She whirled around as he had known that she would and gave him a critical glare, her chin notched up just slightly. ‘None of this is necessary. There are no windows. No escape except through the door which will be heavily guarded. There is no need to chain you if you are in here alone.’
‘And wake up dead? I would rather not.’
She laughed and it was not bitter or derisive. For the first time, he thought that perhaps she enjoyed his goading. Perhaps having everyone around her bowing down to her every whim had not been very satisfying.
‘It is done,’ the guard said.
She nodded her thanks. ‘Go and take your position outside the door, Alder.’
Rurik called after the man, ‘No one in or out for the rest of the night. If you hear screaming, it will be from pleasure.’
The door closed with a bang and Annis shook her head. ‘You hold yourself in too high esteem.’ There was no bite to her words and her eyes shone with mirth.
‘You could find out.’ Rurik raised a brow at her. ‘No one has to know if you are very quiet.’
She rolled her eyes and walked to the far side of the bed, perching on the very edge. She divested herself of one slipper and then the other, keeping her feet and ankles well below the side of the bed so that he could not see them.
He decided to give his chains a quick test. Grabbing a section of the restraint with each hand, he pulled tight. She glanced up in surprise at the movement. The wood groaned a bit in protest, but stayed in place. He did not think it could withstand a prolonged assault and would eventually give way. The problem was the noise would draw her attention or even the guard at the door before he could break it. To make a quicker escape, he would have to roll up and give the wood bar a swift kick that would likely splinter the wood. It was a measure he would take only if Cedric or someone else came in to end him, but it was reassuring to have a plan.
So that she would not catch on that he was coming up with a plan for escape, he said, ‘There is no chance that I can touch you. The wood is strong. You might as well get more comfortable.’ He gave a shrug as well as he could with his arms pulled up past his ears.
‘Thank you, but I will be fine.’ Moving back on to the foot of the bed, she pulled her feet up so fast he barely saw the flash of her light skin before they were hidden beneath the deep amber of her skirts.
‘Whose chamber is this?’ he asked.
‘It belonged to Wilfrid’s wife. She died many years ago when I was still a child.’ Her gaze touched briefly on the space between them before she looked away. It was a telling gesture, as if she thought the bed was smaller than she remembered, or perhaps it was simply that she felt uncomfortable being so close to him. He shifted a bit, making certain that his legs took up more space than was strictly needed.
She did not move away and instead asked, ‘Would you mind explaining something to me, Norseman?’
His plan was to get her to talk with him openly. If he could get her to understand him, even sympathise with him, he just might get the information he sought. ‘I will if you call me Rurik, not Norseman.’
She glanced at him and he read hesitance in her eyes. Almost a sort of fear. Interesting. Instead of responding to that, she asked her question. ‘How is it that you are here on your father’s behalf, as his son, if your mother was a slave?’
Noticing that he had to crane his neck to look at her, she moved on to her knees and leaned over him to adjust the cushion behind his head. She smelled fresh and faintly sweet with a hint of the outdoors about her, like a field of wildflowers in early summer. He closed his eyes to breathe her in more, searching for the musk of her layered underneath the scent, but opened them again as soon as he realised what he was doing. He could not allow his attraction to her to undermine his strategy.
‘Because I am still my father’s son.’
Her lips pursed in obvious displeasure at his answer as she sat back on her knees beside him. ‘But you would be a slave as well?’
He stared at her, wondering why he was so compelled to answer her question. Yes, he wanted her to know him, but this could easily become too intimate, yet he was compelled to answer her. Was it simply that she was a woman to whom he was attracted?
‘My father acknowledged my brother and me from the beginning. We were never slaves.’
She nodded and understanding dawned across her face. ‘Ah, so then your mother was a true concubine and not a slave.’
‘My parents had a complicated relationship.’ Truer words had never been spoken.
‘Will you tell me of it?’
He never spoke of his mother to anyone except for his twin and even then the conversations were brief and rare. She had died when they were young and ever since he had felt that talking about her might somehow take her further away from him. As if speaking of his memories would release them into the air so that they might evaporate and be gone for ever. As a result, he held them close, unwilling to part with the few he had.
‘Why?’
She shrugged and he was struck by how vulnerable she seemed now. Without her guard, with Rurik bound, with her slippers on the floor, she seemed less Queen and more woman. He quite liked the transformation.
‘You do not know this about me, because, as you are a prisoner, we have not had much opportunity to talk.’ Her eyes sparkled as her tone became teasing and he found himself dangerously close to being enchanted by her. ‘But I enjoy learning about other people. Wilfrid once had a warrior with dark skin who claimed to be from Córdoba. He would talk of great, domed buildings and fantastic battles. I like to imagine them.’
Rurik could not quite keep himself from staring at her. It crossed his mind that she might have figured out his ploy to get under her skin and was using it against him. If she had, she was being very effective. As wary as he was of her new-found enthusiasm, he decided it would be best to keep her talking. With that in mind, he resolved to tell her a bit of his parents, while keeping his own personal memories to himself.
‘I am told that when she was young, men came from all over Éireann to seek my mother’s hand. She was a princess—Saorla the beautiful.’ As a child he had thought her beautiful in the way every child thinks a loving mother beautiful. Only now that he was an adult could he think back on her and appreciate her true beauty. With dark, flowing hair, green eyes and a small frame, she had stood out among the women back home in Maerr. Even knowing that she belonged to Sigurd, many men had admired her. ‘She refused all offers of marriage until my father visited. It seems that even he was intrigued by her, despite having a wife at home already.’
Clearing his throat, he swallowed down the bitterness that accompanied those words. Most of this he had learned only when he and Alarr had gone to confront King Feann. He had not known Feann was his mother’s brother and that he had confronted Sigurd to avenge the injustice done to her. His father had not told her he was already married, all but stealing her away from her home in his bid to possess her.
His mother had deserved better than the life she had had with his father. ‘My father charmed her and when he left Éireann he took her with him.’
When he paused, she asked, ‘Saorla went willingly, then? It was not a kidnapping?’
A bitter smile turned his lips. ‘I suspect it was a seduction. She left with him willingly, but only because he lied to her and promised her marriage. She would not have accepted anything less. My brother and I were born less than a year after they met. My father’s wife, as you can imagine, did not take to my father having such a beautiful concubine. My mother was relegated to little more than a slave. She asked to go home many times, but he refused to part with us, holding my brother and me hostage.’
He had not meant to tell Annis that much. It was too close to his memories. He could see his mother shaking with anger after Sigurd had refused her request to allow her to go home yet again. Could remember climbing into bed wi
th her to comfort her at night when she cried. An unwelcomed swell of guilt thickened his throat. She might have returned home to Éireann and had a good life had he and Danr not bound her to Maerr. Or perhaps Feann was right. Her pride held her there away from those who loved her.
Fascinated by the story, Annis asked, ‘Why would Sigurd keep her? Would not letting her go have been simpler for him?’
Clearing his throat again, he said, ‘I think he cared for her in his way.’
‘And what way was that?’
The way of a tyrant unwilling to part with something every other man wanted. ‘He was not an easy man. He was brash, arrogant, unwilling to give up things he wanted.’
She sniffed. ‘He sounds like a child with a trinket.’
Rurik laughed, surprised to find humour in the telling of the story. ‘He may have been. Perhaps it was possessing her that drove him to keep her rather than a tenderness for her.’
But that was not precisely true. Just as he remembered the anger and pain, a few of his earliest memories were the rare times Sigurd had visited their small home on long winter nights. He would open his arms to the boys and tell them stories for hours. Saorla would look on with a smile and, afterwards, long after Rurik and Danr were supposed to be asleep, he would hear them talking softly and laughing. That was long before their relationship had become more bitter than sweet.
‘Why are you here fighting so fiercely in your father’s memory? If you are…’ She seemed reluctant to say the word. It was a harsh word, but it was one he had heard often enough.
‘If I am a bastard?’
Her cheeks went rosy, a pleasing look on her, and she nodded.
‘My brother and I were acknowledged by our father. We have the same advantages as our brothers born to Sigurd’s wife.’
She frowned. ‘You Norse are a strange lot.’
‘Why? Because we believe that children have value, no matter whether their parents were wed or not?’
She sucked in a harsh breath. He had not meant her child, but somehow the words had struck that way. ‘We value our children,’ she said.
‘I did not mean you. I meant that your people tend to disregard the babes born out of wedlock. Do you not send them to monasteries or send them out to be fostered by strangers? Are they not barred from their rightful inheritance?’ There was truth to his words—she could not deny that.
‘But surely, not all slaves are as fortunate as your mother. Is it not still up to the man to acknowledge them?’ she asked.
And he could not deny the truth in that. ‘That is true.’
‘Women, doomed to have no choice in many cultures.’
For some reason, he longed to push the strand of hair back that had fallen down over her cheek and was glad for once that the restraints bound him. ‘You seem to have managed your choices quite well.’
She smiled, but it held a bit of sadness. ‘I am lucky to have found Wilfrid. He cares nothing for what people think and allowed me freedoms denied to most.’
‘Wilfrid, is it? What of your own father?’ Rurik was genuinely curious about her now.
She frowned and he knew there was something there. He was stunned at his own sense of betrayal when she shifted positions, grabbing a cushion and settling herself as if for sleep with her head at the foot of the bed.
‘That is not fair. I tell you of my life, while you hold back.’
‘You are a prisoner,’ she said easily, ploughing a fist into the side of what appeared to be a very hard cushion. ‘Life is not fair for prisoners.’
He laughed a mirthless laugh at how she had bested him. The woman was a fierce adversary, and, despite himself, he found he admired her even more. ‘Tell me, please.’ He could probably count on one hand the times he had begged in his life and here he was, begging again with her.
She had rolled on to her back and became very still at his plea. Finally, without looking at him, she asked, ‘Why do you wish to know of my family?’
‘Because you fascinate me,’ he answered honestly. ‘I have never met any woman like you.’
One long heartbeat later, she rolled to her side to meet his gaze. He was struck anew by how heady it felt to hold her undivided attention. ‘I have met no man quite like you either, Norseman.’
His breath caught in his throat as he sensed more to her words. There was the flicker of interest in her eyes and, if he was not mistaken, her gaze had dipped down to his chest, perhaps lower, as she spoke. He was forced to grind his molars together to stop the surge of heat that wanted to warm his blood.
‘Then you will tell me?’ he asked to cover his response and draw her gaze back to his.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Annis knew what the Norseman was hoping to accomplish. If he could get her to see him as a person, a man who was part of a family with his own needs and goals, then she would naturally feel less inclined to see him meet his end. It was a clever move, though not particularly inventive. The problem was that she already saw him in such a manner. Her guilt had forced her to ever since he had first shown himself on the shores of Glannoventa. Perhaps it was that she was not particularly good at holding people prisoner, or perhaps it was that her prisoner was him—a man she was coming to know as endlessly fascinating. Either way, she was faltering in her bid to keep herself from feeling anything where he was concerned.
‘What is it that you want to know, precisely?’ A need she did not understand made her talk to him. All the while she knew that this path led to danger, but she could not stop herself.
‘You seem to have been with Wilfrid and his family a long time. Why did your parents send you away?’
It was an easy enough question to answer without allowing him to get too close to her. Rolling on to her back, she stared at the ceiling which was quite dark in the dim light. ‘I grew up in the east with my family. My father’s sister, Merewyn, lived with us. Because he was quite a bit older than she, my family took her in when their mother died. We were very close when I was quite young.’ In many ways, Merewyn had been a mother to her when her own mother had been busy with the other children and running the household. ‘One morning, a group of Danes visited our shores. It was a raiding party. They burned and looted, taking anything of value they could find. One of them took a liking to Merewyn, so he took her, too.’
‘Ah!’ He said it with such satisfaction and confidence that Annis was compelled to raise up on her elbows to look at him. ‘Now I understand why you despise me so much.’
‘I do not—’ She broke off abruptly. It would not do to allow him to understand her true feelings, that she was coming to admire him and hoped for a way out of this mess they were in without his bloodshed.
‘You do not…?’ He asked the question, but his eyes told her that he knew what she had meant to say. Everything had changed between them in the space of the past hour. She did not know how or why and could not name the many ways that it had, but it had.
‘I do not despise all Danes or Norse.’
He grinned. ‘I vow that I have not come here to pillage and take you home with me.’
The queer little flutter in her belly had no right to be there in response to the idea of being pillaged and taken home by him. It was a terrible thought, for to belong to him would make her little more than his property, but it made itself known regardless. ‘Of course you have not.’ She sniffed and laid back down to stare at the ceiling, her palm going to her belly to calm it.
‘What happened after that?’
‘My parents sent us all away, hoping to avoid disaster should the Danes return. I was sent to Wilfrid because he and my father had already been arranging a marriage with Wilfrid’s oldest son. We were betrothed with the promise that I would not wed Grim until I was older.’
‘What happened with the Danes?’ His expression had gone pensive, as if he were evaluating their actions. ‘They must have returned.�
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‘The Danes returned in the spring, as expected. Jarl Eirik took over our home and my father was sent as a representative to the King. He had no choice in the matter.’
‘And what of Merewyn?’
Secretly pleased that he would concern himself with her, Annis smiled. ‘She happily married her Dane, Jarl Eirik, and they still live there, raising their children.’
‘It is becoming clearer now why Jarl Eirik would be so adamant about you marrying. You are his relation and his responsibility.’
She shrugged, not particularly interested in discussing that topic again. ‘Grim has been gone for several years now and I have managed to avoid Jarl Eirik’s decree that I marry. I imagine that I can hold him off for a while longer.’
‘Do you not want to marry again? Have children?’ The teasing in his voice had gone. This was spoken softly and without mocking.
A cold hollow opened up in her chest as it always did when she thought of Grim and her lost babe. There had been a time when she had thought of nothing more for her life than being a good wife to him and a good mother to their children. But that had changed. With Grim’s death and Wilfrid’s poor health, more of the responsibility of running not only the household, but the larger issues in Glannoventa, had fallen to her.
Two summers past, she had organised the early summer planting. Cedric had been preoccupied with a threat to their southern border and Wilfrid had only recently been seized by another attack. It had been a small thing to gather the men and convey to them a directive she had been forced to claim had come from Wilfrid himself, then to make certain the task was followed through to the end. Small as it was, it had filled her with a sense of pride and purpose. Ever since, she had been the one to receive villagers with Wilfrid in the hall every month. When his last attack had left him disfigured, it was she who continued to meet with them, conveying his wishes and resolving disputes, often without going to Wilfrid because she was capable all on her own.
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