Devil's Angel (32 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Erika soon discovered why bards did not sing of the joys of pregnancy.

As soon as her eyes opened to the new day she would retch. If she attempted to ingest anything more savory than bread and cheese, she would retch. Only a special elixir provided by Aine and imbibed twice daily got her out of bed at all.

The only positive she could see from being with child was that her slumber was deep. So sure was it that she was almost always asleep when Conor came to and left their chamber. Only his rumpled side of their bedstead proved to her that he did sleep beside her each night.

In the month since the
ceili
, her husband had firmly retreated to his former taciturn self. His days were spent in training and judgments and overseeing the stock, long hours that apparently left him little time to see to his wife.

No, that wasn’t entirely true. Conor did show interest in her welfare. He posed repeated questions to the three people closest to her—Aine, Múireann and Padraig. Through them, he knew when she needed more stuffing in their bedding, ordered her baked fish prepared without the heavy sauce and seasonings, and ensured that she retired at midday to rest.

Without doubt, he was a concerned father-to-be. If only he showed a modicum of that concern to his wife.

Erika had no answers as to why he had withdrawn from her. Her confrontations with him were over before they began, terminating with him quitting her presence with the excuse of pressing business about the
tuath
.

She had had enough. In her heart of hearts she believed Magda had something to do with Conor’s retreat into stoicism. She’d seen the Irishwoman talking with Conor the night of the dance, and knew that his demeanor had drastically changed afterwards. Unfortunately, Magda had soon hied herself off on a visit to former friends about the holding, leaving Erika with a mounting frustration.

It was time for Magda to leave. The widow had done little but snap at her heels like Fenrir gobbling up the world. She was Loki’s sister in spirit and deed, and had done more harm than good since her shadow darkened the door to the dun.

The decision was sure to cause strife, Erika knew, but it was preferable to what she endured now. With the former mistress returned to her southern relatives Dunlough would finally settle, and she and Conor could get about the business of building their future together.

Erika paced about her chambers, her stomach roiling unceasingly. Magda had returned yester eve, and she’d summoned the widow to her chambers for a much-needed reckoning. It was not a conversation she looked forward to, but knew it a necessary evil to be borne. She just hoped the maidservant would arrive with her calming elixir before Magda did.

The elixir and Magda arrived together. The servant sat the tray down on a near table then left. “Well.” Magda’s smile was strained as she lifted a mug from the tray. “You wished to speak with me?”

“Yes.” Erika reached for her own wooden goblet and took a sip of the overly bitter brew to calm her nerves and keep her hands from circling the other woman’s throat. “The truth of the matter is, Magda, that I have been unfair to you.”

The Irishwoman seemed taken aback. “Unfair to me? How?”

“I have taken advantage of you and your knowledge. For that, I offer a most humble apology. You are a guest here; it is time I treat you as such.”

Magda’s jaw dropped open in an entirely unladylike manner. “But-but I—”

“I’ll not hear another word,” Erika smoothly interjected. “It has been an unnecessary burden on you. I am grateful for the gracious manner in which you have undertaken my education, but it is a burden you no longer need carry. It has caused you to tarry longer here than you would have otherwise, I am sure.”

Her voice hardened. “I know you said something to Conor the night of the
ceili
. It matters not what was said. All that matters is that it upset him, and that I’ll not have. I’ll not have you or anyone else affect his happiness. It is time for you to leave.”

For a moment, such blind rage suffused Magda’s face that Erika instinctively reached for her dagger to defend herself. Then the older woman smiled, a curving of lips that chilled Erika to the depths of her soul.

“You poor, foolish barbarian. I wanted to spare you the harsh truth, for ’tis not my place to speak it, but you must know. Conor sent for me, to run his household and to raise his heir.”

The flame-haired woman smiled again as she stepped closer. “Do you remember the bargain you struck? Your freedom for a male child? Ah, I see that you do. Conor will uphold that bargain, you can be sure. Can you really believe that a murdering mercenary can remain as mistress of Dunlough? Such a thing is impossible for the leader of northern Connacht. You will never be accepted, but your get will. Conor realized this long ago.”

“You lie!” Her vehement declaration lacked conviction, and Erika knew it.

Magda knew it as well. “Do I?” she wondered, chuckling with indulgence. “Tell me this: has Conor asked you to stay? Has he ever told you that he loves you? Of course he hasn’t. And he never will.”

Erika did reach for her blade then, and lunged toward Magda, wanting nothing more than to rip the smaller woman’s throat out. Instead, she tangled in her own skirts and fell to the floor, hard.

Mocking laughter came to her through a sudden haze of pain. “No, Conor will never love you, Viking whore! In fact, with thanks to the elixir you just imbibed, he may come to hate you, for destroying his child.”

“No!” Erika tried to scream a denial, but pain forced all air from her lungs.

“Oh yes.” Magda retrieved the damning cup and walked to the door. “Pity that you’ll not be able to recall our talk, if you even survive. I would have enjoyed seeing your face as you told Conor what transpired here, and seeing him not believing you. A good day to you, Angel of Death.” Her laughter lingered even after she left.

Stars danced before Erika’s eyes as another wave of pain hit her, clawing at her insides. Clawing at her child. She tried to climb to her feet using a nearby chair for leverage, and only succeeded in toppling over again.

Panic squeezed the air from her lungs, making it impossible to scream, to call for help. She had to get aid; if she didn’t, Conor’s babe would die.

Her fingers clawed the floorboards as she dragged herself to the door, a door that suddenly seemed a league away. She wasn’t going to make it; she would never reach the door…

Her hand connected with wood. Survival instinct flowed into her veins, momentarily overpowering the poison and giving her strength to stagger to her feet. To open the door and stumble out.

“Help me.” In her mind it was a scream, but her body continued its rebellion, the plea only a whisper. The hall reeled around her as her body cramped again. She retched, the force of it kicking her from her feet, sapping her strength.

She was dying, taking another life with her, a precious life. The last unclouded part of her mind railed against it, but the poison was stronger than her will. Her hand moved feebly to her womb as she begged for forgiveness, forgiveness she knew would not come.

The screaming could be heard everywhere about the dun. Urgent, grieving shrieks that clammed the skin of all who heard it.

Conor ran into the dun, a brace of soldiers with him, weapons drawn. Something was wrong with Erika; he knew it to the depths of his soul. He shouted her name, pounding up the stairs in the direction of the screams.

Múireann stood at the head of the stairs and ’twas she who screamed, horror limning her features as she stared at the floor.

Erika lay crumpled facedown at the top of the stairway, her hair spread about her like a pale silk cloth. Still, so very still. Falling to his knees, he turned her over, ignoring the palsied tremor of his hands. On the front of her gown a scarlet flower blossomed, increasing with every heartbeat.

It wasn’t a flower.

“Erika?”

Slow, oh so slow, her eyes opened, washed out with pain. “C-Conor. The babe…must save…” Her eyes fluttered shut.

“No!” Gathering her in his arms, Conor raced to their chamber, shouting orders at the top of his lungs. He laid her on their bed as his people scattered for water and linens and Aine.

Erika thrashed on the bed, moaning with pain. The blood had become an angry vermilion stain, soaking her robe and the front of his tunic, and still it would not stop. He took his dagger, slicing the front of her dress, looking for a wound, praying there was a wound.

“Kill me,” she whispered, her voice frantic. “T-tried to—” She heaved beneath his hand, rolling to her side to vomit, to utter a weak scream.

Aine came into the room, followed by servants carrying the necessary supplies. They tried to make him leave, but he refused to go farther than across the room. He needed to be there, just in case.

It was a nightmare that would not end. Erika alternated between Gaelic and Norse, breathless pleadings that they save the baby, cries for forgiveness. Each whimper tore through him like a sword strike, bleeding his soul. There was nothing he could do for her save add his pleas to her own, to whatever gods would listen, that they save her and their child.

Those pleas were in vain. Erika lost the battle to keep their babe. Aine won the battle to keep her from bleeding to death. A final, pain-filled shriek of denial rang through the chamber, slamming into Conor, sending him to his knees.

Gone. Everything, all his hopes…gone.

People milled about the room, Múireann and Aine and the priest and Olan, who nearly killed a horse in his race to his sister’s side. Feeling like an old man, Conor climbed to his feet. “Did anyone see what happened?”

His question was greeted with silence. Anger surged through him, temporarily holding the grief at bay. “All of you were in the hall. Did you not see anything?”

None answered. “Get out,” he ordered. When no one obeyed his command, he drew his sword. “Get out, all of you! Leave now!”

He pushed people to the door, throwing some bodily into the hall. At last he slammed the chamber door and bolted it, resting his head against the smooth wood. The cool surface did nothing to quell the demons rising within him, the specters of death that had haunted him for two years.

He had failed her. He had been so consumed with distancing himself, with shielding his soul against her inevitable departure that he had not been there when she needed him most.

Images danced through his mind. Erika, handing him the tiny dagger as a gesture of trust. Giving him her sword during their marriage ceremony. Yielding her body to his, surrendering the freedom she valued above all else. She did all this, based on a promise he had made, the one promise he should never have made.

The promise to protect her.

He had failed Erika and their child. Failed to protect them, just as he had failed to protect his older brother and three nephews during the fighting at Clontarf. His mind roiled with images, all awash with screams and blood. And above them all, Erika’s cries and pleas echoed in his mind, his soul.

He brought his hands up in a futile attempt to ward them off. Blood caked his fingers and arms. Erika’s blood.

With a cry of impotent rage, Conor drew his dagger and plunged it into the door again and again, as if he could slay the voracious demons that taunted him. The cry tore from him, from the deepest, darkest chambers of his spirit and rose to an inhuman roar that echoed through the chamber and out into the night.

Falling to his knees in exhaustion, Conor looked towards the bed. Erika had not stirred during his outburst. The thought that she might be dead near slammed him into the floor. What would he do if she were dead?

With his heart in his throat, he moved to the bed and dropped to his knees. Pale hair lay against an even paler bandage about her forehead. Her jaw line was livid with deep purple bruises, and shadows were heavy beneath her swollen, red-rimmed eyes. The slow rise and fall of her chest was the only indication that his wife still lived.

Even in slumber, sorrow was evident in her features. Had Erika ever been happy here? She had come to Dunlough a prisoner, was almost raped and had been forced into marriage by losing a duel to him. He had told her he could never love her, that he wanted an heir, not a wife.

No, Erika had not had an easy time here. Did she still dream of freedom, of a life away from him? Would she choose freedom now, since her sole reason to stay had just been taken?

As if sensing his distress, she moaned, her head moving side to side as she struggled to awaken. He was about to leap to his feet to summon Aine when her hand flailed out, catching his forearm. “Conor.”

He covered her hand with his. “I am here.”

Lashes fluttered against the sooty hollows beneath her eyes. “No…leave. You. Promised…”

Blessedly, unconsciousness claimed her before she could utter more. In rising horror he stared down at his slumbering wife, unable to believe her words, unable to hear, see, or feel beyond the flash of pain that consumed him.

He had lost everything.

Conor held the limp hand between his own, rested his head on the mattress, and cried.

“Ease, my lady. Ease.”