over the vulnerability of the island will be taken care of. You will be out of reach of your brothers or the king’s men, if it comes to that, since you will be under my shield. And you and Thork will have an opportunity to make decisions about your future together. Know this, my dear Medana, if you are carrying my grandchild, it will be born in marriage. I know from personal experience the scorn that illegitimacy carries.”

This was a long speech for Tykir to make, and they all remained silent taking in his words.

“I do not want to leave Thrudr,” Medana insisted. There was no time for further discussion because Brokk, the young Viking comrade of Thork’s, came stumbling in. “Ships . . . there are ships headed toward Small Island.”

“Well, we often have ships stop by for fresh water, or to deliver and pick up messages left by other passing vessels.”

Brokk shook his head vigorously. “Bolthor said they carry flags that are identifiable, even from the mountaintop. Lady Katherine’s . . . she is Bolthor’s wife, and he is moaning and flailing his arms like a scared chicken. The two others have white thunderbolts against black fields.”

“My brothers,” Medana gasped.

Tykir stood and rubbed his hands together. “Nothing like a good fight to whet an old man’s juices!”

“You are not fighting,” Alinor told her husband.

Tykir picked his wife up off the bench and kissed her deeply on the mouth. “Try and stop me,” he said. “Come, Thork, we must gather the men and plan strategy.”

Thork looked at Medana as if considering the same.

“Do not dare,” she warned.

He grinned and rushed out with his father, Brokk following after them.

“Wait!” Medana said, but they were already gone.

Alinor sat back down across the table from Medana, then glanced around at the empty cups and empty benches before saying, “That went well, didn’t it?”

The worst possible thing happened . . .

Thork stood on the mountaintop with his father and Starri, staring down at Small Island. It looked as if the three new ships were staying. That meant that one of his father’s men must have told them about the tunnel.

Of course, Medana, Gudron, and several of the pirate warrior women were there, too. Medana insisted it was their island, their problem, and they must be involved in the solution.

Bolthor was there also. Guthrom, Selik, and Thork’s other men were down in the village assembling every weapon on the island to get an idea of total inventory. They would also be helping to train the women warriors in fighting techniques they might not have yet mastered and refreshing their own skills. There were plenty of swords and lances and bows and arrows aboard his father’s longships, but they didn’t want to rush out at first low tide and alert Medana’s brothers that the island was now under the shield of the Thorksson family.

“I will go through the tunnel first to forestall Katherine coming through,” Bolthor decided. “I fear for her safety when Medana’s brothers are here for their own devious purposes.”

“That is a good idea,” Tykir said, “although my seamen know enough to offer her protection. Plus, Katherine did not come here without her own guardsmen. If you go through alone, they will not feel threatened.”

“Medana, I think you need to stay out of sight. At first, leastways,” Thork said.

She immediately stiffened, willful wench that she was. “I will not cower like a timid bird.”

“ ’Tis not bravery that is needed here. Strategy is more important. Outwitting the enemy,” Tykir told her, putting an arm around her shoulders and squeezing. If Thork had tried that, she would have clobbered him on the spot.

“I understand. We women have had to resort to strategy as well, to compensate for our weak points. When a-pirating, we rarely confront our victims head-on,” Medana said.

“Well said!” This from Starri, who showed his admiration with a full-body survey of Medana in her usual tunic and braies.

Thork did not want Starri admiring Medana. “Then you will appreciate why you must stay out of sight,” Thork told her. “We do not want an immediate confrontation. Best we get a feel for your brothers’ reasons for being here before engaging in any fighting.”

“Oh, I know why they are here. They want my land, meager as it is compared to their estates. They would take Thrudr, too, just to be mean. They gain their ends by having me tried for murder, then petition to the king to release my inheritance, especially since I have no daughter. Or they will force me to wed a man of their choosing who will be the puppet holder of the land. Of course, my life would soon be forfeit, either way. In the latter case, they would not want to risk my bearing a girl child who would be next in line.”

“But you might
already
be carrying a girl child,” Tykir said.

Medana put her face in both hands and groaned.

“What?” Tykir asked.

“Medana hasn’t mentioned anything to her women,” Thork told his father with disgust.

“Why not?” His father was sincerely confused. To him, naught was sacred.

“You are breeding?” Gudron asked Medana in a voice filled with hurt that Medana would not have told her, presumably one of her closest friends.

“Nay, I am not breeding,” Medana replied.

“But she could be,” Thork interjected.

Medana sliced him with a glance so icy he might just have icicles growing on his eyebrows.

“I have an idea,” Starri said. “I could marry you, Medana.”

Thork, stunned into momentary silence, turned slowly, very slowly, to gaze at his traitorous brother. His father was tapping his chin thoughtfully, as if actually giving it consideration.

“Why would you make such a ridiculous offer?” Medana asked Starri.

“It would give you further protection. And I have been wed afore. I like married life.” Starri shrugged and ran a fingertip up the sleeve of Medana’s tunic in a playful manner.

“Medana will wed you over my dead body, Starri. Forget that idea.”

“Thork! That is not your decision to make,” Medana said.

“You want to marry my brother?” he inquired, and felt pitiful in the asking.

“Nay, I do not want to marry your brother, or you, or anyone else. For the love of all the gods, stick to battle strategy.”

Tykir looked from Medana to Thork and back again. Then he smiled. The sly old codger!