Whisper of Scandal (23 page)

“The Pomors are a very spiritual people,” Alex said. “They use the crosses for navigation as well as worship. The monastery at Bellsund is only a day’s ride from here and there have always been strong links between the village and the abbey.”

The villagers were coming out to greet them now, hunters in leather jerkins and women in white aprons with children hiding behind their skirts.

“I did not realize that people lived her all year round,” Joanna said. “Merryn’s book implied that the settlements were mainly used for overwintering.”

“So you did read it!” Alex said, smiling at her. “I thought that books bored you.”

“I flicked through a few chapters,” Joanna murmured.

“It is the Norwegians who tend to visit just for the hunting and trapping,” Alex said. “Some of the Pomors have lived here for many years and as you see, they bring their families with them.”

“They must be very hardy,” Joanna said.

Lottie, she saw, was looking about her with her customary disdain.

“What a primitive and ghastly place—” she started to say, but Joanna kicked her firmly in the ankle.

“What a delightful village,” Joanna said, smiling at Karl. “We are very grateful to be staying here.”

“They are holding a feast in our honor tonight,” Alex said. He nodded toward Owen Purchase, who was shouldering his rifle and chatting to a couple of the Pomor hunters. “Purchase is going to shoot some ptarmigan for us.”

“Ptarmigan?” Lottie wrinkled up her nose. “Isn’t that a bird? What are we to do, gnaw on the bones? This isn’t the Middle Ages, you know.”

“A pity,” Alex whispered to Joanna, “for if it were we could duck her for being a witch.” He raised his voice. “I am sure,” he said smoothly, “that you will feel a great deal better after you have had a hot bath, Mrs. Cummings.” He gestured to the women who were crowding about them. “They are waiting to show you to the sweat baths so that you may wash and relax.”

“A sweat bath!” Lottie exclaimed. “How utterly disgusting! You will not tempt me into sweating!” She snatched the skirts of her gown away from the fingers of one small child, who started to wail.

Alex turned to Joanna. “Then it would appear,” he said, “that it is just you and I, my lady.”

The idea of a bath, sweat or otherwise, sounded extraordinarily tempting to Joanna. The idea of a bath with Alex in it as well, however, was rather more disturbing. She eyed him cautiously.

“You are to accompany me?”

Alex’s expression was suspiciously bland. “It is the custom here in the North.”

“Is it indeed?” Joanna challenged.

He took her hand. “It is perfectly respectable for a married couple to bathe together, Joanna. I assure you that I would do nothing to offend the sensibilities of our hosts, and anyway—” he lowered his voice “—we have been very intimate these past few days. There is no need to be shy now.”

Joanna’s face flamed. “I am not shy!”

“Yes, you are.” Alex’s smile said that he knew better. “You have been shy with me from the start.” He touched her cheek. “I like it—but you don’t have to feel like that anymore.”

Joanna closed her eyes for a moment. She felt hot and stirred up by the expression in his eyes but at the same time helplessly adrift. The feelings that Alex was starting to conjure in her seemed too complex and difficult to control. At the beginning it had been about claiming Nina, but when she had started to fall in love with him that had all changed. She remembered once telling Merryn that adventurers were the worst type of man to fall in love with because they would always care more for traveling and exploring than for any woman. She thought of those words with a shiver.

Their hosts were helping to unload their baggage from the cart now and taking it toward one of the living huts. The women swept Joanna up in a laughing, chattering group and carried her away toward the nearest cabin.

“They will fetch me when they have made you ready,”
Alex said, smiling at her as she cast him a look of apprehension. “I have told them that we are but recently wed,” he added. “They wish to give us the bridal
bania,
the bridal bath.”

It seemed to Joanna that the news of her wedding had indeed sent the village women into a fever of excitement. As they drew her into the warm shadowy interior of the bathing hut they plucked at her clothes and at her hair, exclaiming and smiling. Her meager words of Russian seemed totally inadequate now. All she could do was smile and nod as they gestured to her to sit on a cushioned bench and started to unpin her plait, which felt stiff with dust.

The hut was extraordinarily hot after the clinging chill of the mist outside and it smelled absolutely wonderful with the scent of birch and pine. What light there was filtered in through one small window and the tiny gaps between the wooden logs that made up the wall. Joanna started to relax as the warmth seeped into her veins. One of the girls brought her a cup of wine spiced with nutmeg. It was strong and delicious. They were brushing out her hair now, exclaiming over the length and the thickness of it. The long strokes of the brush were very soothing, as was the sweet tide of wine. Joanna, who had spent most of the day warding off frightened thoughts about meeting Nina on the morrow and how she might start to build the foundations of a relationship with a little girl who must be lonely and abandoned, allowed her mind to rest for a while. In the sweet-scented darkness of the bathing hut her fears were lulled, her anxieties about the future banished. Even when the women started to ease her from her
riding habit, she barely noticed. There was a great deal of hilarity about the boots, which needed three of them to pull off.

It was only when they started to peel away her underclothes that Joanna realized with a rush of astonishment that they intended her to be completely naked. She sat up abruptly and her head spun with the wine and the heat. The women were around her like a flock of birds, chattering and plucking and seemingly taking no notice of her puny efforts to resist them. One of the girls, who could not have been more than sixteen, smiled at her and put a reassuring hand on her arm.

“Please do not worry, my lady. It is part of the bridal preparations.”

“You speak English!” Joanna said. She felt hugely relieved, less alone. “What is your name?”

“I am Anya and I learned your language at the monastery school at Bellsund,” the girl said. She had laughing brown eyes and the widest smile that Joanna had ever seen. “The bridal
bania
is very special,” she confided. “We were all so happy when we learned that you and the stern lord were newly wed.”

“The stern lord.” Joanna laughed. “Yes, that is a good description of Alex.”

“So we make you beautiful for him,” the girl said as someone else whipped away Joanna’s last shreds of underwear before she could even protest. “There is soap here to wash, and almond oils for your hair—”

“Thank you,” Joanna said hastily, gesturing them to step back. “If you please, I shall do the washing myself and…um…do you have a robe I could borrow?”

There was some grumbling at this. Clearly, her
British reserve puzzled her hosts. However, they backed away good-naturedly, leaving her with cool springwater to wash and, more important to Joanna, her privacy. She lathered her hair slowly, enjoying the rich scent of the almond oil after so many weeks on the ship and the past few days of rough traveling. The soap was gentle and smelled of herbs and she reveled in washing herself all over. After what seemed like a very long time, Anya knocked gently at the door and brought her a robe of the softest wool to wrap about herself, and then gestured to her that she should enter the inner baths. Joanna stood up and felt so dizzy and disorientated in the heat and darkness that she almost fell.

Her head spun even more when she went into the inner room and Anya shut the door softly behind her. Here it was fiendishly hot, like the fires of hell. She had never experienced anything like it. There were no windows and one long wooden bench along the wall—and Alex was sitting on it. He was, as far as Joanna could see, utterly naked apart from a cloth across his lap. His chest already gleamed with sweat.

“How did you get in here?” she asked foolishly, backing toward the door, her fingers rough against the hardness of the wood.

“There is another entrance,” Alex said. He put out a negligent hand and pulled her down beside him, and because of her utter confusion she collapsed onto the bench beside him like a rag doll folding up. He steadied her. In the near dark she saw his teeth gleam in a smile.

“Are you quite well, Joanna?”

“I feel very odd,” Joanna admitted. “I fear these unusual customs are rather unfamiliar to me.”

“Of course,” Alex said. He brushed the hair back from her face and she flinched from his touch, for it sent such awareness skittering across her skin that her entire body tingled.

“Relax,” Alex murmured. “You feel very tense. I had hoped that the bath would refresh you. It is renowned for its medicinal properties, you know.”

“Medicinal,” Joanna murmured. That sounded most reassuring.

“Would you like me to tell you a little of the history of the baths?” Alex asked. “It might help you to feel a little more calm.”

Well, Joanna thought, a little history seemed unexceptional. As a subject it had never particularly interested her, but anything that helped to distract her from the potency of Alex’s presence beside her must surely be a good thing. The heat was building now. Alex leaned forward and poured water on the pile of stones in the center of the room, and the steam rose hissing into the air and wreathed about them and it felt almost too hot to breathe. Then he tipped a bottle of clear liquid into the center of the column of steam, and the scent and the fumes made Jo’s head feel so heavy she wanted to lie down. The room was spinning slowly, pleasantly, and her blood beat hard in her veins.

“Vodka,” Alex said. “A terrible waste, but it is part of the ritual.”

“What is vodka?” Jo asked.

“A spirit so strong it would make last night’s rum taste like lemonade at Gunter’s,” Alex said, smiling.

“I do feel foxed again,” Joanna admitted.

“It is merely the scents, and the intensity of the
heat,” Alex said. He slid a little closer to her along the bench.

“All the Scandinavians have a bathing custom.” Alex spoke softly after a moment. “It goes back many hundreds of years. In countries with climates as harsh as this the glowing heat relaxes the muscles and soothes the soul.”

“Delightful,” Joanna murmured. She was starting to adjust to the intensity of the heat now. Her skin felt as though it was shimmering with it and a strange new consciousness of her body was creeping through her. It was as though every part of her was alive.

“After they have experienced the heat of the sweat baths,” Alex continued, “they beat themselves with a birch switch to improve the circulation of the blood.”

Joanna gave a little gasp. Her mind filled with deep, dark images. Her body burned. “Birch switch?” she said faintly. “Beating?”

“It is the custom,” Alex said smoothly. “For medicinal purposes.”

“Oh, of course.”

How decadent was she, Joanna wondered, to have put quite a different emphasis on his words?

“And then,” Alex finished, “they run outside completely naked and either roll in the snow or plunge into the waters of the fjord.”

“How extraordinary.” Joanna shifted on the bench. Never had she felt so aware of her physical body. The wooden bench was so hot it stung her skin. She was rosy all over, the sweat rolling from her and the woolen gown intolerably sticky as it clung to her damp body. Her abdomen felt tight with pleasure, her nipples were hard where they rubbed against the wool of the gown.

This, she reminded herself sternly, was supposed to be a relaxing but medicinal experience, not a sensual one.

“You look most uncomfortable,” Alex said. There was amusement in his voice. “You would surely be more at ease if you removed that robe.”

Joanna realized that she was clutching the neck of the gown very tightly at her throat. Alex rested his head against the wooden slats behind him and closed his eyes, for all the world, she thought crossly, as though he was as thoroughly relaxed as he claimed she should be. She eased her grip a little. It was true that to lose the robe would be a great deal more comfortable. And it was practically dark in the bathhouse. Alex would not be able to see anything if she did… And what did it matter anyway, for he was her husband…

Stealthily, she eased the robe away from her body and dropped it to the floor with a sigh of relief. The swaths of steam curled up around her naked body and she felt hot and tight and excited and not one whit more relaxed.

“Traditionally,” Alex said without opening his eyes, “the sweat of the bride is baked into the wedding bread and cakes when she is covered in milk and dough in the sweat baths.”

“I know that I sound like Lottie,” Joanna said, “but it really does not sound very pleasant for everyone else to have to eat me.”

Alex shifted and opened his eyes suddenly. His gaze swept down her body. He touched the curl that nestled in the hollow of her throat then leaned forward and licked up the drops of water there.

“I will taste you,” he said. “That will suffice for us.”

Joanna’s heart leaped and started to race with a deep, harsh beat that seemed to fill her whole body.

“Hmm.” Alex’s voice was deep and rough. “Salty.”

Joanna shivered despite the intense heat. Her senses were bewitched. The darkness, the scent, the warmth…She felt drowsy and languid yet somehow more awake and alive than she had ever felt before. She lay back on the hot wooden bench and felt Alex’s hands and his lips on her body, and she was so heated and so wet and so open to him that she cried out in longing. It was like a feverish dream as he sank inside her and her mind tumbled over and over into the dark and she gave herself up to him and felt as though he possessed her soul.

Later Alex wrapped her in the woolen robe and carried her back to their hut and she dressed for the feast and they ate roast ptarmigan and freshly baked bread and fruit and honey. The villagers danced and sang the bridal songs of their homeland and gave Joanna a shirt, which they said was for her to wrap her firstborn child in for it would bring good luck. Joanna felt a pang of grief but folded the gift away carefully at the bottom of her trunk.