Her lips were dry and parched. She could not open them to speak.
“Irish,” he said softly, “you will rise. And you will know from this day forth the pain that you cause others. I cannot kill you, as my men lay dead, but I will wield a sword of steel. Perhaps the injustice was mine. Had I blistered your seat the night of our marriage, you might have understood your hate and treachery would truly not be tolerated. But that injustice will not come again.”
She could hear him, but only vaguely, and all she could think was that she had never really known him. He would grant her no doubt, give her no chance to explain, and she couldn’t stand. She couldn’t even open her eyes, or fight the darkness. She could only pray that she didn’t heap further indignity upon herself by turning into the dirt to lose the meager contents of her stomach.
“Stand, my lady. I know you well. You have the agility of a cat.”
Erin noted dimly that the swordpoint left her flesh. She felt the earth seem to tremble beneath her, but still she couldn’t open her eyes. Another horse is coming, she thought vaguely.
“What do you do here, Druid?” Erin heard Olaf demand furiously.
“I have come to stop you, Lord of the Wolves!” Mergwin called out, dismounting from his horse. The evil he had felt was afoot, the evil that had begun with the shadow upon the moon. He had seen but he had not seen enough.
“Druid, I deal with a traitor who cost lives. Irish lives as well as Norse.”
“You must stop this, quickly!” Mergwin demanded, coming to the Norwegian king.
Olaf looked at him, shielding the agony in his features with rigid control. “She came against us, Druid. I cannot stop this.” She had come against him, wishing his death. All the long nights he had dreamed of her, remembered the soft feel of her skin, the web of blue-ebony hair that covered his shoulders, entrapping him in her sensuality, in her innocence, in her scent. Making all others dim in comparison, haunting his memory, robbing him of sleep as he ached for a glance of emerald eyes embracing his with deepest, misted seduction as he brought himself between the silken prison of her thighs. It had all been lies, even when she came to him, especially when she came to him.… Trickery. Deceit. She had longed only for his death.
“You are wrong, you have to be wrong—”
“There are twelve dead men out there who can no longer tell you that I am not wrong.”
“Keep this up, and you will kill her.”
“Nay, Druid, I do not seek her death.”
They both broke off as Erin moaned softly. Mergwin vaguely noticed that the Norseman’s nails crawled into his own palms with such force that they split the flesh and drew blood.
Mergwin pounded both fists against Olaf’s chest and glared like a madman into the cool Nordic eyes of the Lord of Dubhlain. “You must let me tend her. She is with child!”
Olaf raised his arched brows in surprise, then glared at the Druid with naked suspicion and—a very unusual characteristic—uncertainty.
“How can you know that, Druid? And if you can see so damn much, why didn’t you foretell this morning? Why didn’t you spare us all—”
“I am not a prophet. I see only what I am allowed. But I tell you, King of Fools, you will kill your own heir—”
Erin had understood little. The world had begun to swirl. She tried to move, but nausea overwhelmed her, and she was wretchedly sick, too sick to care, too sick to feel Mergwin’s gentle touch as he ripped the sleeve of his robe to gently clean her face.
Suddenly she felt arms around her. She wanted to fight the touch, but she was powerless. She tried to open her eyes, and her lashes fluttered. She saw blue. Blue with no gentleness, blue that still condemned. Her eyes closed again and she lay limp in the strong arms that carried her as if she weighed no more than a bird.
She was teetering between consciousness and a world of blackness. She wanted the blackness. It took away the pain of her limbs, it took away the terror of reality. But it was not to be hers.
She was set down beneath a shading oak and her eyes finally flew open. He stood towering over her again, touching her this time, his fingers biting into her shoulders. His features were tense and rigid, his bronze flesh drawn tightly over the chiseled bone structure. His lips were pulled into a thin grim line. “Is it true?”
Was what true? She didn’t know what he was talking about, and the world was spinning viciously, even the fury of his countenance seemed to swim in and out of focus.
He shook her. “Are you with child?”
Her eyes widened. How could he know?
“Are you?”
She could bring no words to her parched lips. She closed her eyes and nodded. The world still swam, as the pain eased, even the grate of his words was easing. The world was slipping away.
He released her. Someone else was with them. Someone with old and gnarled but gentle fingers. Someone touching her, forcing her to drink a sweet and soothing potion.…
She opened her eyes. The curl of a smile played about her lips. “Mergwin,” she breathed in a whisper.
He nodded, but his eyes in the deep sockets of his wrinkled and weathered face were grave.
It didn’t matter. She was in his hands. Her eyes flickered and closed again. From somewhere, very far off, she heard Olaf’s voice again.
“Thank whatever gods you wish, my lady, that you carry my son. You will be reprieved until five months hence. At which point you will find yourself beaten black and blue for risking that life which is mine in your vicious quest for revenge.”
She wanted to strike him, to curse him, to rake his eyes from his head with her nails. But she had no will, no strength to speak against him, in defense of herself. Mergwin’s potion held her tongue and she gave herself up to the darkness.
There were but ten men still living he could call his own. Most of the mercenaries who had called him leader were corpses. And yet for Friggid the Bowlegs, the encounter had been a macabre victory.
The combined Irish and Norse troops of Olaf the White quit the cliffs of the beach just minutes before Friggid left his cave of retreat to stare after the departing army.
He had inadvertently achieved far more than a rift in the Norse and Irish alliance, and his laughter echoed with hoofbeats of the horses that retreated now in the distance. He had pitted Irish wife against Norse husband. The revered Golden Warrioress had been none other than the Wolf’s mate, the daughter of the High Irish King.
Friggid’s laughter faded as he sank to the ground in thought. He had dug a sword deeply into the side of the Wolf. A Viking should have slain male or female, stranger, wife, or sister, for such an act of treachery. Olaf had dealt with his offending bride lightly. It was quite possible the Wolf cared far more for his lovely mate than the warrior would care to admit. Olaf was known to be a man of deep passions, capable of thundering rages, ice-cold judgment, searing love and loyalty. The gods had long ago decreed that all men should have a weakness. Friggid now believed he knew what it was.
He could bide his time, return to his homeland to reinforce his strength, to watch … and wait … and plan carefully. He could never hope to equal the power of the Wolf. But the man could be brought down. The Irish princess could be used again even to a greater advantage.
Friggid would see to it that the agonized howl of the Wolf would echo across the land again.
CHAPTER
19
There was very little she remembered about the trip home. Images slipped in and out of her mind. The color of the sky, the blinding dazzle of the sun when she occasionally opened her eyes, only to close them again and find solace in the blackness. I’m drugged, of course, she thought vaguely. Mergwin, with his potions, could ease the pain of the flesh and the spirit with his secret concoctions of dried herbs.
There was a definite difference when she emerged from the final spell of darkness. She was no longer being jostled roughly along in the hard, coarse litter. She rested on something soft, which smelled of the clean air and a faint fragrance o
f summer roses. The sheets were cool beneath her fingers, and her head rested on a down pillow. She fluttered her lashes to see the carved arch above the bed, the fine silk draperies tied about the carved posts.
She was home, in her own bed. But it wasn’t her bed, and it wasn’t her home. That she had come to think so was ludicrous. It was the home of the Wolf, the conqueror, the king of Dubhlain. He had merely been gone so long that she had come to think of it as hers. She had slept in the broad bed alone so many nights, nights when she remembered his touch, the unique, compelling strength of his features, the sweet tempest and serenity of surrender to his passions.
She closed her eyes again. Lying in this bed, it was possible to believe that she had never ridden from Dubhlain. Dear God, why had she ever left? How had she been such a fool? It was incredible to believe that she had simply mistaken the group of men. They had seemed to expect her. But how?
Something had been wrong, because she wasn’t a fool. She was the daughter of Aed Finnlaith, a king wise in the ways of warfare and men. Something had been afoot, but Olaf would never believe that, because she had, in fact, ridden at the head of a group of men against him.
I did nothing wrong! her heart cried out. I am guilty of caring, of loving only. Even as I would never have ridden against my own father, she thought bitterly, I would have never ridden against Olaf.
She knew now how completely, how pathetically, she loved him, and that realization cut through her with bitter, bitter pain. Love was a bitter gall to swallow. One could be strong without it, immune to pain, powerful against any abuse of the flesh because the soul could not be touched. But now she was vulnerable. His mere words were more a slashing stab than the keenest blade. He would not even listen to her protestations of innocence. He had already condemned her as a traitor.
Then suddenly she knew he was in the room with her. She hadn’t twisted her head, opened her eyes, or heard the slightest rustle of a sound. But he was there, watching her. She could feel the Nordic drifts encompassing her from the icy depths of his eyes.
I will beg that he listen no longer, she promised herself. He mustn’t know the power he has to wound me, for I will be lost. I am a princess of Tara, the daughter of the greatest king ever to rule the Irish.
She opened her eyes and twisted her head to meet his stare. She found him instinctively. He stood by the shuttered window overlooking the courtyard. He was in full dress, resplendent in crimson and black, naturally arrogant in stance, his gold-brooched mantle flowing smoothly over the still breadth of his shoulders.
She was at an immediate disadvantage, aware that her hair was in tangled dishevelment, that her bare toes were protruding from beneath the hem of the sheer white linen gown someone had garbed her in.
She sat up, warily keeping her eyes on him, tucking her toes beneath her gown. She didn’t like the cool, still look of him. His moments of greatest calm and smoothest composure were definitely his most deadly. His lowest tones were the most dangerous.
It had been so long since he had ridden away. She faced a stranger again, yet a stranger she had come to know so well.
“So,” he said softly, “you have wakened. And you look quite refreshed.” He turned fully from the window, crossing his arms over his chest, bracing a leg against a stool. “We can talk.”
“Talk? Now, my lord?” She laughed bitterly. “You do not wish to hear me. I have nothing to say to you.”
“I suggest you come up with something.”
Determined to parry his every thrust with a collected calm to match his own, she ignored the fluttering of her heart. “I attempted to explain everything to you. You chose to ignore me and mete out punishment without any thought of justice or law. You have condemned me, and I will never forget.…” How he shackled me, dragged me along with no mercy, she thought to herself, just as I had done to him that long ago day near Carlingford Lough.
“How cruelly I treated you, madam? I’m sure you feel nothing. I took great care to see that you suffered no permanent injury. You did naught but learn a well-needed lesson in justice and humility.”
“Lesson! You have no right to—”
“I have every right! I received all rights when I married you!” Frustration knotted within her to become fury. How dearly she wished that she could shake him, pummel the insolent contempt from his granite features … and yet how she wished to touch him, to feel the smooth ripple of his muscles tensing beneath her fingers, bury her face against his neck, inhale the clean, male scent of him.
Her fingers clenched into the palms of her hands and when she spoke it was in a scathing whisper. “You are an idiot, king of fools! Hailed as a wise and merciful man—yet you do not even seek the truth! If you will not listen to me, Viking, seek out your own logic! What if I did wish you dead, lord husband? I would find a better way than risking the lives of my own brothers, father, and cousin!”
His brow lifted slightly. Other than that, he showed no sign of belief or disbelief. “Erin, you are aware that I no longer rode with your father.”
“I know now, aye, because you’ve told me!”
“You are asking me to believe that you just happened to stumble across the outlaws rather than the Irishmen of Meath?”
“Yes.”
He kept staring at her and Erin felt that she had to say more. “They were Irish, you see. I believed the outlaws to be Danish or Norse—”
“You have finally hit upon something that I do believe—that you would assume all outlaws to be Viking rather than Irish. And yet I tell you this, Erin. You claim that you met Irish. You did not. The dead men found upon the cliffs and beach were more Viking than Irish.”
Erin’s breath caught in her throat. “No, they couldn’t have been.”
“But they were.”
She felt as if a stifling band of steel were twisting around her. “But they greeted me in Irish, they wore the leather aprons of the Irish—they spoke of Meath, and the king of Meath is an ally of my father—”
He interrupted her with a snort of disgust. “Erin, you insult my intelligence. You ask me to believe in gross stupidity, when I know, dear wife, that you have the cunning of a fox.”
He left his place across the room to stalk her slowly, holding her eyes as he lowered himself beside her. “You have threatened me with torture, death, hell, and damnation since we have met, Princess. On the night of our marriage you intended to kill me. And then again I find myself attacked by you, but I am supposed to believe you meant others to be killed. There were a few Irish men in with the scurvy low bloods who attacked. But I do not believe you are too particular on the nationality of the men you use against me. And how simple to lead! How well your counter-egos mesh! The famed Golden Warrioress—and Princess Erin of Tara, beautiful daughter of Aed, wed to a despised Viking! You must have been in great spirits, my wife, while planning on your widowhood.”
“You are wrong!” Erin spat out, feeling a trembling begin within her. He had once been gentle; even in anger, he had seldom been cruel. But now he despised her.
“What would you believe?”
A trembling that she could not control came to her lips. She had to blink to keep the tears that stung her lids from falling. “You could trust me,” she lashed out.
“Trust you? Were you bound and gagged, Irish, I would not trust you. My back has been threatened one time too many.”
“You have no intention of listening to a word I say,” she breathed out harshly, grasping her down pillow with its finely embroidered linen case to her chest as if it could act as a barrier against him. “Think what you like then, and leave me be.”
He reached for the pillow and ripped it from her. “Oh no, Irish! We are far from finished with this discussion. I want to hear more about this. I am enjoying this story. How, if you did not have council with these outlaws, did you hear of any of this?”
“Through Sigurd! I went down for ale … I was thirsty. I heard him speaking with the captain of the guards.”
“I hav
e spoken with Sigurd. He says he never told you anything. He was afraid you would be anxious. Amusing, isn’t it?”
“Sigurd did not see me,” Erin replied impatiently, wondering if he was listening to her at all. “I waited in the stairwell because I didn’t know what I should do.”
She was startled when he rose, turning his back to her as he rubbed his beard and paced several steps away. “When do you expect the child?”
A trembling set up inside of her again as she realized the course of his questioning. “Surely you can count, my lord—”
He spun back to face her. “Yes,” he said dryly, “I can.”
“You know that you are my child’s father.”
“What I know, Erin, is that you would do anything to spite me. But yes, I do believe you carry my child. You were watched meticulously while I was away. You are lucky, Princess, that your dreams of vengeance became more devious. Without the child, you would be in the dungeon, and had you not chosen to barter yourself on that bed to deceive me into trust—”
“Watched meticulously … bartered … you Viking bastard! You do not own me!” Erin lost all thought of sanity or control. She came at him with a snarl, as if catapulted from the bed, hurling herself at him like a desperate wild creature, her nails raking, her fists pummeling.
He was stunned by the impact and strength of the attack coming from his wife’s slim body. He thought fleetingly that it was no wonder even men such as her stalwart brothers had found her difficult to best in swordplay. His own anger and the simple superiority of having spent half his days in battle had given him the easy victory over her on the cliff when he faced the warrioress, but now, taken off guard, he was startled to discover that with fists alone she was pelting him many punishing blows.
“Enough!” he yelled, and using a sinewed thigh to cut between her legs, he sent her off balance so that he could catch her falling form in his arms.
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