In the morning, which came too soon for my liking, I woke as everyone else did and sat on a chair next to the fire watching my people blink themselves awake and cock their heads to the side, listening for the strength of the wind as Emma slept curled on a fur next to the fire.

Arva walked by me on her way to check the situation outside, her eyes glazed with sleep.

"I see you changed your mind about company, Jarl," she said, smiling.

I smiled back. "Just helping to keep the captives warm, Arva."

"And one in particular, I see," she replied, leaning in. "I can't quite see her face but I think my guess would be correct. I see from your face that I needn't ask if she's pleased you. Shall we meet soon?"

I always met with Arva and Fiske in the mornings, often as we ate breakfast and drank ale. But that morning, I was not yet ready to leave the cocoon of warmth in the feasting hall. "Have Kiarr bring my breakfast to my roundhouse," I told her. "I'll take my ale and fish with this one, and I'll see you and Fiske afterwards."

Arva grinned. "As you wish it, Jarl."

Emma stirred as Arva left, roused by our conversation. I looked down, feeling a sensation almost like my heart collapsing inwards on itself as she rubbed her eyes and I watched her expression go from one of confusion to recognition to, when she looked up at me, happy contentment.

"No mead has ever had that effect," I told her gently.

"What do you mean?" She asked, reaching up for me.

I took her hand and held it close to my chest. "Even after a night by the fire your hands are cold, girl. And what I mean about the mead is that it feels that way to watch you wake up – like I'm loosened by honey mead or dark ale – but the effect is actually stronger watching you."

We stayed where we were for a moment, gazing into each other's eyes. But the day beckoned and as much as I wanted to spend it entirely in my roundhouse with my juicy Emma-berry, I knew it was impossible. "Come," I told her, moving to help her to her feet. "We can take breakfast in my –"

She shrieked and crouched back down to the floor, grabbing dressings and furs to hold cover herself.

"Is it a draft?" I asked, confused – the fires in the feasting hall really did have the place quite warm.

But Emma shook her head quickly and widened her eyes at me like I was missing something obvious. "There are people in here!" She whispered. "I – I don't have any clothes on! They'll see me."

Emma was right, there were still a few people in the feasting hall, mostly the teenage sons and daughters of some of the higher, older warriors, wasting time in the warmth before they had to go back to their daily tasks. I didn't see why my foreign girl wore such a horrified look on her face, though.

"Aye, there are people. What is it you –" and then I stopped because I saw what was happening. Emma was embarrassed, self-conscious. "You wish to conceal your nakedness?" I asked, surprised and not a little baffled. "Why? Do you think the people see the way you curl up in my arms – and the way you gaze at me this morning – and don't guess what we did as they slept? What half of them did themselves during the night?"

I reached for her hand again, trying to pull her to her feet but she pulled herself away and threw her linen under-dress on over her head quickly, bending her body so no one would be able to see much before the dress fell over it.

"Of all the people," I said as we dressed in earnest, before heading to my roundhouse for breakfast, "who I could expect to feel shame at their bodies, you are the very last."

"Well it looks like you're all a bunch of hippies here," Emma replied, "but it's not like that where I come from. Where I come from you would actually be in a lot of trouble for having no clothes on in front of –"

"Hippies?" I asked, unfamiliar with the word. "Is this your word for the people of the north?"

She laughed heartily at that and took my hand as we walked, allowing me to move her behind my body slightly so I could protect her from the still-strong winds. "No, Ragnar," she giggled. "Hippies and Northmen are definitely not the same thing."

I wasn't sure what Emma found so worthy of mirth but I enjoyed hearing it all the same. We took breakfast – dried fish, dark bread and butter and ale – in my roundhouse and at one point she caught me watching her perhaps a little too intently.

"What?" She asked. "Why are you watching me eat? I hate it when people watch me eat!"

"Who else watches you eat?" I asked. "Give me their names so I can have them killed! I watch you eat because something odd has come over me, Emma. I believe I might be getting more satisfaction from watching you eat your bread, than I do from eating my own."

She looked at me pointedly, as if trying to tell if I was toying with her or not, and then swallowed another mouthful of ale. The stirring under my leathers, which had been there since we woke up, quickened at the sight of her lips on the edge of the cup.

"Don't tell Fiske that," Emma warned, having discerned Fiske's natural suspicion levels from the short interaction with him the previous day.

"Oh I don't think I'll tell Fiske," I said, reaching out and sliding one hand under her dressings, up over the smooth muscle of her calf and then bending it under her thigh at the knee, not stopping. "But something tells me he knows it already."

I exhaled heavily at the sensation of Emma's wetness on my fingers, and slipped two of them into her. It was just what I needed after the urgency of the previous night – the time to take it so slowly she would lose herself in desire, and plead with me to give her what she needed.

"Jarl Ragnar?"

Kiarr. He stood at the entrance to my roundhouse with the leather door-flap pulled aside, allowing the cold air to rush in. I also saw him noticing that my hand was under Emma's dressings. He didn't leave, though – Kiarr had been told to attend to me after my breakfast, and that's what he was going to do.

"Voss, Kiarr!" I swore, reluctantly taking my hand away from the girl whose eyes were already shining with the urges I was going to satisfy. "Can't you see I'm busy? Come back later, when –"

"When, Jarl? When shall I come back?" He asked, unmoved. I got to my feet, ready to shove him back outside myself, when another appeared behind him. Fiske.

"We must speak, Jarl. A messenger from Jarl Eirik, another entreaty to meet with you – and this one more urgent than the last."

And then, turning the situation from one which I truly felt might lead to me launching a few of my own people straight into the sea into one in which I couldn't help but laugh helplessly and shake my head, a third person appeared, one of the young female thralls. She pushed her way in between Fiske and Kiarr and popped out between them, holding her head respectfully low.

"What is it?" I sighed, seeing that I wasn't going to get the time to quench the heat of my lust in the lake of Emma's body that morning.

"Inga wonders if you will send the prisoner again, Jarl. She says she needs her to help with the vegetables for the –"

"You tell Inga that the next time she sends a thrall to ask me a favor, and after disgracing herself in front of me yesterday, she's going to get thrown into the stew-pot herself!" I barked, sending the thrall fleeing back to the cooking-pits.

"I don't need you now, Kiarr," I told the servant, not quite keeping the exasperation out of my voice. "Go away, I'll call for you when I need you. And you, Fiske, come in. Where is Arva?"

"She'll be with us soon, Jarl," Fiske replied, coming into the roundhouse and glancing, very briefly, in Emma's direction. Fiske knew not to question me, or to behave in a disrespectful manner around me, but he was a man of rules and routines and even in that fleeting glance I could see his displeasure.

"She has business with Jarl Eirik," I told him, not wanting to send Emma away, even if it was just back to the feasting hall to spend the day in warmth before I could see her again. "She can be here."

Soon Arva arrived and before the sun peeped out of the racing clouds at the highest point of the day, a plan had been forged. We were to head north the next morning – myself and near half of the warriors. Families and advisors would stay behind, and the second half of the warriors to hold the camp, should any of the East Angles get foolish ideas in their heads. Emma from the southeast, across the sea, would not be staying behind. The truth is I would have brought her along anyway, even if anyone had objected, but I can't say I didn't try to impress upon Fiske, Arva and my men that the foreign girl with the strange words and the skin like fresh spring milk was, in some vague but real way, necessary to me.