Sold to the Viking Warrior

by Michelle Styles

  Saying that, Ketil went out of the hall with Beyla bleating at his heels about the unfairness of it all. The hall rapidly emptied after that until only Malcolm, Hring, Sigurd and Liddy were left.

  ‘Liddy?’ Malcolm cried. ‘Shall we go? Fa isn’t going to believe this. You are free with enough gold—’

  ‘Come on, lad,’ Hring said, pointedly taking Malcolm’s arm and leading him away. ‘We are not wanted here.’

  An awkward silence descended once they had gone. Liddy wanted to run to Sigurd and confess her feelings, but the words stuck in her throat. All she could do was stare at him and think how close she had come to losing him.

  ‘Did Malcolm speak the truth—you voluntarily went in a boat?’

  ‘Not only in a boat, but I piloted it as Malcolm tends to take the wrong tack,’ Liddy confirmed, pressing her hands together.

  He took a step closer. ‘Why, Liddy?’

  ‘Because I wanted to ensure justice was done. Because sometimes people are more important than fear.’ She swallowed hard and hoped he’d understand. ‘My share of the gold, it is yours. We made a deal.’

  He stopped and tilted his head to one side. ‘You came because of justice and duty? Because of the bargain we made? I have no need of your gold. Keep it.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Liddy said to the floor. Her heart knocked against her chest. ‘We made a bargain.’

  Sigurd’s face hardened. ‘You are already free, Liddy. There is no need to buy your freedom. That gold only complicates things. It is yours to do what you will with.’

  All the pretty speeches she had practised on the boat vanished from her mind. Had she totally mistaken everything? Had he truly been saying goodbye?

  ‘I thought it was what you wanted.’ She gestured about her. ‘All this. I found the gold to give you your heart’s desire.’

  He crossed the room and gathered her hands within his. ‘My heart’s desire is something else. My heart’s desire cannot be bought with gold or lulled with empty promises. My heart’s desire is true and honest and worth a thousand kingdoms. Her safety means more to me than life itself.’

  ‘Your heart’s desire is a person?’ she breathed.

  He lifted her chin so she looked directly into his eyes. ‘Yes, and until I met you, I thought my heart was locked up tight for fear of losing it. Then you and that dog came into my life and I discovered that my heart had escaped and only wanted one thing—you. I love you, Eilidith. I’d offer you my heart, but you already hold it. You are all I want in the world and no amount of gold or riches would ever change that. I need you in my life. I should have told you this before I forced you to go with Aedan, but I wanted to keep you safe. I wanted to make sure I had something to offer you.’

  Liddy looped her arms about Sigurd. ‘And you are all I want. I don’t care about the riches or the jaarldom, I care about you and being with you. You are the man I love.’

  ‘Truly? You love me? The man who enslaved you?’

  ‘The man who set me free.’ Liddy stroked his cheek with her hand. ‘I had thought my heart died with my children and I lived in a prison of my own making, a hell hole from which I was unwilling to escape, but you brought me back to life. You showed me that life had so much more to offer. Now I know hearts are not small things, but large with a capacity to grow. I love you, Sigurd, and I want to stay with you freely.’

  ‘Good, then you will marry me as soon as possible. My mother was right—true love is worth waiting for and I have found mine.’

  There was a sharp bark and Coll rushed into the room. He put his paws on both of them and nudged them together.

  Liddy laughed. ‘Coll thinks marriage to you is an excellent idea.’

  ‘And you always trust Coll.’

  ‘No, I trust my heart.’

  He bent his head and captured her lips. And after that for a long while there was no need to say anything.

  * * * * *

  If you enjoyed this story, you won’t want to miss

  these other great reads from Michelle Styles

  PAYING THE VIKING’S PRICE

  RETURN OF THE VIKING WARRIOR

  SAVED BY THE VIKING WARRIOR

  TAMING HIS VIKING WOMAN

  SUMMER OF THE VIKING

  Keep reading for an excerpt from THE COWBOY’S CINDERELLA by Carol Arens.

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  Author’s Historical Note

  What do we know about the Vikings in Islay? Surprisingly little. Although many places on Islay in the Western Isles have Viking names, we don’t know much about how the islands were conquered. We do know that they were part of the Viking empire which was ruled from the Isle of Man. Some archaeological evidence, including high-born Viking graves, has been found on Islay.

  Ketil Flatnose, who appears in the opening part of the Laxdalea saga, is supposed to have conquered them, but as with most things from that shadowy era, there are discrepancies in timing. Some of the records refer to a Ketil the White who may or may not be the same Ketil.

  The Laxdalea saga also references the experience of the Irish women taken as slaves and what could happen to their children. Eventually the island hopping would lead the Vikings to Iceland. The Western Isles as well as Ireland proved a rich source of slaves.

  We do know that there was rapidly a mixing of the two cultures. The word galloway refers to half-Gallic, half-Norse, and is a corruption of Gall-Gaedhil. And the great Scottish hero Somerled was actually half-Norse, supposedly with a Gallic father. His name comes from the Norse for summer warrior. As with most of the other conquerors of the island, the Vikings most likely did not leave, but became assimilated into the culture.

  It is best to think of this empire as one dominated by the sea. People and goods travelled by the sea, rather than overland. Islay with its position between mainland Britain and Ireland was ideally placed to profit.

  The question of whether Vikings practised human sacrifice is open for debate. There are several accounts from foreign observers that it happened, but how widespread it was is one of those great unknowns.

  If you are interested in this time period, here are some non-fiction books I found useful when I was writing this book:

  Ferguson, Robert, The Hammer and the Cross A New History of the Vikings (2010 Penguin Books, London)

  Jesch, Judith, Women in the Viking Age (1991 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, Suffolk)

  Magnusson, Magnus KBE, The Vikings (2003 The History Press, Stroud, Gloucestershire)

  Marsden, John, Somerled and the Emergence of Gaelic Scotland (2000 Tuckwell Press Ltd, Edinburgh)

  Oliver, Neil, Vikings a History (2012 Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

  Parker, Philip, The Northmen’s Fury: A History of the Viking World (2014 Jonathan Cape, London)

  Roesdahl, Else, The Vikings, Revised edition translated by Susan Margeson and Kirsten Williams (1998 Penguin Books, London)

  Williams, Gareth, ed. Vikings: Life and Legend (2014 British Museum Press, London)

  We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin Historical.

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  The Cowboy’s Cinderella

  by Carol Arens

  Chapter One

  Coulson, Montana, June 1882

  “Gull-durned female traps!”

  Ivy Magee watched three women dressed in all manner of frippery stroll across the gangplank of the River Queen.

  Leaning over the rail of the upper, hurricane deck, she observed their slow, sashaying mosey from the boat to shore.

  With all the fussy petticoats, there wasn’t room for all of them to walk side by side. They were trying, though, arms linked and giggling. One wrong step and someone would tumble headlong into the river.

  While the image playing in her mind presented a humorous picture—with flailing legs getting all tangled up in ruffles, elegant hair dripping water and mud weeds—Ivy could only pity the woman who would have to launder the muck from the clothes. Sure as shootin’ wasn’t going to be those fancy ladies.

  Wasn’t going to be Ivy, either.

  Just because she was a female didn’t make her honor bound to clean up after folks. Uncle Patrick was training her to pilot the River Queen. She was happy as a fish in deep water to be his “cub.”

  For the life of her, Ivy couldn’t figure the female species out.

  Gosh all-mighty! Why would a soul want to stuff her body into whale bones and yards of heavy cloth that would only make her sweat and stumble? If she guessed right, the whole of female creation could not breathe.

  “Gull-durned female duds...worst kind of a trap,” she repeated, this time with a dash of scorn.

  Sometimes she thought her fellow sex were touched in the head to willingly—even happily—submit to such abuse.

  Once again, she was grateful for the soft cotton shirt she wore, for the durable denim pants. Even the belt that held her trousers up was just a strip of red cloth. Its flower print and the bow she fastened it with was all the adornment she needed.

  The oldest of the three women, the one walking in the middle, lost her balance when the plank heaved with the current. The young ones tried to set her to rights but they all listed toward the water.

  Just in time, young Tom, a deckhand, dashed across the plank to help them rebalance.

  Ivy had grown up on this boat. In her twenty-two years, she’d seen that not all of the ladies maneuvering the plank were so lucky. Last fall, one had gone over and washed up half a mile downriver. A couple of roustabouts fished her out a second before her waterlogged skirts dragged her to the Great Beyond.

  These ladies were luckier than some. At least they might be, were they not destined for a life of selling their bodies in this wicked town.

  Ivy was glad the boat would dock here only one night before turning east toward respectable towns...more profitable ones, too.

  The River Queen was unique among the boats that did business along the Missouri. Most of them were workhorses, transporting goods and passengers.

  But Patrick Malone, her uncle and the man who had raised her, had a different vision for his boat. The River Queen did transport people and their goods, but it was also a high-class gambling boat.

  Like Ivy, Uncle Patrick had spent his life on a riverboat, but a grand one on the Mississippi.

  Oh, the stories he loved to tell of a night, when the after watch took over and the boat grew quiet. He’d spend hours spinning yarns about the glory of the old days when floating palaces plied that great and perilous river.

  He’d started as an apprentice, a cub. He’d gone on to become the highly respected pilot of the Jewel of the Mississippi.

  The tales he’d spun about that huge boat left her breathless. The glitter of crystal chandeliers, the orchestra playing and lots of folks becoming instantly rich, then just as fast, poor again...it was as though she’d seen it all herself.

  The events she witnessed through his eyes had been beyond grand, the gentlemen and the ladies all rich and refined, the firemen and roustabouts not refined but strong as bulls, their mighty muscles glistening with sweat in the reflected heat of the fire that kept the floating palaces moving.

  Ivy’s favorite stories involved the river pilots, whose uncanny intuition sensed how the river changed, noticed every ripple in the current that might foretell disaster, could see below the water in their mind’s eye, even on a pitch-dark night.

  Lives depended upon their knowing when and where the riverbed shifted. If a pilot made a mistake, failed to sense sudden changes below the water, tragedies occurred.

  Uncle Patrick remembered many such events. But none of them were of his making.

  Even as a tot, no more than two years old, Ivy used to sit at her uncle’s feet and listen to him spin his magical stories, fascinated even though she didn’t understand much of what he said.

  By the time she was four, she knew that she wanted to be a pilot, just like Uncle Patrick.

  But time was running out for riverboats. Her uncle expounded on this very subject every time he saw her becoming breathless with excitement over piloting a boat.

  The railroad had done in the Mississippi years ago. It would do in the Missouri as well.

  Just last night she had argued with him over it.

  To her way of thinking, yes, freight hauling and transporting folks would give way to train travel, but gambling would not. Folks were always in a sure-fired hurry to lose their money and there was romance in doing it on a steamboat.

  But Uncle Patrick believed even this recreation would end.

  She sure did hope he was wrong because she was set on being a pilot.

  “The ladies invited me to the Sullied Gully tonight, me being their hero and all.” Young Tom settled beside her at the rail.

  “My uncle will have your hide, Tom.” And he would. “He promised your ma he’d keep you in hand.”

  “I’m of an age.” Tom grinned at her. Sunshine touched his nose, dotting it with fresh freckles.

  “An age for what, you young fool?”

  “Women.” Just saying the word made him blush.

  “Wait until you grow up a bit for that.” Ivy knocked the cap from his hair with a flick of her fingers. “There’s one of our passengers down there on her knees. Looks like she tripped over her fool skirt. I don’t think she’s a lady of the night, though. See if you can find her a safe place to stay.”

  Tom pushed away from the rail. “Sure won’t miss that noisy green bird of hers.”

  She watched him cross the deck, disappear down the stairs then reappear on the stage plank.

  He was carrying the woman’s trunk across his shoulders. She indicated a spot on the ground for him to set it down. It looked like she handed Tom some money for his effort.

  “Gosh almighty.” She sighed. “Uncle Patrick will tan his hide if he spends it at the Sullied Gully.”

  All of a sudden her hat shifted, tipping toward her nose. She caught the small white mouse that slid from the brim.

  “You little varmint, what’s waking you so early? Sun’s not even set yet.” Ivy fished a peanut from her pocket and gave it to the mouse.

  It sat on her shoulder nibbling the treat. After a moment she tucked the furry creature back into the special pouch under a large satin flower that
was attached to the brim of her hat.

  “Go back to sleep until dark. It’ll be Hades own chaos if a passenger sees you.”

  To her relief, the mouse snuggled into his space and became still.

  Not even Uncle Patrick knew that her best friend was a rodent.

  * * *

  Moonlight reflected off the liquid face of the Missouri River.

  From the cabin deck of the docked River Queen, Travis Murphy watched the sparkling ripples gliding past, not in a straight line, but with the twisting tug of the current.

  The sight kept him mesmerized, since at the moment, his life resembled those twisting ripples. It sure wasn’t traveling the straight line that he hoped this journey would take him on.

  The future of the Lucky Clover Ranch depended upon him finding Miss Eleanor Magee. But it seemed the harder he searched the more twisted the trail became, the pursuit more urgent.

  At one point, he’d nearly caught up with the woman, but his horse had come up lame. It had taken some time for the poor creature to heal properly.

  That delay had been frustrating, but he’d finally made it to Coulson, a day ahead of the steamboat.

  Now, here he was, the boat finally arrived, but he sure didn’t see anyone who resembled the woman’s twin sister, Agatha.

  Travis swatted a moth away from his face. The determined insect seemed intent upon incinerating itself on the lamp hanging over his head.

  Where the blazes could Eleanor Magee be?

  Hell, he’d only learned of Eleanor’s existence when his boss, the man he loved as much as he remembered loving his own father, confessed on his deathbed that he had another daughter.

  That revelation had nearly kicked Travis to his knees. He’d always felt like a member of the family, believed he’d known everything about them.

  When, at six years old, his parents had been put in the grave, Travis had wanted to leap into the hole with them. But Foster Magee had been there, his big hand pulling him back from the shadow of death. He’d taken him to the big house and raised him as his own.