by Jill Hughey
“Not so fast,” she cried. Her protests ended when he whispered something in her ear. “Well, why did you not say so!”
The youngest of the group, probably no older than Samuel, but built like a bull, followed them drunkenly. “You told me I could watch this time,” he whined. “You promised.”
The three left the hall with a yell and a giggle, and all the attention that had been on them now turned toward her. She felt a sinister shift as danger moved closer.
Rochelle pushed back from the table as regally as possible with quaking legs. She made it out of her chair and partway to the door when she heard a slurred protest behind her. Two hands clamped onto her waist like iron. She cried out in pain. Magnus snarled as he attacked, chomping down on the red-head’s forearm with a vengeance. The man howled as he let go of her, but Magnus did not loosen his hold.
“The cur is eating me!” he shrieked. “Get if off! Kill it!”
His protests provided entertainment to the other men, giving Rochelle the chance to run to the storeroom door. “Magnus! Stop!” she screamed. “Come!” He was her only protection. She couldn’t leave him in the hall.
He backed off the man with a snapping growl, then trotted to her with his bloody tongue lolling out of his mouth. She noticed Doeg behind the redhead with his spata drawn, but she didn’t wait to see what he would do. She slammed the door shut, dropping the bar home with shaking hands.
She backed to the opposite wall, certain the door would be bashed in at any moment. She heard Doeg talk sharply. The redhead bleated about the bite on his arm, then Drogo’s shout silenced them both. The sounds from the room soon returned to those of the prior night as the men apparently resumed their drinking and eating and wenching. Disgusting pigs. After awhile, she staggered to the pallet where she curled into a corner, rubbing her tender sides. The man had grabbed her with ferocity.
This was hell. She was in hell and David’s father was the head demon. She couldn’t even picture her husband here. How did he live with such honor when he was the spawn of such depravity? His mother must have been an angel to override the effects of the foul seed she’d carried.
Why had he wanted her to come here? Was he so angry over the argument about the salt that he wanted to see her punished? Did he test her loyalty? Or was it, as his father had said, that David wanted her to become more submissive, like those poor serving women?
The questions did not stay in her mind long. Her situation demanded all her attention. She was five days from home, utterly alone, cowering in the corner of a storeroom.
When the sounds from the hall had nearly died, she heard heavy footsteps outside the door.
“Daughter,” Drogo’s voice called. “You are not doing nearly enough mending. Tomorrow night you will come out to help the women serve. You can show us how our hospitality differs from that of Francia.”
Rochelle did not answer. Her refusal would only worsen her situation, she was sure of it. He would never get her agreement.
“Do you hear me?” he yelled.
“I hear you,” she said, hating the high quaver in her voice. He walked away.
That settled it. She had to leave. Tonight, while everyone slept. She had no food, a little money, no idea where her horse was stabled, and only the faintest notion of where on earth she was. Winter had set in and it was the worst possible time of year to travel, much less be on foot. But she would die alone in the forests of Bavaria before she let herself be used by those men.
Her only ally was a dog who had defended her more than once. She knelt next to Magnus on the floor to bury her face in his fur, never so alone in her life. She allowed herself a moment to indulge in panicky sobs.
Then she got to work, fashioning wraps for her feet, hands, and head from pieces of a heavy wool blanket. She layered on every piece of clothing she’d brought before adding some from the mending pile. As prepared as she could be, she waited for silence in the hall, occasionally describing for Magnus what they were about to do, and how quiet he must be.
After an hour or so, she carefully opened her door, sucking in her breath when she saw Doeg in a chair by the fire, his back to her door. He was not alone. Ingrid sat in his lap. Rochelle heard him say something, prompting Ingrid to slide to her knees in front of him. When his hands clamped down on the arms of the chair, Rochelle made her move, carefully closing the storeroom behind her before slipping stealthily through the kitchen door and out into the frigid winter night.
She found the stable easily enough, but when she cracked the door, she saw the young voyeur sleeping in a pile of hay. He stirred and muttered in his sleep. She knew she’d never get Regret out without raising an alarm. Her only chance of escape was to get a substantial head start.
She set out reluctantly on foot, hoping to God she at least knew where she was going, and if she was very lucky, met up with a trustworthy stranger to help her.
A burgeoning anger drove her. She’d never been in so many life-threatening, emotionally exhausting situations in her whole life as she had since she’d met David. Two interviews with the emperor, road bandits, attempted kidnapping, a tournament, Doeg dragging her off to her depraved father-in-law. Now she marched in the dead of night, with only a vague idea of direction and snow burdening every step. Only a few layers of wool, a willing dog and her own determination stood between her and certain death.
She would survive, if for no other reason than to bring her wrath down on her husband’s head when she saw him next.
Chapter Thirty-four
David reined Woden to a stop in front of the three-sided shed near his family’s hunting hut. He and the stallion had fought for five days through bitter cold and horse-foundering snow. Without the snow they’d have done it in three, but Woden literally trembled in exhaustion beneath him. The horse needed at least a few hours rest before embarking on the last leagues between them and Atrum Calx. David would spend the time warming himself by a fire and continuing the self-castigation for his carelessness with his wife.
David dismounted, then guided Woden into the shed. Paw prints zigzagged all over the place, and David kept his spata handy in case there was a wolf in the area. He fetched some water and took care untacking, drying and feeding the stallion whose head hung low. As he completed these tasks, the endless circle of questions that had nearly driven him to madness continued to wheel through his mind.
How did it happen, he asked himself for the millionth time. How could he not remember the moment he’d instructed his brother to take Rochelle, when he so clearly heard in his mind the plea to bring her to him? Were his brains now so addled by his headaches that he didn’t even control the words coming from his mouth? Or, were Theo’s accusations against Doeg true? Had his brother betrayed him again and again, culminating in what essentially amounted to his kidnapping Rochelle to Bavaria?
David hadn’t conjured an acceptable answer to any of those questions. With or without a good explanation, he was anxious — no, desperate — to be reunited with his wife. He’d been filled with stomach-churning unease since meeting Theo on the morning of his departure. Whether Theo’s imputations against Doeg were true or not, David knew Rochelle believed them. She did not feel safe with his brother, and the idea of her fear had driven him like a whip across the frozen landscape.
Soon the agony would end. When David arrived at Calx this evening, when he saw her whole and healthy, he could begin to breathe properly again and mend the injuries his carelessness had surely inflicted on his marriage.
With Woden comfortably settled, David slung his pack of food over a shoulder and walked toward the hut.
Squinting through the gray winter dusk, David realized he wouldn’t have the luxury of private self-recrimination here. A fresh path in the snow led to the hut from the opposite direction. Someone was in there, and a brief inspection of the track proved it was a single someone. Whoever he was, he would just have to share the space quietly or leave. David was in no mood to tolerate anyone else’s foolishness when he coul
d hardly tolerate his own. He gripped his semi-spata in his hand as he trod toward the door of the hut, flinging it open without knocking.
Nothing could have prepared him for the sight before him. Rochelle stood, bedraggled, rotund in damp clothing, unsteady on her feet, her eyes blazing with infinitely more heat than the smoldering pile of soggy wood on the hearth beside her. One hand hid in the folds of her cloak, no doubt wielding her little dagger. The other held Magnus’s fur. She must have ordered the dog to be silent while David had been wandering around outside.
“You look well,” she said in an irritated — bordering on irrational — voice. Magnus quaked with the desire to greet his owner. “Go to him, then.” She barely lifted her hand before sinking to the floor in a heap of sodden wool, her dagger dropping beside her.
David leapt across the tiny hut, pushing Magnus and his welcoming nose away.
“Do not touch me,” she protested weakly when he grabbed her shoulders to hold her in a seated position. “Doeg did not hurt you. You did send me away with him. You wanted me to go.” The coldness of her voice pierced his heart, but the chill of her clothing was very real. Her cloak was wringing wet, and at close range, he could see blue around her lips.
She struggled feebly against him when he reached for the clasp of her cloak, pushing against him with no more force than a newborn babe. “Is this the only thing men think about – getting under the clothes of women?”
“Do not be a fool, Rochelle,” he said sharply. “You are freezing. We have to get these wet things off before you die of it!”
Her eyes lifted to his, the fire in their green depths replaced with vulnerability and resignation. Pain. She slumped forward. He would have to face all of it later. Now, he had to keep her alive.
With no more fight left in her, the job of stripping her went quickly enough, in spite of the motley layers and of wet wool clothing he discovered beneath her cloak. He paused when he saw bruises at her waist, adding that to the list of concerns to address later. He swiftly wrapped her in his fur lined cloak, taking heart from her gratified moan. There was no decent wood in the hut with which to build a fire so David hastily assembled a nest of dry blankets then lay pressed behind her to warm her with his own heat. He slid one arm under her head as a pillow while using his free hand to briskly rub her arm and side. Involuntary tremors shook her every few seconds.
He thought she was asleep when she murmured “Why are you here?”
He stopped breathing for a moment. “I was coming to get you,” he replied gruffly, pressing his lips into her damp hair. It was the only answer he could think of. It was the truth. He waited a long time for her to speak again.
“I have to sleep,” she finally sighed. And then she did just that.
Well. She hadn’t rejected him outright. Her breathing soon deepened and the shivering subsided. David knew they needed wood before night set in. He slipped reluctantly away from her, set Magnus to guard her again, then wandered into the last of the dying light.
He looked up to a blank twilight sky. There were no stars yet. No glimmers of light to give direction to his world. Questions piled on questions. How had she come to be here? Where was his brother? Had they ever even been to Calx?
Rochelle wasn’t sure what brought her from the depths of sleep. It could have been the warmth or sound or flickering light against her eyelids. She slipped up through layers of unconsciousness with a feeling of utter safety. She could make no sense of it just yet, only knowing she was cozy and dry and somehow watched over where she lay curled in a tight ball. Every slight movement of her body rewarded her with the luxurious slickness of fur against her skin. She let her eyes flutter open. A small loaf of bread and a steaming bowl lay between her and a well-stoked fire. Her clothes were everywhere, draped over the chairs and the table, hanging from the ceiling and walls. Darkness in the cracks between the boards of the walls told her it was night.
She remembered. He was here. Her husband, whom she had worried about, longed for and loathed since he’d sent her away. This was why she felt so protected. She cursed her own weakness at being glad he was here despite his abominable treatment of her.
He was here, somewhere, though her eyes hadn’t landed on him yet. She lifted her head to search the tiny room, quickly finding him seated on the floor at her head, watching her, his face a mask of unhappiness and uncertainty.
He’d said he’d been coming for her, and all her instincts cried out to believe him, to crawl into his arms and let him take her home where they could pretend Drogo and Doeg didn’t exist.
“Shall I help you eat?” he asked. She gloried in his voice, in the tenderness and obeisance resonating in its undertones.
“I do not know,” she said. She burst into inexplicable tears, turning her face down into the fur.
He knelt beside her to lift her against his chest, careful to keep the cloak wrapped securely around her body. The words poured out of him, unbidden. Every thought that had tortured him for the last seven days gushed forth in a rushing stream. “I am sorry, Rochelle. I did not mean for you to go. I am sure I asked Doeg to bring you to me. I needed you sweetling, I love you. I love you so much and I needed your help and I asked for you but instead he took you away. I do not know what I said to make him think he should bring you here without me.” Rochelle concentrated with all her might on his rambling. “My damn headaches,” he spat out.
Oh. Of course.
That last terrible night, he had been surly and impatient. And she, immersed in pride and arrogance, ignored every sign that he was barricaded behind the pain, too proud in the midst of their argument to ask for her help.
It explained everything. His headache now seemed so obvious, she hated herself for not realizing it before she’d ever left Alda. He hadn’t rejected her. He hadn’t sent her away as a test or a judgment or a lesson. Her heart swelled with understanding.
She snaked her arms through the cloak and wrapped them around his ribs to hold him with all her strength, sniffling against his chest.
“You had a headache?” she asked, wanting his reassurance.
“Yes,” he said regretfully against her hair.
“I should have known. I left you there to suffer!” She wept on his tunic for a moment, then pulled back. “But where were you? I tried to find you that morning.”
He shook his head. “My memory is vague. Your mother found me on the floor behind the desk.”
Rochelle knew what it cost him to admit such a thing, not to mention to be found in such a state. “Oh, no. How long were you there?”
“You had been gone for hours. She gave me your remedy, but I still needed that day and the next to be ready to ride. If only I had asked you for your help when I first felt the headache starting, all of this would have been avoided.”
“I should have seen the signs that night. I should have refused to leave before you had been found.” I should never have believed Doeg, she seethed silently.
“Your mother said Doeg led you to believe it was my command that you go with him.”
She nodded against his chest.
“I have no recollection of issuing that command,” he said in a clipped tone, “which is something I will have to take up with Doeg.” He pulled back, waiting for her to meet his eyes. “I also want you to know that I never, ever told him anything about our intimate moments together. It angers me to think of another man — any man — picturing you in that way, and I would take another broadsword to my head before I would provide the description.”
“I know you would never….” They sat silently for a moment, seeking the truth in each other’s eyes before she put her head against his chest again. His heart beat rapidly under her ear. He drew in several shallow breaths before he spoke again.
“I do not understand why you are here in this hut. Have you been to my father’s house?”
She couldn’t stop a bitter laugh. “Yes, I have met your father. I was at Calx until late last night. Or maybe early this morning.”
“No, I came alone.”
“You left the house at night, alone, and walked all the way to this hut?”
“Yes.”
His arms tensed around her. He laid his cheek on her hair again. “But Rochelle, you have no sense of direction. You could have been lost in this freezing weather. You could still be out there, alone and unprotected, except for Magnus.” He cuddled her even more tightly against him.
“I memorized landmarks on the way. Just in case. I had to know how to get home. It was the only thing I could cling to.”
“Why would you leave the safety of my father’s home to travel on foot in the dead of winter?”
“Safety?” she repeated. “I was not safe there…I was not safe at all. I had to leave, David.” Her voice was flat and low.
“You sound afraid.”
“I was afraid of them, of what would happen. Drogo wanted me to serve dinner tonight.” She shuddered.
He lifted his head. She felt his body pull back slightly as he looked down at her. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, staying safely burrowed against his tunic. “I am trying to understand this, Rochelle. It is not dangerous to serve dinner. Oh, the men may get a bit ribald at times, but there is no real harm in it. Perhaps he hoped to give you some kinship with the other women. Perhaps —”
She interrupted him. “I could not be like those serving women. I do not know if they have chosen their lot, if they want to be with all those men, even if they are paid for it, but I would rather die. I could not imagine that is what you wanted, that you would send me to a place to be…used. Like that.”
She’d felt every muscle tighten in his body, growing more rigid with each word she uttered. “Exactly what did you see at the dinners at Calx?”
She shuddered again. “I only ate at his table once. I tried, David, I truly tried, because he is your father. I wanted him to think well of me. But his men watched me. And your father belittled me.” She ducked her head in embarrassment. “He said I must not be of much interest to you at all if you sent me away before getting me with child.”