Townsend, Lindsay - The Snow Bride (BookStrand Publishing Romance) (3 page)

Chapter 2

Elfrida stirred sluggishly, unable to remember where she was. Her back ached, and the rest of her body burned. She opened her eyes and sat up with a jerk, thinking of Christina.

Her head felt to be bobbing like an acorn cup in a stream, and her vision swam. As she tried to swing her legs, her sense of dizzy falling increased, becoming worse as she closed her eyes. She lashed out in the darkness, her flailing hands and feet connecting with straw, dusty hay, and ancient pelts.

“Christina?” she hissed, listening intently and praying now that the monster had brought her to the same place it had taken her sister.

She heard nothing but her own breath, and when she held that, nothing at all.

“Christina?” Fearing to reach out in this blackness that was more than night and dreading what she might find, Elfrida forced herself to stretch her arms. She trailed her fingers out into the ghastly void, tracing the unseen world with trembling hands.

Her body shook more than her hands, but she ignored the shuddering of her limbs, closed her eyes like a blind man, and searched.

She lay on a pallet, she realized, full of crackling, dry grass. When she scented and tasted the air, there was no blood. She did not share the space with grisly corpses.

I am alone and unfettered
. Now her heart had stopped thudding in her ears, she listened again, hearing no one else. Chanting a charm to see in the dark, she tried again to shift her feet.

Light spilled into her eyes like scalding milk as a door opened and a massive figure lurched across the threshold. Elfrida launched herself at freedom, hurling a fistful of straw at the looming beast and ducking out for the light.

She fell instead, her legs buckling, her last sight that of softly falling snow.

* * * *

Magnus gathered the woman before she pitched facedown into the snow, returning her swiftly to the rough bed within the hut. Her tiny, bird-boned form terrified him. Clutching her was like ripping a fragile wood anemone up from its roots.

And she had fought him, wind-flower or not. She had charged at him.

“I wish, lass, that you would listen to me. I am not the Forest Grendel, nor have wish to be, nor ever have been.”

Just as earlier, in the clearing where he had first come upon her, a brilliant shock of life and color in a white, dead world, the woman gave no sign of hearing. She was cold again, freezing, while in his arms she had steamed with fever. He tugged off his cloak and bundled her into it, then piled his firewood and kindling onto the bare hearth.

A few strikes of his flints and he had a fire. He set snow to melt in the helmet he was using as a cauldron. He swept more dusty hay up from the floor and, sneezing, packed it round the still little figure.

No beast on two or four legs would hunt tonight, so that was one worry less. Finding this lean-to hut in the forest had been a godsend, but it would be cold.

Magnus went back out into the snow and led his horse into the hut, spreading what feed he had brought with him. He kept the door shut with his saddle, rubbed the palfrey down with the bay’s own horse blanket, and looked about for a lantern.

There was none, just as there were no buckets, nor wooden bowls hanging from the eaves. But, abandoned as it surely had been, the place was well roofed, and no snow swirled in through the wood and wattle walls. Whistling, Magnus dug through his pack and found a flask of ale, some hard cheese, two wizened apples, and a chunk of dark rye bread. He spoke softly to his horse, then looked again at the woman.

She was breathing steadily now, and her lips and cheeks had more color. By the glittering, rising fire he saw her as he had first in the forest clearing, an elf-child of beauty and grace, a willing sacrifice to the monster. Kneeling beside her, he longed to stroke her vivid red hair and kiss the small dimple in her chin. In sleep she had the calm, flawless face of a Madonna of Outremer and the bright locks of a Magdalene.

He had guessed who she was—the witch of the three villages, the good witch driven to desperation. Coming upon her in that snowfield, tied between two trees like a crucified child of fairy, his temper had been a black storm against the villagers for sparing their skins by flaying hers. Then he had seen her face, recognized that wild, stark, sunken-cheeked grief, seen the loose bonds and the terrible “feast,” and had understood.

Another young woman has been taken by the beast, someone you love.

She—Elfrida, that was her name, he remembered it now—Elfrida was either very foolish or very powerful, to offer herself as bait.

Why work alone, though? Had Elfrida no one, no man to help her?

Rage and a rush of hot protectiveness burst through him in a black wave, and he broke sticks for the fire to stop himself rushing out into the dark with his dagger, seeking a quarry who tonight at least would have wit enough to stay out of the snow. It was falling rapidly, the snow. He could tell it by the soft silence and by the way the door had begun to sag against his saddle.

All tracks will be buried, but ours will be covered, too, so that is not all poor news.

He unclipped the small cup and spoon from his belt and dipped the cup into the murky water of his helmet. Taking a drink, he found it warm, putting a good heat in his belly, and that was the best that could be said for it. The girl, when she woke, would find it warming, too.

“And when you stir again, my beauty, you will see me.”

Swiftly he crossed himself and placed his rough wood crucifix beside her small, warm fingers. If she had learning, they might speak together in Latin, or he could try
London
speech, French, or Arabic. He would recite the creed as she came to, and she would see the cross, so, please God, she would know he was a Christian and that she was safe with him.

He must be milder than a dove and as calm as the stone saint, because he knew very well what he looked like. If she was a Madonna, he was a gargoyle.

His red-haired Madonna stretched out on the pallet like a basking grass snake, slowly, sinuously, and a tiny sigh escaped her mouth. Watching, staring, he was stunned again by her beauty, by the wonder of a woman sleeping in his presence.

It was so wonderful he forgot to swallow a final sip of water. As he felt it trickling down his scars and mottled beard, he desperately smacked his good hand across his face, veiling himself in case the first thing she saw, looming in the firelight, was him, too close.

But she did not wake. She turned on her side and curled into a ball, and he tracked her movement with helpless pleasure. Her languor and the gently snorting horse beguiled him. Telling himself he would rest for a moment, only a moment, he eased himself onto the pallet beside her. Facing the fire, he watched the whispering flames and daydreamed of summer in the heart of winter.

Later he dreamed in truth. In the dream, as ever, he was hale and whole, unmarked by the blades that had hacked off his hand and foot and scarred his face so deeply. He and fair-haired Peter were boating on a river with Alice and Elfrida.
Alice
was learning how to scull from her husband, straining on her oar and calling to her children on the grassy bank. Elfrida dropped pine cones into the water, where each cone became a door.

In the dream, when she spoke to him, he understood.

“Damsels live behind these doors, and a beast visits them.”

“Where does he live?”

She smiled. “You are a good student. That is for us to find out.”

She reached across the ribs of the rowing boat and took his unblemished right hand in hers. “You are handsome. I like your curly black hair and beard.”

She leaned forward, brushing her cheek against his beard. Her touch and the scent of her, spices and poppy, mingled with sweet, warm flesh, aroused him instantly.

“What is your name?” she whispered, stealing a swift kiss from his whole, unscarred mouth.

“Magnus,” he said aloud and woke, his head throbbing. Light glared into his eyes, and he shielded them with his arm, sighing as he saw the stump where his hand had once been. His missing foot itched and ached as he remembered afresh his old war wounds. In Outremer, his scars had been badges of honor and courage, but in
England
he was ugly, a beast.

A monster to catch a monster. Is that not apt?

He heard Elfrida’s breath, fast and hard, and knew she was awake. She had not screamed yet, which was a blessing.

He flinched, surprised as she thrust a firebrand up to his face, then he held still, tormenting her and himself with his looks.

A pair of bright, amber eyes scanned his ruined face. Elfrida crouched by the fire, glancing at him, the door, and the horse.

“If you try riding him, he will kick you off into a snowdrift,” Magnus remarked. Keeping his voice low and even, he said, “Elfrida, my name is Magnus. I am here to help.”

Her eyes narrowed at his use of her name, but she shook her head as he repeated what he had said in every language he knew. When he had finished, she held up her arm and pointed at his. Baffled, he raised his left hand, and she brought the burning brand close, studying the limb as if looking for cloven hooves.

“I am a man,” he said quietly. “I know I may not look it.”

She lifted her left hand, turning the palm to him. When he pointed at the red spots that now marred her previously flawless skin, she nodded to him, then to his horse.

He was stunned when he realized what she was suggesting and violently shook his head. “So you have a pox, which is one reason why you have swooned. But I am still not leaving.” He shrugged and risked a smile. His missing teeth were no worse than those of many others. “I had poxes as a child, and in the East.”

She jabbered something, tossing the brand onto the fire and snatching up the cross he had made. When he began to recite the creed, she joined in, then lifted her other arm, where faint spots were already beginning to emerge, and pointed a second time to his horse.

“Even if I could, I would not leave,” he said.

She backed away to the door and, rising, peered through a small gap between roof and doorway, her lips moving as she seemed to count the falling ribbons of snow. Suddenly, shockingly, she dropped to her knees and pleaded. He understood her name and thought he heard another name, but he shook his head at the rest.