The Northman's Bride (A Sons of the North Romance Book 3)

by Sandra Lake

  They hurried up the stairs, and her husband kicked open the door of his chamber with his thick riding boot. “Get the healer,” he grumbled to his brother. He set her on the bed, pushing her to lie down as he kept her arm high.

  He continued to curse under his breath. “Bloody spoiled, arrogant little harpy. You think this will work? All you have done is ruin a expensive frock.” He wouldn’t look at her face, but tied more strips of silk tighter around her arm. “Norway’s peace is more important than amusing one spoiled princess.”

  Sovia liked the outward pain. It relieved a small measure of the pressure caused by her inner wretchedness. She let the weight of the last twenty years press in on her chest and she sank into the soft mattress further. “I apologize for ruining the gown. I realize all my property belongs to you now. Perhaps you can loan out my body to some silk merchant for the night and have your losses compensated by morning.” She started to laugh to keep from crying.

  “By all the saints, Sovia. Shut up!” Hök crossed the chamber to the washbasin, returning with a fresh towels and water. His face was fixed in hard lines and sharp angles. He carefully washed her gash and reapplied a fresh bandage, but the gash was good and deep, and soon blood ran down her arm.

  “Are we even now?” she asked quietly. Her energy and consciousness were draining out of her with the unstopping flow of blood.

  “What?” he asked angrily while concentrating on wrapping more linen around her arm.

  “Even for Polska. I hurt and embarrassed you. You hurt and embarrassed me. Are we even?”

  “This is not about getting even. I have nothing to get even for.”

  “Liar. You wanted revenge. I saw it in your face. And now you have had it, or very soon will.”

  “Entering your bedchamber that night was my mistake. Not taking you to Toraslotte when you can’t be trusted is using good judgment. What you did in the hall just now proves my point. You think I’m so stupid that I would walk into a country filled with enemies only to be blindsided by another trap. Your treacherous tongue is all that stands between a generation of peace or imminent war.”

  The chamber began to fill with people.

  Her husband leaned over her. “This is no longer about you and me. This is bigger than us both. Put your selfishness aside.”

  Hök’s mother and sister stood in the doorway, and beside them was an older woman with salt-and-pepper hair. They all seemed to move forward as one unit.

  Sovia turned her face away from the people hovering at the side of the bed. She closed her eyes and envisioned herself far, far away from here, from this room, from this life. It was a skill she had mastered over the years.

  “Aye, it needs stitching.” She heard the old woman speaking with her husband but did not turn her face to acknowledge anyone. “Fear not, my young lord. She is strong and healthy. She will heal fine.”

  After the stitching was complete, one side of the canopy curtains was drawn closed as the young chambermaids stripped her out of her ruined gown and dressed her in a clean shift. She knew Hök was still in the room. She hadn’t heard the distinctive step of his heavy boots as he departed. The maids worked on cleaning up the chamber, and placed a cup of broth in her free hand. Her injured arm was wrapped tight in a sling, immobilized and elevated on her chest.

  From across the chamber, she heard the healer say, “All she needs is time to rest. Your presence will only upset her more—”

  Hök’s footsteps grew near, evidently ignoring the healer’s council. The maids’ feet scurried to the far corner closer to the door but stayed in the room.

  “Drink. Your body needs fluids.” His voice was deep, but the sharp tones from before were gone.

  She passed him back the cup. “I’m not thirsty.”

  “I didn’t ask if you were thirsty,” he said. “I told you to drink.”

  “And I told you, I was not thirsty.” Her anger instantly and unreasonably flared.

  He was stubborn and silent, but she could be more stubborn and more silent.

  He glared at her for a long while, but then his glare turned woeful as he looked to her arm. “Prove to me to be trustworthy and you will see your homeland. But I will not return you if you continue to behave as a madwoman.”

  “I am resigned in my madness, and only my true home can cure me.”

  “Drink the broth and you’ll feel better.”

  “I meant what I said,” she said, her voice quiet again. “I swore an oath to God in the hall and I will keep it. Take me home or kill me now.” She turned her face up to look him in the eyes, a final, pitiful plea. “All that I have is there. All that I will ever need to live is there. I swear I will only work to help you protect my home and help it thrive. I would never risk starting another war. No matter what you think of me, I do love my people. I would never risk their safety to spite you.”

  He cupped her cheek and stroked his thumb gently across her skin in uncharacteristically tender gesture. “Be good, wife, and I will see you before the first snowfall.” He leaned forward and kissed her temple. His lips remained locked there for several long breaths before he removed himself from the bed and crossed the room to the door.

  His tenderness hurt more than any blow from a fist. Her shoulders buckled in toward one another. “Please, Hök!” The air was torn from her lungs. She scrambled across the bed and collapsed to the floor, and the maids rushed to her side. “Please!” she screamed through her tears.

  He stepped back toward her but the healer stepped in his path. “I will give her a sleeping draft. She is deranged. There is nothing that you can do to help her.”

  The maids shushed her, lifting her and returning her to Hök’s bed.

  Her husband stood at the door like a stone statue and watched her struggle against the hands of the maids and healer. He finally looked down at his boots and walked out into the corridor. The iron latch to the door closed with a light click, sealing her fate.

  She stopped struggling and sank into the bed. Her mind sped forward, evaluating all threats, plotting all possible outcomes.

  Jarl Magnus’s men controlled the ports up and down the coast. She would never be able to sneak aboard a vessel.

  Utter madness had helped bring on an odd, refreshing sort of clarity in her thinking. If she would not be able to travel home by sea, that left her with only one clear option—land. She would hike. She would climb over the snowcapped mountain range and cross into Norway on foot, or die trying.

  ***

  If Sovia had learned nothing else about Tronscar, it was that its people took pride in order, cleanliness, and solidarity. They ate, worked, cleaned on schedule. Sovia was invited to take all her meals with the family in the great hall, and to take walks with the friherrinna and Katia, but Sovia turned them all down. The days got longer and it would not be long before the night of the midnight sun, summer solstice, when she would make her escape.

  During the day she slept, or feigned sleep for her maids and guards. At night she silently prepared her legs, stepping up and down from the bedframe for hours. She would be strong for her escape, strong for her son.

  She calculated Hök would be landing in Nidaros within a week, depending on the duration of the delays in the Viken, where the central figures to the Lendmann party resided. There, her father’s former allies would expect a report, which her husband would have to falsify of course, assuring all that his wife was happy and healthy and getting better acquainted with her in-laws.

  The Lendmann party still held great power and control over southern Norway. She’d heard from Katia that King Sverre had officially made Hök an earl. Sovia would gladly have given him countless bits of information that would have been useful in securing the alliance of several top leaders in the Lendmann party, as well as the northern Birkebeiner party—if he had taken her with him.

  Each morning Lida or Katia would arrive with a
tray of hearty, deliciously prepared food, and invite her to join them about their daily activities. She would smile apologetically and turn over in her bed. This morning had been no different.

  A short time later, Kaj entered without warning. He allowed his eyes to roam over her body.

  Doing her best to ignore him, Sovia sat at the window seat, counting the seconds until the guard who walked on the battlement would pass her window. She knew Kaj’s type. He hated her for her reputation, yet desired her for it at the same time. He was the kind of man that took pleasure ravishing young girls at a whorehouse, and before they were through, the girl would receive a thorough beating, because somehow it was her fault that he had a weak character and had come in search of a whore in the first place.

  Kaj always looked at her for too long, and he always timed his visits to her chamber for when she was alone. The maids had just finished helping her dress and they would not be returning for an hour or more.

  The other male members of the household regarded her with concern and pity, but avoided her at all costs, never entering her room alone. But not Kaj. “I’ve brought you something,” Kaj said. “Come here and see what it is?”

  “I don’t need or want anything from you.” She continued to stare out the window.

  “Not even this?” The sound of iron keys clinking was unmistakable.

  Still, she refused to look. It was literally her only power over him. He wanted her to look, so she refused. “And what need would I have of keys? I am an obedient wife who stays put where her husband has abandoned her.”

  “Your self-appointed exit from Tronscar is almost here. It will be a month in a few days. I know you’re planning something. But you will not get far in Tronscar without these.”

  Speaking out the open window, she said, “Theoretically speaking, if I did want a set of guard keys, what would that cost me?”

  He approached her. “The only thing you’re good for.”

  She turned around finally, and laughed at him. To incite a large man to murderous rage was not smart, but she was a tad bored at the moment.

  Kaj’s hand shot out and gripped her around the throat. His second hand grabbed her breast—neither squeezed hard enough to leave marks, but just enough to show her exactly who was in charge. Fighting back a man this size was pointless—and anyway, that is what he wanted—her tears, her fear, her to fight and beg for mercy, so Sovia refused to give it. He pushed her to the wall, her head slamming hard onto the stone.

  “I thank you for the kindly offer,” she said mockingly, “but I think I shall pass if it all the same to you, Kaj.” He wanted her to beg and weep, so she would do all in her power to deny him what he wanted.

  “Shut your mouth or I’ll knock your teeth out.”

  Aye, most definitely the secretive lecher type. She preferred her lechers out in the open. Much more direct.

  “Nay. You’re not going to knock my teeth out nor leave me with a mark. That would have to be explained to my maids who dress me, and then that would have to be explained to the Jarl and to Hök and—”

  “I don’t need to leave a mark on you.” He grabbed a hand full of her skirt and forced his hand between her legs.

  “And when I birth a black-haired babe and not golden like my husband, how will you explain that mark? The Magnussons are all blonde. You’d be the only guard with dark hair—”

  He punched her in the stomach and she doubled over in pain. He stepped back from her and let her drop to her knees. “Open your mouth.” Pulling on her short hair, he yanked her face up.

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Your husband told you to obey me while he was away.”

  “The kind of service you are asking for costs extra. And it’s far above a guardsman’s wages.”

  He slapped her. “Open.”

  She thought possibly that she heard a door open far down the hall, perhaps her only chance of help. She screamed with every last scrap of air in her lungs.

  Chapter 21

  The sound of boots running down the corridor grew louder.

  Kaj shoved her down into the chair and moved behind her. “You’ll pay for that.”

  The door burst open. Ansgar and Alexander both stood panting at the door.

  “She saw a mouse and became crazed. You know how she gets. Tell the maids not to leave her dinner tray in here all night,” Kaj said, pretending to sweep crumbs off the small table in the corner.

  The younger Magnussons looked her over, both pinching their brows together with concern.

  “You alright, Lady Sovia?” Ansgar asked, taking a small step toward her.

  “I have a bit of a headache, actually.” Her heart was racing, her belly ached, and she was terrified that two sweet, young lads would draw blades with a much more experienced warrior if she did not play her part well.

  “Fresh air will do you good,” Ansgar said. “Would you like us to take you for a walk? Our aunt and uncle have just arrived and they have been telling us all about the north. Have you ever met a person from the Sami tribe before?”

  “No,” she said, as normally as she could.

  Young Zander held his hand out to her. “Would you like to?”

  She looked at his hand. She could still feel Kaj’s hand between her legs and she shivered. “That sounds delightful. Let me just get my head covering.”

  “Be my guest to remain in my chamber in search of invisible mice, Kaj.” With that, she laced her arm around young Zander’s and took her leave of her prison cell for the first time in nearly a month.

  In the hall, Sovia was greeted with concentrated smiles. Clearly, everyone was trying to look casual and not gawk at Hök’s suicidal, maniac wife. The last time she had been in the hall she had declared her next appearance would be her last, and so it would be. She found no fault in taking one last meal at the friherrinna’s table to shore up her strength.

  She was led to a chair next to an amber-haired woman with skin that had seen too much sun. Still, she was a handsome woman with kind eyes. She wore the simple leather garments of a traveling merchant’s wife and had the hands to match—worn and well used to hard work.

  Sovia had always gotten on well with lowborn women. Most she’d met seemed to understand the plain truth of the world—that life was a series of unfortunate, cruel, and unjust events, and then a person dies. It was best to accept that fact young, work hard, and get on with it. It seemed only highborn persons made their lives complicated by expecting more.

  Hök’s brothers loomed around her as if she were some piece of delicate glass about to shatter loudly across the floor. No one made introductions, so she took it upon herself to greet the woman, assuming she was a guest of one of the traveling merchants who had arrived in Tronscar for the midsummer’s eve festival that was about to begin.

  “What lovely boots! They look so warm and well crafted,” Sovia said as she examined the fur-lined leather footwear. She had seen similar garments north of Nidaros. “I have always wanted a pair of fur-lined boots, but my father would never let me. He had the most useless taste in fashion.” She picked up her green silk and flopped it down disdainfully.

  The woman at first looked wary and then softly laughed. “I have never heard silk described as useless before.” She smiled.

  “It marks so easily that if you sneeze three rooms away I get a wrinkle, and do not even think about sweating. I am in a constant state of terror that at any moment the entire hall will know when I am nervous due to the rings under my arms. It really is distasteful. Now, your leather skirt and vest, those would save a girl a good many troublesome laundry issues.”

  The woman appeared to be close in age with her mother-in-law. Sovia assumed they must be friends, even with the obvious difference in rank, or else the woman would not be seated at the jarl’s high tables.

  “I am Sovia, Hök’s troublesome wife from Norway. And yo
u are?” She stretched out her hand.

  “His aunt. Well, half aunt.” She grinned shyly.

  “Half mother is more accurate,” Lida said, swooping in and embracing first the aunt and then Sovia. “Ylva was my saving angel when the boys were babes. She helped their uncle Hök hide and protect my twins in the northern mountains for a time when enemies of Magnus nearly tore our family apart. So Ylva here is being more than a little modest by calling herself a half aunt.” The women giggled together and exchanged fond glances.

  “I am so glad you have decided to join us, daughter. You are looking so very well in this shade of green, and you have color back in your cheeks—well, one cheek anyway,” Lida said, twitching an eyebrow extra high, glancing first over to the jarl and then to the group of men. “Will you both excuse me for a moment? I see you are fast friends. I would just speak to my husband for a moment.” She glided off.

  “She is a very generous mother-in-law, even more so with an undeserving daughter-in-law,” Sovia said.

  “That is just Lida’s way. She’s always been like that.”

  Sovia chuckled. “So I’m not special then?”

  Ylva blushed. “Forgive me. I am not used to the skills of polite conversation. I feel so out of place. I started at Tronscar clearing the tables after the feast. No matter how many years pass, I still feel like an outsider about to be scolded and sent from the hall.”

  “A warmly welcomed outsider,” Sovia said. “I am very much the outsider here tonight, Ylva. I officially dethrone you and make myself the topic of gossip at every table this eve.” She waved her hand in a circle as if she were a queen making an official decree.

  Ylva covered her mouth and laughed. “You do that so well. I imagine you have seen the king make such a command?”

  “If you only knew.”

  “I am sorry we missed seeing Hök,” Ylva said. “My husband will be so disappointed. I always felt that Hök carried more than just my husband’s name, but a measure of his spirit as well. Second sons often have a certain . . . I don’t know, wild, carefree confidence about them.”