Page 40 of Kept By the Viking (Forgotten Sons #1)

Chapter

Twenty-Two

I f love was honest, why had a curtain fallen between them?

He’d felt it drop last night, the moment Safira had whispered her love for him.

Exhausted to the bone, they’d curled together into the pelt.

He’d opened his mouth to say he loved her, but the words had weighed heavy on his tongue.

Safira’s whispered Whatever happens... haunted him.

What had happened while he was gone?

They’d fallen asleep, her curled up like a sated cat, her body nestled with his.

Awake for the new day, the storm was gone.

Daylight beamed through an egg-sized hole in the deck that he didn’t see last night.

More light poured through cracks in the trapdoor.

Geese honked in the distance. The blacksmith’s hammer pinged an unhurried rhythm.

The hold smelled of wood and the curious peppery aroma on Safira’s skin.

She stirred beside him. Linen slipped off her bare leg. He drew a sluggish line from hip to knee, her skin fine silk on his fingertips. Her toes curled, and Safira yanked the sheet over her body.

“Why do you wake me?” she grumbled.

He pulled the sheet lower. Nipples pebbled to pretty points, the dark-apricot circles of skin the size of small coins.

“Time to rise.”

His edict was met with a sleepy pout. There was no rush. Not when his fingers traced an impudent nipple.

“It is cool this morning. I could use some warming,” she said, a little grumpy.

“You could get dressed,” he suggested teasingly. “Clothes will warm you.”

“Clothes don’t warm. They cover. Besides…” she patted the fur, her smile girlish. “I have a better idea. Lots of them, Viking.”

The sight stole his ease. What did he truly know of Safira?

Deep secrets had been shared on their journey, but the simple things like what was her favorite fruit?

Her favorite color? Or why did her skin have a faint peppery aroma?

How little he knew the maid, yet he was ready to stake his future on her.

When he didn’t move, she cocked her head.

“Something wrong, Viking?” Wisps fell like frayed threads around her face.

Knuckles grazing her cheek, he let uncertainty go. It did a warrior no good.

“I wonder at the woman I am with.” He played with a lock of her hair. “You have different smiles, but I’ve never seen that one on your face before.”

She stretched against his leg and kissed his thigh. “I am content. Now what is this wondering about?”

Safira was happy lounging naked beside him on well-traveled fur in a half-empty ship’s hold. This was contentment. His true wealth—being with her.

He rattled off his questions.

Playful, she nibbled him. “What is this? The big, strong Viking, Rurik of Birka wants to know the simple things that make a Paris maid happy?” Her little laugh against his throat pebbled his flesh.

In between kisses to his shoulder, his neck, his collarbone, she answered, “I love pears best. There is a shade of bronze silk that is my favorite. And I suspect the smell on my skin is from years of sprinkling cardamom on my food.”

“Cardamom...a costly spice.”

“It is. Astrid cooked with it for the Midsumarblot feast.”

“And it is one I could never supply for you,” he admitted.

Safira sat up, letting the linen fall away. “Viking. Are you…doleful? About a simple spice?”

Doleful? He gritted his teeth. Love was new and untested, but he’d not moon over a woman. It weakened a warrior.

Longsword’s words echoed in his head. It’s unwise for men like us to let a woman hold sway over our coming and going.

Was this on purpose, her sitting bare of clothes before him? Fine-grained skin aglow. Her hips shifting. Jet-black hair grazing her back where her body curved as she thrusted her breasts with the subtlest invitation.

Was he reaching for something? Was she?

Frustrated, he opened his saddle bag. “We don’t have time to lay in the furs.” He pulled out two pears and offered her one. “I grabbed these off the jarl’s table last night. It appears I chose well.”

Her eyes rounded as if his abruptness confounded her.

“Thank you.” She accepted the fruit, covered herself with a blanket, and both began to eat.

For their journey, they were a man and a woman.

Simple. Elemental. Free. But their weave brought them to Rouen.

Here things were different. Safira wasn’t a prize to hoard like gold.

He could rail against that truth, fight to keep her by his side, but eventually, the unwanted would come. How would she fit?

He still had to win the land. Best he keep his mind on that.

Wind whistled above deck. Were the Norns cackling? Had they devised these tests to see if he was worthy?

“You were in the jarl’s hall.” Safira licked juice-slick lips, appearing to choose her words with care. “I met your future wife, Lady Brynhild, there.”

He chewed slowly. Norns were definitely laughing at him, and they were about to heap trouble in the form of a jealous woman.

“You must have gone to our old bed and seen her, no?” she prompted.

“I did.”

“Yet, you came to me.”

“I always will.” The promise slipped out with ease. He meant it.

“Not if you have a wife.”

Safira picked at a seed, her downcast eyes and her silence shooting arrows of guilt at him. This was unsteady territory. Sitting with the woman who owned his heart, yet somewhere in Rouen walked another who expected to share his future. Worst place for a man to be.

She wiped her fingers on the blanket. “There is something important I must tell you.”

He hitched up his knee, preparing for an earful about Lady Brynhild.

“What is it?”

“I have a message from your father.”

He tossed the pear core into a bucket. “You mean Vlad.”

That name killed any remnant of joy Rurik had.

Safira was within reach yet a gulf spread between them.

A chasm of the heart. He’d bedded women.

Not once did he care about the status of their parentage.

Or what they thought about his. None had ever asked.

He’d ridden, traveled, fought. Cared for his brothers-in-arms, the Forgotten Sons.

They were the sole family he’d needed. But a hole spread beneath his breast bone.

He rubbed the ache with his palm, but it wouldn’t go away.

Need yawned inside him...for what?

Was it a wish to have the tender rearing he was certain Safira enjoyed? A wish for a past he could never have? Truth grated as it had never grated before.

Wiping his mouth, he faced strange weightiness.

It was regret. A foreign emotion.

Mistakes had been made by father and son.

He rested his head against solid wood. He was too old to weep about the past, and too young not to hunger for a better future. What could be lit Safira’s eyes. A future fulfilled. One brimming with love—if he kept her.

Was that love? Keeping a woman by the might of his hand?

These questions would have to wait. Today a son would fight his father. For land, power, and fame. Most of all for pride.

“What message does Vlad have for me?” he finally asked.

“When Longsword talked of the land, your fath—” she caught herself “—I mean Vlad, did not know you also vied for the holding.”

“That doesn’t change a thing.”

“Of course, it does. He doesn’t want to fight you.”

Rurik wiped juice-damp fingers across his thighs. “Did he say those exact words to you?”

Safira hesitated. “No. Not those exact words.”

“Then nothing changes,” he said, abrupt.

She snatched up the red silk underdress and jammed it over her head. “Do you not even want to try for—for reconciliation?”

“No,” he snorted. “You’re a fool if you think that’s what he wants.”

Safira pushed up on her knees and shimmied the silk over her hips. “How can you be so cold?”

He laughed harshly. “Because Vlad is a master of manipulation. He’d slap my mother one hour, apologize the next. He did it to soften her, to get something he wanted. He’s done the same with you,” he ground out.

Safira sat back, shocked.

Sword and shield in one hand, he tossed the leather bags over his shoulder and made for the trap door. “I have to see Erik.”

Safira scrambled after him, yanking the natural-weave tunic down over her head. “Will you consider the possibility that he is not that man anymore?”

He flipped the trap door open. Safira’s jealousy over Lady Brynhild was preferable to this. Stepping onto the deck, he rumbled a curse. Vlad was up to something.

“Bad morning?” Erik leaned against the mast, a blade of grass in his mouth.

“Vlad. He tried to infect Safira with a tale of woe and regret.”

Rurik scanned Rouen. Crows scrabbled over a fish head on the riverbank. Roads were muddy, air chilly. Heavy clouds blocked the sun, the cold biting his skin. Capes rippled off the backs of merchants and patrons alike.

Erik gave a nod northward. “‘The thrall alone takes instant vengeance. The coward...never.’”

“ You are quoting the ancients? It is a bad morning,” he grumbled.

Erik groused, gave sharp words, but he never preached. Hearing the dark-eyed Son quote Viking wisdom came dangerously close to a holy man teaching a lesson.

“Don’t let your emotions rule,” Erik said. “The time to strike will come.”

Both men stared at the open field above the river where Ivar had held court in Midsumarbot wrestling matches. Housekarls were ramming tall torches into the ground. Rouen prepared for the twilight holmgang, the battle between a famed father and his equally well-known son.

Safira climbed out of the hold and stood beside him on the dock. Gusts chopped the Seine’s surface, blowing hair across her face.

“There is something else I need to tell you,” she said, raising her hood.

“More good tidings from Vlad?”

Sarcasm rolled off his tongue.

Patience lit amber eyes within the folds of wool. “No.”

She glanced at Erik, and he suspected the maid’s message was of a private nature.

“Then, whatever it is, can wait,” he said. “I’m hungry and you must be too.”

The pears did nothing to sate his hunger.

“Longsword is back.” Erik jumped onto the dock.

“Already?”

Erik’s smile was lopsided. “It is midday. Be warned, neither he nor Ademar are in the best of moods. Something about rain dumping on them in the middle of the night.”

Rurik set down a wide plank from the ship’s rail to the dock. “The cost of being ill-prepared for a sudden chase,” he said, crossing over. “I’ll let you talk to him about that.”

“They’re in the feast hall, eating,” Erik said.

“Good. I could eat a bear.” Rurik glanced behind him. “Safira?”

Head covered, she tucked errant hair into her hood. “Go ahead. I will be along soon.”

He bit back an order for her to accompany him. She watched him, distant. The chasm he felt in the hold was growing, but he couldn’t soothe her. Bigger problems awaited him. He and Erik turned and marched uphill through Rouen’s mud-slicked lanes.

Inside the feast hall, the Forgotten Sons were digging into wide bowls of porridge. Rurik scanned the hall. There was no sign of Vlad and his men. His day just got better. He settled his sword, shield, and saddle bags against the giant carving of Yggdrasil behind the jarl’s table.

“Jarl, Ademar,” he greeted them cheerfully.

Too much cheer by Ademar’s scowl. “Someone slept well despite the storm.”

Rurik’s grin expanded. “I did.”

Gyda set before him fresh bread and a bowl of venison and greens cooked in broth.

Longsword tore off a hunk of Rurik’s bread. “Eat well. I would have this business of the holmgang settled.”

“The battle of first blood.” Rurik tore the bread in half.

“Now that the pleasantries are done,” the jarl said, “I want to talk about the problem of our recent chase.”

Rurik tucked into his food and spoke of his ideas to better prepare Rouen’s warriors for long, unexpected chases.

Erik joined in. He was an expert at strategy and unique weaponry.

The jarl and his brother listened, their occasional grunts signs of acknowledgment.

Conversations carried on. Thralls tended the fire.

Others pattered through the hall, pouring sweet cider into cups. The seat beside Rurik was empty.

Small hairs prickled his nape. Safira . Her name was a whisper. She said she’d join him. Dipping bread into the broth, he checked the hall.

The Paris maid was nowhere to be seen.