Page 8 of Loving the Blacksmith (The Noble Norsemen #7)

CHAPTER SEVEN

T hat night, Magnus pretended he had a sword to finish and spent the night at the forge. He doubted Agnes had swallowed the lie but it mattered not. The important thing was that it allowed him to stay away from her and the pallet they had shared for two nights. He could not risk a repeat of the afternoon’s events, when he had frightened poor Agnes to death, first by making her think he’d drowned, then by threatening to eat her whole and finally by stroking himself in front of her with unrestrained ferocity. The release he had forced out of his overstrung body once she’d left had caused him to collapse to his knees in the icy water.

After an agitated night, he was up at the crack of dawn, as usual. Though he was famished, he didn’t dare go back home in case he saw Agnes. He feared seeing the condemnation in her eyes, he feared even more seeing desire because he would not be able to resist it. He would tumble her into the pallet and caution be damned. So instead he went to Wolf’s hut. The Icelander would be up as well and, in exchange for a piece of bread and some cheese, Magnus would offer to help him with the fence. It was the best solution for now.

As he’d expected, his friend was only too glad to accept his help.

“Steinar and Torsten have become veritable terrors. I need something to stop them from destroying our vegetables and terrorizing the chickens,” he told Magnus, the softening in his eyes at the mention of his sons belying the words. Despite the boys’ undeniable boisterousness, he would not be without them for the world. “And seeing as Merewen is going to give me another little scamp in the new year, I’d better take my precautions now.”

Magnus slapped him on the shoulder. He hadn’t known about this new pregnancy and he was delighted for his friend. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you, even though in truth, you have no reason to congratulate me. My part in the whole affair was easy, and more pleasurable than words can express. Merewen will be the one doing the hard part.” A shadow passed over the Icelander’s face. The birth of his second son had been difficult and it had taken his wife a while to recover from it. Wolf had been nothing like his usual self during the long weeks she’d spent lying in bed, building up her strength again. “I wish such joy for me did not come at such a high price for her.”

Magnus didn’t have any children, but he thought he understood what his friend meant exactly. Men were powerless when it came to childbirth. All their supposed physical superiority counted for nothing. Women were the ones possessed with the true force. They alone gave life, their babies were literally wrenched from their bodies. As Wolf said, men’s part in the process was pitiful. They could only watch and try not to go mad when the women they loved suffered agony. Not to mention that a happy deliverance could not be guaranteed.

All in all, a birth was a tense moment, and he could understand his friend’s ambivalent feelings.

“Come,” he told him. “Let us ensure the food needed to feed your family this winter is not destroyed by two little blond monsters. That much, at least, we can do.”

It took them all morning to finish the fence but by the end of it, Magnus was confident even a charging bull would not have presented any threat to it. The chickens and the leeks were safe from Steinar and Torsten. After partaking of a hearty stew prepared by Merewen, he decided to go and see Bjorn. He was only stalling, and he knew he would eventually have to go back home and face Agnes, but he could not bring himself to do it just yet. Besides, he wanted to see how his friend fared after his ordeal of the previous day.

To his surprise, he found him in bed. That was unlike him. Bjorn was more active than most. Had he been more seriously injured than he’d thought?

“How are you doing?” Magnus asked, sitting on the stool by the pallet where his bare-chested friend lay. There was a bandage wrapped around his left bicep and the skin above it appeared burned but, as far as he could see, that was the extent of the damage. He’d been lucky. And yet he was grimacing, like a man in pain.

“I’m fine.”

He didn’t look fine. He didn’t even sound fine. “I’ve never seen you lying in bed during the day. You cannot be fine.”

“I’m fine,” Bjorn repeated, a hint of irritation creeping in his voice. “Only, I have no reason to get up, so I didn’t.”

No reason? What an odd thing to say. Since when did people need reasons to get up? It was what you did in the morning, you didn’t question it. “What about?—”

“You don’t look too well either, if I may say,” his friend interrupted. “What is the matter with you? Why aren’t you at the forge in the middle of the day?”

Because everything had been turned on its head, that was why, and in the forge was a woman he didn’t know what to make of. Or rather, he knew all too well. Only, he wasn’t sure she was ready for it. Or willing. And so he avoided the place.

Magnus sagged on the stool. Suddenly he understood what his friend meant by not having a reason not to get up. He never asked himself why he was getting up in the morning, because he feared the answer would depress him, and he always went to bed dissatisfied with his day, which was an even more worrying situation.

“My life is a waste,” he said instead of answering. “I’m thirty summers and I don’t know what I’m doing, or what I want. Can you think of anything worse?”

“Oh yes, I can.” Bjorn twisted his lips. “Worse than not knowing what you want is knowing exactly what you want and being unable to get it.”

Magnus gave this some consideration and decided that yes, it might well be worse. “What is this thing you want and cannot have then?”

“A woman.” The two words were little more than a breath.

Magnus arched a brow. A woman? He’d never seen his friend with anyone, so the answer surprised him. Bjorn had never even seemed interested in women, yet he was saying that what he needed to make his life complete was a woman. He had not seen that coming. But that was hardly an issue, because Magnus didn’t doubt the man could have all the women he wanted. He was handsome, personable and trustworthy.

“You’re still young, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you to?—”

“Will you all just stop referring to my age! I’m plenty old enough to know my own mind and crave a family.” He gave a sigh, as if he hadn’t meant to snarl. “But I don’t want just any woman. That’s the trouble.”

Oh, so he had his eye set on someone who didn’t want him. That was undoubtedly a complication. Magnus should know, he who had never managed to make anyone want him.

“Who is she?”

Silence was his only answer, then Bjorn threw an involuntary glance at the bandage on his bicep. Everything became clear.

“Frigyth’s sister, Dunne?”

Of course, she was the reason the man had run into the burning hut to save Dawn. Magnus had wondered what had possessed the man to act so quickly, as if his life rather than that of the little girl’s depended on him saving her.

“Yes. Dunne. It’s always been her for me, ever since I first saw her all those years ago.” Bjorn gave a smile that resembled a scowl. “But unfortunately, she doesn’t feel the same about me. When we saw that her hut was burning I was asking her to marry me, believe it or not. She refused.”

“And still you risked your life to save her daughter?”

The look Bjorn threw him would have doused the flames in his furnace as efficiently as a bucket of ice-cold water. “Are you suggesting we should have let her burn?”

“No. Of course not. Forgive me, I didn’t mean to suggest anything of the sort. Apparently, it is not only my life that is a mess. My mind is also addled.”

Magnus shook his head. Had he really asked that stupid question? Yes. As he’d said, his mind must seriously be addled. Fortunately, Bjorn didn’t seem to really think the worst of him. He merely nodded.

“I would have gone to rescue any poor child trapped in a burning hut. But I would not have felt the agony I felt when I saw it was Dunne’s daughter who was in danger. Because her pain is my pain. And I would like her joys to be my joys for the rest of our lives. Only she doesn’t want to share them with me.” Bjorn hid his eyes with a bent arm, like a man weary beyond measure. “And so now you know why I have no reason to get up.”

Magnus swallowed.

Her pain is my pain. And I would like her joys to be my joys .

Yes, that was a good way of expressing what he felt about Agnes.

He’d thought he wanted her body, and he did. He’d thought he wanted to keep her safe, and he did. But he also wanted more. He wanted what Bjorn wanted with Dunne. Dunne, who for a reason he was ignorant of, had refused the offer of marriage she’d received. Would he, Magnus, have more luck when he proposed to the woman of his dreams? He started as the thought crossed his mind. Was he really considering marrying Agnes? Was he really about to risk another humiliation, like the one he had suffered at Edith’s hands, and ask if she would have him?

He shot to his feet. Yes, he was. Because there was no better way to keep her with him always.

This conversation had been most illuminating.

“I think actually I do know what I want to do with my life,” he said, talking almost to himself. He wanted to spend it with Agnes.

Bjorn opened one eye. The ghost of a smile flickered across his lips. “Well, then, my friend, go tell her.”

That very afternoon, under the pretense of showing her how he threw stones, Magnus took Agnes to the clearing in the forest. As she had asked a few times if he could show her how he hunted birds, she didn’t think anything of the request and followed him without comment.

It was time to address what was simmering between them. Because there was something, it was undeniable, a connection such as he’d never felt with anyone before. And unless he was mistaken, Agnes felt it, too. As he’d told Bjorn, he was thirty summers, a man grown, it was high time his life acquired a purpose.

Their conversation had opened his eyes. The man had almost died saving the daughter of the woman he loved and would do so again if need be. When Wolf and Sigurd had carried his limp form to the bed, coughing, and spluttering, Dunne was all he had talked about. His voice hoarse from having spent too long inhaling smoke, his eyes weeping, his body burned and covered in soot, he’d repeated her name over and over again, asking them if she was all right, even though he was the injured one.

Magnus was suddenly seized by the certainty that Agnes’ name would be the first and only word on his lips if he ever escaped death like Bjorn had just done. He would not worry about himself, but about never seeing her again. And because of that, he knew he had to ask the question that had been burning his lips ever since he’d left Bjorn’s hut. The question he’d not thought to ask any woman ever again.

Well, he had to, because his life, already largely meaningless, would not be worth living until he’d had an answer. Sven was convinced the two of them were involved? It was time to make it happen.

“What type of stones do you use?” Agnes asked, her voice as calm as usual. “Big ones, I imagine?”

His chest constricted. Perhaps he was wrong, and she didn’t feel any tension between them. If he didn’t know better, he might think she had forgotten what had happened yesterday. She appeared unperturbed. Looking around as if in search of a suitable pebble, she bent down and picked one the size of an egg. A good choice, he had to admit, but his mind was not on the task at hand. He was too busy watching her and building up the courage to speak his mind to worry about the best projectile to fell birds.

“One like this?”

With a smile she deposited the stone into his open palm. Before he could think, he dropped it on the ground and took her hand instead.

“Agnes. I have a question to ask. I hope it will not take you by surprise, after what we did yesterday.”

After they’d kissed, he meant. Had she felt what he had felt when their lips had worshipped each other’s? Had she seen the inevitability of it? He could only hope so.

Gathering all his courage, he fell to his knees.

“What are you doing?”

She sounded, and looked flustered. A good sign? He didn’t give himself time to think about it, for fear of seeing his strength desert him.

“Will you marry me?”

Silence descended into the clearing. The wind stilled, the leaves in the trees stopped rustling. Even the birds seemed to suspend their chirping for a moment. Her hand still clasped in his, Agnes was immobile as a statue. There was no need to wait for her answer to know she was about to refuse. She had paled so much one would have thought he’d just asked if he could hack her to pieces, like a real Norse invader.

“I see. You won’t,” he said flatly, getting back to his feet. There was no point in waiting for an answer that would be negative. There was a limit to what a man was prepared to endure. Why oh why had he thought this would go better than it had gone with Edith? Would he ever learn? People did not want him, women would not commit to him. They allowed him to bed them, but nothing more. They wanted pleasure, protection and material advantages, but not a lifetime by his side.

“I’m sorry, Magnus, but I-I can’t marry you.”

Though that was not quite what he had expected her to say, it didn’t make it any better. It was still a refusal. “Why not?”

Her eyes filled with tears and, for a moment, he thought she would throw herself into his arms. His body tensed in preparation for the impact. It never came.

“I’m sorry.”

With those words, she turned and fled, just like she had the day before. Only this time, he had not ordered her to go, she had decided all on her own that she could not stay a moment longer with him.

He did pick up the egg-shaped stone then, and threw it as far as he could, letting out a grunt of anger as he let it fly. Another stone was flung, then another, and another. Far from helping, each target he hit increased his frustration. Aye, he could throw stones and hit his mark every time, but what good did that do? The skill was useless, he was useless, and Agnes did not want him.

A dead branch on the nearest tree came crashing down when he aimed a fist-sized stone at it. Of course she did not want him, why would she, no one ever did. A piece of rock split in half when he hit it with a pointy pebble. She cared nothing for him, just like everyone else. An empty bird’s nest was knocked off its perch when he threw a heavy stone at it.

His last projectile embedded itself into a young sapling’s bark, inflicting a wound not dissimilar to the one Agnes had just inflicted on his heart. Yes, on his heart, not his pride, which was far, far worse.

He fell to his knees.