Her hands were trembling as she fumbled for the key at her waist and shoved it into the lock. The stubborn thing was old and unused, so it stuck, but she still managed to turn it, sliding the bolt into place with shaking fingers. He was rising by that point, but she did not dare wait for him and say the things she wanted to shout at him. She hurried down the short corridor and up the steps, his roar of outrage following her as she fled.
Cedric was waiting for her outside the door at the top of the steps. He had insisted on it since she had refused to allow him to go downstairs to see to the prisoner. She could have called out at any time and he would have come running to help her. She had not done so, because she had been so certain that she could handle the Norseman. Only, she had not planned on that kiss. Her face flamed as she imagined Cedric finding them like that.
What had she been thinking? How had she allowed that man to put his mouth on her? She waited for disgust to roil to life within her, but it didn’t. Even now her lips tingled pleasantly.
‘What happened?’ Cedric’s hawk gaze seemed to see everything.
Dear Lord, were her lips swollen? She touched them with her fingertips as she shook her head and locked the door behind her. ‘He’s doing well. Still not talking about who he is or why he’s here.’
‘But we already know that, do we not?’ Cedric raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms over his chest.
‘We do.’ It seemed trifling for him to point that out, or perhaps she was overly sensitive because she did not know how to proceed. This inability to decide was something new for her and she did not enjoy how vulnerable it made her feel. Doing her best to appear busy sorting the keys at her waist so that she could avoid Cedric’s knowing gaze, she said, ‘I shall retire to my chambers after checking on Wilfrid.’
Cedric gave a huff of disdain when she stepped away. Whatever had made her think that he could be put off so easily, she did not know. He had never once been put off easily in all the years she had known him, so she paused and added, ‘I know we cannot keep the Norseman prisoner for ever. I will decide by morning what is to be done.’ Though how she would accomplish that she did not know. She could not bring herself to order his death, but there was no other obvious answer.
The creases between Cedric’s brows relaxed and he nodded. ‘That is wise. The sooner we have this business done with, the better.’
Annis gave him a nod of assent and hurried away. She looked in on Wilfrid only to find him in bed already, snoring soundly. Still shaken from her encounter with the Norseman downstairs, she hurried to her own chamber and suffered through the brisk administrations of her chambermaid. The girl had only been with Annis a year, taking the place of her mother who had served Annis all these years. Annis enjoyed Goda’s company, but sometimes missed the wise words of the girl’s mother. Perhaps she could have confided in her. She discarded the thought almost at once. She was in this alone. She could not endanger anyone else with the truth.
After she was changed into her nightdress and her hair was thoroughly combed and plaited, she bid the girl goodnight and took a candle to her bedside. Climbing up on to the down-stuffed mattress, she lay back and pulled the coverlet over her as she pondered what to do. Cedric was right. Death for the Norseman was the only reasonable solution. But it was so brutal that she could not do it, nor could she order it done. The events in Maerr were already black marks on her soul. She could not add the Norseman as well. However, she could not set him free either. He could very well murder them all with no hesitation. There was absolutely nothing to stop him from bringing back all the warriors in Maerr who might want vengeance.
Then there was the kiss. Even the memory had the ability to make her stomach swirl pleasantly. How could she have responded so completely to him? When she closed her eyes, she could feel the weight of him above her, the heat of his mouth on hers.
What could she do?
The question followed her into a fitful sleep where she dreamed of that stolen kiss.
* * *
Rurik had very nearly bellowed his thanks to the gods when his foot had encountered the metal of her seax. The slim weapon had been lying on the floor of his cell, still warm from where it had been secured against her body. Their wrestling must have loosened it so that it had fallen free when she had been lying on the ground. Rurik had promised to offer up a proper sacrifice to whichever god was responsible for his good fortune when he was free. Then he had spent hours using it to work the lock on the cuff around his wrist. For something so obviously aged as the restraint was, it had taken a long time to break the mechanism holding it closed. Once that had been taken care of, he’d had to do the same for the lock on his cage and the lock at the top of the stairs.
Most of the night had gone by then, but that did not matter. His only objective was to find Wilfrid. The home was quiet and so dark that he had to stand very still for far longer than was comfortable for his eyes to adjust to the lack of light. A series of doors opened off a large atrium, each one appearing to guard dark chambers. The only light came through a crack between a large set of double doors. The wood was cold, nearly freezing, so he knew that they led outside.
Taking a deep breath and holding the seax in front of him, he pushed one open very slowly to find himself entering a garden. A single torch lit this area, revealing chambers along two sides. All seemed quiet, but one set of doors showed flickering light beneath. It was behind this door that he found an old man muttering to himself over a game.
Rurik knew immediately that it was Wilfrid. His age and the status indicated by the comfortable fabrics and appointments in the room told Rurik as much. Whether Rurik lived or died, at least he had found the man at least partially responsible for his father’s death, for Gilla’s death, for Ingrid’s death. So many dead.
‘Wilfrid?’
The man looked up, his snow-white hair an unruly mane. Rurik knew a moment of shock at his obvious age. While he had expected a man of Sigurd’s age, this one appeared at least a score of years older. The ruthlessness needed to kill innocents was generally found in younger men, or so Rurik had thought.
Though Wilfrid’s eyes sparkled with intelligence, there was a childlike innocence about him that had Rurik proceeding with caution. He refused to kill innocents in his pursuit for revenge. It was possible he was wrong about the man’s identity. As he approached, he found himself hoping that he was. There would be no joy in killing this strange man.
‘Are you Wilfrid?’ he asked again to make absolute certain, his fist tightening on the small dagger.
The man gave a jerky nod that had his head moving awkwardly. Rurik looked for an injury that would cause him to move like that, but could not see one.
‘Welcome,’ Wilfrid called out as if meeting a beloved friend, a hand raised in greeting. Whether he did not see the small dagger Rurik carried, or if he simply did not care, Rurik did not know. ‘Come.’
The man’s words were slurred. Having learned a bit of the Saxon tongue from his mother’s servant at a young age, Rurik was adequate, but not advanced in the language. He could barely make the words out. It was Wilfrid’s raised hand that bid him come forward. That and the man’s obvious lack of a weapon.
‘Sit,’ Wilfrid said, gesturing to the chair opposite him.
Rurik let himself fall heavily into the chair, momentarily concealing the weapon in the folds of the fur cloak draped over his shoulders. In all his imaginings, he had never thought to meet Wilfrid this way. His fingers trembled with suppressed anger.
‘Do you know who I am?’ Rurik asked, knowing the man would not.
Wilfrid seemed not to hear as he leaned over the game, selecting a wooden figurine and moving it to an adjacent square on the wooden board set on the table. This man was not a warrior. He seemed hardly more than a child for all his white hair and wrinkles. He was simple-minded.
Rurik had allowed anger and the promise of revenge to fuel ever
y decision he had made for almost two years, only to come to this end. If Wilfrid even remembered the murders in Maerr, he would likely not even be able to talk about them, much less answer Rurik’s questions. His grip tightened again on the dagger. Did it matter that he was simple-minded? He had been involved in the murders. He deserved to die.
As the man leaned over the table, blissfully unaware that his death was imminent, Rurik stared down at the baby-fine hair on his pink scalp. He raised the dagger, but could not bring himself to allow it to descend to its natural conclusion in the man’s neck. It did not seem fair. He had come for a fight, only to find this. He lowered the dagger and several long moments passed with Rurik pondering how to proceed when the door opened and fate delivered to him another prize.
CHAPTER FIVE
In her dream, the face of the Norseman hovered above her, alternating between that of tender lover and vengeful enemy. He smirked down at her as he had after the kiss, only this time she was not offended. Her fingers traced the outline of that smile as he pulled one fingertip into his mouth. She gasped and pulled it away. He laughed and knelt to kiss her again. When she followed his progress, she realised they were in her bed, not in the straw, and he was lying between her naked thighs.
The shock of it jolted her away, making her sit straight up in bed as if she would find him there. Her heart raced and even though she knew that she was still in her nightclothes and that it had been a dream, she reached for the seax that usually sat at her waist. Not the dagger she had worn to take the Norseman captive, but the shorter, blunter one she wore daily.
It was not at her waist. Of course it was not. She was in bed and it was deep in the night. Her candle had long since sputtered out. The seax was in the chest where it was meant to be. She tried to let that thought soothe her back to sleep, but something nudged at the back of her mind. Something important. It hovered there, just out of reach, and all the more insistent because of it.
Was the seax in the chest where it belonged? She mentally retraced her movements of the evening. She had no memory of putting it away, nor of taking it off. Had Goda removed it and put it away? Annis could not remember. She had been so preoccupied with her thoughts about the kiss that she barely remembered interacting with Goda at all.
Rising from the bed, she hurried over to the chest that kept them. There were three inside and she traded them out depending on her mood for the day. Pushing the lid open, she peered into the shadowy interior. It was too dark to see very well, so she used her hands to find them. A sigh escaped her when she found the bundle all lying together. One, two… Where was the third?
Her heart pounded and dread settled heavy in the pit of her stomach. The Norseman had held her down, but he had not taken the seax. She was certain that she would have noticed him taking it. But then her thoughts had been preoccupied with his kiss. A quick search of her chamber revealed that it was missing.
Had he stolen it? She closed her eyes and allowed herself to remember everything that had happened in his cell. It might have happened at any point during the struggle that preceded the kiss. When she had left, she had been too unsettled to think clearly, much less search him for the seax.
The blackguard!
Drawing on a cloak, she grabbed her long dagger off the wall. If the Norseman had her seax, then he could free himself. If it came to it and she could not recapture him, then she would kill him herself. She had no alternative. It was a choice that would haunt her for the rest of her life, but it must be done. The danger to everyone around her was too great to allow him the chance to get free. She could not allow him to harm Wilfrid or anyone else at Mulcasterhas.
The fact that he was the only man she had felt anything for since Grim could not sway her. She opened the door to her chamber that faced out to the courtyard, ignoring the cold blast of air. There was no guard here because they were all posted along the outside walls of the house. The night was still dark, but a single torch gave off a watery light. Wilfrid’s chamber was directly across from her. The double doors were closed, but a flicker of light could be seen in the tiny crack between them. He frequently did not sleep well and Cedric or his manservant generally attended him overnight. But some instinct drew her closer to his chamber.
She walked silently along the tiled path, her gaze on the crack between the doors. Male voices came from inside. She instantly recognised Wilfrid’s. After a series of brain attacks had left him weak on one side of his body, he could still talk, but his words came out as if he were speaking around a mouthful of wool. But the other voice was too low to be Cedric and not quite as deep as Irwin, the strong manservant who attended to Wilfrid.
Bracing herself for what she might find, she pushed the door open and crossed the threshold with her long dagger before her. Wilfrid looked up from the seat he occupied at his table and gave her his customary crooked smile with a cry of enthusiasm to see her. The table game hnefatafl was set up before him.
The Norseman sat across from him.
* * *
Annis arrived as if he had somehow summoned her. Her eyes were wide and fear filled. He knew a strange urge to call to her and soothe that fear, but it did not make sense given their predicament. She should be afraid. He would have to kill her if it came to it, wouldn’t he?
Still somewhat stunned by the strange direction his plan for revenge had taken, he said, ‘Close the door, Lady Annis. We have many things to discuss.’ He tried to keep his stymied anger out of his voice, but it trembled with the absence.
Her astute gaze went to Wilfrid and then the seax. Rurik tightened his fingers around it, ready to use it should she decide not to comply. It was dull, but he knew his own strength. One quick movement would have the knife embedded in Wilfrid’s vulnerable neck. Rurik could see the action play out in his mind and his body even tensed, muscles tight as they prepared to follow his command if needed.
It was his stomach that voiced a rejection. It churned, unwilling to accept what Rurik might be willing to do to mete out justice. He had never considered harming a woman or an invalid. The years since the massacre had wrought many changes in him, most of them bad. He had kidnapped, held a weapon on an innocent and many other things he would rather have missed out on in his life. Was he really prepared to add more atrocities to the list?
He hoped not to find out and clenched his jaw to hide his hesitation. The breath he had been holding slowly released when she reached behind her and closed the door. His hand kept its grip on the dagger, but his muscles relaxed, leaving his limbs numb with relief.
‘Come and sit down.’ He gestured towards the bed. ‘Wilfrid and I have been having an interesting discussion.’
She did as he asked, closing the door and taking halting steps across the room. He allowed himself a moment to admire the upward tilt of her chin, the flaming hair that escaped her plait to sweep around her shoulders and the determined glint in her eyes. She was breathtaking. There was something about her—her strength, her innate integrity—that combined with her very pleasing looks to make her special.
Like someone he could care about very much given different circumstances. Or, perhaps, someone he might be coming to care about anyway, despite the circumstances. No, that could not be right. It must be that he was mistaking respect for genuine affection. That made more sense. He could respect her while still maintaining that she was an enemy.
Of their own accord his eyes dropped to her lips as the memory of their kiss caused an echo of his earlier desire to flare to life in his belly. She drew herself up when she saw him, the very sharp-looking dagger held before her, limbs braced for action.
When she was close enough, he reached out to take the sharp dagger from her, but she pulled it back. He could not blame her. Not when he knew the actions he would resort to if needed. Respect for her increased yet again in the tiniest measure. Inclining his head, he allowed her to keep it for now. He did not want to fight her for it and alert Wil
frid that something was wrong. The house was at rest and he would keep it that way while he could until he got some answers.
‘What has he told you?’ Her eyes were wide and focused, never leaving Rurik’s, as she sat lightly on the bed. It was clear that she was ready to jump up and defend both herself and Wilfrid if needed.
‘How long has he been like this?’ Rurik asked.
Wilfrid, who had gone back to studying the table game, looked up. ‘Annis,’ he said, although it came out as one syllable with the sounds all running together. As if his speech was not to his satisfaction, Wilfrid slapped a hand on the table and gave one hard shake of his head.
Rurik glanced from Annis to the old man, taking in the lines of strain around his mouth and the deep grooves that time and pain had carved into his forehead. His hair was almost purely white and, though it was thin, it stuck out at all angles. As if noticing Rurik’s censure and determined to present her father-in-law in the best light, Annis reached over and smoothed it down on his pink scalp. The man gave her a lopsided smile filled with obvious affection.
The simple action—her touching him with such affection and the warmth with which it was received—stirred something in Rurik’s chest. He ought to look away from the tender act, but he could not risk that when she sat right there with her dagger ready. He had made the mistake of underestimating her once. The pain in his nose could attest to that. It would not happen again. The sharp bite of fury raced up to replace the tenderness. This man had ruined lives in Maerr. He was not entitled to Rurik’s leniency.
Rurik met Annis’s gaze. ‘How long?’ His voice was sharper.
She swallowed and glanced away, hesitant to answer. Finally, she said, ‘A series of brain attacks have whittled away his abilities over the past several years.’
‘But how long has he been witless?’
She looked as if he had slapped her. Rage mottled her face and her eyes turned as hard as marbles. ‘He is not witless! He is a superb player of hnefatafl, routinely besting us still.’ She gestured towards the game they were playing. Realising that her voice was raised, she stopped talking and looked over to Wilfrid who was examining them both in suspicion. In a great display of restraint, she nodded to him as if to tell him things were fine and reached over to the board.
Harlequin Historical May 2020--Box Set 2 of 2 Page 6
