The Shipwreck (4 page)

Then he gave his head a mental shake.  What was he thinking?  It didn’t matter what the woman thought of him.  They were foes.  She probably intended to kill him anyway.  If she’d been exposed to berserkers from the North—the kind that violated women, murdered priests, and slaughtered children—she had every cause to want him dead.

And yet there were qualities about her—her independence, her intelligence, her patience with her daughter, the way she talked about honor—that told him she might not kill him needlessly.  She might listen to reason.

That was why he’d volunteered the truth about his men and his ship.  His fate rested in her hands at the moment.  If he gave her cause for mistrust, she wouldn’t hesitate to slay him.  He’d do the same in her position.

But if he endeared himself to her, if he made her look at him, not as a Viking, but as a man, she’d have a harder time killing him...and maybe he’d buy himself time to overpower her and escape.

“You know, I’m not really the savage you think I am,” he confided.

She ignored him, setting aside the poker and going into the kitchen.

“I had a family,” he called after her, “a daughter like yours.”  He silently cursed as his voice caught on the words.

She froze for a moment, and then cleared her empty shell bowl from the table.

He added, “I, too, would have protected her from men like me.”

She paused again, then sighed and picked up the little girl’s half-eaten pottage.  “It’s cold,” she grumbled, approaching to give him the bowl, “but it’ll fill your belly.”

Pain seared his cracked forearm as he lifted the bowl with his bound hands to tip the contents into his mouth.  But it was better than starving to death.  He finished the pottage in three gulps, and then lowered his hands to rest them limply on his lap, letting the bowl slip through his fingers and onto the floor.

The woman returned to her fire-tending.  Her face glowed golden as she gazed into the flames, and her hair shone with reflected firelight.  “You said you
had
a daughter.”  She asked casually, “What happened to her?”

It had been almost a year, but the wound still felt new and raw.  “She died,” he said flatly.  Just speaking the words aloud hurt.

The air grew still.  For a long while, she didn’t speak.

Finally she asked, “How?”

He swallowed down the knot of pain in his throat.  He didn’t want to talk about it.  He didn’t know this woman.  She was his enemy.  Why should he tell her anything?  And yet something compelled him to speak.  Maybe it was the soft encouragement in her voice.  Maybe it was the dewy compassion in her eyes.  Maybe it was the fact that he had nothing more to lose.  “Plague.”

Her forehead creased, and she propped the poker against the hearth.  “And her mother?”

His cruel mind conjured up Inga’s precious face.  “Dead,” he told her woodenly.  “My daughter.  My wife.  My son.  All dead.”

He heard the woman’s soft gasp, but she had no words of comfort for him.  There weren’t any.  There was nothing anyone could say to bring back his family.

After a bit, she murmured, “But you survived.”

“Oh, aye.”  Bitter regret twisted his mouth as he sneered, “I was lucky.  I was at sea.”

The woman’s brow furrowed.  She leaned forward almost imperceptibly.  For a curious instant, as she looked at him with liquid brown eyes full of empathy, he imagined she meant to touch his hand in solace.

But he’d never be sure, because at that moment, the little girl peered around the doorway.  “Mama,” she sang out cheerfully, “I’m finished sleeping.”

“Kimbery!” the woman cried, coloring and rising briskly.

Avril felt the way she had when her father had caught her kissing the stable boy.  Which was ridiculous.  After all, she’d done nothing to be ashamed of.  But a strange guilt lingered in the air.  She’d almost reached out to comfort the Northman.  And she didn’t know why.

Flustered, she scooped up the empty bowl and turned to face Kimbery.

“I’m all better now, Mama,” the wee lass said, using her sweetest, most cunning voice.

Avril sighed and shook her head, then carried the bowl into the kitchen.

Kimbery’s wiles left Avril with a dilemma.  Avril needed to search the beach to see if any more Northmen had made landfall.  But it was too risky taking Kimbery with her.  If there were shipwreck survivors, she didn’t want to put her daughter in harm’s way.  And if there weren’t, she didn’t need her little girl seeing a dozen half-eaten corpses washing up on her shore.

She needed Kimbery to stay in the cottage.  But she didn’t trust the wee lass with the man she kept insisting was her da.  He might very well talk her into setting him free.

She had a choice then.  She could either tie up her daughter, or she could drug the Northman.

The decision took an instant.

“You must be thirsty,” she called to him.

She needn’t have worried he’d taste the opium powder she put in his mead.  He gulped it down eagerly and wanted more.  While she kept Kimbery occupied churning sheep’s milk into butter, he began to get drowsy.  By the time his suspicions were aroused, it was too late.

“What’d y’ put…in th’ drink?” he asked, slurring the words.

“Nothing poisonous,” she told him.  “Don’t fret.  You’ll just sleep for a while.”

With his last bit of strength, he growled at her in impotent anger, and then he slumped against the beam.

“G’night, Da,” Kimbery called merrily as she plunged the dasher up and down in the wooden churn.

Avril swirled her cloak over her shoulders.  “Kimmie, I’m going down to the beach.  I need you to stay here and keep churning.”

She nodded.

“Stay away from the man.  I’ll be back soon.”

“Shh,” she whispered.  “Da’s sleeping.  Don’t wake him up.”

Avril glanced at the softly snoring Viking, who looked far less threatening in slumber.  His scowl was gone.  His muscles were lax.  His mouth fell open like Kimbery’s when she was sleeping.  With his broad shoulders, his strong jaw, and his breathtaking eyes, he was truly one of the most attractive men she’d ever seen.  Indeed, she could almost imagine him, not as a treacherous Northman, but as a little girl’s father.  Almost.

On her way to the beach, Avril grabbed the sharpened spade from the garden.  It would serve to either bury the dead or defend her from the living.

It was midday by the time she returned to the cottage.  She’d found no bodies or evidence of survivors, just a few splintered planks from his longship.  A lot of driftwood, however, had washed ashore from the tempest, enough to keep their hearth burning all winter.  It would take more than one trip to bring it all home.

To her surprise, when she dropped her first burden at the threshold and pushed open the door to check on Kimbery, the little girl was still sitting dutifully at her post, churning butter.  But then Avril glanced over at the snoring Northman.  Kimbery’s stuffed cloth doll was tucked into the crook of his arm.

“Kimbery,” she chided.

“He was lonely,” the little girl explained.

Avril shook her head.  Kimbery was probably right.  The man had lost his shipmates, his wife, and his children.  She couldn’t imagine how awful that must be.  If she lost Kimbery…

It was too awful to contemplate.  Her daughter was all she had now.

She took the lid off the churn to show Kimbery how all her hard work had magically separated the cream.  She poured the buttermilk off into a small cask and wrapped the lump of butter into a piece of dried kelp.

But then she needed to think up a new task to keep Kimbery occupied while she collected the rest of her scavenge.  She plucked a small piece of cool charcoal from the fire and gave it to the little girl, along with the pale, flat slate they used for writing.

“Why don’t you practice your letters?” she suggested.  Avril’s father had insisted Avril learn to read so she’d be better able to manage Rivenloch.  Avril was determined to pass the skill on to her daughter.

Kimbery picked up the charcoal and, pressing her lips together in concentration, drew a straight vertical line.

“I’m going out again,” Avril told her.  “I’ll see what you’ve written when I come back.”

It took three more treks to collect the store of driftwood.  Satisfied with her haul, which she stacked beside the cottage, she dusted off her skirts and opened the door.

“Look, Mama!” Kimbery squealed, hopping down from her stool.  “Look what I made!”

Avril studied the slate.  Kimbery had printed the letters D and A, and beneath was a primitive sketch of their prisoner, bound with rope, with her doll nestled in one arm.

Avril wanted to be perturbed, but it was admittedly a decent drawing for a four-year-old.  “That’s very good, Kimmie.  Now why don’t you draw a picture of a starfish?”

“Nay!” she said, covering the slate with her arms to keep Avril from wiping it clean.  “I want to show him.”

“But he’s sleeping.”

“He’ll wake up.”

Avril wondered.  She hadn’t put that much powder in his drink—certainly not much more than she did on occasions when her monthly courses became unbearable—but opium could be risky.

His arm looked awful.  It was still swollen, and the skin of his forearm had a bluish cast.  If he’d been someone she cared about, she would have set it and made him a splint so it would heal straight.  But it seemed like a waste of time and effort when she wasn’t even sure she was going to let him live, let alone recover from his injuries.

As it turned out, he slept through Kimbery’s afternoon nap and their abalone supper.  When Kimbery crept into bed with a huge yawn, he was still sleeping.  And he hadn’t awakened when Avril blew out the candles and made her way to bed.

But in the middle of the night, she was roused by the sound of scuffling in the next room, and she crept out to investigate, a dagger in her hand.

By the dim light of the banked fire, she saw the Northman beginning to wake.  His movements were sluggish, and his eyelids flagged as he struggled to sit upright.

She moved forward to get a closer look, hunkering down beside him.

When his gaze alit on her, a look of wonder came over his face.  His eyes lit up with pleasure and relief.  “Inga,” he breathed.

She frowned and opened her mouth, intending to correct him.  But when she saw the affection in his eyes, she found she didn’t have the heart.

“Inga.”  He smiled, his eyes twinkling.

She gulped, reluctant to break the fragile thread of his happy delusion.

He reached up with his bound hands and took her chin in gentle fingers.  Before she realized what he was doing, he tilted his head and captured her lips with his.

For an instant she froze, stunned.  Swiftly, the softness of his mouth, the warmth of his touch, the sweetness of his kiss enthralled her, and she melted into his welcoming embrace.  He tasted of the sea and adventure and passion.  And for one sliver of a moment in time, it was possible to believe he had feelings for her.

Then she remembered who he was and that he’d called her by another woman’s name.

With a soft cry of resistance, she tore free, covering her mutinous mouth with the back of one trembling hand and holding her dagger out before her.

Oblivious to her blade, he mumbled something in his own tongue then and, with a peaceful sigh, slumped back into slumber.

Avril scrambled back, scrubbing at her lips.  God’s eyes!  How could she have let him kiss her?  He was a Northman—a savage, a barbarian, a dog.  His kind were rapists and plunderers.  Shite, she should have killed him while she had the chance.

Yet even though she steeled her heart against him, his taste lingered on her lips, taunting her.  Returning to bed, she found it impossible to get back to sleep as unsavory memories rose to the surface of her thoughts.

It had been a long time since she’d been kissed by a man.  And she’d never been kissed so tenderly.

Though she’d tried to deny it, rape had left her damaged.  The loss of power, the helplessness had cut her deeply.  For a long while afterwards, she hadn’t been able to endure a man’s glance, much less his touch.  She’d wanted to crawl away in defeat, to hide in shame and lick her wounds.

But she knew that would have meant her rapist had won and that she’d bear those scars the rest of her life.  So instead, she’d decided to deal with the trauma the same way she handled falling off a horse or being knocked down in a swordfight.

She’d faced her fears, diving headfirst back into the fray.  Though she wasn’t particularly proud of her rash behavior now, she’d begun bedding men indiscriminately, forcing them to submit to her will, enjoying a heady triumph when they surrendered beneath her.  Eventually, she’d overcome her feelings of powerlessness and vulnerability.

It appalled her now to think of the men she’d seduced and cast away.  On the other hand, when she’d finally realized that she was pregnant, not one of them had come forward to claim the babe and salvage her honor.

Of course, after she gave birth to a fair-haired girl who was obviously the offspring of a Viking, she was shunned by all.  She’d had to face the hard truth—she’d never find a man willing to play father to a Viking’s child and husband to a woman stripped of her title, her land, and her wealth.

She’d shut off that part of her that longed for family, friends, and love, hidden it away behind the locked door to her heart.

But that kiss…that kiss had turned the key in the door and stirred feelings in her she’d forgotten—feelings of tenderness, affection, and hope.  And it was a long while before her restless emotions let her drift off to sleep.

Brandr wandered all night in the land between waking and sleeping.  He wasn’t sure what was real and what he dreamed.  But now morning had arrived, and his body couldn’t have felt more substantial to him.  His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth.  His eyes were gummed shut.  His hands were numb.

She’d drugged him.  He remembered that much.  The mead she’d given him had been laced with something that had sent him into a hallucination-riddled oblivion.

If only it had left him there…