Viking's Prize

by Tanya Anne Crosby

  For defying him? Why else? Elienor asked herself scornfully, wrenching her hand free. “I see.”

  She was suddenly aware of his hands upon her arms, sliding up and pressing her backward upon the pallet. “Rest now,” he commanded. “You must regain your strength.” He pulled the coverlet high about her throat, and his fingers slid the length of her jaw, sending gooseflesh racing down her arms. “I shall bring you nourishment directly.”

  “I’m not hungry!”

  “Nevertheless,” he countered, his voice as deep and unfathomable as the sea, “you’ll eat what I bring.”

  Rising abruptly, he stood over her for an uncomfortable moment, peering down at her with... not concern; but it couldn’t be! And then he turned to leave. Yet he halted before ducking from the tent, glancing backward, as though suddenly reluctant to go. His eyes narrowed. “The boy... he called you Elienor?”

  Reminded of Stefan, Elienor once again fought the salty burn of tears in her eyes.

  “Is that how you are known?”

  Curse him, Elienor thought, for he had not even the decency to show compunction when speaking of poor Stefan! “Aye,” she relented, a lump forming in her throat. A single tear slid down her cheek, but she swiped it away, vowing to shed no more. “I am Elienor,” she told him, suddenly feeling so very fatigued, so defeated.

  “Elienor,” he whispered, as though savoring the sound of her name. His eyes bore into her own. “It suits you,” he told her. “From whence do you hail, Elienor?”

  Her eyes narrowed with anguish. Another tear slipped silently past her lashes. She blinked it away. “As though you did not know.”

  Something strange flickered in the gleaming silver depths of his eyes—regret? She didn’t want his tenderness, nor his concern. She wanted only to loathe him!

  “I mean before. Who was your sire.”

  Realizing what he wished to know, Elienor sought to deter him, uncertain how it would bode her if she revealed her relation to Robert of France. “Baume-les-Nonnes,” she supplied.

  One brow shot up in surprise. “Nonnes? You came from a holy house?”

  Elienor nodded, her eyes stinging with tears she refused to shed.

  His eyes were sharp, assessing. “I thought you were to be wed to Count Phillipe?”

  “I was. Until you came.”

  “Then you’re not his bride?”

  Elienor shook her head in answer, and then shivered, for as she watched, the tiniest smile twisted his lips, spreading deep into his bladelike eyes. She vowed to say no more, not wanting to please him.

  As though sensing her withdrawal, he nodded, evidently appeased for the time being, and ducked beneath the tent flap, disappearing into his own world.

  She wanted no part of that world!

  Her heart heavy with grief, she watched as the flap swung to and fro an instant, and then tugged the coverlet over her head to hide the tears she could no longer keep.

  CHAPTER 11

  Had she truly thought she’d known confinement?

  Elienor’s tiny call at Baume-les-Nonnes had never seemed so grand than at the moment. Still, as she had no wish to see any of her barbarian captors ever again—even to breathe fresh air—she remained within the confines of the little tent. That she had to suffer Alarik, the demon—she couldn’t say his name, even mentally, without adding the epithet—was torment enough!

  He was the one who brought her food and water, and for the first two days had ministered to her head wound solicitously, yet she felt anything but grateful at the moment.

  Some part of her—the part that felt the loss and guilt most keenly—wished only that he would let her die in peace. How could she bear to live with such beasts?

  She could have borne it had she had someone to care for, to protect, someone who needed her. But there was no one now. Stefan and Clarisse were gone, and she’d never been more alone in her life, not even when she’d been abandoned to the priory!

  Turning away from the tent opening and the starry darkness beyond it, she recalled what Alarik had said to her—that his own father had thought to put him out as a babe. She closed her eyes, and there the image plagued her. Desperately, she tried to free her mind, but it was no use.

  Why couldn’t she stop thinking of him?

  Why couldn’t she simply go to sleep?

  He was anything but vulnerable, she knew. So why was she foolish enough to see him otherwise?

  Tugging the coverlet up, she buried her face in the abrasive wool and managed to coerce herself into a troubled slumber. In her dream the rain pattered on her back…

  “Whatever possessed you to come here at such an ungodly hour?”

  Hearing Heloise’s voice, Elienor swung about, hurling herself into the old nun’s welcoming arms.

  “There, there, now,” she soothed. “Sister Heloise will love you now, ma bonne petite. Together we will care for your maman’s lily. Oui?”

  Elienor nodded into the warmth of Heloise’s wool clad shoulder. Scratchy as the fabric was, it felt good to her little cheeks. “Because Maman loves lilies... She loves them so much...” She sighed. Here she felt so safe... so sheltered...

  She lifted her face, smiling, to gaze into... his face!

  That look! So tender. Alarik was holding her, his arms strong, shielding her from the pattering rain.

  She couldn’t help herself. She let him, sagging against his coarse mail-clad chest, her arms going around him.

  Safe... safe...yet how could it be so?

  The sun was shining, sweet and warm upon her face.

  But something was wrong.

  Something... though she knew not what...

  It was much too bright suddenly, the sun glinting off silver helms and mail. All about her swords clashed with a mighty clang. But she could see no one!

  Shields flashed.

  Bringing her hand from around from his back... she discovered blood.

  Betrayed? Had she betrayed him? But how?

  How was it possible when she’d never given her loyalty to begin with?

  It could not be.

  All at once she was torn from Alarik—seized by a man without a face.

  Elienor screamed...

  “Shhhhh, little one,” a husky voice whispered. “Shhhhhhh. ’Tis but a dream.” A warm palm smoothed her damp hair away from her forehead.

  Elienor’s eyes flew wide, and her heart leapt into her throat. As her vision adjusted in the darkness, she found him hovering inches above her, his expression so... tender—that same expression she remembered from the church... and more recently from the dream.

  Her breath caught as his hands moved to her shoulders, stroking gently, the gesture oddly soothing yet disturbing in its intimacy.

  “You?” she croaked. Reaching out, she seized his hand in a desperate attempt to stop his ministrations.

  His hands stilled, but remained where he willed them “Aye,” he whispered, his lips hovering so close to her face that she could feel the heat of his breath. “You were dreaming. Again,” he added with quiet emphasis.

  Again?

  Elienor’s heart somersaulted. Acutely aware of his hands on her shoulders, as well as his lips so near her own, she licked her lips gone dry and swallowed. Each night since her injury she’d dreamed that same distressing dream.

  Had he come to comfort her those times as well?

  “Again?”

  His fingers recommenced massaging her shoulder, undeterred by the nails she dug into the back of his hand.

  “Again,” he said, his warm breath caressing her lips.

  A chill raced down Elienor’s spine. She whimpered softly, recalling the last time a man—Count Phillipe—had lingered so close. The possibility that Alarik might kiss her made her heartbeat quicken and her breath catch in her throat.

  What would she do?

  Looking down into her frightened face, Alarik wanted to ask what made her cry out so desperately in her sleep each night, but was loath to hear that her nightmare was of him.
For an instant, he tried to imagine how he would see himself through her eyes and cringed at the image. “You were weeping,” he told her, his voice strange to his own ears. “I heard and came.”

  “It… was naught,” Elienor protested, her hand drawing his away from her shoulder. “As you said... naught but a foolish dream.”

  “Aye,” he replied huskily, releasing her abruptly. He surged to his feet. “You should go back to sleep.” His breath sounded as labored as her own. “’Tis early yet...”

  Elienor’s heart thrummed in the silence as he gazed down upon her.

  Yet he didn’t go.

  He did not so much as move.

  Nor did his expression shift.

  The silence between them grew until Elienor thought she would shatter from the tension. Her mind searched desperately for something to say.

  “Why would your father do such a thing?” she asked impetuously, agitated as much by the way he watched her as with the silence. “To his own son?” She could understand how it could come to pass that a father might abandon his daughter to the clergy, for the sake of greed, because it had happened to her. But murder outright? “Why would any father think to cast aside an innocent babe?”

  He’d altogether forgotten that first conversation. And then, remembering, he nodded, feeling for the first time in so many years those conflicting emotions he’d experienced the first time he’d asked that question of himself. He turned from her momentarily, frowning as he went to the tent opening, lifting up the flap to peer out from the tarpaulin, into the quiet night. His face, lit only on one side by the night sky, appeared wholly sinister in the deep shadows of the tarpaulin.

  Only the creak of the wood, adjusting to the movement of the sea, and the snores of his crew broke the silence.

  “Because I was born too soon,” he revealed after a moment of discomfiture. He turned to face her once more, the unwelcome emotions swiftly mastered, tucked away even from himself. “Born too soon,” he reiterated without inflection, “and thus too small.”

  “What stopped him?” Something in her tone made Alarik flinch. The last thing he’d intended was to stir her pity.

  He wanted no one’s pity.

  He straightened. There was naught to pity. “My mother’s weeping,” he disclosed matter-of-factly. “’Tis the way it should have been,” he added in a tense, clipped tone that forbade further questioning. The way she looked at him in that instant, full of compassion, set his teeth on edge. “It was my father’s given right’,” he told her, his brows colliding when she continued to look his way in silence, her eyes scrutinizing him through the shadows. “Damn you—I’ve no need of your pity, wench—save it for yourself! You seem to wallow in it more than enough!”

  “I have not been wallowing in pity!”

  “Nei? Is that why you lie here, day in, day out, staring blindly and mutely at the ceiling of this tarpaulin?”

  She flashed him a look of contempt. “And what would you have me do instead?” she countered icily, her voice rising with her anger. “Rejoice over having been taken captive by a hoard of barbarians?”

  Alarik felt a rush of satisfaction at hearing the bite in her tone. If she was angry, at least she was feeling. The more she’d retreated within herself, the more guilt had gnawed at his gut. Yet quick on the heels of his relief came an overwhelming rush of resentment, for once again he mocked himself; why should he care what came of the wench?

  He glanced out from the tarpaulin, his scowl as dark as the night without. To his way of thought, no wench was worthy of more than a fleeting thought, and he didn’t make it his practice to reflect on them overmuch. Nor did he idle away his time with them, save to quench his body’s cravings, and for that there was always a willing body.

  Aye, there had been a few who with their expert ways and comely faces had set his mind to reeling and his tongue ready to recount any number of love words but only for the time, because once his body was sated, cold reality crept abed. He’d never spoken the words. Never would. All it ever took to set his mind straight was to remember another woman who might have destroyed so much in his life. Deceit and treachery was the way with them all.

  By damn! he cursed himself. He didn’t care!

  So why was it he came running to her side at hearing her cries each night? Nei, why did he wait to hear them so that he could come?

  And he did, Loki take him! He shook his head in self-disgust, maddened by his conflicting emotions. Resisting the urge to rip down the tarpaulin where he stood, he turned to face her. “By the jaws of Fenri, wench, I care not what you do!” he exploded suddenly. “Go back to sleep—and next time, be certain to smother your cries lest you rouse my men! I won’t bother to answer them—ungrateful, aggravating, witch!”

  Blaspheming himself next, he thrust aside the tent flap and ducked out into the night.

  Witch.

  The sound of that single word kindled terror in Elienor’s heart, as it never failed to.

  She dared not sleep again. Dared not dream. Closing her eyes, she prayed for morning.

  CHAPTER 12

  Take care what you pray for.

  Recalling Sister Heloise’s words, Elienor grimaced for the first bright rays of morning had come too early, with no regard for her body’s fatigue. Yet despite her weariness—or mayhap because of it—she felt restless.

  She sat abruptly, glaring at the tent opening, hugging her knees, thinking that more than likely it was he that made her feel so cross. How dare he accuse her of wallowing in self-pity! Especially when she had every cause to do so!

  She shivered suddenly, rubbing her arms beneath the blanket, remembering against her will the incredible warmth of his lips.

  Don’t think of that, she scolded herself.

  How could she have felt sympathy for the beast? Amazingly, she had—for the babe he’d once been, and for his mother—and along with it, she’d experienced such an incredible urge to comfort—a ridiculous notion, for he’d seemed not at all affected by his past. His face had remained an impervious mask, and if anything he’d seemed vexed with her for questioning his murderous father.

  Listening to the sounds of the crew rousing outside, she wished them all to perdition—their arrogant leader most especially!

  She stood, shaking off the blanket in the heat of her ire, and began to pace the confines of the narrow tent, stopping to listen to the ghoulish groans of the mast. She pounded the wooden pillar soundly with her fist, wanting it to cease once and for all.

  She couldn’t bear this much longer!

  And she most certainly was not a witch!

  What of the dream? a little voice asked.

  Elienor snorted inelegantly. “What dream?” she countered stubbornly.

  Ah, Elienor, you forget so easily—any one of many—last night when he held you...

  “’Tis naught but coincidence,” Elienor said petulantly, refusing to acknowledge the other accusation—that she’d allowed him to hold her—regardless that it was merely a dream. Mother Heloise said it was so.

  And you believe it still? Can you be so blind? Open your eyes at last, bien-aimee.

  A shiver passed down her spine. “Beloved?” Something about the way the endearment came to her, the way it sounded so clearly in her head, suddenly discomfited her. It brought back memories of her mother’s soft gentle voice. She swallowed, glancing about warily.

  I have been with you always, bien-aimee. You must heed the warnings.

  Elienor’s heart raced and a chill passed through her, sending gooseflesh racing down her arms.

  “Mother!” she said, whirling suddenly, searching for the face that went with the imagined voice, and shook her head.

  Heed them, Elienor.

  Again she spun about, spying nothing still.

  Sweet Jesu! Surely it was only her imagination.

  It was true she oft talked to herself—but never like this! “Dear God! I am mad!” she exclaimed a little hysterically. Eyeing the blanket she’d discarded upon t
he pallet, she felt acutely the crispness of the air. If she stayed in this tent another moment, the madness would be irrevocable. If she didn’t freeze to death first—and It was all his fault!

  “Truly, I am mad!” she whispered again. Jesu, but it was cold! She started for the blanket suddenly, intending to wrap it about her shoulders. “Mad, mad, mad!”

  “I’m inclined to agree.”

  Elienor practically leapt out of her stockinged feet. She spun about to face the tent opening where Alarik, the demon, stood watching her, his arms crossed, his lips twisted with ill-concealed amusement. A grin suddenly overtook his features... those sensuous lips twisting devilishly. “Who can argue with truth?” he said, his eyes sparkling with rare humor. “Without question, you’re unusual, Elienor of Baume-les-Nonnes.”

  Elienor shot him a look of contempt, forcing her gaze from his lips.

  Unusual? Precisely what was he implying? Unusual, indeed! She dared not ask, lest he accuse her of witchery again. “Beg pardon if I offend thee, my lord Viking!”

  “Alarik.”

  Elienor’s eyes narrowed belligerently. “Pardon again! Alarik, the demon,” she countered, daring to use her own epithet for him. And emboldened by his silence, she dared even further. “Mighty Norseman, slayer of innocents!”

  He stiffened as though she’d physically struck him.

  Her voice rose in renewed anger over Clarisse’s senseless death. “Alarik, the executioner!”

  “Enough!” He snarled at last, his eyes warning her. “Lest you wish to join your friend.”

  Elienor snorted to cover her instant of fear. “You would!” she continued carelessly. Let him do what he wished to her! She refused to forget her pride ever again.

  A muscle ticked at his jaw. “Aye, wench, I would... never doubt it!” His eyes glittered dangerously.

  Yet he did nothing of the sort, Elienor noticed. He simply stood glaring at her.