* * *
When Kadlin awoke later it was morning. Avalt would be awake soon, so she gently disentangled herself from Gunnar. He grumbled, but soon his deep breaths assured her that he slept as she rose. She couldn’t resist turning back to look at the man who had taken her so thoroughly. There was enough light streaming in through the open door to see him, showing her that, even tousled in sleep, he was beautiful. The light caught the red of his hair, turning it to flame, and even caught the hints of red in the dark hair sprinkled across his chest, between his legs and down his long, strong legs to his ankles. She blushed when she recalled how good it felt to have that hair abrade her softer skin, everywhere. There wasn’t an inch of her left that he hadn’t touched.
Bringing her wrist up to her nose, she realised with delight that she even smelled like him. It was a wholly masculine smell: sweat and linen mixed with his own spice, a scent she could pick out with her eyes closed. She’d never fully realised how much more satisfying it would be to sleep beside him now and have his solid strength keep her warm all night. Picking up her clothes from the floor, she turned towards the passageway with a smile.
Freyja picked her head up from her spot on the bed guarding Avalt when Kadlin stepped into her chamber. Kadlin stopped to pet her, her gaze falling to the dark-red curls of her sleeping son. The sight made a tendril of doubt creep its way into her heart. How long would Gunnar stay with them this time? She was certain he loved her, but she knew that wouldn’t be enough to make him stay. The wounds he’d inflicted before ran deep, deep enough that she would remember to take their time together for what it was...an indulgence. It wouldn’t be permanent. It wouldn’t be more than a few nights to hold him.
Chapter Nineteen
Gunnar sat straight up in bed when he awoke, jarring his leg and cursing as he did. The bed was empty and for one dreaded instance he wondered if the night that had passed had been a dream. But the smell of her was in the room, on his skin, the slight weight of her body lying against his still fresh in his memory. Every moment of it had been real and more precious than he’d imagined that it could be. More gently than he had sat up, he lay back down and let the memories of the night before hold him before the lure of her voice in the front room dragged him to his feet. He was anxious to see her again.
Steaming wash water had been left just inside his door, so he made use of it before donning his trousers and making his way cautiously down the passageway to the front. He was uncertain of her mood and if she would embrace what had happened between them or if she would hide as if it hadn’t happened at all. Either way, he would overcome her reservations.
He paused at the threshold, uncertain of his welcome, his gaze following her movements as she drizzled honey into a bowl filled with porridge and then placed it before Avalt. Instead of following her again, his gaze hung on the child and his head of dark red curls. The boy eagerly accepted the porridge and spooned some into his mouth. The skin on the back of Gunnar’s neck tightened and a weight settled in his heart. He watched the boy’s tiny lips as he smacked the sweetness and then his equally small tongue as it came out to lick the honey from his spoon. Gunnar was taken aback at how this boy was so different than the child he’d been expecting. He’d been expecting the blond hair of Kadlin’s late husband or perhaps even the silvery tint of Kadlin’s own hair, but not this. Not the perfect match of his own red hair, a colour he’d seen on no other person aside from his own mother. Not his own child.
Once caught, Gunnar’s attention couldn’t leave the boy. He moved forward, gaze tracing the perfect face, his every feature, again looking for signs of himself mixed with traces of Kadlin as if they could have changed since yesterday. They were both there, mixed perfectly in the boy. If he had dared to let himself dream that a child had resulted from that one night, this is what he would have conjured. The beautiful child who sat before him. An ache squeezed his chest, threatening to choke off his air, so he looked away to the boy’s mother to find her gaze on him.
She seemed taken aback for a moment at his presence, but then she smiled. A halting smile, but it allowed hope to spread through him that she wouldn’t shut him out and pretend that nothing profound had happened. ‘Good morning,’ he managed, though his throat had become almost unbearably thick.
‘Come, take a seat and have breakfast with us.’ He hadn’t realised that he’d stopped until she nodded to the stool at Avalt’s side. ‘You don’t mind if Gunnar sits with us, do you?’ This she directed at the boy, who only spared Gunnar a grin and went back to attacking his breakfast.
‘He looks to be a hearty eater,’ he said and took his seat, awkwardly because of his leg.
‘He is,’ she agreed and placed a bowl before him before sitting with her own food across the table. ‘He’s very strong and healthy. Always has been.’
Gunnar nodded and took a bit of porridge, but he couldn’t seem to tear his attention from the child at his side. Every move the boy made was fascinating in a way that he couldn’t explain. They were just chubby hands grasping a spoon, tiny fingers covered with honey and porridge, but Gunnar wanted to touch each one, look at each impossibly small fingernail and feel if the pink skin of his cheeks was as soft as it looked. He’d seen children before, but had never been fascinated as he was with this one. But then, none of them had ever been his... Kadlin’s. That made all the difference.
‘Did you sleep well?’ Kadlin’s voice interrupted his thoughts, drawing his attention back to her.
He smiled as he took in her features, the blush staining her cheeks. ‘Aye, very well once you let me sleep.’
She blushed and bit her lip to stop a grin before taking a bite of porridge. His gaze strayed to her mouth, her tongue as she licked a stray bit of it from the corner of her lips. A wave of tenderness, of protectiveness, welled within him for both of them. It was amazing how natural this felt, as if he’d spent every morning having breakfast with her and their child. He still couldn’t believe it and let his eyes dart to the toddler again, as if to make sure the features he recognised as his were still there: the exact same shade of hair, the nose, the shape of his eyes. The truth was that Gunnar wanted it to be true so badly that he had to make sure he hadn’t fabricated the similarities. But they were there and no one could say they didn’t exist.
He wanted to be upset that she had kept the boy from him, but he couldn’t feel anything past the strange happiness that was seeping through him now. They had a child and it seemed the most natural, most perfect thing in the world, except he needed to hear Kadlin say the words so that it would be true. He needed to know why no one had told him. ‘Kadlin...’ The question was on the tip of his tongue. ‘Tell me—’ Before he could say the words, the door swung open and Ingrid burst through with one of her myriad of brothers, full of excitement about puppies some mongrel had given birth to.
The moment was lost. Gunnar turned his attention back to his porridge and cursed the bad timing, at the same time conceding that the girl had saved him. Above all, he needed to tread carefully with Kadlin. The last thing he wanted was to scare her and drive her away. If he wanted her to confess the truth to him, he needed to earn her trust and have her come to him. He knew that. Understood it. Trust wasn’t something he could force.
But it wouldn’t be easy to wait for the words.
* * *
After breakfast, it was decided that the group would go to the forest to pick bilberries. This time Gunnar was prepared to force the issue if Kadlin was determined to keep him away. Now that he knew about Avalt, he wanted to spend every moment with them. A child with Kadlin was a dream he’d had for so long and one he had been certain would be left unfulfilled. The fact that it had come true left him eager to soak up their presence for as long as he had them. With no home to call his own, the future was murky, but for now they were his.
Avalt ran outside as fast as his tiny legs could take him, squealing hi
s delight to be out in the sunlight. Ingrid and her brother followed, leaving Gunnar standing near the door waiting for Kadlin to collect the baskets they would need. A possessive need tugged at him as he watched her movements, so fluid and graceful as she moved around the kitchen area. His eyes could touch her every day for the rest of his life and not get tired of her. As she passed near him to leave, it seemed that she was avoiding his gaze and he found his fingertips reaching out to touch her before he even knew that he had moved.
‘I’m going with you.’ The pad of his thumb brushed lightly along her cheekbone, letting him savour her soft skin. Though the words sounded confident, he braced himself internally for her rejection.
Instead of arguing, she nodded, but still didn’t look at him. He allowed his hand to drop back down to his side and followed her outside. He despised the distance that lingered between them, but understood it as something he would have to overcome. It had been his own actions that had created it. It was foolish to expect one night to take it away.
Breathing again because it seemed she would accept his presence, he followed her at a slower pace. He’d wrapped the top end of the sapling with a blanket for extra padding and tied it off, but manoeuvring for any length of time was a task he had yet to master. The bilberry bushes were just across the clearing at the edge of the forest. It was the same clearing he’d been determined to cross on his own that night that seemed like years ago now.
Now he was crossing it with an entirely different feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. He wouldn’t go so far as to call it happiness, but as he walked, his gaze kept going to the red hair of the tiny boy running through the high grass and the feeling that passed through him could be close to that. Nay, it was happiness, if only he could allow himself to forget the future existed. The smell of the springtime grass teased him as he took a deep breath and allowed his gaze to move to the land around him. The deep blue of the sky with only a few puffy clouds scattered about, the rolling hills that made their way down towards where he knew the river would be—if he squinted he could see the sun glinting off a ribbon of silver, then back to the tall, green forest looming before them. This was home and the only people he wanted to spend his life with were there with him.
Aye, perhaps this could be happiness.
* * *
Kadlin watched Gunnar with their son from a spot just along the path. She had just walked Ingrid and her brother to the path to bid them goodbye as they left with a basket of berries to take to Ingrid’s mother and Kadlin had returned to the tender scene before her. They were on the blanket she had brought along and spread out on the ground. Avalt was lying down and laughing as he fed berries to Gunnar, who leaned propped on an elbow beside him. Gunnar would pretend that he was going to bite his tiny fingers with each one, sending the boy into peals of laughter.
The sight of their heads pressed so close together, the identical shade of their hair, their enjoyment of each other, the utter adoration on the strong warrior’s face, all of it brought tears to her eyes. She found herself wiping them away before she’d ever even known they were there. Her other hand pressed tight to her chest to combat the ache growing there.
This. This is all she had ever wanted in the world. It seemed cruel that she would be given a taste of it to enjoy for only a little while before it would be gone again. Though Gunnar seemed to still long for her, he hadn’t spoken of the future. Even if he had, she didn’t know that she could believe his words. He had left her before and, if she was being honest, nothing had changed. He’d made no plans for a family and, as far as she knew, he had nowhere to take them once Jarl Hegard demanded they leave. Where would they go? He was as without a home now as he had been before.
Wiping the last tear from her cheek, she took a deep breath and vowed not to think any more of the future. Whatever time they were given now...she would accept and enjoy. That would have to be enough. A cool breeze rustled the leaves of the ancient trees, drying her face and bringing a smile to her lips as she walked to the blanket and sank down on to her knees. They both looked up at her and smiled, causing her heart to slip right down to her stomach.
‘Have a berry.’ Gunnar pressed the dark purple berry between her lips, much to the delight of their son.
Kadlin chewed the sweet flesh and let her gaze move from Avalt to the intense gaze of his father. Gunnar’s smile had changed from one of joy to one of hunger, as his fingertip traced the curve of her mouth, promising so much more than she imagined he was willing to give. To distract them, she turned her attention to Avalt and ran her hand lightly over his belly to give it a tickle. He squealed, drawing Gunnar’s attention back to him. They played with him for a while, each trying to draw a laugh from him until he spotted some tiny yellow flowers growing in the grass at the edge of the blanket and went to pick them.
‘You’re a wonderful mother to him. He’s lucky to have you.’
She glanced at him, but Gunnar was watching their son with that same look of adoration she had noted before. Aye, she determined, he must know that the boy was his. ‘Thank you.’ She wondered if he thought of his own mother, whom he had hardly known. The silence stretched between them until Avalt came back, gifting them each with a bouquet of the weeds before running off to hunt for tiny rocks at the edge of the small clearing.
‘Kadlin...’ Gunnar opened his mouth to speak, but then swallowed as if turning the words over in his mind. A brief moment of panic gripped her that he might ask her now. Though she wouldn’t lie about Avalt’s parentage, she had no wish to open that wound just yet. She needed a few days to just be with him. ‘Was his birth a difficult one?’ he surprised her by asking.
‘It was long. It started one morning and he came the next morning just at sunrise, but there was never a hint of danger.’
He nodded, a look of relief coming over him. ‘And you weren’t alone with the pain, even for a moment?’
There was an earnestness in his gaze that stole her breath for a moment, then it made her want to reassure him. ‘Nay, I wasn’t alone. Not even for a moment.’
He nodded again and turned his attention back to their son, though his hand moved to rest on hers, drawing her gaze to that point of contact. After a moment of silent debate, she gripped his fingers with hers and felt a tug on her heart when he squeezed.
Chapter Twenty
Over the course of the next few days Gunnar’s patience began slowly to unravel. Every day that passed he told himself that he deserved her silence. Every meal they ate together, every night that she fell asleep in his arms, every time Avalt’s laugh filled their home, the need to hear her confession ate away at him. It wasn’t that he needed the reassurance that the child was his. That truth was obvious to anyone with eyes. It was that he needed her, all of her, with no boundaries between them. He’d been foolish to think that he could have only a small piece of her and not crave all of her. He was a fool to think that he could ever walk away from her again. As the days passed, he’d been having a difficult time imagining any sort of future without her. How was he supposed to walk away from her again? How was he supposed to leave his son behind?
He’d spent the past days thinking of the future. His only option was to return to Eirik’s and finally take him up on his offer to rule one of the manors he had helped to overtake. He was loath to bring Kadlin and Avalt along, though, because they were all outlying positions still vulnerable to Saxon attack. That was changing, though. Before his injury, Gunnar and his men had planned to spend the summer solidifying their hold on the region, and by next summer or the one after, he could be firmly established. Certainly by then a home could be safe for them. In the meantime...
He shook his head. None of it mattered. It all hinged on his men accepting a lame master and Eirik accepting his ability to lead his men with only one leg. That was only likely to happen if he’d already established himself as a jarl, if he had already assumed a comman
d position that didn’t involve leading his men on raids to gain territory.
A future for them was murky at best, but that didn’t stop him from wanting all of her. Perhaps that was selfish, given that he could make them no promises, but her silence about their son was a boundary that kept him from having every part of her as completely as she owned every part of him, and it kept him from being Avalt’s father.
She never tried to waylay his attempts to get to know the child. Every morning they ate breakfast together and then they played with the wooden horses Harald had carved for the toddler. Avalt had warmed to him already and seemed to bask in the attention Gunnar gave him. But the boy never called him Father. Gunnar conceded that perhaps he hadn’t earned the title yet, but it wasn’t because he didn’t want it. It was simply because he’d never known of the child’s existence. Kadlin’s continued silence on the subject seemed particularly harsh.
Every night he held her, loved her, brought her to pleasure again and again, hoping to breach the chasm between them, only to have her withdraw come morning. He never awoke to her in his bed. The first day hadn’t bothered him, but each morning that passed without her there brought with it the knowledge that there wasn’t any going back for him.
They couldn’t come this far only to lose each other again, but she was slipping away from him. While he could have her smiles and her kind words during the day, she refrained from touching him. It was as if their intimate moments could only be given free rein in the night. But that didn’t stop him from touching her. His fingers found their way to her every chance they got. A stroke against her shoulder, a touch of her hand, a kiss against her temple. He wanted to take her every time he found her alone, but he held back, determined to allow her to set the pace and understanding that what he felt wasn’t exactly fair to her. He understood her reluctance with him, but he wanted to talk to her as he had all those years ago with nothing between them. Most of all, he wanted her to tell him about their son.
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