The days passed even so. The light began to change, lasting longer before it gave way to night. It was a small thing, but still, within it was the hope of spring. With the coming of spring, Thorbrand knew, came too the promise of the sea. And the lands that waited for him in the west.
Lands he would settle with Aelfwynn at his side, a far brighter prospect now than he had initially anticipated.
But a duty made palatable was a duty all the same, surely. He told himself duty was all it was.
Today Thorbrand found himself out on a gloomy afternoon, checking the traps he’d laid in the hope that there might be meat for his dinner tonight. Though if there was nothing he would eat the bread Aelfwynn baked each day using the stores he’d brought before and call it a feast.
No meat awaited him out in all that sullen gray, but he thought of the magic Aelfwynn could work with very little and was as pleased as if a hart had stumbled into one of his crude traps. Down at the bottom of the valley, he left the woods and walked up its center, his gaze on the cottage in the distance. He could see the smoke from the hearth stain the low sky above the thatched roof. And now and again, a flash of light from the fire when Aelfwynn opened the door as she went about her tasks.
They had not discussed tasks, either. She had woken their first morning, surveyed his stores with a practiced eye, then set to work.
Proving herself, he had thought then. He had expected her to fail. For what could a pampered Saxon princess know of real work? The mother had fought and toppled kings, so surely the daughter would consider herself above the menial labor of life. But she had proved him wrong. Day after day, she cooked their food and frowned severely at him should he make any attempt to do more than eat it.
She kept surprising him. It was starting to make his chest feel tight. Or maybe it was simply being here in this remote, craggy place. Away from all he knew. Tucked up with Aelfwynn in a cottage with winter still thick all around them and no entertainment but themselves.
Or it is ghosts, something in him suggested.
Thorbrand was afraid of neither man nor ghost, but he was properly respectful of the things he could not see. Well did he know that the hands that had built the cottage he stayed in were like as not bones beneath the earth he strode upon. For who abandoned a well-constructed cottage placed between two water sources? The pools to the back and the river below. Who walked off, leaving tools behind? No matter what theories were on offer in the nearest village.
The people who had lived here had either starved in a winter like this one, left for fear of that starving, or had died in one of the wars that always ravaged these lands. However they had left, some nights Thorbrand was certain he could see their handprints in the ash of the hearth. Reminding him that all men met their ends, like it or not, and not all ends were drenched in glory.
Perhaps not even his.
As he headed back across the still, cold valley today, he thought again about that island to the west. Black sand beaches and waterfalls cascading wherever he had looked. The wild sea like a wall of stone, rising again and again. But most of all, that land. New land.
Not soaked with blood and littered with bones. No ghosts, no ashy prints, no messes stretching back through time.
Land like this, Thorbrand could not help but think. A sturdy cottage, his woman, and at long last, quiet.
The quiet was his greatest indulgence. He was used to crowded halls and ships packed tight. Not a cottage to himself and his woman while outside, what looked like the whole world slumbered there before him without another living creature in sight. He knew not when he had last slept so deep, for he was not on his guard here, ready to leap into battle at a moment’s notice. For no one was mounting a siege on this cottage. Only a few villagers in a different valley knew it stood here at all. Thorbrand and Ulfric had stumbled upon it entirely by accident the previous winter when Ragnall had been making his move on Jorvik and the brothers had been forced, for reasons too tedious to recount, to make their own, far stealthier approach. Then, as now, there was naught in this valley but quiet days interrupted only by the wind and the odd bird.
Nor had he ever slaked his lust so long and so intensely, day after day, that he no longer felt certain that lust was the word to describe it. Lust was for some women, perhaps, but not Aelfwynn. Not his woman made of gold, who smiled at him when he was inside her and moaned out his name like one of her pretty Roman prayers.
Thorbrand had always intended to die in battle as his father had done. To carry on the family name, drenched in glory, a hero to his sons and their sons in turn. Making certain, blow by blow and battle after battle, that his failures did not pollute the family name. He had never understood a man who preferred plows to plunder.
But his time in this quiet valley had changed him.
Aelfwynn had changed him.
She was a prize. And she was his. And he found the conquering of her body, day and night, far sweeter a gift than any lands he might have taken in service to Ragnall. He knew it was true no matter how disloyal that might make him.
For he had come to know this valley, even covered in snow, in the same way he had learned Aelfwynn’s curves and secrets. There was a poetry in walking the same land each day. In pitting his wits against what creatures lurked in so dark a season. The skalds might never sing these songs, but he could feel them in his heart. Changing him with their simple beauty.
He had always longed for the battlefields, but here, in the stillness that was only ever shattered by his woman’s sweet cries, he found himself dreaming instead of the quiet verses a man could only hear when the land was not trod deep with the marching feet of too many armies.
But he knew too that he was a ruined man, doomed and grim. He was stained straight through with blood. He had watched his own parents die, had done naught to save them, and he had carried that curse through these brutal years. He carried it still.
The truth was, he did not deserve her.
Not her, not this quiet, and certainly not this peace.
It is as well, then, that this cannot last, he told himself gruffly.
For none of it would last. Not this. Not whatever life he built across the cold sea. That was his true duty, lest he forget. Nothing was his. He was Ragnall’s.
He had always considered it a good bargain, before.
Thorbrand tried to shake his strange mood off as he made the final climb toward the cottage. Because however loath he might be to end this unexpected gift of time here, a surprise to himself each day, that did in no way alter Ragnall’s plans for Aelfwynn.
Ragnall had made his wishes known, Thorbrand was sworn to uphold them, and that was the only story that would ever be told.
He would do the telling of it himself.
And there was no reason that should cut at him, the sharp edge of a knife he’d be far better off ignoring.
“I’m just as pleased you have no meat,” Aelfwynn said brightly when he shouldered his way into the cottage, hands empty. The room was warm and smelled pleasingly of fresh bread. She had washed and hung some of their garments. And she was standing over her cauldron next to the fire, stirring something that smelled enticingly of fish and spice. “I have been in the dried fish and we will feast tonight.”
But Thorbrand had a far different feast in mind.
He had taken her in a fury too many times to count. This afternoon, he shook off the snow and the cold, hanging what he could by the door. He watched her as he took off his boots, biting back a smile as she snuck glances at him while she applied herself to her stirring.
That he went over, held out his hand, and waited.
It was different, though he did not wish to ask himself why. It felt different, there in the places his chest squeezed tight when he gazed upon her. And he knew she felt it too when her golden eyes widened. She wiped her hands on the apron she’d made from what had once been her headdress. Th
en she put her hand in his.
Did he flatter himself that there was no longer anything but greed and longing in her gaze?
He led her to the pallet on the far wall and stood there with her for a moment, both her hands in his as he gazed down at her. He had tasted every part of her. He had learned her generous mouth with his own. He had brushed tears of pleasure from her cheeks. He knew her scent and her sounds.
You do not wish to share her with your king, a voice in him decreed, and he knew it for a truth. Little as he liked it.
For all that was his was Ragnall’s. And Ragnall could do as he wished with it.
Even with Aelfwynn.
For the first time since he had been a lad of fifteen, battered and bruised, Thorbrand did not find that a comfort. He wanted her too much to know he must use her at another’s command.
But then, he wanted everything too much. The quiet life, not merely a taste of it. All the things he knew he could never deserve. For too well did he know his worth—and it was the power in the swing of his sword. The vows he would not break. The trust his king had in him.
Sweet lives were for other men. Better men.
Men who were not drenched in blood, even when they were clean.
And well did Thorbrand know that the longer they tarried here, the sooner it was that Ragnall would call them to him and this would end. How was it possible he did not wish it to end? But he knew it was more than possible. He knew it, too, was a truth he would rather not face.
He who had faced all manner of unpleasant truths the way he did all things, with steel in his hand and the gods at his back.
“What troubles you, Thorbrand?” Aelfwynn whispered, those fire-bright eyes moving over his face.
“I need you,” was all he could manage to say.
She sank down before him, his flaxen-haired princess, and settled herself prettily before him. Then, kneeling up, she put her hands on his thighs and waited for his nod. Thorbrand did not hesitate in giving it.
He pulled off his overtunic as she freed him from his trousers. She tugged them down his hips while he stripped off the linen tunic close to his skin. Then she leaned forward to lick him, delicately, around the thick head of his shaft.
First she teased him, running her tongue down his length, and pressing sweet kisses to the heavy pouch beneath. Then she repeated herself, light and maddening, until she found the head again, wrapped both hands around his length, and sucked him into her hot, wet mouth.
Thorbrand groaned and found her hair, sinking his fingers deep into the warm silk. He looked down the length of his body, for the sight never failed to stir him. Aelfwynn’s blond hair flowing down her back, her face tipped up, and his thick length moving in and out of her pretty mouth.
He had taught her this and yet she still surprised him. She still shook him.
Soon she took him yet deeper, gripping his thighs when he took control. He thrust himself into her sweet, hot mouth again and again until he burst in a rush, roaring with pleasure as he emptied himself in her.
And then he felt the fire again, almost at once, when she sat back on her heels and smiled at him as she swallowed him down.
Everything was wild in him tonight. Thorbrand both did not know himself and knew himself too well. It was the only war he had to contend with of late. He could not swing his sword to cut down his dreams of quiet when he felt he should want glory for his family instead. And he could not vanquish glory when he had long since sworn that whatever glory might come to him, it would come in a lifetime’s service to his king.
But Aelfwynn was here, not his king. And she was one of his vows.
He lifted Aelfwynn to her feet, then pulled off her overdress and her undershift. He bent to tug off her hose. Then he laid her out on his furs, a vision of breasts tipped in rose, golden eyes and pale gold hair, and the darker, richer gold between her thighs.
Thorbrand settled there, kneeling between her legs and drawing them over his shoulders as he set his mouth to her slick heat and drank his fill.
She yet tasted as he’d known she would, honey and heat, and all of it his. He knew how to make her arch up against him, how to grind her tender flesh against his mouth, his beard. He knew she liked the rough of his beard against her thighs, and the graze of his teeth while she bucked and sobbed.
And today he did not pull her astride him, or take her from behind. Or lie, side by side, where he could draw her leg over his hip.
Today, he crawled his way up the length of her body, licking her here, biting her gently there, and then, finally, gathered her beneath him. For the first time.
Aelfwynn’s breath caught. Her eyes flew wide. “But...”
He had told her she need not lie upon her back to take him the first night he had worked the ache out of her limbs. And he had kept to that promise, but tonight... Tonight he wanted this.
Tonight he wanted her where he could see her, as if that might make the way she had bewitched him settle in him better.
“Do you trust me?” Thorbrand asked.
Slowly, even though she shook, Aelfwynn swallowed. Then nodded.
For the first time, Thorbrand stretched out on top of her and gazed down into her face. He gave her some of his weight and saw the way her eyes darkened with a deep, woman’s pleasure. He gave her more and felt the tips of her breasts stiffen.
He took her hands in his and stretched her arms up high over her head, so that her breasts jutted up at the perfect level for him to take those stiffened peaks deep into his mouth.
And for a time, he only lay between her thighs, held her wrists in one hand, and helped himself to one breast, then the other. He kept on until she was writhing beneath him, making those high-pitched, greedy noises in the back of her throat that drove him wild.
But wild wasn’t how he wanted her. Not tonight.
He put his free hand to one side of her head, held her gaze, and shifted his hips to thrust deep inside of her.
One thick, hard thrust, and he was seated within her.
His gaze was locked to hers. And so, caught there, he began to move.
Slowly.
He dragged himself out of her grip, then thrust in again. And he did not look away.
It was as if all the learning came to this. All the ways he made her scream. All that fire, all those storms. And here again was a quiet thing, yet no less a reckoning. Here was an intensity. An intimacy.
She wrecked him as surely as any battle.
Aelfwynn held him, her arms looped around his neck, and it became a rhythm between them, a sigh, a shift. And slowly, deliberately, they unraveled each other.
Then shattered into something new, together.
Later, she served him the stew she’d made and they ate on the floor before the fire, tangled up in each other as if they couldn’t bear to let go. And that was where he took her again, stretched out so that the firelight danced all over the both of them, casting shadows and slicking them with heat. He rolled her beneath him, gathered her in his arms, and unraveled them again and again until all that was left was the two of them, wrapped up tight, his flesh still lodged in her, as if all that unraveling had woven them together after all.
Both of them wrecked, he thought. Both of them new.
And in the morning, the skies were clear. So too, the following day, was the sun so bright and the air so warm that the ice began to melt.
That night, he took her in a fury made new, something like desperate.
“Will you tell me what the matter is?” she asked softly, late in the night. She lay draped over him in his furs, her voice still ragged from the way she’d sat up to ride him, her hair falling between them. Like his very own Valkyrie.
“Nothing is the matter,” he growled in return.
Then took her beneath him again to prove it.
And Thorbrand told himself he spoke truth,
for come the morning, Leif and Ulfric were there to take them back to Ragnall.
Where he should have wanted to go, as he always had before.
Because it mattered not what Aelfwynn deserved, or what he knew he did not after all he’d done. It had never mattered. These days—and these dreams—were a distraction and no more.
Thorbrand had made vows, and he would keep them.
Chapter Ten
Widgongel wif word gespringeð; oft hy mon wommum bilihð.
A far-wandering woman causes talk; often she is accused of sins.
—Maxims I, The Exeter Book
This, then, was the fate Aelfwynn had feared.
Thorbrand’s brother and cousin arrived with no warning. One moment it had been like any other morn in the cottage she had, foolishly perhaps, begun to consider theirs. She had been straining the mash she’d been using to make their ale, as she did every day before starting the bread for their dinner. Then the door had swung wide, letting the cold in. And Thorbrand was back again but with Leif and Ulfric with him, the three of them far too large for the cottage.
Oh, no, Aelfwynn thought at the sight of them. Distinctly. Because she very much doubted they were here for a family visit. Especially when Thorbrand’s kin were clearly no less suspicious of her than the last time she’d seen them, weeks ago now.
They crowded into the cottage’s single room, their sharp eyes missing nothing, she was certain. The laundry she’d hung yesterday. The pallet piled high with Thorbrand’s furs. Her own head bared, her hair caught behind her in a long braid while she bent over her work, like some kind of slattern.
Aelfwynn hardly knew how to feel. She was sure she was as bright as the fire. Was it shame? Fear? Or was she upset at being disturbed here in this cottage, where she had come to think that being this man’s thrall was...not quite the horror she’d anticipated?
Yet surely, she lectured herself sternly as the men talked loudly to each other in Irish, she had not imagined that she and Thorbrand could carry on like this forever. She could not possibly have thought any of this was truly hers.
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