The Bear and the Bride

by Jianne Carlo

  ’Twas a long loving, and with each caress, tenderness flooded his soul. When she found her pleasure under the hot sun, her eyes going unfocused, her lips crying his name, he could no longer hold back and spilled his seed in her convulsing sheath.

  The long grasses shielded their skin from the noonday’s rays. They lay together, still joined, she on top, and Torsten couldn’t remember a more content, satisfied moment. He had long ago fallen in love with his wife, and he cared not who knew.

  She brushed her lips on the spot beneath which his heart pounded, and raised so she leaned one forearm on his ribs, her weight too slight to cause any discomfort.

  “Elska?” he murmured, beckoning sleep weighting his eyelids.

  “I have a confession to make, my lord.” She stared at his jaw.

  Instantly the warrior in him roared to the forefront, the lover and husband subdued. He relaxed the tension building in his muscles and continued his unhurried caressing of her spine. “Aye, and well I know to what sin you seek to confess, you wrung me drier than big-hand Dorna.”

  ’Twas a common jest that the milkmaid, Dorna, could pleasure a warrior in mere seconds, her secret stroking rhythm and magical hands deemed to be a gift from the goddess Freya.

  Ainslin didn’t smile as he expected, but bit her bottom lip. “You must cast me aside, Torsten. I fear I will not birth you an heir.”

  His heart lurched and it took all his warrior will power not to roar, not to hunt an enemy to battle to the death, because he knew not how to conquer the defeat in her tone. The sun’s rays lit the grass buds golden, birds chirped a merry tune, not a cloud marred the azure sky, yet midnight darkness and despair shrouded him.

  Torsten sat up, tangling his fingers in her curls, tilting her face so she had to meet his gaze. “It matters not Ainslin. I fear I love you, and I will never let you go. You are the sun and the stars in my life, and I would rather see Valhalla on the morrow than spend a moment without you and our sons.”

  Tears streamed her cheeks.

  “’Tis my fault,” she asserted. “I watched Lavanya die after she bore Brom and Rob, and I have been terrified of birthing a child. My fear prevents your seed from taking fruit. You must seek another wife.”

  He held her cheeks with both hands. “Answer me this, Ainslin, do you love me?”

  A sad smile curved her mouth. “Aye Torsten. I love you too much to be your fruitless wife.”

  “Mayhap the blame lies with me.” He had thought of this ploy after hearing her tell Martha almost the same exact phrase. “I have lain with many women since gaining my manhood, and not one has born a child.”

  ’Twas the truth and not the truth.

  The maid who’d trained him to bedsport had died in childbirth, but she laid with many other men during the time Torsten swived her. Then he’d traveled to the East, and learned many ways to prevent a child from growing inside a woman’s womb, sponges soaked in vinegar, using pig casings to capture his seed.

  Surprise had her blinking rapidly. She shook her head. “Nay, you strive to make light of this, my most grievous failure.”

  “Ainslin, to me,” he ordered when she avoided his eyes. “’Tis a joining I will remember for my lifetime. Under the sun, in the meadows, you have again confessed your love for me, and I, mine for you. Desist, wife. No other can take your place.”

  He captured her hand and set her palm to his chest. “My heart beats for you, Ainslin. For you and no other.”

  “Torsten—”

  “Nay,” he stated. “From the moment I set eyes on you, this—” he drew her hand to where they were joined, placing her thumb on the base of his cock, “has wanted no other. My brothers tease me relentlessly, for I have tupped no one but you since then.”

  She burst into tears, and he comforted her by swiving her again and again until her mood lightened. The sun had waned by the time they hiked back to the lodge. He loved her on the straw mattress, on the skins in front of the fire, in the bathhouse adjacent to the lodge. He hunted, she cooked, and they swam together in the shallow lake at the foot of the mountain.

  One dawn ran into another, and ’twas only when Torsten calculated the nights they’d been away that he realized the time for her courses had come and gone. The days stretched into a sennight and then another. Torsten fair held his breath every morn, waiting for the sickness to start, for her bleeding to start.

  Jarvik sent a messenger with a missive full of concern as to why they lingered long past the sennight Torsten intended they be away.

  Not trusting such a special suspicion to paper, Torsten replied vaguely, commanding his brother to expect them in another sennight or two.

  Time passed, still Ainslin’s courses did not occur, and Torsten noted subtle changes in his wife. Emotions skittered to the surface at odd moments. She found a fuzzy starling with a broken wing and nursed the young bird with milk-soaked bread, and then sobbed when the creature died.

  One moment she was giddy with good cheer like a young girl on the burst of womanhood, the next she shed tears because of the beauty of the lake’s waters sparkling under the sun.

  When her belly rounded under his caresses, the slight swell made his heart pound, and he knew not what to do—keep her at Sumar Söngur or return to Bear Hall.

  The first morn she awoke and instantly emptied her stomach, he watched her intently, waiting for her to recognize the obvious. The day passed, and the following morn, the same pattern repeated. On the third morn, after her sickness subsided and she set a cauldron of water to boil, she sat by the fire and hugged her knees.

  “Torsten?” The half-whispered query made his mouth go dry. “I have not had my courses. And yet I am sick like I am when they come.”

  Finally.

  He repressed a sigh and hurried to her, cradling her in his arms. “To me, Ainslin.”

  When her gaze met his, he informed her, “You should have had your courses the week we journeyed here.”

  Her green eyes widened to fill her face, and the hope in the gold glints highlighted by the fire’s flames turned his heart over in his chest.

  “I am with child.” The awe in her voice had his eyes prickling with unshed tears.

  She glanced at her belly and her hands curved protectively over the roundness there. “Think you ’tis true?”

  Torsten could see she held her breath awaiting his reply. “Aye, Ainslin, wife, and the love of my life, you are with child.”

  Much later, after a magical, slow loving, when they lay naked in each other’s arms before a glowing fire, she murmured sleepily, “We must get back to Bear Hall. I will have need of Martha’s special tonic now.”

  The hairs on the back of his neck rose like a black bear’s hackles when he remembered Ainslin mentioning the tonic Martha brewed helped with her painful courses. Torsten toyed with Ainslin’s hair until he felt her muscles slacken and he knew she verged on slumber. “Why did Martha accompany you, Greta, Feisal and Eileen to Wales?”

  She snuggled closer to his side. “Martha is a midwife. She oversaw Brom and Rob’s birth.”

  »»•««

  Torsten sent missives to Jarvik and Ruard with strict instructions.

  When Ainslin and Torsten arrived at Bear Hall a full sennight later, Jarvik informed them that Martha had been called back to Cumbria to assist her ailing sister, and Ruard had volunteered to accompany her on the journey.

  Summer faded into fall, the leaves on the trees turned splendid hues of orange, rust, and brown. The air grew chilly, Brom and Rob sprouted like weeds, and Ainslin’s belly rounded and plumped.

  Ruard returned from carrying Martha to Wales before the first snowfall. Torsten rode to the harbor to greet him. They braved the chill breezes off Trondheimsfjorden to walk to the village’s inn. Seated next to a roaring fire, cradling two mugs of ale, they spoke of Canute’s court, the latest appointments and the changes to Bear Hall.

  “What of Martha?” Torsten demanded.

  Ruard twisted his mouth. “She confessed
she fed Ainslin the brew to prevent a child. She claims she did this out of concern for Ainslin’s fear of birthing.”

  Torsten cursed.

  “Martha cannot return to Stjórardalr, brother.”

  “She will never set foot on this land,” Torsten vowed. “Ainslin knows nothing, and I would have this so until after the birthing.”

  “Ælfgifu sends a midwife to attend Ainslin. The ship carrying her is but two days behind us. Rest easy, brother, this midwife’s a renowned healer. ’Tis said she works magic with difficult births.”

  “I want not magic,” Torsten growled. “I want a wife who lives. And if Odin sees fit to let my child live also, I will make the appropriate sacrifice.

  Epilogue

  Bjarndýr Skáli, 1029 A.D. Spring

  Fields had been ploughed, the gentle rains nourished wheat grains into tender sprouts, swallows and sparrows built nests in bough branches, the air hummed with spring song, chirps, toad croaks, piglets squealing. Torsten surveyed his lands and felt well content, the mild spring weather a harbinger of a bountiful fall harvest. The tentative peace that had settled over the lands after King Canute’s coronation still held.

  Ainslin had safely birthed a girl child, Inga, a raven-haired babe with emerald eyes, dimples, and a gurgling laugh that never failed to make his stomach clench. Jarvik, Magnus, Njal, and Ruard teased him mercilessly about his entrancement and swore last eve that if he mentioned his daughter more than thrice a meal, they would all take him on the training ground.

  The dusting of misty clouds sparing him the full heat of the sun vanished as a strong east-west breeze cleared the blue skies. Torsten shifted restlessly in the saddle and abruptly called off his inspection of his tenant farms. He touched his heels to Prúðr’s flanks, the stallion broke into a gallop, and steed and jarl raced to his lodge.

  He dismounted, jaunted the four steps to the landing, and threw open the pine door. He grinned when he found chamber after chamber empty, knowing where he would find his family. Ainslin had discovered the hot springs that fed the bathhouse also fed the lagoon located in a nook in the mountainside. During her pregnancy, they had spent many memorable nights and days of pleasure in the shallow pool.

  Bursting around the bend, he drank in the sight of his wife, daughter, and two sons cavorting in the warm waters.

  “Papa,” Rob squealed. “Inga belched like a warrior.”

  He glanced to Ainslin, who grimaced and agreed, “She did, but mayhap her new brother will belch louder.”

  “New brother?” He hardly dared hope.

  “Or sister, we shall know by first snowfall,” Ainslin replied gifting him with the beatific smile of the virgin who’d come to his bed many moons ago.

  About the Author

  Award winning author Jianne Carlo’s motto is simple: Alpha Me, Please.

  While strong heroines, exotic locations, and cultural differences are her forte, she goes weak in the knees for bad boys, warriors, and alphas. Send her a man with an attitude, and she’ll find the right woman to tame him.

  Jianne loves hot, spicy food, stomach-plunging park rides, and is kept on her toes by her Viking husband of too many years and three, handsome adult sons. There’s nothing she likes more than hearing from readers.

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