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“Some say he has a way of seeing the secrets that lie in the hearts and minds of others. He understood that you were set on a certain course, that if they took you away, you would only return.”
“But if I had died…”
“My father also felt certain you were meant to survive. And to grow strong again. There’s an old Norse saying…”
As if she hadn’t heard it a hundred times already. “‘The length of my life and the day of my death were fated long ago.”’ He did chuckle then, loud enough that there was no mistaking the sound. She couldn’t stop herself from asking, “And you—how did you feel about having to drag an almost-dead woman out of Drakveden Fjord and all the way to your aunt’s village?”
“It was a difficult journey over rough country. It took most of a day and into the night. I felt certain, for a time at least, that you wouldn’t survive.”
“And when my father and your father decided I would stay?”
“I had my doubts it was the right decision—but now, here you are. Alive. Growing stronger. I see that I was wrong to doubt.”
“You certainly were. And, Eric?”
“Yes?”
“Your father was right. My course is set. I’m not going away until I speak with my brother face-to face.”
There was silence.
Which was okay with Brit. Right then there was nothing more to say.
When Brit woke to daylight, Eric was gone. Asta lay beneath the furs on the bed just down the hall.
Quietly, wanting to let the old woman sleep, Brit got up and tiptoed to the sink. She washed her hands and took a long drink and then went back to bed. She was thinking that maybe she might sleep some more.
Not. Her stomach kept growling. And she wanted a bath. At the same time she didn’t really know how to go about getting food or getting clean without Asta’s help.
For fifteen minutes or so, Brit lay staring at the rafters, telling herself to ignore her growling stomach and go back to sleep. About then, quietly, the door opened. Eric. He entered on silent feet. His hair was wet, his face freshly shaven. He carried what looked like yesterday’s clothing and a small leather case: shaving supplies? He went to his bed and stashed everything beneath it.
She sat up. He glanced her way and she signaled him over. When he reached her and she smelled soap and water on him, she whispered, “I know you’ve had a bath. Who do I have to kill to get one myself?”
He crouched to drag her pack out from under her sleeping bench. “Get what you need,” he instructed low, pulling her jacket out, too. She saw that the arrow hole had been neatly mended and the blood stain treated. Blood is so stubborn, though. The stain was faint, but still here. “Come,” he said. “I’ll show you the way.”
The village bathhouse—divided in two; one side for the women, the other for the men—was several doors down from Asta’s. They had actual indoor plumbing and a huge, propane-burning water heater behind the building, Eric told her. And towels, stacks of them, on shelves along one wall. There were two other women inside, just finishing up. They greeted Brit politely and went on their way.
Brit took off her coat and her nightgown and debated over the large bandage that covered the wound on her shoulder. She decided to leave it, let it get wet, and then figure out what to do about changing it when she got back to the longhouse. She showered, washed her hair and brushed her teeth. Then she put on clean clothes and emerged to find Eric waiting outside for her.
She hadn’t expected him to do that. “You didn’t have to stay. I can manage the walk back on my own.”
“Here,” he said, taking her nightgown from over her arm. “That, too.” He indicated her vanity pack.
“No, it’s all right. Really. I can—”
He waved away her objections, his hand out, waiting for her to give him the pack. With a sigh, she did. He offered her his arm.
Oh, why not? She slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow and they started off.
She clomped along the hard-packed dirt street beside him, shivering a little, eager to get back to the longhouse, to dry her hair by the fire and do something about her uncomfortable soggy bandage—and most important, to find a way to get him to be straight with her.
What, exactly, was he up to here? He refused to stop lying and take her to her brother—a fact that she realized might very well be because Valbrand wanted it that way.
But it wasn’t only the big lie he kept telling.
It was also that he was just… such a hottie. And she kept getting the feeling that he was very subtly coming on to her—which was something she so didn’t need at this point in her life. It would only muck up her focus, add complications she wasn’t up to dealing with.
Plus, if he really was coming on to her—which, face it, could very well be nothing more than a sort of contrary wishful thinking on her part—why? Because their fathers wanted them to get married and settle down to rule the country? Doubtful. Because she was so incredibly sexy and alluring, with a hole in her shoulder and bruises on her bruises, no makeup and, until about fifteen minutes ago, very dirty hair and serious morning breath? Not.
The deal was, she couldn’t figure him out. And until she did, she was going to be wary of him. She didn’t trust him. And yet…
It had been nice of him to wait. And his arm was warm and strong and steady, his body heat comforting.
They passed a few people as they made their way to Asta’s house. A man carrying firewood. A woman with a baby in a papoose-like contraption on her back. Eric nodded, and the villagers nodded back, sparing smiles for Brit, along with murmured Your Highnesses and expressions of pleasure at her improving health.
In the longhouse Asta still slept—a lump beneath the furs, curled up and turned to the wall.
Brit whispered to Eric. “The man she was nursing?”
“It appears he’ll survive, after all.”
She smiled at the good news as she took off her coat—easing it carefully over her bad shoulder—and hung it on one of the wooden pegs near the door. The clogs made too much noise, so she slipped them off and set them with Asta’s pair, beneath the coatrack. In her heavy socks, she padded to her sleeping bench, where she stowed the rest of her things. When she turned back toward the center of the room, Eric was watching her, his gaze tracking to where the water from her soaked bandage was seeping through her shirt. She wondered what else he was looking at. She hadn’t taken a bra to the bathhouse. Right now, with her shoulder so stiff, it would have hurt like hell to get into one. And she’d only be taking it off again, anyway. Because as soon as she rebandaged her wound and ate something, her hair should be dry enough that she could climb back into bed.
“Let me change that.” His voice was so soft, the verbal equivalent of a caress.
They gazed at each other. It was another of those edgy, what-is-really-happening-here? moments. She blinked and started to tell him no.
But the bandage had to be changed. Asta was asleep. Brit would probably make a mess of it if she tried to do it herself—and, hey, at least her thermal shirt had a zipper front. She should be able to get it out of his way and still keep the crucial parts covered.
“All right, I’d appreciate it—just hold on a minute.” She turned for her pack beneath her bed. In a side pocket she had three precious bags of peanut M&Ms. She took one out, opened it and got herself a nice, fat blue one. She held out the bag to Eric. Looking puzzled, he shook his head. She put it away.
When she approached the table again, he asked, “What is that?”
She held up the blue candy. “M&M. Peanut. I love them.”
For that she got a lifted eyebrow. “And you must have one… now?”
“I find them soothing—and don’t worry. It’s not drugs or anything. Just sugar and chocolate and a peanut at the center.” He still had that I-don’t-get-it look. So all right, she was nervous, okay? There was something way too intimate about him tending her wound. “Could we just… do this?” She stuck the candy in her mouth.
“As you wish.” He gestured for her to sit at the table. Then he turned toward the sink area—presumably to get fresh bandages and tape.
Brit seized the moment, perching with her back to him at the end of one of the two long benches, and swiftly unzipping her shirt. She heard the slight creak of the sink pump. He must be washing his hands. She pulled the shirt down her left arm—too roughly, hurt like a mother—and got into trouble trying to reinsert the slide into the stopper thingy.
He was finished at the sink. She heard him approach behind her, moving quietly, halting at her back.
“Just a minute,” she muttered, already chewing her only half-sucked M&M, hunched over the zipper, feeling exposed and ridiculous and still battling to get the damn thing to hook.
“No hurry.”
She felt her face flaming as she continued to struggle, the pain an extra irritant as her injured shoulder complained at the tension. At last she got it in. With a sigh of embarrassed relief, she zipped until she had her breasts covered, the left arm of the shirt hanging beneath her own arm.
She turned to him, certain she would find him smirking or quelling a smarmy chuckle. He wasn’t, on either count. He was, however, staring at her chest. He shifted his gaze up to meet her eyes—and she understood.
He’d been looking at her medallion.
She might so easily have lifted it on its chain and mentioned that his father had given it to her. But she didn’t. Somehow, the idea of drawing attention to it seemed unwise, even dangerous. “Okay. Do it.”
He set his equipment on the table: a roll of gauze, tape, scissors and a tube of ointment. Then he returned to the sink, where he grabbed a cloth from a shelf and filled a wooden bowl halfway with water. At the stove he took the steaming kettle and poured hot water to mix with the cold in the bowl. He returned to her, setting the bowl down, dropping the cloth into it.
He went to work. Once again, with him so near, she became way too aware of the fresh, outdoorsy smell of him. His hands were gentle—quick and skilled. She found herself wondering how many wounds he’d bandaged.
“It’s just as well you got it wet,” he whispered. “It’s not sticking.”
She averted her eyes through most of the process, but when he had the soggy bandage off, she looked down at the damage. It wasn’t pretty—ragged and red, still draining a little. There was going to be a scar, for sure. “I guess I won’t be going strapless to the ball.”
He gently cleaned the wound with the warm, damp cloth. “Wear your scars proudly. They speak of what you have faced—and what you have survived.”
She looked at him then. Straight on. There were perhaps four inches between his mouth and hers. And his mouth was… so soft looking. Four inches. No distance at all. The slightest forward movement on her part and she would be kissing him.
Oh, now, why did she have to go and think of kisses? She pointedly shifted her gaze to a spot beyond his shoulder.
He went on with his work, finished swabbing the wound with the warm cloth, applied the ointment, which soothed the soreness and gave off a faint scent of cloves.
Finally, he taped on the fresh bandage. “There,” he said, stepping back.
Her stomach growled. Loudly.
That mouth she’d almost found herself kissing curved up at the corners. “Oatmeal?”
“Please.”
The heavy earthenware bowls waited in plain sight on open shelves. She set the table, doing her best to keep clatter to a minimum as he, equally quietly, fixed the food. They even had milk, which he removed from a small cellar under the floor. There was honey for sweetening. And a lovely tea that tasted of cinnamon—a tea almost good enough to make up for the lack of her usual four cups of morning coffee, strong and black.
She was tired again by the time the meal was over. She helped him clear off, and then he took the single-barreled shotgun from the rack above the door and a pack from under his sleeping bench and left.
Miraculously, Asta hadn’t stirred through the changing of the bandage or the meal preparations. Brit plodded to her own furs and stretched out. She was clean and her stomach was full. Life, at the moment, was good.
She was asleep within minutes.
Brit woke again in the afternoon. Asta was up, surrounded by her grandchildren, her daughters-in-law sitting with her near the fire. For a while Brit lay there, feeling cozy and comfortable, listening to the children laugh and whisper to each other—to the women talk. Sigrid was the quiet one, very controlled, it seemed to Brit. Sif, on the other hand, chuckled and chattered and spoke of the neighbors, of what she had heard about this one or that one. Sif was the one who saw that Brit was awake. She looked over and smiled.
Brit smiled back. Then she rose, put on her boots, got a bra from her pack beneath the sleeping bench and excused herself to visit the lean-to. When she returned she washed her hands at the sink, enjoyed a big drink of water and turned to gesture at the two forlorn-looking piles of feathers lying on the table. “What have we here?”
“Eric brought them,” said Asta, confirming what Brit had already guessed. “A pair of fine partridges. Aren’t they beautiful?”
“They certainly are.” She couldn’t keep herself from asking, “He’s been back again since morning, then? Eric, I mean.”
Sif and Sigrid shared what could only have been called a sly, knowing look. Asta nodded. “He’ll return for the evening meal.”
Brit set her cup on the counter—firmly. Enough about Eric. “So how ’bout I make myself useful and pluck those birds for you?”
Asta tried to talk her out of it. It wasn’t necessary, she said. She’d do it herself in a little while.
But Brit insisted. In the end, when she had sworn she could handle it, she was allowed to do the plucking. Eric had already gutted them in the field, which, her uncle Cam always said, was the best time to do it. The birds cooled faster that way; less chance the meat would sour.
“I’m guessing you have some sort of game shed,” Brit said when the task was done.
Asta, still near the stove with her daughters-in-law, sent her an approving look. “We do. Out in the back.”
Brit took them out and hung them in the wire cage behind the longhouse, where they’d be safe from scavengers until the meat had aged properly. When she returned, Sif was preparing to take Asta’s laundry to the community washhouse.
Brit added her borrowed nightgown and a few other items to the big net bag. “I wonder—could I tag along?”
Sif, who had skin like fresh cream and wore her long red hair in two fat braids wrapped around her head, looked doubtful. “Are you certain you feel well enough?”
“Positive.”
“She’s a determined one,” Asta remarked, never dropping a stitch. “Take her with you. Fresh air will bring the color back to her cheeks.”
“I go, too,” announced little Mist, rising from her seat on the floor and tucking her rag doll beneath her arm.
“All right,” said her mother fondly. “You may come along.”
“Don’t overextend yourself,” Asta told Brit. “If you tire, return immediately.”
“You bet.” Brit grabbed her coat from the peg and followed Sif and Mist out the door.
The washhouse was just beyond the bathhouse. Inside, there was running hot water and six deep concrete sinks, set up in pairs, one for washing, one for rinsing. Hooked between each pair of sinks were old-fashioned, hand-cranked clothes wringers. A washboard waited in each washing sink. Clotheslines ran everywhere, crisscrossing back and forth, about half of them hung with drying garments. One wall had a long table tucked against it—for folding the dry clothes, no doubt. And there were metal racks where sweaters, blocked back into shape, were drying.
Sif explained that each family had washhouse hours. They hung their clothes on the lines and came back for them after they’d had time to dry.
Brit wasn’t much use at the wringer or the washboard. Her shoulder was still way too tender for that. But she helped feed the clothes into the roller while Sif cranked the handle. And then later, she shook out the wet things and handed them to Sif for hanging on the line.
And of course, while they worked, the two women talked. The usual getting-to-know-you chatter. Brit insisted she preferred to dispense with the Your Highnesses and asked how long Sif had been married and if she was born in the village.
“Gunnolf and I have been married eight years—and no, I come from a village to the east, near Solgang Fjord.” Asta’s wasn’t the only village where the people known as Mystics made their home. There were several in the Vildelund.
Brit spoke of her sisters and their new husbands. And then she asked quietly, “Why is it neither Asta nor Eric will talk to me about my brother?”
Did the other woman’s eyes shift away—just a fraction? After a moment Sif said carefully, “I think it’s more that you were so insistent you’d seen him. They didn’t know what to say about it, except to tell you that you couldn’t have seen him, as he is dead.”
He wasn’t, of course. He lived. She knew it. She had seen him. But constantly insisting that she knew he was alive didn’t seem to be getting her anywhere. A new approach was called for. “Did you ever meet my brother?” She shook out a wet shirt—from the size and cut, probably Eric’s—and handed it to Sif.
Sif took so long to answer Brit began to think she wouldn’t. But then she said, “For our wedding trip, Eric took Gunnolf and me over the Black Mountains to the south, to see Lysgard. We stayed for seven nights at Isenhalla. Gunnolf already knew your brother, since His Highness had visited this village often as a boy. But I had never had the honor.” Sif hung the shirt on the line. Brit shook out a gray gathered skirt and glanced up to find Sif staring off toward the sinks, a musing smile on her full mouth. “It was a wondrous time for us. Newly wed. So happy. Looking forward to our life together here, in the village of Gunnolf’s people. And being honored to tour our country’s capital city as guests of the royal family.”
Brit handed her the wet skirt. “You met Valbrand during that trip?”
“Yes. He was… so very handsome. And kind. Thoughtful for one so young—he was barely twenty at the time, I believe. On more than one occasion he paused to speak with Gunnolf and me. He would ask how we were enjoying our stay at Isenhalla. He even advised us on things to be sure to see in Lysgard.” The blue eyes were misty. “Yes. I can tell you that.” As opposed, Brit thought with some irony, to what you can’t tell me? Sif sighed. “Prince Valbrand was a-good man. What a king he would have made.”
