The Viking's Woman (45 page)

Please, God, let him love this child! she thought, and then she drifted, exhausted, into sleep.

The journey home seemed endless, and yet at last the walls of Dubhlain rose high before them. Horns were sounded, their return was announced, and soon the endless parade of warriors rode through the courtyard. Their number had decreased, for Niall had remained in Tara with his sons and his men, and several of those called to arms had also returned to their homes.

Still there was tremendous commotion in the courtyard. His mother was upon the steps to greet his
father. She seemed like a girl—beautiful, fresh, and young—as she awaited her lord, as she had done so many times. Yet even as Erin rushed forward and was lifted by her golden husband, Eric realized that she held a bundle carefully within her arms.

He left the black stallion with its reins dangling for a stable boy, and his strides lengthened with every second as he hurried toward his parents. A chill, and then a warmth, and then a wicked rush of blood seized hold of him, and at the end he was running. Then, before Erin, he slid to a halt and she spun around, her eyes wide, and then she smiled and greeted him. “Eric!” With her free arm she caught him and kissed his cheek, and he found he had voice. “Mother! Mother, is this—”

“Indeed, Eric, this is!” Laughing, Erin cradled her bundle in her arms and moved a patch of blanket from a tiny face. “He is ten days old, and we christened him Garth, since we did not know when you would return. Rhiannon was hesitant to name the child without your consent, but it was her father’s name and I—”

“Garth! It is a boy.”

“Eric, I said ‘he’!” Erin laughed. “Take him.”

He scooped the child into his arms, muttering, “Mergwin! That old Druid said it would be a boy!” His arms were trembling as he tried to study the child. He walked away, hurrying for the entrance to the manor. The news had gotten out among the returning men. A cheer went up, and Eric swung around, smiling, lifting an arm in thanks for the approval of the men. He gazed at his child, at the enormous blue eyes, at the near platinum hair, so light and
yet in thick abundance. Ten days old. His son seemed to study him with equal curiosity. His son.

Eric paused, gazing back at Erin. “Mother, Rhiannon—”

“She is fine and well and sleeping. I heard the horns, but I did not waken her because she slept so soundly and still tires easily. It has just been ten days, you see, and the babe does not sleep through the night.”

He smiled and nodded. Erin made her way to him and proudly touched the babe’s cheek, then pulled Eric on inside. “Really, though, she is fine.” Even as Erin spoke, the babe stared at Eric, waved his tiny fists in the air, and let out with a hearty scream. Erin laughed. “He not only looks like you, he even sounds a great deal like you! Take him to his mother, he is hungry.”

“Is he?” Eric demanded. “Well, I’m glad that he hasn’t merely decided that he does not like my face.” He kissed his mother’s cheek and strode hastily into the house and up the long stairway. He thrust open the door to his room just in time to see Rhiannon rising. She was dressed in white, her hair a flaming tangle about her, her eyes heavy-lidded and both sweetly sensual and arrestingly innocent as they fell upon him. They widened to silver saucers, and she whispered his name with surprise. “Eric!”

He strode across the room to her, laying the child at her side, capturing her hand and kissing it before drinking deeply of her lips. And then her eyes were on his again, wide and luminescent. A rueful, shy smile touched her lips, and she said anxiously, “Do you like him?”

“Like him? I adore him. And I thank you with all my heart.”

She lowered her lashes quickly as tears rose to glisten her eyes. He caught her chin, raised it up, and studied her eyes demandingly. “What is this? What did you expect?”

She went very pale and tried to twist away, but he would not allow her to do so. “Rhiannon, I would know what is going on in that mind of yours.”

“I—I was afraid!” she whispered.

“Of what? Of me?”

Her lashes fell despite his command. And then he smiled and counted days; it was probably an exact nine months since their wedding night, and there certainly had been tension regarding it.

He threaded his fingers through her hair, turned her face to his, and seized her lips with a startling passion that brought her eyes flying open to meet his. “My dear wife, I have always known that I bedded a maid that night. Whatever caused you to take me for a fool at this late date?”

She flushed and freed herself from his touch. Staring down at the babe, she felt her temper returning with a rise. “Well, you didn’t notice the child when he was coming along quite nicely within me!”

He shrugged, a grin upon his lips that tore at her heart and caused it to thunder with a new excitement. “I’m afraid, my love, that I was fairly well versed at sex but quite unaccustomed to the matter of siring a child. Rhiannon, we have made a son. God, he is gorgeous!”

“Hmmph!” came a voice from the doorway. “‘We’ made a son! You should have been here for the labor.
And according to Rhiannon at that time, you should have been swallowed up in the sea for your part in it all!”

Eric spun around to see his sister Daria standing there smiling. He stood and caught her when she rushed into his arms and kissed him fiercely. Tears stung her eyes. “Oh, Eric, I am so grateful to see you all home and alive and well!”

“I’m grateful to be here,” Eric said, holding her close. Then he looked down at his wife. “I should have been swallowed up by the sea?”

She flushed furiously, and Daria laughed. “I’ll be back for Garth, Rhiannon, when you two have finished doting, to give you a few minutes alone.”

She left them, and there was silence for a moment. Then Garth started to scream again, and Rhiannon flushed and murmured that he was hungry. She adjusted her gown and led the babe’s questing mouth to her breast. He latched on hungrily, letting out startling little noises. Eric laughed. Forgetting his travel-stained clothing and weapons, he stretched out beside his wife and felt a warmth and languor steal over him. So this is it, he thought briefly. This is peace and happiness, a taste of it at least, a taste to reach for. Feelings surged hotly within him, the desire to protect against all odds, to hold his son, to hold Rhiannon both with passion and with tenderness. There had never been anything so beautiful in life as the sight of his wife cradling his child.

He touched her cheek as she fed the child. “Did you really wish that I should pitch into the sea? You merely could have prayed for a battle-ax to take me.”

She kept her eyes on her son. “You don’t understand,
Eric. I’m not at all sure what I really said at the time.”

“It was so painful?” he asked her tensely.

“It was horrible!” she replied, but then she smiled, and her eyes turned to his at last. “But worth it! Oh, Eric, he is worth … everything! Everything.”

He inhaled, watching her eyes. He touched his son’s platinum hair. “You love the grandchild of a Viking from the house of Vestfald,” he reminded her.

She watched his eyes, and then she smiled very slowly. The blood within him heated, and he warned himself that he musn’t feel so, that it was far too soon after the birth of their child for him to be feeling desire at all.

“I like your father very much,” she told him primly.

“Do you?”

“Indeed.”

He smiled, then caught her hand and kissed it. They stared at each other for a long moment, and then Rhiannon let out a startled “Oh! Take him, Eric, he’s sleeping already, and he really must burp.”

He swept up the baby, casting him over his shoulder with ease. Rhiannon adjusted her gown and pushed up on the bed, shivering with the pleasure of her husband’s return and his delight in their child. “You do that very well,” she murmured, and indeed he did. The splendid warrior with his golden head, royal crimson mantle, and massive sword arm seemed completely at ease with the child upon his shoulders.

“I am an uncle many times over,” he reminded her, grinning. Then the baby burped, and Rhiannon
laughed, and Eric playfully charged his son with insurrection for spitting up on his father’s formal attire.

“Oh, Eric! I was so afraid so many times!” Rhiannon admitted, watching him.

“Afraid?”

“That you would not come back,” she said, and again her gaze fell and she plucked at the covers. She could not give too much to him. She did not dare. “But you see, you have returned, and your father is well, and your brothers, and your mother is so happy, and I am so very glad ….” Her voice trailed away. Eric suddenly had gone very still.

“Eric—?”

“Garth sleeps. I shall have Daria take him.” He strode to the door. Daria was down the hallway, talking excitedly with Bryan. Bryan, seeing Eric’s eyes, seemed to know that the time had come to tell Rhiannon that her countryman had been slain.

“Daria, go get our nephew,” Bryan told her. Eric nodded briefly to his brother. Daria frowned but quickly swept the baby away. Eric reentered his room, closing the door. Rhiannon was sitting up now, staring at him with deep concern in her eyes, a frown knitting her brow.

“Eric, what is it?”

He couldn’t hedge; he couldn’t ease his guilt or her pain. “Rowan was killed,” he told her simply. And then he watched her features as she comprehended his words, watched the anguish seep into her eyes, the tears rise within them. His voice became rough as he continued. “I swore to protect him, but I failed. I had him buried with special prayers. I could not bring
him back; circumstances would not allow it. I—I’m sorry.”

He wanted to touch her but knew she would not want him to do so. She had loved Rowan. Loved him with youth, with innocence, with passion, and with laughter. She would not want the man who had destroyed that love to soothe her now.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. Then, awkwardly, he added, “I’ll leave you. If you need me, send for me.”

He left the room, closing the door behind him. He heard the soft sobs that escaped her, then winced and hurried down the stairs.

She did not need him, or so it seemed. The hours in the long day passed, and she did not send for him. He ate with his family as dusk fell, then he found solace before the fire with a horn of ale as the night darkened and the hour grew late.

No one intruded upon him until quite late, when his father came and sat beside him, staring into the fire. “You should go to her,” he told Eric.

“She does not want me,” he said simply.

Olaf leaned forward, watching the flames. “Once I came back from a battle and I had to tell your mother that both a very old friend—the Irish king she might have married—and her brother had fallen in the same day. And when I did, I stayed away from her. I left her to cry alone.”

“So what would you have of me?” Eric asked him.

Olaf smiled slowly. “I made a mistake. I would not have you make the same mistake. Go to your wife. Hold her. Ease what pain you can.”

“What if she does not want me?” Eric asked bitterly.

“She wants you!” a soft voice answered him as Erin came out of the shadows to stand behind her husband and smile down at her son. “I know she wants you. She needs you. Just as I needed your father. Go to her, Eric.”

He rose, looking at them both. Then he left behind the light of the fire, strode up the stairs, and walked down the hall to his room. There he paused, then he pushed open the door. He found her in their bed, tears still glazing her eyes. He lifted her into his arms and carried her before the fire, and he held her there, close. Her arms wound around his neck and she sobbed softly, but she laid her head against his chest.

He lifted her chin and gently kissed her tearstained face. He smoothed back her hair, and then he murmured, “Let me hold you, my love. Just let me hold you.”

Her arms tightened about him and she trembled. He asked her what was wrong.

Her silvery eyes looked into his. “I am just afraid that you will let me go!” she whispered.

He stared at her for long moments and then replied, “Never. Never, my love.”

She leaned back against him, sighing softly. And then her eyes began to close.

She slept there in his arms, slept until the very wee hours of morning came, and they were both awakened by Daria’s appearance with their very precious—and very loud—son within her arms.

Another day would soon begin. They had weathered the night, Eric thought.

Indeed, perhaps they had begun anew.