Surely this, like everything else in her life should be business? Strictly business?
Vital when, on the subject of hands, Snotra ate out of hers. Not that Malice couldn’t sleep with him. In fact, sleeping with him was probably a good idea. She just must be careful, not to lose sight of what was important when his body was against hers, warm so she could feel it through the shift. So that shift might as well not be there, he might not have insulted her either and that heat in her stomach uncoiled and snaked between her legs.
“That’s very nice of you, Drottin, to offer—”
“Not really.” He yawned. “What I’m offering is to sell you on in the morning to someone who will see to it. Ari.”
Ari? Oh my God. She nearly fell off her elbow. At least she was lying down. Yes. Never let it be said she failed to count her blessings. But Ari? She would sooner swallow a whale and its nephew George.
“Now go to sleep.”
This man’s real bed slave? She would sooner swallow a whale, its nephew George, its niece Angela and its Aunt Sally, although she did keep her hand on his waist.
“Of course, if you want me to simply tell Snotra . . .” She said that too. Why did she say that? Because blackmail was the last resort of the desperate?
“Right . . .”
The mattress pitched, so did she, as he swung his feet onto the floor. Oh my God. Ari. What had she just thought about the whale and its nephew George? She clutched the edge of the mattress, clutched it so tightly she probably clutched straw.
“I can tell her that you gagged me.”
“What?”
“Yes.”
His gaze raked her like a lighthouse beam. Oh, she had his attention now, didn’t she? She also had his breath, warm and laced with ale, fanning her cheeks, fanning them so she wanted to drink it on her lips, to close her eyes and drink him. When she didn’t have the advantage? When he was also warm, deliciously nut-brown warm with his body leaning over hers in the tight, narrow space. When he was threatening her with Ari? Why hadn’t she just gone to sleep?
She swung her gaze to the wooden slats in the recess roof, trying to calm her hammering heart. The answer was simple. She had not secured him. His bed slave, remaining detached about it, or making herself useful, a sort of indispensable adviser to the Vikings, were her choices here. Time was short and she must create space for herself in this world. Strike while the iron of his uncertainty was hot. So, when the time came for him to dispense with her services—well, a sort of indispensable adviser to the Vikings would be hard to part with. So when she said, ‘take me to my country, my home, my husband,’ he was not going to disagree, was he?
She slid him a look from beneath her lashes.
“If I don’t make a noise tonight, is that what you want me to say? That you gagged me? Well? Because she will wonder.”
“Malice . . . Much as I might want to gag you . . .”
Was that an insult? Or some deviant sexual practise, the kind known to the Strictly girls? Behind the scenes of course. She didn’t allow them to do things like that with clients needing their marriage wrecked. Although, when she thought about it, what better way to wreck a marriage than with a spot of deviancy? She let her gaze drift to the stubble peppering his jaw, just perhaps not with a man like him. She brought her gaze back.
“Did she nag you when you came in?”
“Snotra doesn’t nag.”
“Much. Did she mention weddings?” Malice knew the ground she occupied was shaky. Was she not the owner of Strictly though? And had she not been standing with her neck craned, her ears pricked up at the top of the ladder when he’d come in. There was no denying her bossyship had been gagged as effectively as if someone had wrapped a piece of material around her mouth and pulled it tight. As Malice had tiptoed across the floor to the stool, only the thought she might strike her head on the rafters had prevented her leaping with joy.
Could she contain herself now she watched the substance of what she’d just said, sink in? “No. But maybe that’s what you want? Her to nag you to set a date?”
Now it was his turn to lower his eyelashes, stare at some distant point that wasn’t her and wasn’t the mattress. “What did you say to her?”
To be truthful, that was a little more tricky and probably guaranteed to wipe that reflective look off his face. Contain herself, now the substance of what she’d said had sunk in and his pride would demand he didn’t admit that he was nagged? She would have to.
“I am very skilled.”
“Malice . . .” He sighed deeply. “I hope you never told her lies about yourself.”
Lies about herself? Well, really. It was however a well really she would sooner swallow than show the indignation that tore her heart. Lies? Her?
“Well, of course, if you don’t want to hear . . .” She wriggled onto her side. “I can just as easily be quiet and go to sleep like you told me.”
Another sigh. One that was more a brittle huff. “Won’t that be a change.”
It wouldn’t. But to say so? She would sooner swallow the nephew George and his friend the basking shark.
“Malice.”
She closed her eyes, plumped the pillow. Anything to mask what pricked the backs of her eyes, the fact she would rather wish he was the pillow so she could smack her fists into him. “I am doing what you said.”
“That will be a first.”
“Closing my eyes and going to sleep.”
“Malice . . .”
“I said you tied me up.”
“You what?”
Was it so ridiculous she’d said it, even if the cupboard doors were to smack walls and he threw her out the bed to lie on the floor there? Threw her out the bedroom? Out the house? There came a point in life where exhaustion flattened your bones and then you realized you had dragged this whole sorry scenario out to your even feebler satisfaction. After all, what she really wanted was to go to sleep, begin again tomorrow. It was the sole reason she opened her mouth.
“But, don’t worry. She didn’t like it. Which is a far better way to keep a woman on their toes, if that is your desire. I ran a little business. So I know.”
“You ran a little business?”
“Believe me.” She hugged the pillow closer. After all, what else was there to hug. “You would be surprised.”
He would. A lot of people were. Indeed sometimes she was herself, but there it was. Before she congratulated herself though, shouldn’t she just go to sleep? The pillow was nice against her face after all.
“You mean your husband did. What sort of business?”
Her husband did? Why, maybe, for that matter, in addition to being taken back to that convent, she could demand shoes. A pair would not go amiss given his shocking treatment of her when she’d done all this for his sake. And the fact that in the candlelight, now she flicked an eye open she could see his mouth had those sensuous hollows. Ones she’d consider giving up her eyeteeth to kiss.
“No. I did. And it was a marriage-wrecking one.”
The doors on the bed hit the wall, followed by his elbow and then he stormed across the floor. Hope sparked it was nothing she could not remedy, although the noise, the fury with which he dragged the trunk from beneath the table, undercut it. Had she done something to him that like her own—not so dear—husband, he felt the need to obliterate her?
“The sisters?” As he yanked the lid back, he gritted. “The sisters needed you to do what? Divorce them from Christ?”
“If you do not want my services . . .”
“Your services?” His blue gaze skimmed her. In fact she’d go as far as to say it skinned her. “This . . . this was my uncle’s homestead. We came here, my mother, my sisters, younger brothers, after my oldest brother put us off the family land. This place was rundown. It was nothing. No fo
od. No farms. And they couldn’t survive it.”
“I’m sorry.”
She was, wasn’t she? For opening her mouth too now. Papers, tiny stones, leather armbands flooded the floor. Whatever he raked for, it wasn’t any of these items.
“This place being nothing was also why it wasn’t good enough for Snotra’s father first time around when I offered my hand.” A small knife was followed by a spindle. “I am going to marry her. I’ve loved her longer than I can remember right now. You are not getting in the way of that.”
My God, forget as if she would, forget everything. What was that thing? That heavy metal thing he now lifted out of the trunk? The thing he didn’t throw on the floor so it must be important to him?
“Now I’ve never done this.”
Even though she’d no idea what the thing was, or what it was he’d never done, she backed away to the furthest corner of the mattress.
“But this was a mistake.”
In three steps he was not just at the bed, he was kneeling on the bed. She gasped. She had seen better looking dog collars. Surely he did not mean to put it on her? When she was this much use to him?
“Tomorrow I’m taking you to market. This is so I don’t have to prove you’re mine when I sell you.”
Chapter 9
“More ale, Ari? No . . . please, allow me.”
Malice bit the inside of her cheek. For the past half-hour, Snotra had paid her guest undue attention, hanging like honey on his every word, snorting loudly at his jokes—she was well-named—staring across the table like a cat about to pounce on a mouse. Of course, Ari was hardly a mouse. Not with shoulders that would cut a wheat field in the absence of a plough.
Leaping up to snatch the jug from Gentle so she could pour it herself, was over and above her duties as a gracious Viking hostess though. Unless that was the whole idea? To make Sin Gudrunsson jealous and almost knock Gentle off her feet while she did it? Gentle wiped her hands down her skirt, coarse and brown as Snotra’s was softly sweeping, the color of misty rain in the torch-lit room.
“My apologies for getting right in your way, mistress.”
No doubt Gentle would have far rather said something else but the thought of being turfed out into the rain presently battering the thatched roof and spitting on the roaring fire so the flames sizzled, probably prevented her.
“It’s all right, Gentle. You are so fat we all know you can’t help it. How you never sank the Raven on the way here is a miracle of Odin. We know it was so you could come here and be my giant house-slave that you were spared.”
“Snotra . . .”
“Oh, don’t frown, Sinarr, you of all people are not going to dispute it.” Give Snotra her due, she knew how to keep the crowd in her orbit by flicking her gaze over the opposition. “She’s a cart-horse. Do you know, Ari, that is why he never chose her for his bed slave? If she was in his bed she’d break it. Here. Drink up. Enjoy. You might as well savour all this house has to offer.”
Ari’s goggling gaze said he was doing just that. If Snotra pushed her lowered cleavage any closer, her breasts would ping loose and it wouldn’t just be ale in his tankard.
It was nothing to Malice. Given the cold talons clenching her heart, she was not even going to turn her head. What was it Snotra had said to her this morning? About the rusty weight grinding on her neck? Your own fault, Malice. Bondage?
“That’s fine, Snotra. Now sit down.”
Malice would sooner swallow six crocodiles than turn her head to look at him either, even if there wasn’t one crocodile here, let alone six. It didn’t matter he sat beside her. She was especially not going to when she remembered that other thing Snotra had said. Yes. For him to put that on you, it must be bad. Do you know when he first came here to Juggesland, that thing was around his neck?
He stretched his long legs beneath the table. “Don’t I have house servants to deal with that?”
“Yours, Sinarr?” Snotra shrugged. “But I thought they were mine? I thought you said—”
“What I said—”
“Sinarr, don’t you want me to make your guests welcome? Especially when they are old friends of mine?” She set the jug down on the table. “Ari, do you remember that song we used to sing as children? The one about the walrus? How funny it was.”
Perhaps Ari didn’t remember. Was there any need for Snotra to start making tusk gestures on her chin? To snort too? If she had had a lovely voice perhaps. But the guttural snorts were hardly that. Of course Snotra had drunk enough to fell that same walrus, if not drown it in a vat. A pity Malice hadn’t been permitted to do the same then she might be deaf to the racket.
At home a quiet supper with a friend was just that. Here it was with a friend, their friends and every other friend that person had. Every hen, cow and chicken and neighbour too. Very well, she exaggerated. But Snotra’s rheumy-eyed father, the servants, and that piglet trotting and snorting about the floor, peppering the entire place with the most God awful stink, made it seem as if the whole world was here. And that whole world wore helmets and hair plaits and couldn’t refrain from talking at the top of their voices. Except perhaps for Sin Gudrunsson, only she wasn’t looking at him.
Actually, why was she letting all this trouble her? Rusty weight around her neck, or not, she was still here. She had no idea why. Was this her unexpected chance? Despite everything he’d said last night on the subject of Malice’s interfering, not to mention the blot his lack of trust had cast on her and Strictly Business, despite the fact he’d ignored her all day, later he’d want some payback for this. For Malice to groan, or come up with another story. When he did was she going to say, I told you so? No. Wasn’t this her chance to have the rusty weight removed?
She lowered her eyelashes. How the world had shrunk. Was that the reason for Snotra’s bold as brass behaviour? She knew exactly what was going on upstairs in the bed cupboard. As for what Snotra had said about this collar being on his neck, she really couldn’t understand it. Aunt Carter’s Viking book which seemed to be solely interested in their illustrated biceps—for some very strange reason— had said very little on the subject of thralls and collars. In fact, it was quite an odd book, like many of the books at Carter House Grandmother Brittany had plainly got her name from. But if this was a slave collar, did that mean he’d been one? A boy of what? Eight? Ten?
“Christ my lord, ain’t she a proper tusker?” Gentle’s hand added to the world’s weight on her shoulder. She reached for the jug. “Do you want more ale? You’d need it to listen to this horse-piss. Jees but she don’t know when to hush it.”
Obviously Snotra didn’t because she raised her head. “You are saying something, Gentle? Something you want to share?”
“No, mistress. Not me.”
“No. No. I’m perfectly sure you are. You both are.”
Both? Wasn’t that good? Especially when Malice hadn’t opened her mouth. Hadn’t opened it all day actually.
Gentle squeezed her hand around the jug handle, probably in preference to her spitting at Snotra’s feet. “Us, mistress? No. What would we say about you? We know our place.”
“Then come, come over here.”
“I—”
“We should all of us revel in hearing it. You too, Malice. Do you know, Ari, she is Sinarr’s bed-slave? You have no idea of the fun they have. At least that they make out they have. All the Hmmmmm’s. Oh and then there’s the little stories Malice tells me.”
Malice fought a grimace. Yes. And just look at what clasped her throat because of it. Still, the emphasis was on obedience. Although if Snotra thought she was for admitting the stories were false, she would sooner swallow the ale jug. Unwillingly she placed her hand on the table.
“Who says they’re stories?”
Malice hesitated. If she had asked that question, it would have been
no surprise. For Sin Gudrunsson to do it instead? She turned her head sideways, slid her gaze over him, then turned her head back. It was even less, if such a thing was possible. What was it? Anything not to make himself look stupid?
“Oh, Sinarr, don’t pretend. Do you have any idea of how boring it gets? How much it makes me yawn?”
She did so vigorously. Much as Malice wanted to keep her gaze fixed on nothing in particular, she couldn’t.
He shifted on the chair, his boot scraping beneath the table. “Well, maybe that’s because you’ve had too much to drink and it’s making you sleepy.”
“Making me sleepy? I am not sleepy. Though I think you would be, the hours she apparently keeps you up at night. And yet you’re not. Is she so boring?”
Loud laughter cut the air. “More ale?” In her moment of triumph Snotra’s hand descended on Ari’s shoulder. “Gentle, give me the jug.”
Perhaps indignation tore Malice’s breast. Awareness stifled her protest. If she had allowed it to do that when Grace Newell entered her study, she would not be here. Snotra could make all the fool of herself, of him, of Malice that she liked. What was this but one more person picking at her hard won serenity? A serenity that . . . all right, perhaps she didn’t fully possess.
Still, there were choices to be made here. A platter of biscuit like bread sat on the table, next to a slab of salted cheese. The aroma was not particularly nice but she fixed her gaze on them. The explosion, when it came—as it most surely would—would come from him, Sin Gudrunsson. Not her.
THE VIKING AND THE COURTESAN Page 14