‘I told Eirik that you and the child are coming to Denmark,’ he said.
‘And what was his response?’ she asked, a dull colour stealing across her cheeks. ‘I know that he guessed that...’ Her voice trailed away dismally. ‘He must think very little of me,’ she finished lamely, hunching her shoulders, a wary, defensive gesture.
Ragnar angled his head, the gilt strands of his hair dishevelled by the breeze. ‘On the contrary. It was me he was displeased with, not you.’
‘Because of the way you blackmailed me to come to Denmark?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘he knows that I gave you no choice in the matter. And also...because I slept with you, Gisela. Because of that,’ he croaked out. ‘Because of the way I treated you.’ A muscle shifted in his jaw, a defined, stiff movement. ‘Eirik is married, with three children. He is a man of honour, of principle.’ He paused. ‘Which I am not. Unfortunately for you.’
* * *
Or fortunately, she thought. In her whole life, there would surely be no other occasion like the one she had shared with Ragnar. It was her responsibility now to remember every single perfect detail and preserve it, like a shimmering crystal, in the dark recesses of her mind. And not just that, she thought. It was everything about him: the touch of his hand, the way he scooped her up before she stumbled; his ready laugh, the quick easy smile. It was everything about him.
She shivered in the chill breeze rising from the water, hauling her cloak more securely around her shoulders. ‘You know I don’t blame you, Ragnar,’ she said softly. ‘You need to stop blaming yourself.’ The freshening wind tugged a tendril of hair out from beneath her scarf; she snagged it, coiling the glistening strand around one finger.
A drift of birds landed elegantly on the surface of the river, ruffling the silver skin of water. ‘We will never agree on that,’ he replied thickly, watching her wind the hair around her finger. ‘Your forgiveness will never absolve what I did. Gisela... I...’ he managed to croak out. ‘I want to say that...’
She tilted her head to one side, eyeing him keenly. What was the matter with him? Ragnar had the strangest look in his eyes: savage, possessive, and yet beset with such a sad melancholy that she had never seen before. ‘Ragnar...?’ She touched his sleeve. The flexed rope of his muscled forearm rubbed against her fingers. ‘Are you...? What ails you?’
He cleared his throat. ‘I will take Torven to Denmark on my own.’ His words emerged in a rush. ‘You don’t have to come, Gisela. I can take you back to your family this afternoon.’
His blunt words echoed tonelessly against her ear. Shock engulfed her; she staggered back, clapping one hand to her mouth to stop the screech of sound emerging. This could not be happening! Desolation crashed over her, a great rolling tide of loss, abandonment. Why was he saying such things? He was dismissing her, pushing her away. The base of her belly quivered with unhappiness. Confidence wilted, curling in on itself, a papery leaf shrivelled in flames.
‘I... I don’t understand!’ she said, a shrill note gripping her voice. Her mind struggled to comprehend, to make sense of his damning words. ‘I thought you... I thought you said you wouldn’t take the child without me!’ Hope whipped away, a snapping flag breaking loose, chased away by despair.
‘That was before...’ He paused, looking at her strangely, as if her reaction to his words was not as he expected.
‘Before what...?’ she cried out on a half-sob. ‘What has happened to change your mind?’ It’s me, she thought. I’ve done something foolish, said something untoward. She’d certainly caused him enough trouble over the past few days. Or was it simply the prospect of travelling further with her that he could not endure? He had had his fill of her and was now sending her away. ‘Is it Eirik who has told you to do this?’ Her eyes slid past the rounded bulk of Ragnar’s shoulder, searching the group of Danish men for their tall leader, the head of jet-black hair. ‘Let me speak to him! He will understand if I talk to him.’
Stunned, Ragnar gazed down at her. ‘What are you saying?’ he said slowly, his voice lifting almost in wonder.
Gisela frowned at him as if he were dim-witted. ‘If I could just speak to Eirik,’ she repeated briskly, ‘then he will understand why I have to come.’
‘But—’ He broke off, puzzled, tilting his head to one side in question. He placed a hand on her shoulder, cupping the soft muscle in the palm of his hand. The coarse skin on his fingertips rustled against the wool of her gown. ‘But... I’ve told you, you don’t have to come. Gisela, I am giving you your freedom! Why are you not seizing it with both hands and running away as fast as you can?’
Her heart teetered. As if she stood on the edge of an abyss, peering down into a bottomless black pit. The unknown. She could step back now, place her feet on a firm footing and return to her father, never having risked her heart to tell Ragnar how she truly felt about him. Or she could jump, skirts flying out about her, into the unknown. Her fingers linked with his on her shoulder, grazing his big knuckles. His big frame tensed, stiffening beneath her touch.
‘Because I have no wish to do that,’ she said, jerking her chin in the air, as if willing him to contradict her. There, she had said it. Let him laugh if he wanted.
His pupils widened, the brilliant darkness engulfing the emerald of his eyes. ‘Why not?’ A hoarseness scraped his throat.
Her confidence wavered. ‘This is going to sound so foolish...’ she muttered.
‘Try me.’
‘Well...it seems like...like I have fallen in love with you.’ She looked away, across the muddy waters of the river, at the shingle, the longships. ‘How foolish is that?’ Winding her arms about her torso, she hugged herself tightly, bracing herself to hear his condemnation.
Ragnar held his breath. ‘Nay, Gisela, not foolish at all.’ His voice was low, thready with emotion.
She stared resolutely at her boots, unable to meet his eyes. ‘When you pulled me out of the mud on the first day you met me, I had been living a life of fear. I jumped at the slightest shadow. I kept thinking that de Pagenal would appear around the nearest corner and take another swipe at my neck. I was so frightened...that I didn’t know... I didn’t know...’
‘...how to love,’ he concluded for her, his great arms swooping around her, gathering her to his torso.
She nodded, her eyes shining with happiness as she finally tipped her chin to look up at him. ‘I love you, Ragnar. I think I might have loved you from the first moment that I saw you.’
* * *
Emotion crushed his chest at her solemn tone, delight suffusing his limbs. A light, powerful feeling. Strong. ‘What, when you came around on the beach and saw me grinning down at you? I’m surprised you weren’t scared out of your wits!’
Her knees bumped against his. ‘Even then. Your kindness towards me, your care...your love...’ Her pupils dilated, dark pools against sparkling sapphire. ‘Your love has forced the fear from my soul and mended my spirit.’
‘Gisela.’ He breathed out slowly. He could scarce believe what she was saying. ‘I never thought...’ He buried his face in her neck. ‘I thought I would lose you,’ he mumbled against her perfumed skin, the heated flesh. ‘I thought after what I had done...how I treated you, you would want nothing to do with me.’
Her fingers twisted in the silky hair at the back of his neck. ‘That’s where you were wrong, Ragnar. I want everything to do with you. I never want to be parted from you again.’
He lifted his head. ‘You have my word on it,’ he promised. His hands gripped the sides of her face. His mouth moved over hers, seizing her lips in a kiss that would last for a lifetime, for ever.
Epilogue
Outside the great hall on the Svendson estate, it had started to snow. Grey, lumbering clouds had rolled in from the east, pressing heavily on the land. Great fat flakes spun down, drifting white like feathers, down on to the cobbled bailey, some melting quickly,
some settling. Soon, the snow would settle for good, as winter extended its icy breath across these northern lands.
Inside the hall, the wedding feast was in full swing. A great fire blazed out from the centre of the hall, smoke rising lazily to a hole in the timbered roof, rows of flaming torches lighting the vast chamber with a warm, golden glow. Trestle tables ranked across the flagstone floor, laden with food and mead to satisfy the appetites of the guests who had travelled from far and wide to witness the wedding of Olaf Svendson’s only son, Ragnar. Squeezed on to the narrow benches, the chattering guests ate and drank, casting interested glances towards the Svendson family sitting along the top table and towards Ragnar’s new bride. A Norman lady, no less. The stories of how such a marriage had come into being knocked back and forth among the guests: how Ragnar had rescued the maid, half-dead from the mud, although some said it was the other way around and that she had pulled him out, although that seemed impossible, given the bride’s diminutive size.
‘Look,’ whispered Gisela, pointing at the flakes brushing the diamond-shaped window panes. She turned in delight to her husband, her heart brimming with love for the tall Viking at her side. She wore his mother’s wedding gown, a heavy cream silk, encrusted with tiny seed pearls that winked and glimmered in the flickering torchlight. Following the Viking tradition, she wore no veil, only a simple silver crown, studded with rock crystals. Her glossy sable hair flowed down over her shoulders, the curling ends pooling in her lap.
‘I hope you like snow.’ His brilliant eyes roamed over her, hot, possessive. ‘There’s a lot more of that to come. It was the right decision to bring your father and sister with us when we left that day. They would never have been able to travel otherwise.’
‘And we have my brother’s blessing,’ she added, ‘even though he cannot be here in person.’ She turned to look at Marie, who sat further along the table, talking animatedly to Eirik’s wife. And on her sister’s other side sat her father, smiling happily. ‘This snow means they can stay here with me until the spring,’ she added brightly, turning back to Ragnar.
‘They have no choice.’ Ragnar grinned. ‘For the weather will be too horrible for them to even attempt such a journey. The snow piles up in great drifts and the harbour often freezes over.
‘Well, then I love snow,’ she said, enthusiastically. She splayed her fingers flat on to the pristine white tablecloth, watching her new wedding ring gleam in the light. ‘Torven will love it, certainly.’ She glanced at the bronze-haired maid sitting next to Ragnar’s parents. Torven was sitting on her lap, one chubby hand lurching out across the table to grab at food, a plate, a goblet. Laughing, Gyda seized his little fingers, lifting them to her lips. ‘I’m so happy that...’ She paused. ‘I’m pleased that Gyda seems better.’
‘She is,’ Ragnar agreed. It was a month since the two longships had arrived back in Ribe, a month since Gyda, frail and mute, her hair in tangled disarray, had glanced up and spotted her child in Ragnar’s arms as he walked into the great hall. In recognition, she had screamed out loud, rushing forward to wrench her little son from her brother’s hold. From then on, Gyda had come alive again, growing back into the woman she had once been, talking and laughing; animated. In quieter moments, she had confided in Gisela and the two women had become close friends.
Reaching for his pewter goblet, Ragnar rubbed the stem with his thumb. ‘You were right, Gisela.’ His eyes darkened. ‘If you hadn’t been there to persuade me, then...then she would never have healed.’
‘You mustn’t think like that, Ragnar. I was there, and I did persuade you.’
* * *
‘And I thank Thor that you did.’ He glanced along the table, at Gyda’s happy face looking down at her child, at his father’s wide smile as he raised his goblet in silent congratulation towards his son, at all the Viking warriors and their ladies who had gathered here to celebrate their wedding and his heart swelled with happiness, with a great gust of love for the woman at his side. Gisela, his darling love, his elskede, whom he would cherish for a lifetime.
* * *
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The Viscount’s Veiled Lady
by Jenni Fletcher
Chapter One
Whitby, North Yorkshire—July, 1872
‘You want me to do what?’
Frances Webster dropped the piece of jagged black stone she was polishing on to the table with a thud.
‘I want you to visit Arthur Amberton for me.’ Her sister Lydia draped herself over a chaise longue by the window, somehow managing to look both spectacularly beautiful and sound utterly shameless. ‘It’s not as if I can visit a bachelor on my own, is it? I’m a respectable widow.’
‘And I’m a respectable spinster. That’s worse.’
‘Yes, but you’re always wandering along the beach by yourself. Anyway, it’s different for you.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, don’t be so tiresome.’ Lydia shot her a look that suggested the answer ought to be obvious. ‘You know perfectly well why, Frannie.’
‘No. I’m sure I do not.’
Frances gritted her teeth at the hated pet name. She suspected her older sister did it on purpose, as if she were still a child to be ordered around and not a woman who’d turned twenty-two that past spring. It was also obvious what why referred to. Lydia was forever dropping hints about her scarred appearance without ever going so far as to actually refer to it directly. Well, if she had something to say, then for once she could just say it out loud.
‘I mean it doesn’t matter if anyone does see you with him. It’s hardly your fault, I know, but you’re not exactly the kind of woman a gentleman would dally with, are you? Your reputation would be perfectly safe.’ Lydia heaved a sigh. ‘It’s such a pity when you used to be so pretty. If only you’d married Leo when you had the chance—’
‘Enough!’ Frances raised a hand, deciding that she’d heard quite sufficient after all. ‘You’re right. I’m sure my face would repel any man.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’
Not in her hearing perhaps, Frances thought icily, tho
ugh what her sister and mother said about her behind her back would probably convince her to wear a bag over her head for the rest of her life. They both thought of her facial scarring as the worst misfortune that might have befallen her on the very morning of her eighteenth birthday, but then both of them were beautiful. In her mid-fifties, their mother was still a strikingly attractive woman, with only the faintest touch of silver in her dark hair and an almost unnaturally smooth, porcelain complexion. Walking side by side with her eldest daughter, the pair of them were capable of turning every male head in Whitby.
Of course there had been a time, not so long ago either, when she wouldn’t have looked so out of place beside them. With only a six-year gap in their ages, both she and Lydia had inherited their mother’s fine looks and statuesque figure, though it had taken her own curves so long to appear that she’d thought they weren’t coming at all. She’d been a late bloomer; though when she finally had, she’d shown signs of surpassing even her sister in beauty, or so their mother had once told her to Lydia’s furious chagrin.
Her accident had put paid to all of that, however, so that now, although they shared the same oval face, dark eyes and chocolate-coloured hair, they were hardly two sides of the same coin any more, rather two different coins altogether, one lustrous and shiny, the other dinted and tarnished.
‘Now will you take a message for me or not?’ Lydia was starting to sound impatient.
‘No, and I can’t believe you’re even suggesting it! John’s only been dead for ten months.’
Rescued by the Viking Page 23