Nor is he, she reminded herself sharply.
Not the way she had come to want him, she knew too well. A thrall had only what her master bought her and what he did with her was his own affair. That was the beginning and end of it.
No matter how her heart beat as if only for him.
Still, she did as required, no matter her feelings. She was no foolish girl who imagined feelings might sway men’s minds. Especially not these men. Northmen, no less, who had laid in wait for her and carried her out of Mercia to serve their own ends. Aelfwynn quietly offered Ulfric and Leif hospitality and what food and drink she could. And fought to remain all that was serene when they condescended to speak with words she actually understood.
Though it was only to announce that they were leaving here to take her to their king.
“Our king commands your presence,” Ulfric told her, a gleam in his dark eyes she could not say she cared for.
“And yours,” Leif said to Thorbrand.
“I look forward to meeting such a legend,” Aelfwynn said, as if easy with this turn of events.
What was far harder was when she looked at Thorbrand and saw no evidence of surprise on his face. She understood at once that he had expected this summons all along. That what had happened here had only ever been a bit of tarrying with his captive.
Did he suggest any other aim? a voice in her asked.
But Aelfwynn knew the answer already. The shame of it was hers. And so too the sin.
It took little time to pack up. Little time indeed to break apart the cottage she’d made more a home than it ought to have been until no trace of them remained. Aelfwynn knew from this that Thorbrand did not intend to return. What she could not know was how, somewhere in this quiet stretch of peaceful days threaded through with the wonders he worked with his body, she had let herself forget not only who she was—but who she was to him.
She blamed the way their bodies fit together. She blamed the heat of that spring and the surprising tenderness in the way Thorbrand fit his hand to her cheek. There was the temptation of his midnight gaze. The impossible beauty of his kiss. There were the scars that marked him, each and every one she had kissed while he’d told her a short, gruff story of how he’d survived the getting of it.
Trust well that the man who laid me open will never lift an axe again, he had growled once.
And that was the trouble, was it not? Aelfwynn had trusted him. Too well.
Maybe she wasn’t as weak and foolish as she felt now, however, she thought as she drew her cloak around her and stepped out of the cottage to look out over the valley one last time. Maybe it had been the peace here, that was all. The simple joys of tending a fire and baking bread. Of making ale and washing their clothes. All the skills Mildrithe had insisted any charge of hers possess, and no matter who her parents were.
You are a woman first, child, she would say. And there is no telling what sort of marriage you’ll have.
But it had been a long while since Aelfwynn had been given an opportunity to put her skills to the test. It was far different to help out than it was to take charge, and she found she liked it. Not that the work wasn’t hard. It was. What work wasn’t?
Yet she had found the simplicity of this life nothing less than a wonder. It had been what she’d hoped to find in Wilton Abbey. An order to her days and a reverence for that order, a far cry indeed from what her life had been like until now—both before and after her mother died.
More, she had found a deep joy in it because it was for him.
For Thorbrand.
She had let herself daydream...but there was nothing to be gained by dwelling on such things now. She pulled her hood tighter around her face while the men closed up the cottage and brought the horses round. There was a stiff, cold wind rushing down from the hills this morn and it felt too much like a slap in her face. But Aelfwynn welcomed it. Because the truth was, she should have known better. There was no safe, secluded space on this earth. Not for her.
Even if she had made it to the abbey as planned, had she truly believed that it would stand as a true sanctuary? Wherever people were, there were wars. It was only that they took a different shape in different places.
So too had this cottage been. They had fought in their own manner, had they not? Just because it felt good didn’t make it any less of a battle, and Thorbrand had always been better at it. More skilled in every regard. Aelfwynn might have loved every moment, but that didn’t make him any less the victor.
It made it sinful, that was all.
But she’d known that too. She’d known all of this. It was her fault for forgetting. Her fault for pretending this could be other than it was. Her own fault—and her shame.
When he hauled her up to ride before him once again, she had a thought that he might whisper something for her ear only. That he might tell her not to fear, or tell her what to expect. That he might offer her comfort.
Or hope, something in her added wistfully.
But he did not.
The three Northmen kicked their horses into a gallop and set off. And it had been what seemed like a lifetime since she’d last sat like this, before Thorbrand on the back of a horse. It felt familiar, yet also new. Because she knew his touch far better now. The press of his thigh against hers made her...melt. And this time, she did not try to pretend she felt it not.
Even though she rode to what must surely be her doom.
Again.
They rode for a few hours, this time keeping to the roads for a time, before veering off again and into the woods on a road less traveled. When they finally slowed, she expected to see a city worth the taking. But there was only a small village in another valley much like the one they’d stayed in.
“This cannot be York, can it?” she asked, confused.
“It would make little strategic sense to bring you into Jorvik,” Thorbrand rumbled at her ear. “What if you were recognized?”
“Heaven forfend,” she murmured, and took more pleasure in it than she should have when she could feel his laughter move his mighty chest behind her.
As if that might save her from what awaited her here.
Only then did it occur to her to worry about her reception here, so far north. She had no idea how Thorbrand’s king treated his captives and slaves. All she’d ever heard about Ragnall was that he was a savage—but not one to underestimate. And even if she had not already listened well to her own mother rant about the Northmen who had fought these long years to reclaim Dublin and bring York under their rule, certainly she could not believe that Thorbrand would call any man king unless he was...an immensity.
But she dared not allow herself to think too much about it, lest she topple from the back of Thorbrand’s horse in a dead faint, which would honor neither her nor her people.
She’d been sure that Thorbrand would do something to better indicate her status once they arrived amongst his own people. Bind her hands. Make her walk behind the horse in the trodden snow that had turned to mud. Cast her down before them, at the very least.
But instead, he rode her straight into the small village, sat up high on his steed for everyone to see.
Once again, Aelfwynn was forced to ask herself what it was Thorbrand wanted from her. What too his king might want. And unlike those first few days when they had ridden north with his kin, she thought she knew now. Was it possible Thorbrand had taken her to that cottage as...a test? She had heard whispers of such things in her uncle’s court. Of women used and sold for pleasure, again and again. And not the woman’s pleasure.
It would be a certain kind of man’s idea of the perfect revenge.
Was Thorbrand that kind of man? Had she misjudged him so completely?
She cast down her eyes to block out the stares of the villagers who came out to watch as they rode in, and she could feel a surging, terrible panic inside her.
The truth was, her time in that cottage with Thorbrand had ruined her in more ways than one.
She felt as if she’d forgotten...everything. Who she was. What she was about. How to protect herself and how she might behave now that she found herself here. She knew already that whatever connection she might have imagined she felt with Thorbrand, it could not possibly matter.
Not here.
The three men stopped, and swung off the horses, though Thorbrand laid a heavy hand on Aelfwynn’s leg and kept her where she was. High on his horse, visible to all who might gaze upon her.
He and his kin began to speak in Irish again, but she could hear other voices. The voices of the villagers here, speaking words she understood. And Aelfwynn could not decide if that was a gift or not. Perhaps it was a kindness not to comprehend what was happening to her.
Grace, she reminded herself. This is an opportunity for grace.
So she sat tall, though she was a Northman’s slave. He could call her what he wished, she knew what blood she carried within her. She knew who she was.
No matter how he might have confused her with his touch, she knew.
Thorbrand turned from his brother and cousin and the other men who had come to join them in conversation. He came to the horse and lifted Aelfwynn off its back, an easy demonstration of his strength that should have terrified her. Instead, it made that flame inside her reach high.
He set her down, moving her to the front of him with his hand resting heavily on the nape of her neck.
Better that than an iron chain, she thought.
Aelfwynn tried her best to keep her gaze demurely lowered as he began to move, guiding her before him so she might walk when he did. She expected jeers, perhaps. Shouts. Even the odd stone, but all was silent. Eerily so.
Soon enough they reached the longhouse that stood at the center of the village with smaller cottages and the other buildings necessary to village life arrayed around it. Though unlike other villages, where the people came and went freely from the communal places, men stood at the off-center door and eyed her coldly.
Aelfwynn tried her best to look serenely unconcerned, though she feared her hands shook.
Then the men opened the door, Thorbrand thrust her forward, and she found herself in the presence of the Northman king who would have killed her mother, if he could. Ragnall, whose name had only ever been spoken in her presence in these last years as a curse.
There were others in the hall, dark and smoky, but she knew him instantly. It was how he sat at the great chair at the far end with an appearance of languor that was utterly belied by the power in his gaze and the authority that sat on him like armor.
This was Ragnall, the scourge of Dublin even before the Irish kings had expelled him and other Northmen who had originally come from Norway, yet had long since mixed with the natives. Ragnall who had taken the Isles and had moved on to Northumbria. Rumored to be a direct descendant of Ivar the Boneless, though there were many who claimed such things around a fire on a cold night. Rumored too to be a man of dark appetites and darker grudges, Ragnall wreaked havoc wherever he went, and the way he looked at her suggested he would think it a pleasure indeed to turn his dark attentions on her. She reminded herself that true though all those stories and rumors might be, he was yet a man.
Just a man, flesh and blood like any other.
But that had never comforted her when it was her uncle who stood before her, her life in his hands. Nor did it aid her overmuch now as Thorbrand marched her down the center of the hall to stop before his king’s chair.
Ragnall was not a young man, though he yet had power written deep all over him. There was gray on his head and in his beard, but his gaze pierced straight through her.
“Aethelflaed’s daughter,” the king said, after all those around him had stopped speaking in Irish. In a tone of great satisfaction. “You have the look of her.”
It was as if Aelfwynn had been in a dream. There had been nothing but snow, the wind howling around the cottage so intensely she’d been certain they would wake to find no roof above them. And she would not have cared, for the wonder that she experienced again and again at Thorbrand’s hands.
Not only his hands. His mouth. Every part of his marvelous body. And that impossible magic when he thrust deep inside her.
What she could not understand was how, when such sensations existed, she had lived her whole life having no idea they were possible. She had found herself staring off into space when she should have been mending, or tending to the fire and her many other tasks, asking herself who of the people she knew could possibly have experienced these things. How could it be that they had walked next to her in this state and she had never known it?
For even if she now understood a need so great that any dark corner would do, she found it difficult to believe that people simply lived their lives, breathing the same air she did, when they had ever felt... Like this. Like new.
And she had lost herself in it so completely that even the arrival of his disapproving kin hadn’t brought her back to herself. Even traveling through this village, for all she had braced herself, hadn’t quite done it. For there was Thorbrand’s heavy hand at her neck and the traitorous slickness between her legs.
But here, now, was her mother’s name in an enemy’s mouth.
And Aelfwynn might have felt a pang about letting go of all that rich, wondrous heat that had so marked these past weeks. But let it go she did.
Because she was, indeed, her mother’s daughter.
She inclined her head. “You have the advantage, I think. You invoke my mother’s name, yet I do not recall her ever having uttered yours in my hearing.”
And then she smiled.
Thorbrand’s hand tightened at her nape. The men who stood around Ragnall’s chair stiffened in outrage.
But Ragnall laughed.
He threw back his head and roared loud enough that all the others in the room shifted their battle-ready stances and joined in. Though behind her, she could feel no less tension in the way Thorbrand continued to grip the nape of her neck. Or the way he stood close, the wall of his chest at her back. Almost as if he meant to protect her—
She knew that could never be so.
“Are you certain?” Ragnall asked when he finished laughing, and though there was mirth on his craggy face, she did not mistake the shrewdness in the way he gazed at her. “Perhaps she cried it last, upon her deathbed. Knowing then, as she should have known before, that Jorvik was already mine.”
“I fear not,” Aelfwynn murmured. “It is said she asked only for a sword to handle the fight herself. If she had, who knows who would claim Jorvik today?”
Ragnall laughed again, louder this time, and Aelfwynn knew her gambit had succeeded.
You must learn how to recognize and measure a man, her mother had always said. It is how they carry themselves. How pride works in them, and envy. Some men are bold because they believe they have nothing to prove. Prefer these men, always, to those who have everything to prove and will use any opportunity to show it to be so. They love nothing better than crushing those weaker than themselves. Never give them the opportunity.
Handy as that advice might have been, Aelfwynn did not forget herself. She was not her mother, the mighty Lady of the Mercians, who would have spoken to Ragnall as if they were the same. Whether he considered himself such or did not, Aethelflaed had still been who she was. A woman of standing, with armies at her beck and call. Aelfwynn, by contrast, was slave to one of his men. A thrall who any one of them could use as they wished if Thorbrand allowed it—and she had no doubt that some of the greedy, considering gazes she felt upon her came from men who could think of any number of ways they might like to test a woman who dared speak to their leader so.
She cast her eyes down once again, kept her pretty smile on her face, and did her best to look nothing at all but peaceful.
Even when they continued to discuss her, as if she was not there, in the language they must have all known by now she could not understand. It was clearly meant to put her in her place after all.
And Aelfwynn counted herself lucky enough it wasn’t a blow.
The voices got louder, then dropped. When she dared sneak a glance, she found Ragnall was staring at her again, no hint of good humor on his face.
She found she did not have to try to act meekly any longer.
“Tell me of your uncle.” And though Ragnall’s voice was an invitation, she was perfectly aware that it was a command.
Again, Thorbrand’s grip at her neck tightened. And Aelfwynn had the strangest notion that he was not issuing his own commands, he was attempting to...comfort her. Or speak with her, somehow, without anyone else the wiser.
That is naught but a wish, she told herself sternly. But somehow, wish or no, it made the tension inside her settle all the same.
“My uncle is well,” she replied to the Northman king. “Hale and hearty when I saw him last, in truth.”
“And does he move on Jorvik?” Ragnall asked in reply, his voice significantly less inviting than before. His smile a blade. “Or does he content himself with weaseling his way into Nottingham, thinking, as your mother did, that building your fortresses will keep us out?”
What Aelfwynn knew was what she felt certain every man in this hall knew. That Nottingham had strategic value thanks to its position on the Trent. And that her uncle had repaired its defenses and then manned it with his own people and Danes alike, the better to appease the many Danes who were as displeased with the Northman incursion as he was. Such as those who had conspired with her mother against Ragnall last year.
But no good could come of her saying such things.
“I know not,” Aelfwynn managed to say, keeping her gaze on Ragnall. “My uncle did not see fit to confide his plans in me. And indeed, if your man is correct, sought to kill me off altogether.”
“Your family is not as close as mine, I take it,” Ragnall said, and though his eyes gleamed, it was all those around him who laughed.
Kidnapped by the Viking Page 14
