Loki's Daughters (36 page)

The child slept, wrapped in Egil's arms as the big man leaned against the wall. His deep voice sang on and on, so soft it caressed like a feather.

Exhaustion enveloped Arienh and threatened to swallow her. When at last she and Ronan stepped outside the cottage for the first time in two days, she drew the clean, chilly air into her lungs as if she had never tasted its freshness before. She answered everyone's questions and sent them home.

Then she and Ronan walked, drinking in the freshness of the night, the clean aroma of a recent rain. Even the darkness seemed to have a smell of its own. Silence hung between them as she racked her tired brain for anything else that could be done.

"Will he live?" Ronan asked for the first time.

"I think so." She could think of nothing else to say. "I cannot tell. I have never known an adult to die of such a bite, but some children live, some die. Or he could lose his leg. Only God knows if we have done enough, or done it in time."

"You are so weary. Could you not rest awhile?" His voice was soothing, and his face mirrored his concern.

"Nay."

"I could do what you are doing, and wake you if you are needed."

A frisson of terror ripped through her heart, but she shoved it aside. He meant well, but he did not understand. She could not let go, even for a moment, until she was certain Liam was safe. It was like giving up, and giving up was unthinkable. "Nay, there would be no point. I could not sleep anyway."

Silence returned as they walked on. The air from a wet day had chilled with the clear night, but a stiffening breeze foretold another storm blowing in. She needed the freshness of the wind to invigorate her, and the quietness of his company to calm her.

When they returned to the cottage, the mud had dried again, and needed once more to be replaced. Arienh gave Liam another dose of the lettuce following the broth, adding bugloss, cleavers, and ash leaves. And they waited.

Waited.

Night became morning, day faded to evening. Liam worsened, improved, worsened again.

And everyone waited.

The worst of the poison stayed in Liam's leg, and the swelling began to shrink. Beneath the mud, the skin that had turned hideously dark, almost black, finally began to fade to brown. Dead skin crumbled away, leaving an ugly, gaping hole with bright red flesh beneath it.

By the middle of the third night, Liam slept quietly. Egil slipped out for a little while for the first time, then Birgit. Each returned to take their vigil on the bed with the boy. After a while, they took turns eating, then curled back on the bed, with the boy between them, and slept. Egil's long arm stretched over Liam, to rest atop Birgit's hand.

"Now you will sleep, too," Ronan announced.

Aye, now she could sleep. She could not tell if Liam would be crippled from the bite, but he would not die. Silently, with a hand to her waist, Ronan guided her back to her own bed.

She could no longer even find the strength to remove the old cloth she had tied to her skirt to protect it from the mud and blood. As she sat on the bed, Ronan untied it for her, and removed her soft leather boots. His deft hands smoothed the woolen hose down her legs, evoking a fleeting memory of the night she had so gently done the same for him.

She was beyond thinking, anyway. Willingly, she succumbed to his tenderness, not caring where it led. Ronan pulled back the heavy woolen blanket and eased her down. Linen sheets, soft and cool, caressed her skin.

She closed her eyes. The mattress dipped, and Ronan crawled in beside her.

"Hush", he said as she started to object.

Aye, surely he must be as weary as she was.

Beneath the covers, his arm slipped around her waist, drawing her body against his, not so much an amorous thing as one of comforting affection. And the bed was small, hard for two to sleep in without touching.

He leaned over her, lips descending, touching, caressing, a soothing touch she needed, more than she ever had any other. Tomorrow, she didn't know what she would do, but tonight she would accept his warmth as he once had hers.

In the other bed, Birgit sat up abruptly. A garbled gasp escaped her as her pale eyes widened in horror.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Small noises floated through the hushed room from Arienh's bed. Birgit sat up, shaking off her exhausted sleep.

He was kissing her. And she was allowing it. Arienh, who had made such a fuss about the Vikings. A sudden terror arose in Birgit's throat, tightening it as if she were being choked.

Egil, too, sat up. His big arm wrapped around her as it reached over the sleeping child. "Nay, love, let them be."

Let them be? Her fists tightened, fingernails biting into her palms. Birgit had tried to keep her fears to herself. She knew they weren't logical, even though they welled up from deep inside her, but every time she saw the dark Viking touch her sister, she cringed. She knew what was in the man's mind, even when she could not clearly see his face. Lust. Horrible, terrifying, dredging up all her painful memories of the past.

Nay, she knew better. She truly did. Such things were part of the normal way of life, that very same normalcy she hoped Arienh would have some day. Yet all she could think of was her own nightmare that had never really left her.

"He will not hurt her, Birgit. Don't you know that? What is it you fear?"

She opened her mouth, but words would not come out. She knew. It was not that. How could she tell him? How could she say aloud her fears when his very knowing would cause them to come true? How could she say she feared for Liam, for Arienh, mostly for herself? In the daylight, she could joke with Mildread about the size of the men's organs, but how could she tell anyone how much she feared the joke might really be the truth? Her only experience with a Viking had been one of terror and pain. She had nearly died from the man's brutality. And she had seen enough, both of Vikings and normal men to know these Northmen were indeed of prodigious size.

Her tongue seemed firmly wedged in her mouth, her throat too tight to let words out.

"Birgit," he said, his blue eyes the color of smoke in the dim firelight, "what happened to you was not a normal thing. It is not the way of things between a man and a woman. You must know that."

She did. Yet she could not dislodge the memories that told her otherwise. How was it she could look at this man and desire him so much, hunger for his
 
simplest touch, yet fear him so much? Why did she long to finger the yellow mane of his hair, crumpled from having been so long without a comb because he had given his full measure of patient attention to her stricken child? Or to run her hand across the newly grown prickle of yellow beard he had so recently shaven off?

She knew what lay beneath his jerkin and breeches, for she had seen all of it. Yet she wanted to see it all again, the square-set, bulky muscles of his heavy-boned body. Even the huge organ she so feared, she wanted to touch.

She wanted to know what it felt like to be loved by a man such as he. But she had no courage.

"A kiss cannot hurt. Have you never been kissed, Birgit?"

How had he known? Once there had been a boy, but he had been only a boy, before he had been killed, and it had not been a real kiss. No one had ever wanted to kiss her after that. Men had always thought her too strange. Even when there were still men around, they had thought of being father to a Viking's child, and the burden of a wife going blind. No one had wanted her.

Nor would he, when he knew.

But he didn't know. And he wanted her.

The rough pads of his fingers skimmed lightly over her cheeks. His thumb caressed across her lower lip. "Your first kiss, Birgit? Will you give it to me?"

She thought she would drown in the smoky depths of his eyes. She drank in his scent, salty from the long ordeal, yet so sweet to her, for he had given everything he could, even his penchant for cleanliness, for the sake of her son. His rumpled clothing, scratchy beard, uncombed hair, were all precious to her, for they were the badges of his caring.

"I promise you, it will be the sweetest you will ever have."

Birgit licked her lips in anticipation of the touch. Yet she could not find words to say what she wanted. Fear still held sway, fear of pain, fear of...

The brown fringe of lashes shaded his eyes as Egil's sensual lips gently touched hers. Birgit nearly jumped from the sudden tingling, then slowly melted, yielding to the tender pressure and sinuous flexing, as if they formed whispered words of love.

Fear of love. Even more, fear of losing it.

She had no courage. None to say aye, none to say nay.

The tip of his tongue teased against the tender flesh within her lips, seeking entrance between her teeth. Callused thumbs paraded boldly along the curve of her cheekbones. She opened to him and found herself suddenly lost in the whirlwind of sensation in the play of his mouth and hers. A timid moan escaped her, startling her
 
She pushed against him, a tentatively silly push that said more of wanting him than of resistance. He was right. It was good. Sweet.

Egil understood far too much of her. With a gentle caress across her cheek, he released her, quietly smiling.

"Stop that. Leave her alone!"

Lurching out from the dreamlike state of the kiss, Birgit whirled her head toward Arienh, who was trying to rise from the bed.

Ronan held her back. "Leave them be, Arienh, it is only a kiss."

"Will you never cease, either of you? Leave her alone."

"Arienh..." said Birgit, not at all certain what her objection would be.

"Do not think just because we are so weary that we do not know what you do. You take advantage of our troubles. You, Egil, you pretend to care about Liam, but you only use him. You think you will win Birgit by your false caring. You do not even care about her, only how you may use her."

"Arienh!"

"It is true, Birgit. 'Tis nothing but seduction. Both of them. That one is no different from his brother."

"How is that, Arienh?" laughed Ronan. "Does he mean to make her his wife? Perhaps if we left, he would finish the task."

"Stop it. You see, Birgit?"

"See what?"

"He is trying to do the same thing to you that-"

"Do what, love?" teased Ronan.

Birgit felt the silliness of a half smile creep onto her face. So that was it. Now, she understood. Arienh really was harboring a secret. She could not exactly see Arienh's face, but she could tell by the sudden silence and the stillness of her form that Arienh had let something slip. Exhausted as she was, Arienh couldn't be thinking clearly. So they had made love. And that was why Arienh had been so jumpy.

Now that she thought of it, Birgit even knew when it had happened, on the morn of spring's first day, when Arienh had gone to await the sunrise at the stone circle. For at the same time, Ronan had been confused and furious, and shortly after that, brazenly cocky.

It was love, if ever she had seen it.

Egil slipped a nibble of a kiss at Birgit's earlobe, and a quiet chuckle rumbled through him. Birgit bit back the smirk that teased at her lips. So Egil knew, too.

"Come on, Egil," Ronan said. "It's time for us to go, lest this one do you harm for molesting her sister."

"Aye," Egil replied. "'Tis more than time. The boy will be all right, and none of us will get any sleep until we leave."