With a grunt of disgust, she yanked her chemise up to cover her breast.
He chuckled.
“What… are … you … doing … in … my … bed?” she gritted out.
“Best you stop wiggling about, Maire, or Lance will be impaling your sweet target.”
She stilled for a second and felt the male appendage pressed into her hip move. It actually moved. Was it growing larger? She didn’t dare look. “Lance?”
“My manpart.”
“You name your manpart?”
“Nay,” he answered and grinned unabashedly, “though many men do.”
“Many men are lackwits.”
He shrugged. “Mayhap. Where women are concerned, you may be right. In truth, a man’s lance often has a mind of its own. So, really, women should not blame men for their lackwittedness in that regard.”
“Now that’s a piece of male ill-logic, if I ever heard it.”
“Hush, Maire. You’re offending Lance, and he is a very sensitive fellow.”
“Well, Lance better get away from me, or risk being broken by a quick chop of my fist.”
Rurik winced, but still grinned at her. “I would not mind your fist on me. Not chopping, of course. More like, softly—”
“Aaarrgh! How dare you speak to me so?”
“I dare much, m’lady, and I expect I will dare much, much more before I leave your company.”
“I repeat, why are you in my bed?”
“Where else would I be? I am not letting you out of my sight till you remove this blue mark.”
If only he knew … the blue mark did not detract from his good looks at all. In fact, it brought out the deep blue of his eyes, and made his face appear fierce, like an ancient Celtic warrior. “Aye, I can see why you would want to have it removed. It must interfere with all the women you would like to draw to your bed furs, then abandon.”
“Oh, I have no trouble attracting women, even with this mark,” he boasted. “Actually, some women like the way…” He stopped midsentence and stared at her. “Abandon? Are you implying that I abandon women … that I abandoned you?”
“What would you call it?” she snarled. She immediately lifted her chin with indifference. “Not that I cared.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “How did I abandon you? You were betrothed to be married, were you not? A love match, I believe you called it at the time.”
“Hah! That did not stop you from seducing me. You were relentless, Rurik. You would not leave me alone till I finally succumbed.”
“Do not lay all the blame on me, Maire. You were willing, in the end.”
“In the end,” she emphasized.
He cocked his head to the side. “Were you in love with me, Maire?”
“No!” she practically shouted.
“Then what?”
“I don’t want to talk about this any more. Let me up. Or I really will strike a mortal blow to your Lance.”
He smiled, not at all intimidated by her threats. “I will release you for now, witch, but we will finish this conversation afore I leave this cursed land.”
She scrambled out of the bed the moment he raised his arm and lifted his leg. Suspecting that he perused her form in the thin chemise, she did not turn, but quickly donned a clean but well-worn arisaid, belting it at the waist. Still not turning, out of fear that she might see more of “Lance” than she would prefer, Maire scooted toward the doorway and the chores that awaited her this day.
But Rurik asked a question, just as she put her hand to the door latch, that caused her to stop in her tracks and the blood to run cold in her veins.
“Where is your son, Maire?”
Chapter Four
“My … my son?” she stammered, dropping her hand from the door latch as she turned back into the bedchamber. “Which son?”
“You have more than one son?” He was half reclining against the headboard, the bed linens drawn up to his waist, his arms folded over the bare skin of his lightly furred chest. His question was asked with seeming casualness, but Maire knew there was nothing casual about his pose or the question.
“Nay, I have only one,” she said, walking closer to the bed.
“And that would be James, I presume. The bloody hell laird-to-be of Clan Campbell?”
She nodded though his wording was rather curious … offensive, really. “ ’Tis true, Wee-Jamie will one day be our clan chieftain… if we survive the MacNab threat, that is.”
It was his turn to nod with understanding.
“How do you know of Jamie?” The words sounded calm, but inside Maire was tense and wary. Her heart thundered against her rib cage.
“I met him yesterday when Old John came to me with the proposition. And a more foul-mouthed little bugger I have ne’er met.”
She gasped. Then, noticing his surprise at her gasp, she took a deep, calming breath. “I did not know that Jamie was with Old John when he met with you…. I mean, I knew he was with Old John, but I thought they were off in the forests, in hiding. The MacNab would use Jamie against me, you see, if he could lay hands on him. I’ve had to keep him out of sight for weeks now. As to his foul mouth …” She shrugged. “I suppose the lad has picked up bad habits from my men, since I’ve been unavailable to correct him. And besides that…” Her words trailed off as she realized that she was rambling with nervousness and Rurik was watching her intently.
“What kind of mother are you that you entrust your son’s well-being to that ragtag guard? By thunder, woman! They have trouble enough holding on to their own bodily appendages, let alone those of a running child.”
“I am a good mother,” she declared hotly, “and don’t you dare say otherwise. You know naught about me, or my son, or my clan. Who are you to be my judge, Viking? Are you an expert on fatherhood now, as well as raping and pillaging?”
His only response was a raised eyebrow.
She decided to steer the conversation away from the dangerous subject of her son. “Exactly what was the nature of the proposition that Old John offered you?”
“You don’t know? The offer did not come from you?”
“Old John has the right to speak for me, on occasion. And I was unavailable to speak for myself, as you well know.” She shivered inwardly at remembrance of the wooden cage, which she planned to burn this morn in a joyous bonfire of celebration.
He waved a hand as if the details of the proposition were of little import. “I help you build up your defenses against the MacNabs. You remove my blue mark. Those are the essential details … all that you need to know for now.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “What more could you ask?”
“Oh, lady, you owe me aplenty for what I have suffered these past five years. My time here is short, and my list of grievances is long.”
“You can see how poor my clanstead is. We have no coin or treasure to offer you in recompense.”
Rurik stroked his upper lip as he regarded her, then smiled—a slow, lazy smile that failed to reach his ice blue eyes. “Ah, then, I will have to take my payment in some other form.”
That was what Maire was afraid of.
A short time later, Rurik was standing at a low chest, splashing water onto his face from a pottery bowl, after having just shaved, when Maire came storming back into the bedchamber without knocking. The force of her entry was such that the heavy oaken door swung back on its hinges and hit the timber wall with a resounding crash. A battle shield, which had no doubt belonged to her father, fell to the floor from its wall hooks. The tapestry in the corner shook on its frame.
“Back already? That anxious to begin your punishment, are you?”
She glared at him. “Did you give an order that I was to be confined inside my own keep?” she demanded. “That huge warhorse of a guard of yours … the one with the battle-ax the size of a drawbridge … actually laid his hands on me when I attempted to walk through my own gates.”
“Laid his hands … Who, Stigand?”
“Aye, he’
s the one. He had the nerve to lift me by the scruff of the neck—with one hand, mind you—and toss me back inside like a… like a pestsome dog.”
Rurik smiled at that image. Little did she know that she was fortunate to still have her head in place.
“I… need … to … see … my son,” she said, spacing her words evenly.
“Bring … him … here,” Rurik replied in like fashion.
“Nay,” she snapped, with no explanation whatsoever. Then her eyes dropped lower and took in his nakedness. In an instant, a rosy flush spread across her face, down to her neck, and beyond. He could tell that she wanted to bolt, but she stood frozen in place. “Have you no shame? Tsk-tsk. Don some garments, at once.” She turned away as if she expected him to comply immediately.
Hah! It will be a sorrowful day in Valhalla when I bend to the orders of a woman, and certainly not a woman who happens to be a witch. Just to annoy her, he took his time drying his face with a linen cloth, ran a carved-bone comb through his long hair, yawned loudly, and stretched widely. Only then did he pull on a pair of braies. “I am decent now,” he announced finally.
Her eyes swept over his hip-hugging, low-slung braies, which exposed his flat-ridged abdomen and the beginning of his navel. He had a good body, and felt no shame at her close scrutiny. “You are never decent,” she asserted.
He took that as a compliment and tipped his head in thanks.
She made a low, growling sound, which she intended to demonstrate her displeasure, but which he found oddly arousing. When she noticed the effect on him, she repeated the growl in a prolonged fashion, accompanied by the tugging of both hands at the roots of her luxuriant hair.
He surmised that she was getting frustrated.
’Twas always a good sign when women got frustrated, in Rurik’s opinion.
“Didst thou barge into my bedchamber for some particular reason?” he inquired sweetly.
“Your bedchamber?” she sputtered.
’Twas also a good sign when women sputtered over men’s superior actions, Rurik decided.
“I came into my bedchamber to inform you that I will not be a prisoner in my own keep. I had enough of that with the MacNabs. I will not abide similar treatment from Vikings … whom I gave good welcome into my home, I might remind you, muckle-head.”
“I would not exactly describe it as welcome,” he pointed out as he hitched up his braies, then pulled a brown tunic over his head and gathered it at the waist with a wide leather belt. The tunic was an old one but of the finest wool fabric made by Alinor, his friend Tykir’s wife. The embroidered thistle design along the edges in shades of green and yellow was still visible. “Know this, m’lady witch, my guards have been given precise orders to ride your tail like fleas, everywhere you go, even to the garderobe. And that order stands till the blue mark is gone from my face … and mayhap even beyond that, for there is still your punishment to be dealt with.”
She huffed with disgust and murmured something under her breath that sounded like “We shall see about that.”
“I’m ready if you are,” he pronounced then, having slipped on a pair of half boots and attached his scab-barded sword to his belt.
“Ready for what?” she choked out.
“To have my blue mark removed. What else?”
“I thought that perchance you might want to break your fast first.” Her eyes shifted from side to side as she spoke.
Rurik immediately tensed with suspicion. “You do have the antidote to remove the blue mark… do you not?”
“Well, not exactly.” She looked everywhere but at him.
“What exactly do you mean? How will you remove the mark?”
“I do not know.”
Aaarrgh! She does not know. Is the woman demerited? What kind of witch is she anyhow? Three long years of searching for her and she tells me she does not know. Through gritted teeth, he asked, “How did you put the mark there?”
“I do not know.”
I swear, I am going to kill her… and take great pleasure in the act. Does she know how close she is to death? “How do you plan on fulfilling your part of our proposition?”
“I do not know.”
Rurik counted to ten inside his head, Einn, tveir, rr, fjrir, fimm, sex, sj, tta, nu, tu. Only when he’d regained his calm did he speak. “Well, I know something, wench. Best you explain yourself, and quickly, or I am going to hold the world’s biggest witch-burning. And guess who will be tied to the stake?”
Maire cringed, but to her credit, she did not cry or beg for mercy, as most women would. “Fanned fires and forced love ne’er do well,” she said, instead.
“What in bloody hell does that mean?”
“You cannot force things that come naturally.” She must have sensed his rising temper, for she quickly explained, “The answer will come to me when it comes … naturally.”
“Are you barmy?” Rurik felt like pulling at his own hair, a wee bit barmy himself.
“It’s like this …,” she began.
Rurik groaned inwardly. Every time a female began with, “It’s like this …” it was a certainty that her man was not going to like what she was about to say. Not that I am Maire ’s man. No, no, no. I am definitely not her man.
“… I was angry with you that time that you… that we … uh …”
“Made love?”
“Coupled,” she said with a becoming blush.
He grinned at her discomfort, despite the seriousness of their conversation. So much of his life depended on the removal of that damned mark… his marriage, his reputation, everything.
“In my anger, I wanted to lash out at you, but I also needed to go away with you, far from the Highlands, for a time, leastways. But as you will recall, you declined my request… in a most rude fashion, incidentally.”
“Rude fashion?”
“You laughed at me.”
“I did? And for that you marked me for life?”
“Nay, you do not understand. My need for escape was more important than my damaged pride. So, whilst you were sleeping, I took a vial from the leather bag Cailleach gave me—”
“Cailleach?”
She frowned in annoyance at his interruption. “Cailleach was the old crone who taught me witchcraft at one time.”
Rurik was getting a huge ache in his head from Maire’s roundabout explanation, which made no sense at all. “Backtrack here a bit, Maire. You took a vial from the witch’s bag. What did you intend to do with it?”
“I was going to slip some of it through your lips whilst you slept, but I tripped and the liquid in the vial spilled onto your face.”
Rurik still did not understand. “What kind of potion was in the vial?”
“Well, I thought it was a…” Her words trailed off into an indecipherable murmur at the end, and she picked up with, “but obviously it was something else.”
“What did you say? I could not hear you. What kind of potion had you intended to give me?”
“A love potion,” she practically shouted. “There! Are you happy now that you know?”
“A love potion? A love potion? Lady, the desire to swive you has ne’er been a problem.” He could not stop the grin that crept over his lips.
“Ooooh! Do not dare to laugh at me again, Viking.”
“What will you do? Put another mark on me? Slip me a love potion? Turn me into a toad?”
“You are a toad,” she declared and had the nerve to dump the pottery bowl of wash water over his head before she sailed away, out of the room.
He could not care. He was laughing too hard.
And he did not believe a single word the witch had said. He knew only too well the conspiracies that enemies wove in the course of battle, and there was no doubt in his mind that he and Maire were in a war… of wits, if nothing else. The only leverage she had over him was the blue mark, and she would not want to remove it till she had gained all she could from him.
Little did the witch know what a seasoned warrior he was, and how
much he relished a good battle. She would never, ever win, whether crossing swords, or wills, with him.
He was sore angry with the witch, and had been for five long years. Still, for now, he could not help delighting in the laughter that rippled through him at her weak machinations.
A love potion? Indeed!
It was late afternoon, and the Campbell clan was celebrating their liberation before a huge bonfire composed of the wooden cage that had held their leader for almost a week.
The number of clan members seemed to be growing by the minute as more and more of them came out of hiding… most of them battered or handicapped in some way by war or their harsh lives. Rurik had tried to tell them that it was too soon for celebrating, and that liberation could be a momentary thing, but they would not listen to him. Instead, they gazed at him as if he were a savior sent by the gods … or, worse yet, a knight in shining armor called forth by a dimwitted witch.
The only one missing was Maire’s son, and Rurik was starting to be sorely annoyed by that fact. He suspected that Maire feared contamination by him… as if he might turn the wee-laird into a Viking, of all horrible things.
“What do you think?” Rurik asked Stigand and Bolthor, who had been working with the men all day, attempting to instill some discipline and rigor into their fighting exercises.
“They have heart,” Stigand informed him. “Even those who are lame and weak have the will to fight. That may not seem like much, but it could make the difference.”
“And there are those who were fierce warriors and can be again, despite their weaknesses,” Bolthor added. “Like Young John with the one eye. Even with just a few lessons this morning, I was able to show him how to better handle himself. In truth, his half-blindness is not near as bad as mine. He can still see blurry shapes with his bad eye. It is a question of balance, and he is an enthusiastic learner.”
Rurik nodded. “Toste and Vagn have been assessing the physical defenses.” He peered off into the distance where they were assisting some of the younger Campbells, pulling down the rotting timber walls with their crumbling stone foundations with an eye toward rebuilding and remortaring them over the next few days. Of course, there were several Campbell lasses about admiring their work… or could it be their good looks? Truly, the twins garnered female admirers no matter what country they were in. “We have much to do to repair the walls,” Rurik went on, “but this clanstead is well situated to ward off attacks when guards are positioned strategically.”
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