Captive of the Viking

by Juliet Landon

  The signal he had hoped for came just as his hand reached its goal, instantly parting her legs for him, yet still with a trace of fear lingering in the hard clutch of her fingers on his shoulders, prompting him to whisper reassurances with his kisses. ‘Yes...yes, I know...it’s all right...just let go now. We’ll take this slowly, my beauty. There...am I hurting you?’

  ‘No. Go on,’ she whispered against his mouth.

  He smiled down at her, bracing his arms on each side of her body, almost losing himself in the sheer beauty of the moment and in the exultation of having, at last, won her trust. He had never really doubted it. He had noticed her interest, but she herself had made it happen, which was as it should be, and now it would be up to him to turn the tide of her anger into a raging desire. That would be revenge indeed.

  Whatever Fearn had expected, she now realised that her imagination had come nowhere near reality when each of Aric’s slow thrusts made her gasp with pleasure, never hurried but apparently meant to make their first time a discovery of lingering delights and sensations, undisclosed until now. The world slowed to a halt. The echoes of the forest faded with her thoughts, only broken by the soft rhythmic sound of Aric’s breathing that accompanied each powerful pulse of his body deep into hers. Neither of them spoke, for there was nothing they could have said to enhance the experience. For Fearn, this alone was a revelation she wanted to continue, having no idea that for her it could develop into something even more wonderful. So when the exquisite heat flared through her body and flooded her limbs, she moaned in an ecstasy of uncontrolled excitement, helplessly adrift. Aric responded, elated by his success, urged on by Fearn’s wildly tossing head and mewing cries, her amazing eyes opening only once to bore into his, then closing before his next burst of energy.

  Then Fearn understood for the first time what the fierce conclusion signified and that she was not only a physical part of it, but that it was also for their mutual pleasure, a pleasure she had never known existed until now. Riding on the crest of a mighty wave of sensation, she was swept along by the intensity of Aric’s vigour in which his caring was all for her, never for himself alone. She had known he could be the one to teach her, but this was a lesson to exceed everything and now, no matter what complications might follow as a result, she knew the joy of being a complete woman at last.

  Exhausted by emotion and sated by her ardour, she felt the last slowing pulses of his body inside her before he carefully withdrew and rolled aside with a groan, leaving her feeling bereft and at a loss when there was no word of praise, no touch of hand, no caress. Puzzled, she thought to prompt some kind of response, framing it in the same kind of tone that had begun the encounter, more familiar to them than compliments. ‘You are disappointed,’ she said, turning her body towards him, thinking he might do the same. ‘Well, I have nothing like the comparisons you’ll be able to make, but never mind. You’ve taken your revenge, Dane, and that’s what this was about, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, very quietly. ‘That’s what it was about. Come on, we’d better go back.’ Abruptly, he sat up to adjust himself and then stood to offer her his hand. ‘I’ll help you pick up your oak apples.’

  Fearn felt as if an ice-cold shower of water had doused the glow simmering inside her until the moment when he’d replied, straight-faced, to her half-hearted spitefulness. But pride kept her on course, refusing to ask for an explanation. Angrily, she sat up, ignoring his offered hand, turning her back on him. ‘You go,’ she said. ‘I can find them myself.’

  ‘Fearn...’ he began.

  ‘Go! Leave me alone! You’ve done enough damage.’ Still with her back to him, she felt him hesitate, then heard the snap of twigs as he walked away, echoing through the chilling numbness of her mind.

  But, no, she could not allow this to happen. She was an earl’s daughter and sister to England’s Queen, and worth more than a quick tumble on the forest floor. Why had she allowed it? Why had she not drawn her knife on him? Why was she allowing him to walk away without even an attempt at an explanation? Had she fallen so far from the standard he’d been expecting, after all his flattery woven around her character and looks? She had a right to know. Now. While the memory was still alive. ‘Revenge, Dane?’ she yelled after him, clambering to her feet. ‘Is that really the best you can do, then? So where was the pleasure you were going to show me? Was that it?’

  She saw his shoulders droop as he half-turned and waited for her to come within speaking distance, his hair raked back off his forehead, catching the dappled sunlight on the folds of his soft woollen tunic to which bits of the woodland clung. This was far from the arrogant man who had pursued her half an hour ago.

  ‘You knew that was what this was about, Fearn,’ he said as she drew near. ‘We both understood that. It was never about anything else. Only revenge.’

  ‘Anything else? Like what?’ she cried. ‘Like love? Did you—?’

  ‘I didn’t imagine anything,’ he said, harshly. ‘But such things happen when a woman discovers what her body can do. I don’t want that to happen to you. Our time together lasts only one year. That’s all. You will have served your purpose and my family’s honour will be satisfied. Then you’ll be returned.’

  ‘Like used goods. So what’s to stop me from returning home now? Does your revenge need a whole year? Isn’t once enough?’

  ‘That was the time we agreed on. My sister was with your father for that time. At least you’ll be alive at the end of it.’

  ‘Your sister. Yes, of course. You should have brought her child back instead of me, Dane. Think of the empty flattery and energy you’d have saved.’

  ‘But I brought his child back, didn’t I?’

  Fearn had intended to ask him again about how he knew this, but had been waiting for an appropriate moment. The first time, he had been evasive. ‘So perhaps now you can tell me what you know of this,’ she said. ‘Did he tell you?’

  ‘Your father? No, of course not. But it doesn’t take much to see how his mind works, does it? It’s sons Thored wants, not daughters, so why would he have kept you away from your parents to remain with him? Because he sired you, woman. Because you are his own. Then when I saw your sister’s child in Lundenburh, I was sure of it. I took you instead of Kean to make your father suffer as our family did when he took Tove and used her. Only she didn’t return and you will.’

  But now Fearn’s emotions had endured too much for caution and words were thrown out like daggers. ‘Oh, don’t be too sure of that, Dane. I can keep a family feud going for another generation without too much effort.’ She had given no thought to the reaction this would provoke after so little success with the previous ones and his long stride towards her across a bright patch of bluebells took her completely by surprise. His gold-circled arm flashed and she was grasped and pulled with a thud hard into his chest, her head pulled round too close for comfort into the fierce glare of the steel-grey eyes.

  ‘Is that what Christians do, then, when life goes hard for them? Eh? Opt out of life altogether?’ he snarled, bending her so that her thighs pressed against him. ‘Or is it that the healer can turn killer? Either way, you will remember that you are my woman still, like it or not, and you will do nothing to injure me or my property. Do you understand?’

  Glaring at him with the full force of her amazing two-colour stare, she saw how he flinched before holding them with his own. ‘Your woman?’ she said, scornfully. ‘Still? After that sad performance?’

  ‘Stop it!’ he said. ‘That kind of jibe is unworthy of you. I know exactly what you felt just now. You cannot conceal that from me. I saw it in your eyes and felt it within your body, and now you will have to learn how to deal with it and not become its slave. In this kind of arrangement, there is no place for sentiment.’

  ‘You should have warned me,’ she whispered, remembering.

  ‘Yes, I should. You have a rare natura
l ability. I should have been prepared.’ Slanting her mouth under his, he kissed her with an expertise that seemed to remind them both of the quality of their loving, and perhaps as a comfort, too, for the harsh words that had sought to blemish it.

  She was trembling as he released her, still not knowing whether her role as his woman would include more such episodes, or whether he would be satisfied with having awoken in her what he’d called a natural ability and leave it at that. There was no mistaking, however, the hard pressure of the bulge beneath his tunic. Stepping back apace, she summoned all her courage to bring her body back into her control, instead of his. ‘Then the answer is simple, isn’t it?’ she whispered, trying to prevent her voice from shaking. ‘Having done what you set out to do, you can now leave me alone. You have shown me nothing new that I cannot live without, Dane. Did you think you had?’

  His look held both disbelief and disappointment as he answered her. ‘You are a noblewoman, remember? An earl’s daughter. Lying does not suit you.’

  His message stung and she could no longer face him. They both knew that what he had shown her that day had lain dormant within her for years, waiting to be brought to life, and that the effects of it would take hold and make every other experience less than worthless. Unless it was with him. Turning away, she left him standing there. ‘Where are you going?’ he called.

  ‘To get my basket. I’ve wasted enough time here already.’

  * * *

  Some time later, it was Haesel who found her, sitting on a log, clutching the empty basket, her streaked cheeks showing where tears had been, now dried. Questions, too, had come and gone, few of them answerable, not even Haesel’s concerned, ‘Lady, are you all right? Shall we go back?’

  No going back. I’ve come too far. I should never have let him show me.

  When she did not answer, Haesel set about recovering as many of the oak apples as she could find and placing them in the basket, seeing by the bed of flattened bracken that what she suspected had in fact happened. Then, taking a piece of linen from her pouch, she touched it to her tongue and began to remove all traces of tears from Fearn’s cheeks like a mother with her child. ‘There now. Can you stand? Come, lady. We’ll leave this place,’ she said, taking Fearn’s hand.

  ‘Elf told me,’ Fearn whispered, allowing herself to be led. ‘I didn’t believe her.’

  ‘Told you what, lady?’

  ‘That it would be so wonderful. With the right man. Now I know what she meant.’

  ‘So why the tears?’

  Fearn’s steps slowed as she felt once more the coldness that he had put between them, even before a single word of admiration to pair with the compliments he had showered on her beforehand. ‘Because... I suppose...it meant nothing to him and everything to me, and because he would not even pretend, for my sake, that there was anything more to it than simply to pay my father back. He would not even allow me to think for one moment that it might have changed anything between us, no tenderness, no emotion, just an act that had to be concluded there and then. He probably gets more excitement from his mares and stallions.’

  Facing her, Haesel gently shook the hand she was holding. ‘Perhaps it was a mistake to hope that he might begin to feel the way you do, lady,’ she said.

  ‘Does it show? I’ve tried not to let it. I told him I didn’t want him.’

  More than anyone, Haesel understood her mistress’s needs and how, after being starved of even the smallest husbandly kindness, Fearn’s heart had begun to open like a flower in the warmth of Aric’s presence. To give her credit, she had resisted for as long as she could what she knew to be inevitable and yet, in her moment of weakness, had forgotten that, for him, this had less to do with affection between a man and a woman than retribution for past wrongs. If she had held that in her heart with more conviction, Haesel thought, sadly, perhaps she would have prepared herself better for something beyond her imagination. This, of all times, was when Fearn needed her mother’s advice most.

  * * *

  Intending to return to the great hall, Aric took a detour instead by way of the sloping field behind the settlement where the ancestors of Lindholm lay, marked by stones. He had taken Fearn up here on the previous evening to show her the extent of his property, though he could tell how her thoughts were more of the home she had left behind than her new one. Sand piled up in drifts around his feet, some of the stones half-covered already like the ploughland they’d had to abandon, too sandy to grow crops.

  Fearn’s acid words burned into his mind, fading each time he recalled her soft body beneath his, responding to him in a way far beyond his expectations, especially after her previous ordeals, urging him on to scale new heights of sensation as new to him as they were to her. He had not been prepared for that. He had always thought there was no more for him to discover. Countless women had dulled his performances except, perhaps, after a long voyage. So although he had seduced her with words she would not have heard before, he had felt that he was saying them for the first time and meaning them.

  He picked up a handful of sand and let it blow away from between his fingers, like words lost in the wind. His hand had taken her breast, felt the silken skin, the instant hardening of her nipple, heard the soft moan, the gasp of surprise. Everything he had done had brought him delight in her awareness, telling him that this glorious woman might as well have been a virgin for all she knew about lovemaking. Except that her journey with him to the end was by no means virginal and that, too, was something he had not been prepared for. Yes, he had fully intended to turn her anger into desire for him, to make the revenge that much sweeter, but he had expected that to grow over a period of time, not to burst into a conflagration that had scorched him as much as her. In his experience, a conclusion such as that came only rarely and it had taken all his pretence not to let her know it. So much so that, with his unkind words, he’d brutally inflicted a double wound on the heart of a courageous woman. She had been right, of course, when she’d said he ought to have brought Kean instead. Life would have been simpler if he’d stuck to the plan. Now, he could not even ransom the lady as long as Kean remained with Earl Thored for, earl’s daughter or not, she was of less value to him than his son.

  Shielding his eyes against the distant glare of the fjord, Aric picked out the movement of figures below him: women washing clothes in the stream, men moving sheep into pens for shearing, builders raising a wooden cruck frame and children getting in the way. He recognised his cousin Freya’s petite form and blonde hair as she carried a pail of milk across her father’s yard, almost hearing her squeak of surprise as young Loki rounded the corner of the byre, catching at the pail before it slopped its contents. But what he saw next was so unexpected he could hardly believe his eyes; this sweet, mousy, obedient young maid being steered into the open doorway of the byre and held against the frame for a kiss which lasted too long for it to be a simple greeting. With the milk pail on the floor beside them, the two lovers were oblivious to the world until Uther’s distant shout made them both jump apart, Loki to skip away like a sprite into the shadows and Freya to pick up her pail, her face as composed as before.

  It was quite some time before Aric stood, dusted the sand off his tunic and walked down to his uncle’s farm to talk to him about the horses.

  Chapter Seven

  Avoiding the blaze from dozens of lamps shining through the open door of the great hall, Haesel kept to the shadows and well away from the streams of servants carrying platters of steaming food to the feasters inside. From the hall, shouts of laughter rose and fell on waves of merry music—pipes, whistles, drums and harps—to which few people listened except to join in, now and then, with some hearty table-thumping. Haesel knew she would not be missed. These feasts usually lasted until the early hours and the Lady Fearn was in the good company of Oskar and his charming wife, Ailsa, and Einar and his lady, putting a brave face on the kind
of event she would rather had avoided. Celebrating a Viking homecoming was, however, a way for Aric the Ruthless to reward those men of Lindholm who had left their families and risked their lives to be at his side, and to thank those who had been left behind as caretakers. But Haesel saw no reason to be a part of this, especially since hearing yesterday the terrible tragedy of Wenda’s infant. Such heartlessness was impossible for her to understand, even from a society where any abnormality was looked on with suspicion.

  It was the issue of Wenda’s infant that drew Haesel to the cemetery on the hillside that night, following the sandy path by the light of the full moon, not knowing exactly where the child had been left, but needing to make some kind of sympathetic connection and to feel something about its pitiful destiny. Then perhaps the worst images in her mind would fade and restore to her some peace. As if some unknown force was leading her, she picked her way through the marker-stones to the top of the slope where she halted, sinking to the ground obediently in answer to a silent instruction. As she waited in the darkness the scent of newly cut grass drifted strongly on the night air, bringing snatches of laughter and the roar of men in their eternal preoccupation with contest and rivalry.

  A prickling sensation stole along her arms, even before she saw the shadowy figure of a young girl climbing the path towards her, too young to be anyone she knew so soon after her arrival in Lindholm. At her approach, Haesel spoke, for it looked as if she had not been noticed, sitting there alone. But her words had not the slightest effect and it was then that Haesel saw her transparency and knew with the certainty of experience that the girl was of the past, not the present. She was even more convinced of this when the filmy figure reached the stones just beyond Haesel’s feet and bent to touch a bundle that Haesel had not seen, lifting it off the ground and into her arms, cradling it as a mother would have done. Except that this girl was too young to be a mother, but not too young to sense that she was in danger, standing for a moment to listen and to look before moving away. She did not take the same path back to the settlement, but seemed to skirt the edges of the plots before fading into the moonlit landscape of stones.