by Kris Tualla
“How many more days?” Grier croaked.
“Four, I think.” Rydar squeezed her shoulders. “If weather is good.”
“You seem rather susceptible to stomach sickness, Lady Grier.” One of Margoh’s brows arched. “Might it be that you are with child?”
Incredulous, Grier rounded on the woman, dizziness be damned. “What!”
“You spent quite a lot of time with Lord Andrew… Alone.”
“He was a royal guest! ‘Twas our duty to serve him!” Grier gripped the slippery rail and pressed the back of one hand to her lips. A weakness passed through her and she wondered that her knees still held her.
Margoh looked overly concerned and her gaze hopped to Rydar then back to Grier. “But he was so handsome and charming… Was it a burden? Servicing him, I mean?”
“I’ve never lain with a man!” Grier snapped, her voice frustratingly thin. She spit into the water and tried to swallow past her sticky throat. Furious, she pinned her fiercest gaze on Margoh.
“And seeing as how I’ve no’ been visited by an angel, a second virgin birth is highly unlikely!”
Rydar snorted then coughed, his face astonishingly ruddy. His eyes twinkled with amused appreciation. Grier stared at him, her anger throbbing past her nausea.
Then she began to chuckle.
Her chuckle turned into hysterical laughter, a ridiculous reaction to the dark apprehension that held her captive for so many weeks. She dropped onto her arse on the planks, legs sprawled improperly wide, unable to gain control. Tears streamed down her cheeks as tension from the past fortnight flowed out of her in the most unexpected and raucous way. The more she tried to stop laughing, the harder she laughed.
A hissing wheeze pulled her attention. Rydar sank to his knees beside her, his own face wet with tears. His hands gripped his stomach and he bent over. He leaned back, and a rushing gasp preceded the loudest roar of laughter Grier had ever heard from any human.
“Second! Virgin! Birth!” he shouted. His laughter went quiet again as he wheezed the last of his air. Another gasp. Another staccato roar.
Grier smacked the deck. “Stop!” she pleaded, unable to draw a breath against her own mirth. Her cheeks hurt. “Stop it! I can’t breathe!”
“No angel!” he blubbered. “No angel! Å min Gud, Grier!”
“I don’t see what’s so funny!” Margoh spat.
Grier gaped at Rydar.
“Neither do I!” she whooped, then fell back onto the deck alongside the Norseman.
Margoh spun and stomped toward her cabin as the pair laughed themselves into belly-aching exhaustion.
July 24, 1354
Either the episode of hilarity, or the fact that she had finally been aboard the boat long enough, cured Grier’s ailing stomach. On the fourth day she awoke feeling fine. It was such a relief that her spirit felt giddy, reborn. She gaily flung open the door of her cabin to greet the morning—and stepped into a world gone gray.
Gray clouds hung low in a cold gray sky. The gray water beneath them undulated in an endless multitude of oily gray swells speckled with tiny rain ripples. Even the sail looked like a limp, gray shroud.
The scent of food drew her to the forward cabin where the cooking fire burned in a large iron pot. Fresh fish sizzled on a grate resting over the fire. Rydar looked up from the meal. His expression brightened when he saw her.
“You look well!” he exclaimed.
“I feel well,” she responded. But she shivered in the damp chill.
“The weather?” she asked.
Rydar pressed his lips into a grim smile. “Weather does no’ look well.”
“It’s only raining a little,” she offered.
“But, is thing says about weather: wind afore rain, sail fill again. Rain afore wind, your sail, ah, overvær…” He shrugged at the Norse word.
“What does that mean?”
“We have rain, not wind. Winds comes, and is bad.”
Grier subdued her alarm as best she could, which in truth wasn’t very well at all. “Are we safe?”
Rydar stared at her, his beautiful green eyes gone as gray as the day. “I do all I can, Grier.”
By afternoon, their swirling world consisted of colorless shades of gloom from top to bottom. Wind pushed against the small craft from all directions, capriciously batting her like a cat toying with a mouse. Yowling through the mast and sail, she foretold their certain demise.
Grier staggered onto the deck. Even though the wind knocked her sideways, she could not bear to sit useless in her cabin where fear would drive her mad. The collision of wind and waves thundered in her ears and stole the men’s words as they fought with sail and rudder to keep the boat afloat.
“Can I help?” she yelled to Rydar. “Show me what to do!”
Rydar let go of the spar and his expression shifted between irritation and admiration. Gavin’s face showed only fear before he tugged the sail across the deck alone. It pushed him right back again. Grier battled to keep her footing as the storm tried to shake her off the boat.
“Margoh?” she shouted.
“Locked away!” Rydar answered. Then he said something else.
“What?” Grier shrieked. She shoved the already sodden locks from her eyes, though the north wind blew them back with a stinging slap. Rydar’s mouth was moving, but she couldn’t make out his words.
He closed the space between them. “Help hold rudder!” he bellowed. “Come!”
Grier followed, climbing to the upper deck. Rydar looped a rope around her waist and tied her to the iron ring that secured the sail. Kristofer was already there, straining without success to keep the massive paddle still by himself. Grier nodded and wrapped her arms around the rudder’s smooth oak shaft. She braced her feet against the roof over the aft cabins.
“I—hold—spar!” Rydar shouted. He moved away from them.
The storm was so heavy it had substance. There was no way to determine where the sea ended and the clouds began. Violent movement in a featureless void buffeted her without mercy. Cold rain pelted her. Grier closed her eyes and concentrated on holding the pole still.
Her clothes and boots soaked through. Her hair clung to her face and neck like ivy on a stone statue. She licked moisture from her lips, sweet rain mixed with astringent salt.
At first her calves cramped and her thighs burned, their straining effort keeping her warm. But after an hour or more, they were numb. She couldn’t feel her arms, and opened her eyes a slit to assure herself that she still held on.
Chapter Thirty-One
Rydar and Gavin rode the spar, trying by their combined wills to keep the small craft’s bow headed into the waves. They swung the sail to one side, then the other, in an elaborate dance with the wind. When they misjudged, water slapped onto the deck and tugged their feet out of rhythm.
Rydar’s eyes stung from salt spray and his hands were bloodied. Tears of rage and frustration were disguised by rain and seawater. His chest spasmed with sobs of pain and exhaustion but, by God, he would see it through.
“You cannot have me!” Rydar roared at the storm. “Not this time!”
“What?” Gavin called back. His shirt was torn and sagged around his waist. His skin was blue with cold.
“We’ll not go down!” Rydar screamed.
“Hell, no!” Gavin responded. He shoved the spar toward Rydar.
Time was inconsequential. Only the next swing of the spar, the next mouthful of seawater spat out, or the next resistance to movement counted. Eye the wave. Push the sail. Hold it. Don’t slip. Don’t let go. Once more. Once more.
Once more.
How long it lasted was unclear. All that mattered was that Rydar’s enraged tenacity had lasted longer.
***
“Grier?”
Rydar tugged at the unyielding arms circling the rudder’s shaft.
Her eyes blinked open, reflecting a brief glint of moonlight. “What?”
“Is over. You can let go.”
Confu
sion flickered over her features. “I can’t.”
“I help you.” Rydar unwound her and helped her to stand.
“I can’t feel my legs.” A violent shiver shook through her.
Rydar lifted her and carried her down to the mid-deck. He set her in front of her cabin door, held her steady with one arm, and pounded on Margoh’s door with the other.
That door creaked open and Margoh’s pale face appeared. “Is it over?” she asked.
“Aye. Now I need you to help Grier undress and get into bed.”
Margoh’s gaze washed over the drenched woman. “Why?”
“She’s a bit worn out from the storm.” He adjusted his grip on Grier’s waist. “She helped hold the rudder with Kristofer all this time.”
“I don’t need help,” Grier protested, obviously discerning the word hjelp in the Norse exchange. She pushed Rydar’s arm away and accomplished two uneven steps before she pitched forward. Rydar caught her. She was shaking.
“Stop being so stubborn, woman,” he scolded in Norse. He kicked her door open and guided her inside. Her legs folded and she sat down hard on the bed.
Margoh followed him into the cabin. “Go on. I’ll see to her,” she grumbled.
Rydar gave her what he hoped was a grateful look and left the women alone. He made his way unsteadily across the sodden planks to his own cabin. Behind the closed door he dropped to his knees and rolled on his side, gasping. Deep pain pounded his left shin and spread from his ankle to his thigh. He prayed the bone wasn’t broken again. His palms burned, raw with broken blisters soaked in sea salt. Shaken by the storm, he trembled in its aftermath.
While lying on the floor he stripped off his wet clothing, one laborious item at a time. Then he rested, cold and naked, until he trusted himself to stand. He dressed, relishing the feel of dry cloth against his saturated skin. He pulled on a pair of leather boots and wrapped his new woolen cloak around his shoulders.
Kristofer had reheated the pot of fish soup that they didn’t have time to eat earlier. Rydar helped himself to a bowl, gulped it, and then refilled it. He took the second bowl to Grier.
Margoh sat on a low stool in Grier’s cabin looking bored. “What else do you expect me to do?” she asked Rydar when he limped in, bent over. The cabin’s ceiling was too low for him to stand upright.
He looked at the woman curled in the narrow bed, pale in the light of a single candle. “Has she eaten?”
“No.” She pointed at the figure in the bed. “She’s asleep!”
He swung his gaze to her. “Have you?”
“Yes.”
Rydar swallowed the second bowl of soup. It filled his belly with warmth, though he was still hungry. “How is she?”
Margoh shrugged. “She said she was cold.”
Rydar handed Margoh the empty soup bowl and knelt beside Grier’s berth. Even by the flickering light of the cabin’s lone candle he could see that her face was pale and her lips were blue. He laid the backs of his fingers against her cheeks; they felt like cold marble. Though she slept, her muscles twitched randomly in a shivering search for warmth.
“She’s mortal cold.” He stood and swung the cloak from his shoulders and laid it over the tufted blankets already covering her. “If she doesn’t warm, she’ll fall ill. Or worse.”
He sat on the bed and pulled off his boots.
“What are you doing?” Margoh squeaked.
“Warming her.”
“How?”
“How do you think?” He climbed over Grier, wincing when he put weight on his sore leg. He squeezed himself between her and the wall.
Margoh looked frantic. “That’s not proper!” she cried.
Rydar snorted. “I’d rather save her life than her reputation; especially in the eyes of a trio of young fishermen she’ll naught see again in her lifetime.”
Margoh straightened on her stool. “What about in my eyes?”
“If it’s that important to you, you may stay.” He lifted the edge of the blankets and slid under them. “There’s room on the floor.”
Margoh jumped to her feet. “You go too far, sir!” she spat.
“Then might you close the door? The night air is not helpful.”
Margoh slammed the cabin portal as hard as the wet leather hinges would allow. The puny candle flame wavered in her wake.
Rydar curved around Grier; she was so cold it felt like lying in snow. What warmth his body held left him as he absorbed her chill. He pressed his chest against her back. His thighs snugged under her arse and his knees bent behind her knees. He draped his arm over her and tucked his fist under her chin. Her wet hair was twisted above her head and splayed over the pillow. Rydar rested his face against the nape of her neck.
In increments, she warmed.
And as she thawed, she melted into him.
While Rydar had bedded plenty of women in his life, he’d never kept one overnight. Grier’s soft form fit perfectly against his and filled him with such contentment as he had never known. This was so right; this was where she belonged. Grier’s presence in his arms soothed his soul as it soothed his body. She healed him with her touch. He was safe, restored.
He must find a way to keep her here, whatever that required.
The first obstacle was already passed: Grier had left Durness.
All used up, Rydar finally allowed himself to sleep.
***
Grier dreamt she was warm.
She stood on the bluff by Durness castle. There was no sound from the waves, no breeze teasing her hair. Intense summer sunshine wrapped around her shoulders and flowed down the back of her legs. The tension of being cold floated away from her and she relaxed. Her skin prickled. The heat was palpable, reassuring. Substantial.
And then, the heat snored.
With a startled cry, Grier churned through the blankets until she sat at the head of the berth, her back pressed flat against the wall. Her pulse pounded with shock. She didn’t remember where she was.
“Grier?” Rydar’s voice was coarse with sleep.
Oh, aye. Boat. Storm. “Rydar?”
The candle had guttered, but the night’s endless sunset lightened the oiled skin that was stretched over the cabin roof’s opening. In the pale glow, Grier could see the outline of Rydar’s long frame under the blankets. He lay on his side, knees bent, facing her.
“Aye?” he croaked.
“What in God’s good name have you done?” Grier gasped. She crossed her arms over her chest.
He propped himself on one elbow. “What?”
“Ye’ve bedded with me!” Her voice verged on hysteria.
He cleared his throat and coughed. “I sleep beside you. Is no’ same.”
“Rydar!” she barked, angry at his word play.
“You too cold, Grier! You shake and you sleep!” he chastised. Then he softened his tone. “You need me. I’m warm.”
“But it’s no’ proper! And everyone must know!” She fought tears, prompted as much by her embarrassment at his presence in her bed as his admission of his care for her.
Rydar snorted. “You care what boys ken? When we are in Norway, they go far away.”
“But… Margoh kens, does she no’?” Grier’s face heated with anger and shame.
“Aye, she kens. I tell her what I do. And why.” Rydar reached for her, fumbling through the covers until he grasped her hand. “I did no’ mean you harm, Grier.”
“What must she think of me?” she whispered. A sharp shiver shook her.
Rydar squeezed her hand. “I no’ care! Now come. You too cold again.” He pulled her toward him.
Grier hesitated, the very reason she wished to lie with him was the same reason she wished not to. Another strong shiver pushed her to inch back under the blankets, seeking his substantial warmth. She turned on her side away from him, tense and alert.
Rydar settled along her again. His head rested on one folded arm and he held her close with the other. He sighed deeply. His breath caught in her hair and wa
rmed the nape of her neck. A blade of pleasure slid along her spine.
“Relax, Grier. I no’ a ‘ruffian’ to you and you sleep.”
Her pride riled, Grier inhaled sharply but swallowed her retort. Rydar was, after all, completely hers if only for this night’s remaining hours. With a slight shift of her weight, she rested against him, easing into his solidity. Daring to take his hand, she laced her fingers with his and nestled them between her breasts.
Grier determined not to sleep; she wanted to feel every inch of his powerful body pressed against hers. Wrapped around hers. For as long as she could. She listened to him breathe, comforted by the slow, steady rhythm of his heart.
A tear rolled off the bridge of her nose and dripped onto her pillow.
July 25, 1354
Grier opened her eyes, angry that she had fallen asleep. She listened but heard nothing; sliding her foot to the other edge of the berth confirmed that she was alone. Had she dreamt Rydar into her bed? No. His cloak still covered her. The memory of his long, lean body pressed against her warmed her in ways that had nothing to do with temperature. She felt his absence as if a part of her was missing.
“Stop such thoughts,” she whispered. She pulled his cloak to her face, unable not to. “He’s no’ interested in you. He slept a night at your side and did no’ even kiss you.”
Grier pushed the covers back and sat up. Her arms were stiff and ached with overuse. When she tried to stand, her abused muscles rebelled. She tottered around the tiny cabin, painfully pulling a dry kirtle over the chemise she slept in. Her leather boots were still wet, so she slid into a pair of wooden clogs.
Grier stumbled out into blinding sunshine. Rydar was high on the mast, retying the sail. She tilted her head back and considered him from under a cupped hand.
“Are you alive?” he called down, laughing.
“Aye. And why would I no’ be?”
“You sleep so hard I must feel you are breathing.” Rydar swung down from his task and stood before her on the deck. “You are hungry?”