Like this, something in her whispered darkly. Three huge, glowering men at a fire and she no larger nor more accomplished at warfare than she had ever been. Helpless.
When all but handed Mercia after her mother’s death, Aelfwynn had done a different kind of peace-weaving. Not house to house, but Mercia to her uncle’s too-powerful Wessex. She had not taken any actions that could have been misinterpreted as rising up against him, though too many had wished she would. Instead, she had waited. She had prayed almost as often as she’d pretended to pray. It had been a fraught and treacherous six months and Aelfwynn had known too well that every breath might well be her last.
Had she really thought, only yesterday as they had set out from Tamworth, that she might truly live free of that weight?
No longer need she worry about earthly kingdoms, she had told herself with great satisfaction once Tamworth was behind her. And yet here she was, faced with three sets of hostile Northman eyes, very much on this same earth.
Aelfwynn smiled as serenely as possible. “Many greetings to you all this fine morn,” she said, not quite merrily. But certainly with no trace of fear.
Thorbrand indicated the pouch that he’d fed them from the night before. “The day ahead will be long. You will need your strength.”
As overwhelming as Aelfwynn found Thorbrand, she found his men even more intimidating. Leif was loud, Ulfric silent. Both were tactics, she understood, as well as possible hints to their characters. The two of them watched her as they broke their fasts, their gazes hard and merciless. And Thorbrand might have been equally forbidding, but he had not hurt her when he could have. Again and again.
It was not trust. She was not so foolish. But it was enough to have her smiling in gratitude when she sat beside him and he presented her some more dried meat and slivers of hard cheese from the blade of his dagger.
“I’ve never spent a night in a tent in the woods before,” she observed into the cold air, the crackling fire. “It was far more pleasant than I’d been led to believe.”
“Pleasant.” Leif snorted.
“You must have been a captive before now, Lady Aelfwynn,” Thorbrand said in that dark way of his. “You do take to it so well.”
Aelfwynn chose to take pleasure in the heat of the fire in her face and the cold December morning at her back. She chose not to let the words he clearly meant as a blow harm her. “Have I been carried off on a horse to parts unknown to me before now? I have not. Yet have I been free to do as I pleased whenever the notion took my fancy? Alas, no. Or I would have found my way to the abbey long since.”
“The lady was not being taken to a nunnery against her will,” Thorbrand told his companions, sitting back. “She wishes for the veil. She finds the prospect of a life in servitude to her god...peaceful.”
Ulfric did not smile. His eyes were too dark, his mouth too stern. “If you think a god peaceful, lady, you’ve never encountered one. Or his works.”
But all three of them laughed at that before she could think how to respond, lapsing into the other language they spoke. Irish, she was fairly certain, though she could recognize only the sound of it. Not the words or their meaning.
She ate the meat she’d been given as the men rose and broke down the camp, rolling up their furs and bundling up the strong sticks they’d used as poles, then securing them to three far more impressive steeds. Her own pouches were secured with Thorbrand’s, then lashed to his saddle. They put out the fire, kicking fresh snow over the embers. It was only when the men started to mount their horses that she looked around for her tired old steed and found her still tethered to a tree.
“What about my horse?” she asked Thorbrand when he came to stand over her.
He frowned slightly. “That pitiable nag cannot keep up.”
Then he said no more.
Aelfwynn gaped at him. “You cannot mean you will leave her here? She will be set upon by the wolves in short order. And that would be a mercy, for it would be swift. Else she will freeze, starve, and die here.”
“You should count yourself lucky that you were not set upon by those same wolves,” Thorbrand replied, his voice a warning. “Nor left tethered to a tree.”
“I count myself lucky that I did not have to walk from Tamworth.”
Aelfwynn knew better than this, especially when she heard the low rumble of the other men’s voices. Why was she taking up for an old, tired horse? It was not as if her own life was secure—as Thorbrand had so kindly reminded her.
But she could not bring herself to back down.
“I only hope when I am old and gray I am not so easily discarded by those I faithfully served,” Aelfwynn said, foolhardy to the last. “Tossed aside when inconvenient, left to die alone.”
What was it about this man that made her reckless? She who had escaped unscathed from her uncle’s spies. From Edward himself. She knew well how to keep her own counsel.
And yet.
She was aware of his companions nearby, watching her, but all she could see was Thorbrand. How he stood above her, blocking out the weak winter light, with the shoulders she’d laid her head upon.
Her breath caught in her throat.
“We will take her only so far as the nearest village,” he said at last, his voice still a low, dangerous rumble. And a considering light in his midnight blue eyes. “But we will only do this if you grant me a favor.”
“A favor?” She had not expected him to assent. If anything, she had thought he’d likely toss her up on his horse and carry her off again. Or run the poor old nag through with his sword to end the discussion. Perhaps some part of her had looked forward to proof he was a heartless monster, the better to hate him as she should, for all the good it would do her.
But a favor? A new heat seemed to flood her, scraping her throat before making its way down the center of her, until it stayed there like a flame. Insistent and low.
“What favor would you require of me?” she managed to ask.
“I will let you know,” he growled. “When I claim it.”
Aelfwynn nodded, mute with what she told herself was terror, though it was far too heavy, too hot. And then she had ample time to reflect on the folly of her outburst, not to mention granting such a man a favor. Because Thorbrand held her before him once again, nestled between his thighs with his arm like a brand around her and his powerful chest like a fortified wall.
And he did exactly as promised. He led her old nag to the outskirts of the first village they encountered, then set her free within sight of the thatched cottages.
“The villagers here are like to treat her no better than the wolves,” Leif said from his own horse, shaking his head.
“At least she has a chance,” Aelfwynn replied. With more spirit than she should have, perhaps, when the red-haired giant frowned at her.
She lowered her eyes, surprised to find herself overcome with emotion. When she had never had any particular relationship with the creature. But unlike the men who had been sent with her from Tamworth, the nag had done her best.
Aelfwynn watched the old thing as she trotted away, feeling what should have been a minor loss, if a loss at all, too keenly.
“You will remember my mercy, I trust,” Thorbrand rumbled at her ear. “And the favor that is mine to claim as I wish.”
The heat of him blazed through her, shaking her. But the nag was gone over the hill and there was nothing Aelfwynn could do but surrender. There was never aught to do but surrender. “I gave you my word.”
Then the Northmen kicked their mounts, and everything became a blur.
The day was brief and cold, but the men made the most of it. It bore no resemblance to any journey Aelfwynn had ever taken before. Not even yesterday’s long, doomed ride from Tamworth. She was used to royal processions, long caravans with soldiers marching on either side, making certain that there could be no ambushes and on
ly moving from one town along the road to the next in the course of a day. Thus had she taken her mother’s body to Gloucester, so that Aethelflaed might rest with her husband secure in the light of St. Oswald, for whom the church was named.
This was nothing like any of the journeys she had taken in her time.
Yet no matter how they galloped, dodging trees at a speed that made Aelfwynn’s head spin if she paid too close attention, Thorbrand held her in the same secure grip. He seemed closer to her today, because they moved fast enough that he was leaning over her, so that it seemed ofttimes that he lay flat upon her back.
She could not understand why she was not focusing on her discomfort. On the relentless cold. On the soreness between her legs from yesterday’s ride that she was surprised had not woken her in the night, as she could recall from other, shorter journeys on horseback. Instead, she’d slept deep and had known nothing at all until awakening. She could not recall ever having done so before. Not in Tamworth, certainly, where she had dared not rest lest some other plot against her come to fruition while she slept, all unknowing.
It was the fear, that was all, she told herself. It had made her sleep as soundly as a child.
They rode at a relentless pace, keeping off the roads. They stopped rarely. When they did, Aelfwynn made her way behind a tree when necessary, and, for once, kept her thoughts on it to herself and her tongue mercifully still.
“You do not run,” Thorbrand observed when she returned to him on one such stop, shivering beneath her cloak.
“Run?” Aelfwynn looked around, but naught had changed. There was nothing but an open field to one side that they were skirting, keeping to the trees. There was nothing else in any direction. She knew the old roads stretched from town to town, but these Northmen seem to have no need of roads. No interest in the commotion they would cause should they come within sight of a watch, more like. “Where would I run?”
“Captives run first, then worry over it later, I’d wager.”
“Have you spent much time as a captive, then?”
There was her reckless tongue again. Why had it only made an appearance now? With the last man on earth she ought to test—and especially in these dire circumstances. Was she mad?
Aelfwynn knew she must be so. But she wondered, too, if she was trying to push him so she might finally know what to do. If he was brutish, if he was cruel—she would know her place better. She would know what came next. How to prepare herself to submit. Or to sacrifice herself, if necessary.
Though in all her girlhood imaginings of rapturous surrender, she had never comprehended how physical these virtuous appeasements might become. She had imagined her pious acceptance, her hands folded in saintly conciliation...yet already she knew the feel of his chest. Those huge, iron thighs. The scrape of his beard.
The way it all made her shiver, and not from the December chill.
And she knew, then, that the heat that blazed from him, and in her, was something far different than any notion she might have held onto as a girl, regarding the things that went on between men and women. Or surely it would not wind about inside her, tighter and tighter.
He stood beside his horse, a magnificent beast that bore no resemblance to the poor, tired creature they’d left behind not long after dawn. Thorbrand rested his hand on the saddle, a look of amusement making his dark eyes gleam as he gazed down at her.
She would do well to remember that this was naught but a game to him.
“I have never been in captivity,” he told her in that dark rumble of a voice that sounded like weather, not words. “I would choose death first, and happily. If taken, I would risk anything to escape it. But you have yet to try.”
“I strive to find grace in all things,” Aelfwynn said quietly.
Did she imagine he might find that a worthy thing? This man of brawn and power, who knew not the faintest touch of grace? For what use was grace to a warrior when he could swing a heavy sword?
He considered her for far too long, that same light in his gaze. “You take to kidnap readily, Aelfwynn.”
She felt her cheeks go hot at that, though she hardly understood why. Shame, she told herself severely. It is only shame that you cannot fight as others might. As her mother would have. But shame did not explain the thick bloom of heat in her belly.
“Submission is a virtue,” she told him. “You need only ask the priests.”
Thorbrand laughed, a dark sound that seemed to scrape directly against that thick bloom within her, making it far hotter than before. Too hot.
“Bite your tongue,” he rumbled at her, his teeth a white flash against the dark of his beard. “Submission is a weak man’s sure death. And I intend to die with honor.”
He swung onto the back of his horse, leaving Aelfwynn breathless and bewildered, and that before he bent and hauled her up to settle her before him yet again. Then he murmured a command to the horse and set off once more.
It took her a long while to catch her breath.
Perhaps the truth was that she never did.
She lost herself in his grip. And the reality of him that had naught to do with virtue or weakness. A force beyond any she had known. A hard cage, a man of stone, holding her fast. While beneath her, the powerful horse charged a smooth path over uneven ground, carrying her further and further away from all she knew.
But there was something in the rhythm of it. The cold against her cheeks, the furious pace made smooth as she moved with the horse beneath her, the man behind her. She felt almost sorry when the three men stopped at some mysterious signal she did not see, conferred briefly, and then, at a much more sedate pace, moved further into the woods.
Dark, scarred Ulfric disappeared into the gathering dusk. Thorbrand and the red-haired giant rode on, picking their way deeper into the forest, until they found themselves another outcropping. Only then did they dismount and without seeming to so much as glance in each other’s direction, set about building the same camp as the night before.
Aelfwynn’s first thought was that she ought to help. But she stopped herself. As Thorbrand had pointed out earlier, she was a captive here. Not a guest. Certainly not a bride bartered to an enemy for the express purpose of weaving peace from the ashes of old wars and bitter resentments. So instead of making herself useful, she stayed back and considered her options. She still saw no point in making a run for it. Even if she had somehow known where she was with more accuracy than, simply, north, and thought she could find aid, she was not mad enough to imagine she could outrun a set of Northman warriors.
She still didn’t know what they wanted with her, but she could draw some conclusions. She was not dead. She was as yet unharmed. They were taking her somewhere and thus far wanted her to arrive there whole. Aelfwynn dared not put her trust in these facts, for men did ever alter their plans to suit themselves, but thus far she did not believe herself to be in mortal danger.
There were yet other dangers, she knew.
But she dared not let the fear creep in behind it as another night loomed before her.
Her mother had spoken only ill of lying beneath a man, and that man had been her husband, bound to treat with respect and care the sister of the Wessex king.
I did my duty, she had told Aelfwynn when Aelfwynn had come of age. And hear me, daughter. You will do yours in your time as it is required. And better still, pray it take you less than ten years’ time to bear your husband a child.
Was that what Thorbrand wanted of her?
Inside her, that same too-hot flame seemed to grow higher. But there was no sense in worrying about what was to come. She could do naught to alter it. Therefore she settled herself on a cold rock and watched the men, studying what they did and how.
Thorbrand tended to the horses while Leif found a bit of earth beneath a tree with no snow covering it. He spent some time knocking what little snow remained off the branches above, t
hen built a fire there, using something he took from his pocket that looked like flattened bark to spark and catch the logs and sticks around it.
Finished with the horses, Thorbrand put up two of the tents. Aelfwynn tried to pay attention to how he did it. The more she could learn, the more she could use. Or so she had always been taught by her mother, who had never been tender, preferring instead to admonish her daughter to pay as much attention to small things as large.
A woman never knows when the smallest, most inconsequential detail will change everything, Aethelflaed had said.
But as Thorbrand spread out the furs she knew she would rest on again tonight, she found it impossible to think of strategies. All she could think, instead, was that she had never slept the way she had last night—held close to a man. She’d hardly known what to make of it at first. Her senses had deserted her. She felt as if she’d fallen into a deep river, then let the current carry her away. There had been too much to take in. She kept thinking she ought to have been uncomfortable, for he was a hard mattress indeed, with no give or softness. His arms were as heavy as tree trunks and they’d wrapped around her so that her bodice pressed against him and, somehow, she’d felt unsteady on her feet though she had not stood.
Nothing she knew of coupling could have led her to imagine how it would feel to lie in a Northman’s furs.
Even now, she trembled.
Take heart, she admonished herself. It might be another cold day darkening swiftly into another frigid night. And there was no telling what was to come. But here, now, she sat in a clearing with a fire already bright against dark and cold alike. For the moment, it was enough to sit on her rock and be glad of it.
And then Aelfwynn felt herself something other than glad when, after conferring with his companion, Thorbrand turned that dark, simmering look of his to her.
Then started toward her, everything about him so wildly intense that it made everything in her...pull tight and burn bright, like the fire.
Aelfwynn caught her breath. Low in her stomach, something cramped. But before he reached her, Ulfric rode into the clearing, a selection of game fowl over his saddle.
Harlequin Historical May 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Page 32
