The Viking's Woman (37 page)

“I came to warn you!” she cried out.

“You were told to take care! Not to expose yourself across the countryside.”

“My God, how dare you! I saved you and your men from the treachery of another!”

He pushed up and demanded furiously, “Was it another? I have felt the shaft of those well-aimed arrows of yours—remember, my love?”

“But—”

“Ah, you’re a remarkable actress, too, Rhiannon. I seem to recall a night when your performance nearly incited hundreds of men to bloodshed. It was our wedding night, remember? Perhaps you sent the
message, then came out to ‘warn’ us in a pretense of innocence.”

Fury filled her until she was choking. Her emotion was such that she managed to thrust him from her. He slipped in the mud even as she rose and nimbly ran from the pool.

“Rhiannon!”

In a second he had caught up with her. She tried to struggle free from his grasp, but she stepped down hard on a root and cried out as her ankle twisted. He swept her up in his arms and continued walking, his gaze straight ahead, his face masked in the mud but for his eyes.

“My men should now be descending upon the Danes hiding in that camp,” he told her at length. “We’ll meet with them by the fork in the brook tomorrow.”

She did not reply. She was filthy and her throat was parched and every muscle within her body ached and burned. She leaned her head back, exhausted, and closed her eyes.

Despite the jar of his movements as he walked, she must have dozed. When she opened her eyes again, the world was still and darkness had fallen. All that lit the forest around her was the glow of a bright full moon and a twinkling of stars. Then she realized that a fire also burned nearby, that some meat roasted upon it, and that she rested on the earth on a pillow created of Eric’s shirt, heavily padded to support the weight of his mail. She could hear water running close by and knew that he had not rested until he had reached the point where he had said that he would meet up with his men.

She still felt dizzy and closed her eyes. They flew open once again as something cold touched her forehead. Eric was at her side, stripped down to his hose, cleaning the mud from her face with a length of material from his over-tunic. She quickly sat up, warily backing away from him.

“Rhiannon, I was merely trying to—”

“I can take care of myself, thank you!”

“Can you?” he demanded.

“You are putting more mud on me than you are taking off!”

“Well, that, madam, can be most easily solved.”

She shrieked in protest, pounding his chest as he swept her from the ground and headed with her straight into the cold water of the brook. It was deep here, where the waters met to rush out to the sea. And when the wetness came to his hips, he dropped her into it. She came up sputtering and choking and swearing, increasingly infuriated by his laughter.

She swirled about, and he caught her by the material of her tunic. “You’ve soaked my clothing, and I shall now drown of its weight or freeze if I do not die of the sheer longing for your demise!” she told him.

He jerked her into the hold of his arms. “Well, love, we mustn’t have drowned,” he said. “If thine own eye offends thee, pluck it out—a good Christian platitude, is it not? Your clothing is hardly an eye, but if it offends you …” And with his words he caught the hem of the garmet and stripped it from her despite her writhing, her flailing fists, and her oaths. When he was done with that, he heedlessly tipped her back into the water to take off her hose. He tossed both to the shore as she dived deep to escape him. Far across
the brook, she crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him in a quivering fury.

“Come back here,” he commanded.

“You are insane!”

“Rhiannon, we could not stay so encrusted with mud. Come over here. I only wish to rinse out your hair before it is so matted with the stuff that we’ll have to cut it out.”

“Well, what would be the loss of such a tangled mass of tarnished brass?” she retorted.

He was silent, and then his laughter suddenly rang out. “Alas, what vanity is this?” he teased. The water rippled as he strode toward her within it. She dived in the moonlight, swimming far beneath the water, surfacing only when her lungs were bursting.

And still he was not far behind. “Rhiannon …”

She dived again. This time she chose her direction poorly, and he quickly captured her foot. He pulled her against him, his hands sliding along her naked thigh, hot against the chill of the water. She choked and struggled, but her breasts were taut against his chest, and she was suddenly staring into the very deep blue of his eyes in the moonlight. His knuckles brushed her teeth. The sizzling light of passion came to burn within his blue eyes.

Breathlessly she demanded, “What would you have with hair so tarnished?”

His fingers curved over the rise of her buttocks and swept seductively along her spine, then lowered again, pressing her close to him so that she could feel the rise of his sex hard against the apex of her thighs.

“What would you have had me tell him?” he asked her softly. “Aye, indeed, it is glorious hair. It shines
with the light of dawn, and that of the sunset too. It blankets me with softness, with beauty; it caresses my naked flesh with a life and wonder all its own.” His fingers stroked her soaking hair, smoothing it back, then wandered down her cheek and fell slowly over her throat and collarbone. His palm teased her chilled and hardened nipple even as his fingers closed warmly about her breasts. She caught her breath as his touch there started a bonfire within her that burned even between her legs, and she leaned back, resisting him. “My lord, I would not have you insulted by allowing you to dally with a breast that was ever so like a rotten, sagging melon!”

A smile flickered over his features, and they were shatteringly handsome in the dusky light. “Aye, but if I had told him yes, indeed, they were the lushest, sweetest fruit, hard and firm as apples, alabaster tipped with rosebuds, and glorious in their beauty, alas! He might have determined never to let you go.”

His stroke was light and magic. His palms moved with a tender, scintillating rhythm over those rosy crests, and she feared that her knees would buckle, even as he held her. Then, without warning, his touch suddenly shifted with bold intimacy to sweep searing heat betwixt her thighs, and she shuddered and held tight, forgetting her protest. Yet he had not forgotten his words, for his denial of them still rang out softly as he whispered against her ear. “Knock-kneed, madam? I dared not tell him that the feel of your flesh was finer than any fabric raided from the masters of the east, that your legs were indeed long and shapely, and that they could wrap around a man to give him ecstasy so great, it was indeed paradise here on earth.
I could not tell him that the taste of you was sweeter than any wine, that it was possible to drown in the beauty of your eyes, that the wanting of you could knot a man inside and out, and that I should readily die to retrieve you, for I had tasted your sweetness and would defy any man, any god, to have you once again.”

He taunted her; surely he taunted her. Yet as she raised her eyes to his there seemed to be no mockery in his gaze. He lifted her from the water to carry her to the shore, and there he set her down again. Again he spoke of the alabaster beauty of her flesh in the glow of the moonlight. And as he spoke of each of her perfections he planted there a tender yet sensual kiss, until it seemed that she was dried from the chill of the water by the heat of his lips and tongue, and then it was his body that warmed her, and the startling, seductive tenderness gave way at last to the searing rise of passion.

Later, so much later, when the moon at last begin to sink in the blackness of the heavens, when passion had been heavily spent and exhaustion had nearly claimed her, she felt his arms again, lifting her, carrying her beneath the tree and setting her there upon the warmth of his own mantle. She had nearly drifted off to sleep when he nudged her and offered her some of the meat, now well-charred, that he had set upon the fire. She did not think that she could eat, but the food was delicious, and she found that she had acquired a ravenous hunger.

When they had finished their meal, he came down beside her and held her close against his naked heat. Lost in the warmth and comfort of him, Rhiannon
thought that this was almost like being cherished, almost like being loved.

Yet it had been an illusion of the night, she thought as the first bright rays of dawn awoke her. For when she opened her eyes, he was gone from her side. The mantle was cast down carelessly upon her, and as she wrapped it about herself, shivering as she sat up, she saw that Eric was dressed and stood some distance from her, one roughly booted foot balanced on a stone as he stared out pensively at the water.

He seemed to sense that she had awakened, for his sharp gaze quickly fell on her as well. “Get up, dress,” he told her curtly. “The men will be here soon.”

Stunned by his tone, she gritted her teeth and rose regally, his mantle cloaked about her. She walked to the water and knelt down and drank deeply, then cleansed her face. She felt his eyes upon her all the while. When she rose and swung about to face him, he was still watching her with a chilling gaze. Anger and irritation simmered deeply within her. Tenderness was a tactic with him—he waged battles with her
according
to strategy, as he did his enemies. When the need was gone, he cast tenderness aside as he might an empty dish.

“What are you staring at?” she demanded. “Just what is it that you want from me now? Aren’t you accustomed to merely taking anything that you desire?”

“If I could take the truth from you, my love, know it—I surely would.”

“What truth? What are you talking about now?”

He was slow to answer, and then he shrugged. “If
not you, Rhiannon, who? Who is the traitor within your own home?”

She stiffened, inhaling sharply. She had risked her life to warn him, and he still suspected that the treachery had come from her! “Bastard!” she hissed at him, and that was all. Swinging about, she collected the pieces of still damp clothing. She was about to stamp around the tree when he caught her arm, her eyes raising furiously to his.

“I did not accuse you—” he began.

She wrenched free. Tears were stinging her eyes, and so she swung at him blindly. Her arm was caught and she stood tightly against him. “I asked you who, Rhiannon, that is all! You must have an idea of who or what is behind this!”

“I don’t!” she flung out. “I don’t know! Let go of me!”

“Rhiannon!” His voice grew gentle, and he moved to smooth the hair from her forehead. She tossed her head back to elude his touch. “No! Don’t give me your pretenses of gentleness, for the lies are useless by the morning’s light, are they not? There is no sweet emotion lost between us, milord!” She wrenched free from his touch, backing away from him, afraid that the tears that stung her lids would fall and she would betray the fact that many emotions were rising terrifyingly within her. “Accuse me if you would, but do so honestly. I despise the lie of—of tenderness from you!”

She saw the tightening of his jaw and the lighting flash within his eyes, and still she was not prepared when he came toward her, drawing her close again with a grip that threatened to smash the fragile bones
within her wrist. “Despise me, loathe me, spend your every waking hour ruing the day that I was born! But obey me, Rhiannon, in all things. And answer me with a civil tongue when I ask you a question!”

“Then ask me civil questions!” she tossed back, praying that he would release her. She would break, she would cry, if he did not to do so quickly. Only a fool would love him. Only a fool would succumb to his whispered words in the velvet of the night. Only a fool.

Dear God, she was slowly but surely becoming a fool, needing him, seeking his approval, yearning for those whispered words ….

Craving his silken touch in the darkness.

“Who is doing this?” he repeated.

“I don’t know!” she answered once again. And then she smiled through clenched teeth and reminded him, “Surely not Egmund nor Thomas—my men, milord!—unless you believe that their ghosts rose from beneath a tree to betray you and Alfred ever further!”

He was not able to reply, for at that moment there came a thrashing through the trees and a cheerful, if somewhat anxious, cry on the morning breeze.

“Eric! Are you here?”

Eric’s eyes remained sharply upon her as he cried back. “Aye, Rollo, we are here!”

Rhiannon tugged frantically upon her wrist once again, her anger and hurt momentarily forgotten. “My lord, I am not dressed!” she reminded him. But it was too late, for horses were moving into the clearing—Patrick’s and Rollo’s first, Rowan’s close behind.
The mantle was about her, but her clothing now lay strewn at her feet.

Patrick quickly dismounted and hurried before her, catching her free hand, falling to his knees. “Bless our Holy Father and all the saints, my lady! I was so frightened for you.”

“Patrick, please!” she said softly, wondering what Eric thought of this display. “Please, get up.”

But he did not. “You saved my life, lady, with that arrow, and risked your own. And though I found Eric quickly enough, we could not charge in upon them, for in danger the things that the Danes sometimes do to captives are best never spoken. But, lady, you are here, and safe, and we are so grateful—”

“And the Danes?” Eric interrupted dryly.

“They hadn’t a chance,” Rollo assured Eric from his mount.

“Not this group,” Rowan added quietly. Rhiannon’s eyes touched his. She felt a soft color rise to her cheeks as she remembered that her clothing lay at her feet.

“We must ride for Eric,” Rollo said quietly.

Patrick, who had realized he knelt upon her tunic, rose awkwardly. “We shall ride on past the clearing and await you,” he told Eric.

Rollo was not so delicate. He burst into laughter. “Alas, but we have spent the night in deep worry, and milord and milady have spent the night as if they played in some paradise. Indeed, excuse us, Eric—we shall wait beyond the trees.”

Patrick remounted, and the riders were quickly gone. Rhiannon turned her back on Eric and tried to stumble into her clothing with the mantle still about
her shoulders. He was silent for a moment, then his voice thundered out with irritation. “What is this, madam? Some new game?” He pulled the mantle from her, and she shivered in the coolness of the morning air, facing him furiously. His eyes raked over her and then met and clashed with her own. “I know every tender inch of your form, Rhiannon, and I would remind you that you are mine, that I am not a man of patience, and that I will not tolerate this foolishness.”