Harlequin Historical May 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Elizabeth Rolls

  Because survival often depended on recognizing a king when one appeared, Thorbrand thought then, with some amusement. He suspected that were Edward to appear before this same hearth tomorrow, the villagers would treat him just the same.

  Kings came and went. Land could always be disputed. What mattered was the will to fight on, come what may.

  Then again, he thought as he filled his belly, perhaps there were other ways to fight.

  “How fares our Mercian princess with her upcoming nuptials?” Ulfric asked from beside him. “She will make a merry bride, I hope?”

  Thorbrand shrugged. “I feel certain she will come around to it.”

  Leif snorted. “However will you tempt her?”

  “I do not find it necessary to tempt women, cousin,” Thorbrand said. He grinned. “They find merely to gaze upon me temptation enough.”

  “Temptation enough to slip a dagger in your ribs,” his brother retorted.

  “And yet I do not bleed,” Thorbrand replied. He eyed Ulfric and his usual dark scowl. ”A pity you cannot say the same, brother.”

  Ulfric glared, the scar on his face telling its own tale. And then Leif was starting in on him as Thorbrand had known he would, once again bringing up the fact that Ulfric, a mighty warrior, had let his own concubine cut him.

  Thorbrand sat back, let them bicker, and thought over Aelfwynn’s reaction to the news he meant to wed her.

  It had been much like that first night in their tent, after he’d taken her from the road. That night she had laid herself out before him, a brave sacrifice to a ravening beast.

  And had seemed, if he wasn’t mistaken, somewhat disappointed that her martyrdom was not required.

  So too had she seemed...almost outraged that he planned to marry her.

  You do not mean marry me, she’d said, her voice loud and shocked in the empty hall.

  And yet I will, all the same.

  She had frowned at him, that perfect, placid sweetness of hers gone as if it had never been. That mask she wore to handle kings and strangers alike had disappeared like smoke through the opening in the roof above them.

  He found he liked it best when she wore no mask at all. And no garments otherwise, were he to have his way.

  I’m not the loose end your king believes me to be, she had told him. My uncle wanted me dead. Or at the very least, tucked away in a nunnery with unbreakable vows made to God. I am no threat to anyone.

  Thorbrand had considered her for some time. And wondered what had befallen him, that while he yearned to ease his need in her, as ever, he found a different solace simply in touching her. In holding her face in his hands. In running hands over the silk of her flaxen tresses, braided or not.

  It is not that you are a threat, sweeting, he told her, and had found a hand over his chest as if he was bruised. It is that you could be used as leverage. Surely you know this.

  Her frown had deepened. I do not recall agreeing to marry anyone, much less the man who abducted me from a dark road.

  You cannot have imagined the choice would ever have been yours to make, Aelfwynn. Whether on a dark road or in a bright-lit castle.

  She had actually curled her hands into fists. He would have laughed, if only to see if she would swing them, but this was a serious matter. This was their marriage—and he found that what he’d seen as a duty to be exercised in service to his king before he’d met her was now...

  A different kind of song in him altogether.

  I do not know how you Northmen conduct your affairs, she had seethed at him, but brides are rarely forced where I come from. We are not so uncivilized as some.

  He had wanted to stop her there. To revel in her like this, eyes of molten gold no longer demurely downcast. Temper coloring her cheeks. Those fists. Like his very own, tiny Saxon Valkyrie. His cock took notice. His heart had pounded at him, hard, like a blow.

  But Ragnall expected a wedding to lock Aelfwynn down and keep her within his control, to be used against her uncle in the future. And it turned out... Thorbrand wanted a wedding himself, for reasons he had not cared to dig into just then.

  This is no question of civility, he had told her. It is about kingdoms, not manners. You are the granddaughter of Alfred. It is known what blood runs in your veins.

  Remember who my mother was, please.

  I remember, he had said. Though I wonder if you do. She loved you well, I have no doubt, but surely you know that when it came to a choice between her love and her rule, she would always have chosen what was best for Mercia. Or perhaps for her brother.

  She would never have forced me, Aelfwynn had protested.

  I assume she would have but asked you.

  Aelfwynn had clearly misliked his dry tone. If I had found a man disgusting, she would never have insisted I wed him.

  Happily, that is not our situation, he had said, perhaps more darkly than before. For he had begun to find that her resistance to the idea of wedding him did not sit well with him. Well do I think you know it.

  What is it you plan to do? she had asked, holding herself still. Too still. You marry me at your king’s behest, but then what? March on Mercia before the week ends?

  Thorbrand had studied her for a moment while he made sure his own temper stayed in check. Ragnall must fortify his position as King of Jorvik. Only once he has done so, and thrown open trading routes with our kin in Dublin, will we advance. And you will be a part of that, as my wife.

  He had not chosen to point out that he would never have discussed such things with her had he not known, without doubt, that she would wed him. It was to his own detriment that he wanted also for her to wish to do so.

  Though he had thought he would rather die than admit such a thing.

  I will never be a part of any plot that threatens Mercia, she had gritted at him. Never.

  Then tell yourself, here and now, that you will make yourself easy with what must come, he had told her, his voice like steel. For this is the way of the world, Aelfwynn. And you know it. Mercia will fall. Whether it is to Ragnall, to your uncle, or to whoever rises up when all of us are dead. Should Ragnall prevail it will be my honor to rule Mercia in concert with his wishes and with Aethelflaed’s daughter at my side. And you may lie to yourself if it pleases you, but both of us know well that taking your place at the side of a man who might otherwise be an enemy has always been your purpose.

  But...

  Thorbrand had not finished. And well too do you know that marrying me will not be the sacrifice you might have been called upon to make, were the choice your mother’s.

  She had turned her head away at that, but he’d seen the heat in her gaze and the glassiness as much from that as from the force of her emotions. He had taken her chin and pulled her face back to his.

  We have already lived as a man and wife do, he had gritted at her. You may well be carrying my child. And I do not intend for my sons to be illegitimate.

  And not only because he did not think Edward of Wessex would pay for the raising of a son he did not claim, or a part of the raising if Thorbrand acknowledged him, as was his people’s custom.

  That’s a very convincing offer, she had begun, her golden eyes shooting sparks at him as though they stood in a forge.

  That is no offer, sweeting. Those are simple truths. The offer is this. He had searched her face, his grip gentle enough but his own gaze a fury. Us.

  And what use will such a thing as us be when you are off dying on a battlefield? she had hissed at him. Chasing your glory while the women you leave behind must grieve your death and plan your burial.

  This is what men must do.

  This is what men do, yes, she had replied hotly. But whether they must is a different matter. I will be a widow within a year, and then what? Will your king hand me off to your brother? Your cousin? Not that it will matter to you, dead and gone.

 
Thorbrand had not liked any of that. It had struck him then that he had never thought of his mother’s pain. Only her courage. But he should have known better. Courage was not called for where there was naught but joy. And was that the life he wanted for his woman made of gold? Ever waiting, ever worrying. Raising his sons to mourn him.

  Sending them off to die in his footsteps.

  Did he dare imagine there was anything else for a man as battle-scarred as he was?

  Or was that little more than a betrayal of those he should have saved?

  Neither you nor I will be dying near any battlefield, Aelfwynn. I cannot risk another happening along and finding you, then using you as we would. And he had not wished to ask himself if it was Ragnall he thought of then. Or if it was only himself. I want you to be my weapon, not anyone else’s. There is a new land in the west. A new island. I have been there, and I will take you back, and we will live there as we already have. It had taken him a moment to recollect himself. Until it is time.

  You, Thorbrand? she had asked softly, though he had heard too well the disquiet in her voice. You intend to live quietly, far away from blood and glory? I don’t believe it.

  Neither did he. But it ached in him, the wanting of it.

  And then the villagers had come in to claim their hall that had likely only just been emptied of the animals that slumbered within during the cold season, and he had not seen her again, alone, until it was time for them to take to their tent. For Aelfwynn had busied herself with the work of the women, tending to the stores brought out to acknowledge Ragnall’s presence and the meat the king had brought as tribute to his hosts’ generosity. There had been drinking aplenty and bright songs sung.

  Inside their tent last night, it had been dark. Close. He’d had her on her hands and knees, gripping that flaxen hair that fell all around her and pulling her head back as he slammed himself into her, telling her without words how this would always be with them.

  And he had taken her mouth while he’d done it, for she was far sweeter a taste on his tongue than the mead he’d drunk.

  He’d woken in the night to find her wrapped all around him as was her custom, her leg drawn over his. He had rolled over, drawing her legs wide so he could slide inside, knowing she loved to shiver awake to find him already deep within her.

  He had not spoken then, either.

  And it was only now, with his brother and cousin trading barbs and his king’s men all around him, that it occurred to him she had not answered him. She had managed, somehow, not to tell him whether she would marry him, however reluctantly, or if she planned to cause difficulties.

  Thorbrand had assumed her body’s soft surrender was her answer...but Aelfwynn was unlike other women he had known. He wanted her words. He wanted a vow.

  He wanted something that was his alone.

  Even if only for a small while, away across the sea, before the world swallowed them down again.

  She was not in the hall. He went out to look for her throughout the village, but couldn’t find her in the groups of women he found tending to the usual tasks of the day. He searched the whole of the village, twice, before he found himself standing at the fencing that kept the animals in and the beasts out. Or tried.

  “I have not seen your woman this morn,” came the voice of his king from behind him.

  Thorbrand turned and nodded his greeting. “It could be she hides,” he said, though that was unlike the woman he thought he knew. “She had resigned herself to slavery, you understand. That she has been elevated to a bride offends her.”

  Ragnall laughed. He was yet a mighty force of a man, though he was far more gray in person than he ever was in Thorbrand’s memories. Yet only a fool with a death wish would discount the damage he could still do well with his blade. He held himself like the king he was, but to Thorbrand, he had always been more than that.

  He was the father who had lived.

  And more, the father who had never looked at him and found him wanting.

  “You do me a great service, Thorbrand,” Ragnall said after a moment, his gaze on the fields. “There remains no one else I could trust with such a task, as I have told you.”

  “It is my honor,” Thorbrand said gruffly. “You know this is so.”

  “What I know is that you think the only honor to be found in this brutal life is in battle. And well have you distinguished yourself there. Many a song will be sung of you, but none, I think, as rich as this task you undertake.”

  “A man kidnaps a woman and removes himself to a distant land, where he seeks out a distant cousin, become a chieftain, and farms,” Thorbrand said dryly. “This is not the great story of our age, I suspect.”

  “But you must keep her safe, no matter who comes,” Ragnall countered. “Never must her name be spoken again in halls where men listen, lest our enemies seek her out and use her for their own ends. You may till a field if you wish, but it can only come second to your real duty. And more, I know you will do it. You will not throw her overboard and tell me it was an accident, so you might return to the battles that might win you the glory others seek. You will not abuse her. You will keep her, for me, until I have need of her here.”

  Thorbrand nodded, for what else could he do? He would do what Ragnall asked, because he asked. Because he asked, whether he was king or no, and Thorbrand owed him his life. His years at Ragnall’s side had let him, if not make up for what he had done, find an ease in it. And because this was so, whatever Ragnall wished to make of his life would be done. Thorbrand would see it done.

  They stood there together, looking out at the cold afternoon. The sky was clear and what light there was, on the brighter side of midwinter, cast the land around them into hue less bleak than usual.

  And Thorbrand knew he must offer his king what everything in him roared against.

  Even if it tested the loyalty he would have sworn, before, was as solid as any mountain.

  “You could take her for yourself,” he made himself say, though it felt ripped from the deepest part of him. “Instead of spinning out these plots.”

  Ragnall sent him a sideways glance, filled with laughter. “Could I, then? And you would surrender her, would you?”

  “You are my king,” Thorbrand gritted out.

  Ragnall laughed out loud and clapped him on the shoulder. “This is why I chose you, Thorbrand. Your loyalty extends so far you would hand over your woman, who could even now grow thick with your child. But I do not require this of you.”

  Thorbrand had made the offer because he felt he must. Because Ragnall should have first choice, even when it came to Aelfwynn. Though the words had tasted rotten on his tongue, he had forced himself to speak them anyway.

  But now that Ragnall had refused, something in him...shuddered.

  Relief, he knew.

  Because he was not as loyal as his king believed him. For even as he’d spoken the hateful words, he had known the truth.

  He would not let Aelfwynn go without a fight. Even if it were necessary he fight his own king.

  The man he considered a father.

  “It would be impossible to hide her until the right moment if she was with me,” Ragnall was saying. “Her whereabouts would be known, her people notified. It would give Edward an excuse to rise against me before I wish it. And besides, I have all the concubines I can handle. I do not need one who considers herself a princess.”

  He laughed at that, and Thorbrand smiled too, for he knew some of his king’s concubines too well. He had separated them from each other in more than one brawl.

  “They fight enough as it is,” he said.

  “I have always admired those who long for a quiet life,” Ragnall told him. “But the gods set me on a different path. Not for me the plow. Instead I will swing a steel blade until the fight claims me, and hope I make my way to Valhalla. We all must play our part. Lucky is the man who
can play more than one.”

  “And what would you do,” Thorbrand asked him, “if there were no end? If you swept the whole of this island and called it your own. If the world fell before you. Where would you fight then?”

  His king studied him a moment. “Northmen will take these islands. If not in my time, then those who come after me will make it so. I believe this.”

  Thorbrand nodded.

  “And there is always a fight, Thorbrand,” Ragnall continued, with a grin. “Always, everywhere, there are kings with too much land. All I seek is to part them from it. I am a simple man.”

  Thorbrand couldn’t stop thinking about that as he continued looking for Aelfwynn.

  For he had discovered that he, too, was a simple man. He wanted land like any other. Riches enough to hold what was his and more friends than enemies.

  But most of all, he wanted Aelfwynn.

  For it had never occurred to him that she might not wish to marry him.

  He did not like that at all. Thus it took him far too long to realize, when he still couldn’t find her, that she had given him her answer after all.

  And run.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Leorna a hwæthwugu; ðeah ðe þine gesælða forlætan, ne forlætt þe no þin cræft.

  Always be learning something; though your good fortune may abandon you, don’t abandon your skill.

  —Old English Dicts of Cato,

  translated by Eleanor Parker

  Aelfwynn only vaguely recognized the wiry Northman who waited there when she emerged from her tent that morning. She had woken to find Thorbrand gone, but as she’d lain there surrounded by his scent in the warmth of his furs, there had been no mystery as to where he’d gone. She could hear the shouts of the men. The clash of swords in the distance that reminded her where she was.

  Not in the secluded cottage she’d come to consider a home. Nor even back out in the cold woods of Mercia and the Danelaw as she’d been those first few days with Thorbrand and his disapproving kin. She was in a tiny village in southern Northumbria, likely no great distance from York. And yet far enough that Ragnall was not over worried about the villagers recognizing Aelfwynn, or her name, and carrying the tale of the Lady of the Mercians’ daughter in the Northman clutches to others.