Chapter Twenty-Nine
Two faces peered at her. One was dearly loved and long known to her, the other was a face that filled her dreams.
Dreams of a late-night kiss beside a river...
Dreams of hot touches in a cool forest...
Dreams of ease and conversation with a man whose storm-blue eyes saw deep inside her...
“Rurik.” His name was a dry sound on cracked lips.
“She needs water.” Another voice. Stiff, imperious, and a touch shocked.
Lady Rachel of the House of Alzaud spun away from the bedside. The mother didn’t like her daughter calling for a Viking. Safira would laugh if she could muster the energy, but even the act of opening her eyes was a chore. Firm hands helped her rest higher on plush pillows. Her fingers curled over fine cotton sheets; the luxury had to be her mother’s doing.
“Here.” Rurik set a cup to her lips. She drank it, the water cool on her tongue, and she drank him in.
Dark crescents shadowed the skin under fierce eyes. Rurik was thinner and harsh lines etched the sides of his mouth. His lips parted as if he’d speak but didn’t know what to say. Despite his misery-engrained features, Rurik wore his pagan raider status like a second skin. A new, wide silver arm ring banded his thick bicep. Sun-blond hair was combed severely back and tied at his nape, showing the missing chunk from his left ear. That had to horrify her mother.
“My beautiful Viking wolf,” she murmured.
“What did she say?” Her mother’s voice shot across the room.
“Nothing.” Then, under his breath, “Everything.”
Safira scraped her hand across his beard. “You need a shave, Viking. You’ll scare small children looking like this.”
Calloused fingers grasped hers and kissed the pink tips. Rurik was a strange mixture of relief and anger. He exuded lethal warrior, but his brutish appearance was about more than the missing piece of ear or his scowl. Blue eyes ringed with grey ranged over her, emotions ricocheting in their depths. Eyes revealed much. The harsh slant of Rurik’s mouth revealed more.
“You’ve been asleep for three days.”
“And you look like you ordered me to be healed each of those days.”
An uneven smile was her answer. Her honest Viking. His face was inches from hers, holding nothing back. Fear. Anger. Sadness. Love. Dizzying emotions, all of them. Absorbing them exhausted her.
Her tongue was thick, but she managed, “Vlad?”
“We didn’t find him. But we will,” he said, setting her cup on the bedside table to refill it. “He and his men will pay for what they did.”
Footfalls intruded. “She needs more than water to build up her strength.” Her mother hovered by the bed with another cup in hand. “Your conversation is draining her.”
Her poor mother. This wasn’t easy, not being able to direct one of her children. Lady Rachel Alzaud, wife to the spice merchant of seven kings, was used to telling people what to do and how to do it. But, on this side of the Epte River, she was—what had Astrid said of Frankish highborn women?—ill-prepared for life.
“If she wants me to leave I will.” The Viking stayed firmly in place.
“Here.” Her mother squeezed between him and the wall, offering a steaming cup.
Safira sniffed the air. “Mmmm. Is that Astrid’s rabbit stew?”
“The slave woman who tended your arm brought it. You should eat. You need your strength.”
Safira let go of Rurik’s hand and accepted the cup. Through the steam, she glanced at the door and gave him a speaking look. His face clouded. She’d swear he was...hurt.
Surely, he understood the fragile situation here?
She took her first sip and stared at the far wall. Rurik and her mother could be two creatures vying for the same bone. Conversation didn’t drain her. Boiling emotions did—mostly the barely contained cauldron that was her mother. Much needed saying and, weak or not, she’d just as soon get it over with.
A chair scraped the floor. Rurik stood up, his eyebrows hard slashes over his eyes. “I’ll leave you to your mother’s care.”
As he exited Ademar’s room, sunlight touched the silver arm ring. Was it a sign of his new authority?
The door firmly shut, her mother sighed. “About time he left. That man and the slave woman lurked over you the first night. It was very crowded in here. I thought he was going to plant himself in here again.”
Safira swallowed a mouthful of broth, the herbs and salt coating her tongue. “That man saved my life.”
“Humph!” Her mother sat on the edge of the bed. “By all accounts you saved his life.”
“What?”
“That’s right. Everyone is saying when the arrows were flying, you jumped to cover his back. One of his men, the one with—” Mother waggled her fingers at her head “—a mess of hair and braids said you raised your arm and took an arrow meant for the Viking’s head, the man who was just here.”
The mess of hair and braids. Thorvald. Perhaps now she’d won his friendship. She strained to remember what happened. The screams, the whoosh of arrows. The day was a haze in her mind.
Light brown eyes glossy with tears stared at Safira. “I thought I’d found you only to lose you again.”
“Oh, mother.” She set aside the cup and wrapped weak arms around her mother’s quaking shoulders. “I am safe.”
The embrace was a shift, Safira comforting the woman who had always comforted her. Rachel of Alzaud was a powerful woman. None could dispute that, but the tides had changed. Grief had painted her mother with new strands of grey hair. Her bustling resolve, usually the force of a lioness, seemed more like that of a meek cat. Shoulders had thinned. Fine-grained skin was drawn and pale. When she withdrew from the hug, pain nipped her eyes.
They talked of home and Savta, who was alive and well. Of her brother and his lessons with his tutor. Safira explained what happened the day she was taken from their orchard. Her mother was hungry for details. Safira held nothing back. Convincing the Lombard man to sell her. The loss of Savta’s ring and the lies to Hilda. Her seeress’s lie to Sothram. And the Saxon’s taste for abuse. Surviving by her wits until a plan hatched to strike a bargain with the Forgotten Sons’ leader.
She and her mother held hands. It was good to bask in her mother’s care, but the inevitable question came. Her mother’s head dipped, the gold medallions of her head dress jingling softly. She traced Safira’s fingers with her own.
“And did the Saxon or the Lombardy men...hurt you?”
“You mean, did they force themselves on me and lay with me?”
Her mother’s lashes dropped low. “Yes.”
“I avoided them with my seeress claim.”
Rachel of Alzaud nodded sagely and slipped off the bed, not meeting her daughter’s gaze. The soles of her shoes scraped the floor as she went to the open shutters. She rested her arm on the frame, her face set to the sun.
“But you and this Viking...”
“His name is Rurik, Mother.”
Lips like Safira’s pinched. “Fine. Rurik. Did you and he...”
“Did I lay with him? Yes. I gave myself to Rurik. Willingly.” She let that sink in before finishing with, “Several times in fact.”
A groan and her mother turned to Safira. Have you gone soft in the head? was plainly writ on her features.
Laughter bubbled up in Safira. The jarl had looked the same way when she’d questioned his judgment in the eldhus after Rurik’s battle with Vlad. Was that what love did? Made a person rise fiercely to defend the one loved? It had changed her view of the world. No doubt it would change how the world viewed her.
“You could have returned with your maidenhood intact?” her mother gasped. “And you chose not to?”
“The choice was mine.” Safira put the half-eaten stew on the bedside table with wobbly hands. She regretted sending Rurik from the room. His presence set the world right.
“I understand the Viking’s rugged appeal. He is...strong, though none too friendly. He looks like he eats small children.”
She laugh-wheezed. “I assure you, he doesn’t.”
“He’s an obvious leader of men when he steps in a room. But you let yourself fall prey to—to muscles,” her mother lamented. “Have you no sense of your purpose? He is a warrior of no account.”
“I love him. It’s as simple as that.”
Those were the wrong words to say. Her mother peppered her with a scathing, “Nothing is that simple, Daughter. Don’t confuse sex with love.”
“The way you confuse love with wealth?”
Her mother paced the room, a froth of indigo silk. The gold headdress clinked and color flooded her cheeks. The storm that was Lady Rachel was building.
“I doubt you can make such a claim of love.” She waved dramatically at grain fields and sunshine. “You haven’t spent even a full summer with him. That’s not enough time to know.”
“I do know.”
“A little time away and suddenly you know all,” Mother hissed. “Do you think you are the first woman to fall for a man’s handsome form?”
This was a new development. Pain flashed in pale brown eyes. Lips flattened, and the powerful spice merchant’s wife showed a chink in her armor. She excelled at giving advice and direction. But falling for a man was...unpleasant terrain. Messy.
“What goes on with Rurik is about more than his handsome form.”
And what she would do next had to be about more than a man. She’d learned much since the Saxon’s outpost: Viking words...lots of them, the best way to smooth wrinkles from a tunic, how to save a man’s life, and how to save her own. The last lesson was a gift from Rurik. Her eyes pricked. Tears threatened to fall. All these years she’d drowned in bland acceptance of the path others chose for her. Not anymore.
“I will no longer allow you to barter me, Mother. I will have a say in my future.”
A bitter laugh filled the room. “You made sure of that when you handed over your maidenhood to that Viking.”
“Because it was mine to give. Not yours to sell.”
“Bah!” A beringed hand sliced the air. “To think, you could have married a prince of Burgundy. Everything has a price, but you sold yourself for a false dream of love.”
Safira fisted the bed furs with all her might. “There is nothing false about it. Rurik loves me and I love him!”
Sun glared sharply on her mother’s gold headdress. Cool calculation shaded light brown eyes. “We shall see.”