Chapter Twenty-Two
If sex and love were honest, why had a curtain fallen between them? He’d felt it drop last night—the moment Safira cried out her love for him.
Exhausted to the bone, they’d curled together into the pelt. He’d opened his mouth to say he loved her. The words had weighed heavy on his tongue, balanced against Safira’s whispered Whatever happens...
Wisdom bade him to swallow declarations of love.
What had happened while he was gone?
Awake for the new day, the storm was gone. Daylight beamed through an egg-sized hole in the deck that he didn’t see last night. More light poured through cracks in the trapdoor. Geese honked in the distance. The blacksmith’s hammer pinged an unhurried rhythm. The hold smelled of wood and sex and the curious peppery aroma... Safira’s skin.
She stirred beside him. Linen slipped off her bare leg. He drew a sluggish line from hip to knee. Her toes curled, and Safira yanked the sheet over her body.
“Why do you wake me?” she grumbled.
He pulled the sheet lower. Nipples pebbled to pretty points, the dark-apricot circles of skin the size of small coins.
“Time to rise.” His edict was met with a sleepy pout. There was no rush. Not when his fingers traced an impudent nipple. “You hide nothing from me.”
“It is cool this morning. I could use some warming.”
“Get dressed. Clothes will warm you.”
“I have a better idea.” She patted the fur beside her, a girlish smile on her face.
The sight stole his ease. What did he truly know of Safira? Deep secrets had been shared on their journey, but the simple things like what was her favorite fruit? Did she prefer a certain color? Or why did her skin have a faint peppery aroma? How little he knew the maid...yet he was ready to stake his future on her.
“Something wrong, Viking?”
Wisps fell like frayed threads around her face. Knuckles grazing her cheek, he let uncertainty go. It did a warrior no good. Surely the same was true for what went on between a man and a woman.
“I wonder at the woman I am with.” He played with a lock of her hair. “You have different smiles, but I’ve never seen that one on your face before.”
She stretched against his leg and kissed his thigh. “I am content. Now what is this wondering about?”
Safira was happy lounging naked beside him on well-traveled fur in a half-empty ship’s hold. This was true wealth—being with her.
He rattled off his questions, to which she happily answered, “I love pears best. There is a shade of bronze silk that is my favorite. And I suspect the smell on my skin is from years of sprinkling cardamom on my food.”
“I have heard of cardamom...a costly spice.”
“It is. Astrid cooked with it for the Midsumarblot feast.”
“It’s one I could never supply for you,” he admitted.
Safira sat up, letting the linen fall away. “Is that why you’re doleful?”
Was this on purpose...her sitting bare of clothes to comfort him? Fine-grained skin aglow. Her hips shifting. Jet-black hair grazing the small of her back where her body curved as she thrusted her breasts...with the subtlest invitation. Signs of wanting sex. All of them.
But the day required more of him.
He opened his saddle bag. “We don’t have time to lay in the furs.” He pulled out two pears and offered her one. “I grabbed these off the jarl’s table last night. It appears I chose well.”
“Thank you.”
She nibbled the pear, and he ate his too. For their journey, they were a man and a woman. Simple. Elemental. Free. But their weave brought them to Rouen. Here things were different. Safira wasn’t a prize to hoard like gold. He could rail against that truth, fight to keep her by his side, but eventually, the unwanted would come. How would she fit?
And he still had to win the land.
Wind whistled above deck. Were the Norns cackling?
“You were in the jarl’s hall.” Safira licked juice-slick lips, appearing to choose her words with care. “I met your future wife, Lady Brynhild, there.”
His chewing slowed. Norns were definitely laughing at him, and they were about to heap trouble in the form of a jealous woman.
“You must have gone to our old bed and seen her, no?” she prompted.
“I did.”
“Yet, you came to me.”
“I always will.”
“Not if you have a wife.” She picked at a seed, her silence shooting flaming arrows of guilt.
This was unsteady territory. Sitting with the woman who owned his heart, yet somewhere in Rouen walked another who expected to share his future. Worst place for a man to be.
“Safira—”
“There is something important I must tell you.”
He hitched up his knee, preparing for an earful about Lady Brynhild. “What is it?”
“It is a message from your father.”
He tossed the pear core into a bucket. “You mean Vlad.”
“Yes. Vlad.”
Safira was within reach yet a gulf spread between them, a chasm of the heart that he’d never given much thought to until this moment. He’d bedded women. Not once did he care about the status of their parentage. Or what they thought about his. None had ever asked. He’d ridden. Traveled. Fought. Cared for his brothers-in-arms, the Forgotten Sons. They were the sole family he’d needed.
But a hole spread beneath his breast bone. He rubbed the ache with his palm, but it wouldn’t go away. He was...
Hollow. Empty. A need yawning inside him...for what?
For the tender rearing he was certain Safira enjoyed? For a past he could never have? Truth grated as it had never grated before. He was too old to weep about the past, and too young not to hunger for a better future. What could be lit Safira’s eyes. A future fulfilled. One brimming with love...if he kept her. Was that love? Keeping a woman by the might of his hand? But those questions would have to wait.
Today a son would fight his father. For land, power, and fame. Most of all for pride.
“What message does Vlad have for me?”
“When Longsword talked of the land, your fath—” she caught herself “—I mean Vlad, did not know you also vied for the holding.”
“That doesn’t change a thing.”
“Of course, it does. He doesn’t want to fight you.”
Rurik wiped juice-damp fingers across his thighs. “Did he say those exact words to you?”
“No.”
“Then nothing changes.”
She snatched up the red silk underdress and jammed it over her head. “Do you not even want to try for—for reconciliation?”
“No,” he snorted. “You’re a fool if you think that’s what he wants.”
Safira pushed up on her knees and shimmied the silk over her hips. “How can you be so cold?”
His laugh was harsh. “Because Vlad is a master of manipulation. He’d slap my mother one hour, apologize the next. He did it to soften her, to get something he wanted.”
Sword and shield in one hand, he tossed the leather bags over his shoulder and made for the trap door.
“I have to see Erik.”
Safira scrambled after him, yanking the natural-weave tunic down over her head. “Will you consider the possibility that he is not that man anymore?”
He flipped the trap door open, banging it on the deck. Safira’s jealousy over Lady Brynhild was preferable to this. Stepping onto the deck, he rumbled a curse. Vlad was up to something.
“Bad morning?” Erik leaned against the mast, a blade of grass in his mouth.
“Vlad. He tried to infect Safira with a tale of woe and regret.” He scanned Rouen. Crows scrabbled over a fish head on the riverbank. Roads were muddy, air chilly. Heavy clouds blocked the sun, the cold biting his skin. Capes rippled off the backs of merchants and patrons alike.
Erik gave a nod northward. “‘The thrall alone takes instant vengeance. The coward...never.’”
“You are quoting the ancients?” Rurik stood beside Erik and faced north.
Both men stared at the open field above the river where Ivar held court in Midsumarbot wrestling matches. Housekarls rammed tall torches into the ground. Rouen prepared for the twilight holmgang battle between father and son.
“Don’t let your emotions rule. The time to strike will come.”
Safira climbed out of the hold and stood beside him on the dock. Gusts chopped the Seine’s surface, blowing her hair across her face.
“There is something else I need to tell you.”
“More good tidings from Vlad?” Rurik asked coldly.
“No. It—”
“Can wait,” he inserted. “I’m hungry and you must be too.”
“Longsword is back.” Erik jumped onto the dock.
“Already?”
Erik’s smile was lopsided. “It’s midday. Be warned, neither he nor Ademar are in the best of moods. Something about rain dumping on them in the middle of the night.”
Rurik set down a wide plank from the ship’s rail to the dock. “The cost of being ill-prepared for a sudden chase,” he said, crossing over.
“I’ll let you talk to him about that.”
“Is he in the map room?”
“No. He’s eating.”
“Good. I could eat a bear.” Rurik glanced behind him. “Safira?”
Head covered, she tucked errant hair back into her hood. “Go ahead. I will be along.”
He and Erik marched uphill through Rouen’s mud-slicked lanes to the Longsword’s hall. Inside the hall, the Forgotten Sons dug into wide bowls of porridge, but there was no sign of Vlad and his men. That fact made his day better. Rurik settled his sword, shield, and saddle bags against the giant carving of Yggdrasil behind the jarl’s table.
“Jarl, Ademar,” he greeted them cheerfully.
Too much cheer by Ademar’s scowl. “Someone slept well despite the storm.”
Rurik’s grin expanded. “I did.”
Gyda set before him fresh bread and a bowl of venison and greens cooked in broth.
Longsword tore off a hunk of Rurik’s bread. “Eat well. I would have this business of the holmgang settled.”
“The battle of first blood,” he said, liking the jarl’s directness. “Now that the pleasantries are done, I want to talk about the problem of our recent chase.”
Rurik tucked into his food and spoke of his ideas to better prepare Rouen’s warriors for long, unexpected chases. The jarl and his brother listened, their occasional grunts signs of acknowledgment.
Dipping bread into the broth, he paused to check the hall. Safira had not joined him.