“Lind Island, ASAP,” his cousin Oswain said with barely throttled excitement. Oswain was one of the Lord Lindorm’s current sword bearers. This duty fell to all Lindorms in turn as they entered manhood. Lars had done his service in his twenties.
“At once,” Lars answered. He waited.
“You are returning to Lind Island immediately,” confirmed Oswain crisply.
“That is correct. I will leave for Lind Island within the hour.” They hung up simultaneously.
Lars began to pack his duffel. It did not take him long. He tried to make himself care that his career was apparently in tatters. The moment the Swedish Royal Navy had responded to the Russians’ complaints that their spy sub had been destroyed, with an official inquiry, Lars had foreseen he was to be the scapegoat for the operation. The damage was of course inconsistent with explosives. The Russian submarine was in violation of every treaty and international law. But still the inquiry had been ordered.
His six months of excruciatingly careful surveillance, which had culminated in the successful disabling of the spy sub, was to be sanctioned. In all probability, he would lose his commission and such purpose as his life now held. For months, the government had been mobilizing the Army and the Navy in one breath, and caving to Putin in the other. Politics.
Of course, it didn’t take a genius to see the hand of the Eldest behind his present suspension. Lord Lindorm had some task or the other that he needed Lars to undertake. Lars wished he could care about this new mission. Just as he wished he could care about the outcome of the inquiry. But these days, he got through life by putting one foot in front of the other. Whatever it was that Lord Lindorm needed, Lars would plod through that too. It was all unspeakably tedious. But he had been reared to do his duty and he would.
His launch was waiting for him in its berth at the Karlskrona Marina. And so was his cousin Örlogskapten Theodor Lindorm.
“You too?” he greeted Theo.
He and Theo were about the same age, had entered the Navy together, and served in the same unit, but Theo had continued to be promoted and decorated, while Lars’ career had stalled under the crushing weight of his grief.
Theo nodded. “I have two months’ special furlough.” His booming voice was jovial.
So it was something big. It would have to be for Uncle Thor to send for both Lars and Theodor at the same time. “I am suspended, pending the investigation of Russian sub found in Swedish waters,” he informed Theo dryly.
“I’m sorry to hear that. I heard the Russians are claiming the crew was merely lost!” Theo clapped his cousin on the back cheerfully. “Permission to come aboard, Kapten.”
“Granted.” Lars tried to imitate his cousin’s sunny demeanor. By the way Theo’s lips flattened, he had not fooled his best friend.
As they puttered away from the marina and set their course out to sea, Lars took the wheel. This trip to Lind Island was a familiar one. He and Theo were both so used to the Baltic Sea that they barely glanced at the charts or the navigation screen as they headed towards the Gulf of Bothnia where Lind Island was located. Neither one commented on their summons. Whatever was happening had to be so deadly secret that the risk of being overheard could not be hazarded.
“What’s new with you?” Lars asked Theo instead. They had grown up together, as close as brothers, but Theo had been deployed since the Russians had been detected in the Baltic, and they had not met since Christina’s wedding.
“Lady Drake sent me the profile of another lovely young woman.” Theo leaned against the railing that surrounded the control panel of the launch. His long beard danced as his lips twisted.
Lars eased the throttle back and guided his vessel around a row of buoys. “What’s she like?” he asked.
Theo sighed. “She’s pretty enough, but unless it’s my imagination, Lady Drake’s young virgins get younger and younger every year.” He grimaced. “I agreed to meet her. Just because I didn’t feel anything when I looked at a photograph doesn’t mean she’s not my fated mate. But I’m too old for all this endless matchmaking.”
Lars nodded. “Lady Drake is after me too,” he said wryly. “I keep telling her it’s too soon, and she just sends me another profile. She seems to think that because she approved my match with Annalise, that she knows what I want in a wife.”
“Four years is a very long time to grieve, cousin.” Theo’s voice was sympathetic. “I can’t begin to imagine what losing your wife was like. But I know Annalise wouldn’t have wanted you to remain unwed and miserable for the rest of your life.”
Lars kept his voice indifferent. “It doesn’t feel like four years. It feels like four days. I still dream about her – and the baby. And every time it’s just as bad. How the hell could I offer marriage to some sweet young thing, when I’m not over the death of my first wife?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Theo. “Dragons are supposed to be married for life. Your fated mate is not supposed to die in her thirties.”
A vision of Annalise’s laughing face floated in front of Lars. In his memory, his beautiful wife was always laughing. Happy in her pregnancy. Happy in their love. Happy in her career as a doctor. Sometimes he could almost believe that when he opened the door of the home they had shared she would be waiting for him, big bellied and joyful. How the devil could so much life and promise have been extinguished in a single night?
“Aneurysms happen,” Lars said curtly. “I just never thought they happened to dragonesses.” His remark was unanswerable, and he wasn’t surprised that Theo didn’t attempt a reply.
Annalise’s colleagues had all assured him that she had died peacefully and quickly. Possibly she had gone to bed with a headache and fallen asleep without knowing her brain was bleeding. Even if he had been home, he could have done nothing. Neither knowing that she had an aneurysm, nor knowing that her pregnancy had put an intolerable strain on it, would have helped. Given its position, no surgery could possibly have saved her.
But what her friends did not know, was that had Lars been home he could have saved her. He could have helped her to take dragon and heal herself. Instead, he had been patrolling the North Sea while his mate and their unborn child died alone. Was his career really more important than his fated mate and child? What kind of dragon let his wife die alone in agony?
CHAPTER FIVE
September
Nicole waited outside the elaborate wrought-iron school gates with the other mothers. This school was the best one in Santa Rosa, and Tia Evita had insisted that Matteo attend it. He had a few friends – mostly schoolyard friends – even those mothers who tolerated the idea of their child playing and learning with a boy they believed was a bastard, drew the line at permitting him into their houses. Like his mother, Matteo lived on the fringes of Santa Rosa society.
A few, a very few, women greeted her and engaged in small talk. Most of the matrons kept their distance. They had long ago decided that she had been sent to Santa Rosa to bear her illegitimate child. Alberto’s recent rumor mongering had stirred up their resentment again. Recently, she had been asked more than once when she planned to return to the United States.
Her very presence in Santa Rosa offended many. People thought that she was little better than a whore. Eight years of sober living had not convinced them that she was no vixen. Alberto might have the weight of public opinion behind him if he went to court to contest Tia’s will. Her wishes might be set aside if they offended the community.
When Nicole had left her luxurious prison in Felipe’s Buenos Aires apartment, she had not realized just how old her mother’s great-aunts were. If she had, she would never have dared to come to Santa Rosa del Pampas. Which would have been a great shame. Tia Evita and Tia Luisa had welcomed her and given her the best home she’d had since her mother’s death. They had been kindness itself, and she had grown to love them dearly. When women in their nineties died after a life well lived, it was not a tragedy. Nonetheless, she grieved.
Felipe had never found her. At
sixteen she had thought it was because she had outfoxed him. She had reasoned that he didn’t know about her aunts in the rural village of Santa Rosa del Pampas. And she had thought that changing her name to Estevan Y Garcia, would put him off the trail if he somehow found her. But of course using her mother’s maiden name in combination with one of the most common Spanish surnames was no disguise at all, let alone a clever one.
All the same, Felipe had never come after her. Perhaps he had not bothered to look for her. His pretense of besotted affection had vanished within hours of their marriage. Nicole was not sure if this was because, once she was alone in a strange city with no one to turn to – as if Stan would have protected her – Felipe no longer had to be charming. Or if he had lost all interest in her teenaged self. He was after all considerably older than she was.
It had taken her three months to realize that, on those frequent occasions when Felipe went away, there was nothing keeping her in the Buenos Aires apartment. All she had to do was walk out and disappear. The hardest part had been scraping up the bus fare. But Felipe was careless. He emptied his pockets when he came in. Nicole had stealthily begun to help herself to part of the money he dumped on the dresser. Her stash had grown faster once she found the vase where the housekeeper had been storing Felipe’s coins for years.
It took weeks to gather sufficient pesos to pay for a single one-way fare to her aunts’ home. But she had managed it. One morning, she had left the apartment as though she was doing nothing more exciting than going for a walk. She taken nothing with her but the purse she usually carried. It had contained precious little besides her stolen funds. Felipe had taken her passport before they were married. She had no identification of any kind except for the ornate certificate that recorded their marriage.
It had taken almost every peso she had scrounged. She had not been able to afford the expensive air-conditioned express bus. She’d had to settle for one of the overcrowded, lurching minibuses that the peasants used to get to market. It had bumped its slow and tedious way from Buenos Aires to Santa Rosa del Pampas. But when she reached her destination, the first person she had spoken to had directed her to the Villa Mendoza and Las Señoritas Bernal.
She would never forget the pleasure with which those old women had welcomed their strange great-niece from America. They had exclaimed endlessly over her resemblance to their sister. Nicole had never known her great-grandmother. Teresa Bernal Estevan had died before Nicole’s birth.
Her story had horrified the aunts. They had examined her marriage certificate and exclaimed over it. They had offered her refuge, but had plainly expected her husband to come after Nicole and demand that she return to Buenos Aires. They had agreed that she could change her name from Balcazar Mendez to Estevan y Garcia. And they had told their curious neighbors that, after a brief marriage, a tragic accident had left their great-grand-niece a penniless widow. Nicole would now be living with them.
The upright, respectable sisters had not been believed. Their neighbors decided that Nicole had been sent to this rural village because she was an unwed mother. They had smiled to Tia Evita and Luisa’s faces, and gossiped behind their backs. Nicole knew she and Matteo had been tolerated because of the enormous respect in which the elderly Bernal sisters were held. Unfortunately, she no longer had their decent black skirts to hide behind.
Once again, Nicole pretended that she didn’t notice the way Señora Johnston drifted away from her contaminating presence to chat with her bosom buddy Señora Mandelbaum. The school bell rang and two lines of white-coated youngsters streamed out from the boys’ and girls’ doors. Like all Argentinian children they wore buttoned white smocks over their school uniforms. They were quiet and orderly until they reached the gate. But as soon as the school handyman opened it they erupted into clamor and chatter.
“Are we going to the library?” demanded Matt as soon as he reached Nicole’s side.
Nicole sighed. She missed the days when Matt would run and hug her hard and hold his face up for her kiss. But at seven, her little boy had decided he was too old to embrace his mother in public.
“It’s Tuesday, isn’t it?” Nicole nodded to the three women she had been standing beside and she and Matt turned their steps towards the town plaza and the modern library that had been built on one corner.
They looked forward to these after-school outings. The Villa Mendoza boasted no electronics whatsoever. This was partly because an Internet connection was expensive, and partially because Nicole had had an obsessive fear of being traced electronically by Felipe. For Matt, whose friends had cell phones, Wi-Fi, Game Boys, and the whole range of modern communications, the primitive nature of life in the Villa Mendoza was a cruel burden only lifted by frequent trips to the public library.
“Eduardo has Wii,” Matteo confided breathlessly. “He got it for his birthday.” Naturally, Eduardo Mandelbaum had not invited Matteo to his birthday party.
“Lucky Eduardo,” Nicole returned cheerfully. “You will have to make do with playing with your cars in the courtyard.” Even if she had the money to buy the expensive computer game, she didn’t think their ancient television was capable of interfacing with it.
“Why did Tia Evita die?” Matteo asked instead of nagging.
Nicole had answered this question a hundred times in the last six weeks. It had taken some time, but she had finally worked out that what her son was really asking was ‘Are you going to die too?’ She reached for his hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. “Tia Evita was very old, Matt. She just wore out. I miss her too.”
“I wish she was still at home.” Matt kicked a stone.
“So do I. It’s okay to miss her. When the people we love die, we get sad. That’s normal. But we will always remember her.”
“I don’t remember Tia Luisa,” Matt confessed.
So that was the problem. “I do. She was just as sweet as Tia Evita. And she loved you just as dearly. But, naturally you don’t remember her, you were only two when she passed away. Just a baby. But you’re a big boy now, and you will always remember Tia Evita.”
“Dolores is old. Is Dolores going to die?”
“Not for a long time.” Nicole didn’t want to lie, but Matteo needed to be reassured.
Nicole didn’t know exactly how old their elderly housekeeper was. Dolores had served the Villa Mendoza her whole life. She was younger than her two employers had been. But her wrinkled brown face was difficult to peg to a date. She might be any age from sixty to eighty. Nicole knew she suffered from arthritis, and privately she thought the older woman should retire, but when she suggested it Dolores had only looked blankly at her. The housekeeper was yet another responsibility Nicole had inherited with the Villa Mendoza.
“I want to watch Bill Nye the Science Guy,” Matteo started to skip.
“I don’t see why not. We can make a potato battery tonight, if you still want to.” Nicole knew that now she had reassured her son he would leave the whole subject of Tia Evita’s recent death alone – until the next time.
They signed in and went to sit at side-by-side terminals. They had a standing reservation after school for a half-hour session on the library computers. Nicole had completed her high school education here. Thanks to the library and the Internet, she had obtained her GED in her home state. But today she was not going to study. Tuesdays were when she went fishing.
She searched yet again for Stan Upshaw. But there was still no sign of her stepfather. Nicole hardly knew why she kept looking for him. Maybe because she had been trying to trace him for so long it was habitual. Even after four months she found it hard not to look for news of Felipe. But her no-good dragon shifter husband had been dead since April. She no longer had to hide from him or fear his return to the Argentine.
The news that Felipe had died in suspicious circumstances in France had astounded Nicole. From the Spanish and French news reports, she had managed to piece together that Felipe had died of gunshot wounds while in the process of committing armed robbery. It h
ardly seemed possible. For some reason, wealthy Lord Felipe Balcazar Mendez had become a criminal. Of course, as far Nicole was concerned, he had become a criminal the day he bought her from her stepfather.
Stan had disappeared completely. He had not returned to Boise or to any of the other places they had lived after her mother died. Back then, she had been grateful that her stepfather was willing to remain her guardian when no one else wanted her. After he had sold her to Felipe, she had wondered if the reluctance of her mother’s relatives to take her in had been just another of Stan’s cruel lies.
Sometimes she felt desperate to return to the States. When she had applied last month, the US embassy had replaced her passport. But they had demanded greater proof that Matteo was in fact her son than his birth certificate and baptismal record. She suspected she was going to have to pay for DNA analysis. And where would the money come from for such a thing? She had a hard enough time just getting by.
Her mind was so full of her financial woes, it was hard to pay attention to Matteo’s chatter as they walked slowly home. “How much homework do you have?” she asked him.
“Not much. Sister Joseph gave us only two pages of arithmetic. And I already read the geography lesson. But I have to copy my notes into the green book.”
Schooling in Argentina was nothing like school in Ohio. Argentinian children learned by rote, and they did lots of repetitive exercises. Matteo knew an astonishing number of facts, and his math skills were very good. And his handwriting better than hers. He seemed happy enough, and there really wasn’t anything that Nicole could do to modernize the school’s curriculum or the teaching methods. Her focus had to be getting those pesky school fees paid. She had to start renting rooms again, or there would be no money for food or school fees.
Dragon's Possession (BBW / Dragon Shifter Romance) (Lords of the Dragon Islands Book 4) Page 4