Prince and Future... Dad?
Page 19
Tenderly he put a finger to her lips and whispered, “Shh. Wait.” He gestured with a toss of his head toward the three gaping men packed tightly together at the foot of the bed.
“Oh. Sorry…” Shyly she tucked her head against his shoulder again.
Liv? Shy? It was a whole new side of her and it charmed him to his soul. He whispered in her ear, “Don’t be sorry. We’ll talk about it. In detail. Very soon. But now, I need to know…” She lifted her head and he demanded, “Who did this?” She looked away. By the runes, she actually seemed reluctant to say. He took her beneath the chin and made her meet his eyes. “I must know.”
“Finn, he’s just a boy. A confused boy.”
His suspicions were confirmed. “Cauley.”
She babbled on, excusing her kidnapper. “When he heard who I was, he got some wild idea he could earn points with Eveline by getting rid of me. He’s young and hurt and angry and he didn’t think it through. He simply acted, knocking me out, tying me up, bringing me here. But in the end, he couldn’t hurt me.”
He took her face in his hands. “Look at you. Beaten and bloody. How can you say he didn’t hurt you?”
“This was…a cry for help. Oh, Finn. Please. I want you to send him to the Mystics. I want—”
“He’ll pay.”
“No. Don’t hurt him. Promise me.”
“Where is he?”
She stuck out her black-and-blue chin at him. “Finn. I mean it.”
Where had that enchanting shyness gone? He wanted it back—or maybe not. By the tail of the dragon, he didn’t care. Shrill or shy, he loved this woman, any way she chose to be. He grabbed her close again and muttered against her hair, “He hurt you and I’ll have him dead. I’ll see his severed head on a pike.”
“No. Please. Promise me.” She clasped his shoulders and sought his eyes once more. “Promise. Don’t hurt him.”
“Where is he?”
“Promise me.”
When she looked at him that way, what choice did he have? He muttered an oath beneath his breath and turned to his waiting men. “Capture him. Don’t harm him. Bring him to me.” He turned again to his battered, beautiful wife. “Well?”
She pointed at the far tunnel. “Through there. He ran out when he heard you coming.”
The men pounded off.
Liv slumped against him. “Oh, Finn. I hope your men obey you….” He said nothing. Wiser that way. She whispered in a broken voice, “I have missed you. And now that I’ve got you, I am never letting go.” She lifted her poor, bruised mouth to him.
He claimed it in an endless seeking kiss.
“We can’t stay in this hole forever, you know,” he said several minutes later.
She snuggled closer. “Why not? I could get used it—as long as you’re here with me.”
“Very touching.”
She brushed her lips against his throat and tipped her dirty, blood-streaked face up, grinning. “That’s love for you.”
“But I think you should know…”
“What?”
“My sister’s waiting outside.”
She wrinkled her patrician nose. “All the more reason we should stay right here.”
He kissed her forehead. “I promise you, Eveline is…much subdued. She’s ready to apologize.”
“How strange. Is she ill?”
“No. Just very, very ashamed of herself.”
“As well she should be.”
“Don’t hate her too much. She did keep me from learning that you called. But she had nothing at all to do with…this.”
Liv said softly, “I know.”
“And maybe you’d like to get rid of that rope around your ankles?”
She took his face in her hands and planted one more kiss on his mouth—a hard, possessive one. “Okay. Cut me loose.” She dropped to her haunches, levered back and swung her feet out. And then she put her hand to the back of her head. “Whoa. Got a bump here. A big one. It hurts.” She looked around, her bright expression fading. “And you’re right. Even with your sister waiting outside, I think I’d still like to get out of here. For a while there, I was afraid I never would.”
He picked up the knife and cut the rope. Liv sighed. “Oh, that feels good.”
Her ankles were rubbed raw. He couldn’t bear that. He threw the knife down and went to his knees in the dirt. Carefully, gently, he cradled one foot and then the other. He kissed each ankle, pressing his lips against the reddened flesh, wishing a kiss really could heal any wound.
“Ah,” she said, as if his kisses had done exactly that. “Much, much better.”
He looked up into her waiting eyes. “By all the gods, Liv Danelaw, we’re going be so happy…”
Her mouth bloomed in a glowing smile. “Oh, Finn. I know it. I know we are. I understand now. This is the starting point. You and I. We make the future…together.”
He had nothing to add to that. She’d spoken his thoughts exactly. He took his flashlight and blew out the lamp. “Come.”
Hand in hand they went into the tunnel and together they made their way toward the light of day.
Epilogue
Liv’s stalling had given Cauley a substantial head start. The men never caught up with him.
Two days later, he turned himself in.
Finn kept his promise to Liv and sent the boy north under armed escort, into the Black Mountains and beyond, to the Vildelund, where Cauley swore to submit to the tutelage of the Mystics.
Shortly after that, Finn and Liv—and Eveline—left for America. They’d decided to live there. After all, Finn could attend to his investments anywhere. They could pay frequent visits to Gullandria. And Liv had her dreams—dreams Finn meant to help her fulfill. She’d be back at Stanford in the fall.
They found a house not far from the university. It was going to be a challenge, with the baby coming. But they would manage. They had plenty of money, her mother and aunts and grandmother nearby to help out if they needed it. And most important, they had each other and so much love.
Eveline moved in with Ingrid, who had a way with strong-minded young girls. She welcomed another “daughter” in the house. Right away, Eveline’s manners and attitude improved. She adored Ingrid. And she tolerated Hildy, who was tough and uncompromising and sometimes seemed to have eyes in the back of her gray head.
At the end of August, Ingrid threw a party in the backyard. She called it a wedding party—a wedding party for both of her newly married daughters. She said she wanted to make it up, a little anyway, to Liv and Elli, for missing the moment a mother should never miss: the moment when a daughter says her marriage vows.
It was a small gathering—family only. They tried to keep it low-key in hopes that the press wouldn’t get wind of it.
Osrik appeared just before the two brides cut the matching tall white cakes. He’d wanted Liv and Finn to stay in Gullandria. But he was reasonably content with the way things had turned out. At least they were married in the truest sense now. They’d promised to visit him often—and to bring his grandchild.
Later in the afternoon, Elli took him aside and whispered in his ear that she’d been very sick that morning—she’d been sick and then she’d fainted. And yes, the Freyasdahl rash had appeared.
Osrik knew a deep happiness then. So much had been lost. But life did renew itself. He looked across the backyard at his beautiful wife and he wished…
But Ingrid was cool to him, cool and never more than carefully polite.
Well, cool and polite was something, he told himself. A start, and a good one. A huge improvement, in fact, on all the years of bitter hatred.
Perhaps a healing had begun.
His one unmarried daughter stood off to the side. He winked at her.
Brit saluted her dad with her glass of champagne. She was happy for her sisters.
But her thoughts, really, were far away. In Gullandria. On a man she’d never met: the mysterious Prince Eric Greyfell, the man who, essentially, had started all this—
the man her father had been scheming to get one of his daughters to marry.
Brit had been snooping, learning all she could about her lost brothers. Greyfell had been Valbrand’s closest friend. From what she’d been able to learn, they were like brothers: blood-bound, as they said in Gullandria. To be blood-bound meant that they had shared absolute loyalty, each to the other, loyalty until death.
Always, it had been understood that someday Valbrand would take the throne and Eric Greyfell would step into his father’s shoes as Grand Counselor.
When Valbrand disappeared at sea, Eric had set off to find the truth about what had really happened to him. What had Eric learned? Brit wanted to hear it from Eric himself.
Her dad said the prince was in the Vildelund, with the mystics, simple mountainfolk who lived, for the most part, by the old Norse ways. Her sources confirmed that. Greyfell was at home with the Mystics. His father, after all, had been born among them.
Brit set down her glass at the end of the cake table. Time to go. Back to Gullandria. Time to head for the Vildelund. Time to track down the elusive Prince Greyfell and find out exactly what he knew.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6220-5
PRINCE AND FUTURE…DAD?
Copyright © 2003 by Christine Rimmer
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