The Blooded Ones

by Elizabeth Brown

  “You scoundrel!” she laughed, shoving him back with one hand as he tried to plant a kiss along her low-cut neckline. She had shed her dress on the beach and wore only her old threadbare shift, unwilling to risk salt-stains on any of her better dresses. She had not expected any company when she set out to gather clams.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” he chastised her. She leaned back as he bent to kiss her again, swatting his hand and squirming back away from him.

  “What has got into you?” she asked

  “I missed my wife. Is that not enough?” he murmured. She relented a bit, relaxing when he wrapped his arms around her waist.

  “Here, hold this, so I can bury my face in your–”

  Her eyes fluttered open and she let out an indignant squeal when she realized he was not alone.

  “Winn! The boys are with you!” she hissed. Dagr and Malcolm were indeed running down the beach toward them, with a full view of their mother in the arms of their unrepentant father. Winn let out a low snort and shook his head, distracted for only a moment before he bent his head back to her.

  “They will see we are busy and go away,” he reasoned, his voice edged with boyish petulance as he stared down at her. She bit back her own laughter and gave him a shove, eliciting a frustrated groan from him while she tried to disengage from his embrace. At a stalemate, he rested his head against her shoulder for a moment, then uttered a sigh.

  “Boys!” he shouted. His words were somewhat grumbled, but they heard him and came to attention at the sound of their father’s voice. Twelve-year-old Dagr was the image of Winn, his expression shielded with both respect and curiosity as he faced his father. Malcolm stared openly at them, his blue eyes wide across his round little face.

  “Yes, Da?” both boys echoed in unison. Winn cast a stern glare at them.

  “I have an important duty for you,” Winn said. The boys nodded eagerly, their attention seeming entirely on their father rather than the spectacle of their disheveled mother, for which she was grateful. “In the woods where the trail splits there is a nest. I think I saw a few goose eggs. Gather them for our dinner,” he ordered.

  “Yes, Da!” the boys answered, taking off in a sprint back toward the wood line. As Maggie watched them race away, Winn resumed his attempt to catch her attention. Clearly pleased with himself for the clever distraction, he grinned down at her.

  “I think I lost my way,” he murmured, kissing her cheek lightly.

  “You’ve found it,” she answered. She felt his lips turn into a smile against her ear as he attended to his task.

  Later, they sat on the sand together and waited for the boys to return. Remnants of afternoon skittered away, leaving a glimmer of amber-kissed echoes across the water. She pressed her lips to his chest, over the shallow scar that marked him, and he whispered sweet words in his native tongue against her ear.

  “Da! We found the eggs! Shall we cook ‘em?”

  She nestled her head into his shoulder as Winn muttered an oath. Dagr and Malcolm stood a few feet away on the beach, their arms filled with large pale eggs.

  “Put them in the basket, we will tend to them. Go find wood for the fire,” Winn answered. She felt him sigh.

  “They did what you told them,” she smiled.

  “Yes, they did,” he replied. He slowly sat up, releasing her. “But I saw no eggs, I know not where they found them.”

  Maggie giggled, smacking him lightly on the arm.

  “So you sent our sons on a wild goose chase?” she asked. He shrugged.

  “I thought it would occupy them longer.” He caught her hand and raised it to his lips, kissing it solidly. “I would do much more than lie to have you to myself, ntehem,” he whispered. His eyes still shimmered with boyish charm, but she glimpsed a shadow of darkness in his gaze before he left her to chase the boys down the beach, making terrible whooping sounds to urge them on.

  She twisted as much water as she could from her sodden shift, and then pulled her brown gunna dress over it. She was not a fan of such brazen displays of affection in front of her children, despite Winn insisting that children saw no shame in those things. Living with the Norse, however, lent to a blending of cultures, so it was only in the privacy of their own home that the topic arose. Despite her attempts to meld into her life, she had an inkling that some issues would always be a struggle.

  Malcolm made it back to the fire before the others. He plopped down into her lap without invitation, his narrow little chest rising and falling as rapid as a bird as he recovered from the run. He was a wiry sandpiper in her arms, covered in grit and damp with seawater. Even his hair was saturated, and when she kissed the top of his head she could taste the salt in his locks.

  “You need a bath when we return,” she murmured. She stoked the fire with a long stick and gripped him with the other hand as he squirmed.

  “Aww, no Mama, not today!” he whined.

  “Yes, today, if your mother says so,” Winn interrupted. He deflected a blow from Dagr and grabbed his elder son around the waist, throwing him up over one shoulder as the boy screeched. “And you, too, mud-face. You stink like sons of a bull, not the sons of a Chief.”

  Malcolm scrambled from Maggie’s lap and joined his brother. The boys took turns poking the eggs with a stick as they cooked over the fire next to the clams. Dagr crouched down, his long black hair falling tangled around his face, his lean arms extended out as he wrangled the crackling fire. Malcolm stood next to him, watching, always the shadow to his older brother’s sun. Both boys resembled Winn, and in Dagr the resemblance was most stunning, but Malcolm held a bit of what Maggie recalled of her grandfather. Even with his sun-kissed skin tone and dark hair, young Malcolm had the squared jaw and straight nose that marked him as Norse, different from that of his father and brother. His hair tended to curly rather than straight, and when damp it wrapped around his ears in ringlets. Despite their looks, in essence the boys belonged solely to Winn; whether from sheer admiration of their father or the image of their shared mannerisms, they clearly came from his blood. Norse or Indian, it did not matter, only that it was the same blood he passed from his ancestors onto them.

  Winn settled down next to Maggie, sprawling out beside her on the sand as he perched on one elbow. She felt the warmth of his skin as his hand slid over her thigh, resting there as if she needed any other reminder that he was with her. Her lips formed a smile as she felt him gently squeeze her leg.

  They took the meal amidst gleeful conversation, the boys filled with stories from the gathering of the night prior. Dagr was most impressed with the weapons the English men had, the strength of their firepower seeming to have left a lasting impact on the boy. He chattered on about it, his admiration flowing over in an excitable jumble. Malcolm, however, was not so impressed, pointing out that Winn’s bryntroll could fell a man as easily as a musket, and with no need for the fire-powder that the English required to make the guns work. As their bellies filled, the boys soon fell silent, resting on their backs as they stared up at the stars.

  “Our daughter seems pleased with John Basse,” Winn said. Maggie shrugged, unwilling to agree entirely.

  “She didn’t say much,” she replied.

  “She did not object,” Winn persisted.

  Maggie sighed.

  “No, she did not. She won’t disobey you.” It was the most Maggie was willing to concede. Yes, Kyra agreed to the match and had spent much of the evening on the arm of her betrothed, but Maggie worried with the way Kyra acted so subdued. She knew she had difficulty accepting an arranged marriage simply because of the way she had been brought up in the future. It was all she could do to keep her opinions to herself, especially when she knew it was what was best for their future. After all, arranged marriage was the norm in the seventeenth century. Having a say in those matters as a woman was not.

  “We should go back,” Winn commented. Maggie could hear an easy snore from Malcolm, curled up beside his brother.

  “All right,” Maggi
e replied. Although she had enjoyed the quiet afternoon away from the village, it was late, and the others might worry if they did not return soon. A war party searching for the Chief’s family was the last thing they needed.

  They left Malcolm sleeping while they gathered their few supplies. Winn surveyed the site with a nod, and then bent and gathered his youngest son in his arms. Maggie reached for Dagr’s hand but the boy slipped away, as he often did, his lips graced with an apologetic, but stern smile. Dagr had told her earlier in the week that he was too old to hold her hand any longer, and she grimaced at the memory but let him go without a fight.

  “Da?” Dagr asked. The boy trailed behind, dragging a long stick with the empty clamshells tied to it.

  “Hmm?”

  “Do ye think ye ought to stop trying to make more weans with Mama? We have enough to bide,” Dagr said. If Maggie had not heard it with her own ears, she would not have believed the words from his mouth, but at the sight of her eldest son’s serious face she clamped her mouth tightly closed. Winn raised an eyebrow, slowing to meet Dagr’s pace.

  Dagr planted his heels shoulder width apart in the sand as Winn placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “Is that so, Dagr?” Winn replied evenly. Dagr glared past Winn, refusing to meet his gaze, his chest heaving with short bursts as he seemed to fight some demon unknown. She had never seen her son so agitated, but Winn seemed to know what ailed him. Winn gently set the sleeping Malcolm in her arms and whispered softly against her ear.

  “Go on ahead, ntehem. We will not be long.”

  He kissed her cheek, a grin on his lips, and patted her bottom as she walked away. She tried to give Dagr a smile, but the boy refused to acknowledge her gesture. Maggie heard Dagr utter one of the half-snort, half-grunts that the Indian men were known to make and she knew Winn had his work cut out for him. She left them on the path and made her way back to their Longhouse.

  Malcolm was snoring soundly in his cot when Winn finally slipped beneath the furs beside her. She nestled back against her husband, her hips fitting into him as he molded his warm body to hers.

  “Dagr?” she inquired. She did not know what to ask, or if she even wanted to know what sort of conversation they had, but her curiosity won the better of her as Winn kissed the nape of her neck.

  “He had many questions. I think I answered them all,” Winn replied with a chuckle.

  “About what?”

  “Oh, it seems he saw Ahi Kekeleksu with an Indian girl. They wandered away from the gathering, and the boys watched them. Dagr had…questions.”

  “Was Mal with him?” Maggie hissed. She groaned when her husband nodded.

  “He and a few others. It seems I should speak to my nephew as well,” Winn muttered.

  “Mal is too young to–to know about that yet! And so is Dagr, for that matter!”

  “Shh,” Winn admonished her, covering her lips with his mouth. “Dagr is still awake, and he will hear you. Do not shame him, he is old enough to speak of it.”

  “So what did you tell him?” she asked, trying to control her tone enough so that only Winn could hear her. He kissed the tip of her nose.

  “I told him when he is a man, he will want to lay with a woman as well,” he replied. “And that he will find great pleasure in that task.”

  “You make it sound like a game,” she replied. He took his head in his hands and stared down into her face, shaking his head.

  “No, I did not. I told him someday he will want only one maid, and until then,” he whispered, “I told him to keep his little prick in his braies and forget about pleasuring woman. And that if I wish to make children with his mother, I will do so, and it is none of his concern.”

  He stifled her laughter with his mouth.

  “I think we need more practice,” he grinned.

  CHAPTER 18

  Kyra

  SHE AVOIDED MORGAN for the remainder of the week, her heart broken and battered after the gathering. It was easy to adjust her hunting times rather than risk running into him again. After all, how could they go back to their normal routine when he had rejected her so horribly? Although she missed his company, she was sure it was better for them both. Even if Morgan suddenly declared his love for her, she was betrothed and there was nothing she could do to change it.

  So when he sank down beside her in the tall grass one day as if nothing had happened between them she was near startled into silence. Nearly, but not quite.

  “What are ye doing here?” she demanded.

  He grimaced, avoiding meeting her stare as he adjusted his bow.

  “Hunting. What are ye doing?”

  “Hunting,” she whispered with a scowl.

  After that they resumed their afternoon outings, neither speaking of the day at the waterfall nor making any acknowledgement that anything might be different between them. Things gradually resembled the easy way they had with each other, talking about everything… and nothing at all. It was not perfect, but they continued to spend each afternoon together.

  It was a day like any other when they sat crouched over in the tall grass, the soft cattails brushing her skin with the rhythm of the afternoon breeze. The meadow was a clever spot for tracking prey in the early spring as the reeds were still short yet tinted to a yellowed hue, hiding them well as they lay in wait. As she shared a sip from his flask, she wondered if she had the courage to follow through with her marriage and berated herself for the doubt. Of course she would do it. She must obey her father.

  Yet as Morgan glanced over at her with his soft brown eyes, gleaming with a gentle curiosity, she felt the heat rise unbidden to her face. They had not spoken of that day at the waterfall. They continued on with their afternoon hunting escapades as if it had been only a dream.

  Across the meadow, a spotted doe looked up. Her wide eyes turned in their direction and her tiny snout lifted, as if she caught their scent as they stalked her. Kyra adjusted her bow before she moved from her crouch, notching the arrow and drawing back the string. With a practiced motion she rose up on one knee and let go, the arrow spearing the air ahead of the soft twang sound.

  She lowered her eyes as the doe skittered away, unharmed.

  “That was terrible. Have ye webbed fingers today?” Morgan laughed.

  “Not likely, ye bloody lout.”

  “Then what are ye afraid of?” he asked, his hand settling next to her as he tilted his head in wait. It was her chest that felt like a bowstring then, plucked tight and tensed to burst. His face was entirely too close to hers, his breath teasing her skin with a presence that was not entirely unpleasant.

  “Fear? I think not,” she scoffed. She spoke the words bravely to hide her discomfort, but he knew her better than that and she watched his mouth twist into a grin. She drew back away from him but did not go far, unwilling to diminish his amusement. It made her happy to see him smile.

  “No?” he murmured, his fingers brushing her cheek. His touch sent a flurry of tingles through her skin, down through her chest where it settled as an ache deep in her belly. Yet it did not seem like her belly that ached. It was another spot, an entirely foreign sensation she had only glimpsed once before in his arms.

  “Yer barmy, if ye think I fear anything,” she whispered, her voice trailing off. His lips curled into a grin. “If I recall correctly, ye were the one who was afraid to kiss me.” She instantly regretted her words, her heart thudding so hard against her chest she thought surely he could hear it.

  “’Twas not fear,” he muttered.

  “Then what?” she whispered. Before she belonged to another, she needed to know why. After all the years she had loved him, why could he not love her in return? Yet still he hunted at her side each day, meeting her in secret despite what her father would do to them if they were discovered.

  “There are things ye dinna understand,” he said.

  “Because I have no sense?” she asked, defensive when she thought he meant to insult her.

  “No!” he sighed, rolling ont
o his back. He ran his hands over his face and through his thick blonde hair. “Ye are clever and pleasing in every way.”

  Utterly confused, she leaned over him, placing one palm flat on his chest. Her fingers rested between his opened shirt buttons, and he sucked in a breath at the shock of the connection. Yes, she would be married, and yes, she would do her duty, but she would ask one last thing of her oldest friend before that happened.

  “Morgan?” she said softly. “Would you kiss me again?”

  His breathing slowed and he stilled. Her eyes moved slowly from his chest to his face, which seemed scrunched as if he were in pain.

  “Please?” she murmured, intent on wiping the pained look off his face.

  “Kyra,” he whispered, his voice strained.

  She parted her lips and pressed her mouth to his, letting out a sigh as she quickly pulled away. There. It did not seem nearly as intense as their last encounter but it was not so bad.

  “Was that proper?” she asked. His pained look remained, yet intensified, his cheeks flushed as he looked at her.

  “No,” he murmured. “I fear I must show you the proper way.”

  With a swift motion he placed her gently on her back and his mouth descended upon hers. This time it was his fingers tangled in her hair, and his hand cupping her jaw very carefully. His opened lips were soft, yet she yielded to the pressure, his tongue meeting hers in a delicious torture. His thumb caressed her throat, and he pulled her closer so that her body fit snugly within his embrace.

  “Oh,” she sighed, her head tipping back as she lost herself in the delicious sensation. So that was it. That was what she had been missing since their time at the waterfall!

  Suddenly, he broke their connection and pulled away with a low uttered curse.

  “Did I do it wrong?” she asked, breathless. He shook his head, but the pained look on his face was worse than before.

  “No, you did it quite well,” he said, his voice hoarse. “We canna do this. I shall go.”

  She felt her stomach drop. Had she been truly awful?