The Pagan's Prize (28 page)

Her open defiance of Rurik had also gotten her nowhere;
in fact, he seemed to enjoy it. No, there had to be another way. . .

A nervous warmth sluiced through her body at the sudden
idea that came to her, one that would perhaps have never occurred to her if not
for what had passed between them last night.

Rurik had to know that he had pleased her. She shivered
to think of how much. Why not take it further by leading him to believe that
she was beginning to accept her marriage? That had been his toast to her after
all at their wedding feast. It was what he wanted. Why not make it appear as if
she were finding contentment as his wife? Surely then he would let down his
guard around her, which could open up any number of opportunities . . .

Seized by tense excitement, Zora drew the heavy fur
spread with her as she raised herself to a sitting position.

It was so perfect, made all the more so by the
possibility that she meant more to Rurik than he wanted her to believe. Perhaps
she could further seduce him into trusting her if she seemed to care for him as
well—

"I was hoping I'd find you awake."

Zora's heart leapt into her throat, those same
butterflies fluttering like mad inside her stomach as her gaze darted to the
doorway where Rurik stood watching her. How could she have been so lost in her
thoughts that she hadn't heard him enter? Then again, what had she just been
thinking about? All of a sudden, she felt so scattered . . .

"G-good morning," she stammered. Her cheeks
grew warm as he took in every aspect of her appearance, her pulse pounding at
the air of intimacy that now charged the room.

"Good afternoon, you mean," he corrected her.
"It's well past midday."

"Oh." The hard edge to Rurik's voice broke
the befuddled spell. Why did he look so grim? Surely there was no crime in
sleeping late, especially after what they . . . Remembering all too well the
arousing sensation of his hands upon her, she added distractedly, "I didn't
hear you leave this morning. When did you—"

"Not long after sunrise." Rurik moved farther
into the room but stopped several feet from the bed as if he did not want to
come too close. "A journey was required to an estate east of Novgorod . .
. that's why I've come to speak with you. I didn't want you to hear the news
from any slaves and perhaps create false stories."

Zora was stung by his sarcasm. His present mood
contrasted sharply with how he had earlier tenderly kissed the tip of her nose
and her eyelids and then bade her in a whisper to go to sleep. Yet she supposed
if he was trying to fight his feelings for her—

"News?" she said with feigned lightness,
thinking again of her plan. Zora was surprised by the strong sense of guilt
that accompanied it.

"About Semirah. I've given her to Lord Boris and
he seemed quite pleased with her. She'll trouble you no more."

Zora could not have been more shocked. For a moment she
didn't know what to say. She had thought Rurik might somehow punish the
concubine, especially after his hard words in the forest about not being able
to forgive her, but to rid himself of her by giving her to another man?

"The same Lord Boris who my uncle . . . ?"

Zora was answered with a brusque nod. She stared at
Rurik, incredulous.

"Did . . . did Semirah go willingly? I can only
believe that what she did to me was because she held feelings for you—"

"Affection had nothing to do with her treachery,"
he broke in coldly, although his gaze held a piercing warmth that belied the
harshness of his voice. "Would you rather I had allowed her to remain
here, Princess, where she would be a threat to the mother of my heirs? Aside
from endangering your life, the crime of setting fire to my property was enough
to warrant my selling her back into slavery, but I spared her that horror by
giving her to Boris. He has the coarse manners of a pig, but he's unmarried and
rich enough to satisfy Semirah's ambition. I have no doubt she'll have better
luck with him."

Stung twice as sharply by Rurik's dispassionate
reference to her maternal use to him, Zora had to remind herself to keep calm.
But what he had said about Semirah made little sense.

"Ambition?"

"Exactly. I had sensed from the moment I brought
her here that she wanted to become my wife because she craved the rank it would
give her. Yet when you arrived, she believed that unless she got rid of you,
she would always remain a concubine. Her confession led me to think of Boris,
for until that moment I was undecided as to what I was going to do with her.
Semirah was pleased at my offer to take her to him."

Absorbing this startling news, Zora thought of what
Lady Ingigerd had said to her about seeing so much more in Rurik than a brutal
captor if she would only give him a chance. It was obvious that he had
compassion, even though it would have been well within his rights to deal
harshly with Semirah. How swiftly it seemed Zora was learning that Rurik wasn't
the coldhearted barbarian she had always perceived him to be!

Suddenly another thought struck her, a troubling one.

"What of your other concubines, Rurik? Perhaps one
or two might share a like ambition with Semirah. Must I watch my every step for
fear I'll find a knife in my back or poison in my food?"

"My other women have been with me long enough to
know their place," came his swift reply, his tone grown no warmer. "They
expect no more than I can give them, a comfortable home, safety, recognition
for any children they might bear me—"

"No love?" The question was out before Zora
could stop it. From Rurik's darkening expression, she almost wished that she
could snatch it back.

"That word holds no meaning for me, Princess, and
never will." Tight-lipped, he abruptly changed the subject. "My men
await me at the training field. Tonight you and I will dine again in the hall
so that all can see harmony is restored."

"As you wish, husband."

Her soft response seemed to startle him, his arresting
blue eyes alight with sudden suspicion. But if he was going to say something
else he thought better of it and strode from the room, slamming the outer door
a moment later.

Zora stared at the place where he had stood, stunned
that she could miss him when he had just left. Holy Mother Mary, if she wasn't
careful, she might find herself fighting some feelings of her own—

Liar, you already
are!
came that insistent inner voice and this time, Zora could not ignore
it.

***

"Is this to be the way of things, my lord? You
come to the training field to vent your anger upon your men? To work them hard
is one thing, but to push them beyond exhaustion—"

"I ask no more from them than I demand from
myself," Rurik cut Arne off irritably. His lungs hurting with his every
breath from the fury of his exertions, he wiped the stinging sweat from his
eyes. "If they cannot fight past exhaustion, they are as good as dead men
and of no use to Grand Prince Yaroslav in the battle to come."

"Yet this afternoon you were not thinking of that
battle," Arne countered bluntly, "but of the woman you have finally
taken to your bed. Training your men and yourself into exhaustion is not the
answer if you're seeking to rid her from your heart and mind."

"No?" Rurik shot back, vexed that Arne always
managed to read him so well. "What then, my friend, is the answer?"

To his surprise, the grizzled warrior who usually had
copious advice on every subject, merely shrugged.

"No, Arne, I cannot believe you have nothing to say,"
Rurik goaded him. "You started this and you will finish it. Speak your
piece and have done."

Sighing, Arne met Rurik's eyes squarely. "Perhaps
it is an impossible thing and there is no answer, my lord. Perhaps you must
simply accept that the gods have thrust a woman in your path who you cannot
ignore. I've never seen you so consumed by a wench since Astrid and even though
you believed at the time that she was the love of your life, her betrayal thus
made all the harder for you to bear, she cannot have meant more to you than
your new bride does now."

"And how do you know this?" Rurik demanded
unkindly. "You who are such an expert in matters of the heart? You've
never married, never loved—"

"Aye, never married you can well say," Arne
interrupted vehemently. "But as for never loved, the mother who bore you
won my heart the day she came to wed your father as a blushing girl of fifteen!
Eva never knew and with my loyalty sworn to your father, I would have died
before I dishonored myself. But it was
me
holding her hand when she finally let go of life, broken and alone and with
that Welsh whore Gwyneth on the high seat beside your father! If he hadn't sent
me to Rus with you, I tell you now, Rurik Sigurdson, though you may be tempted
to strike me down for saying so, I would have killed him!"

Breathing hard, Arne glanced to the sword Rurik still
held and then back to his face. "By the blood of Odin, are you going to do
it or not? You've finally found your chance to silence my meddling tongue
forever."

"How could I strike you, friend, when that is why
I left Norway as well?" Rurik said quietly, thinking of how terribly Arne
must have suffered to see his mother so abandoned, as had he. His throat tight
with remembered pain, he sheathed the weapon and then reached out and clasped
the warrior's arm, never having felt a closer bond between them. "Forgive
me. I had no right to say what I did."

"Aye, you have the right when I presume to know
what you're feeling." Arne laughed gruffly as if embarrassed by their
display of emotion, yet he quickly sobered. "I only said as much about
Astrid because she didn't have to face the barriers you've built inside
yourself . . . long held barriers your Rus princess has managed to shatter in a
few short weeks time. That alone should tell you something, my lord. And though
I'm no good judge of women's hearts, I'd say your comely bride is struggling
with herself much the same as you."

Rurik's heart seemed to skip a beat, Arne's unexpected
observation triggering the memory of his exchange last night with Zora that he
had tried his damnedest all afternoon to dispel. Add to that her unsettling
query about love and her soft-spoken words of acquiescence just before he came
to the field, and suddenly it was very hard to think rationally. Yet he made
himself, all the same.

"How can you say this? Zora may have given in to
desire but she despises me."

"Perhaps she did at first," Arne countered, "but
I would have had to be a blind man to miss the hurt in her eyes the other night
when she spied your dark-haired wench Radinka sitting on your lap. I was
tempted to tell you then, my lord, that you were acting the fool . . ."
The warrior shook his head. "I'd never have believed after all the trouble
she caused us that I would feel sorry for her, but I did."

"Trouble she is
still
causing," said Rurik with no small amount of sarcasm. "What
say you of her escape attempt yesterday? That wasn't the act of a woman who
might be falling in love with the husband she was forced to marry."

There, he had finally said it aloud, Rurik thought as
Arne heaved another sigh. Falling in love. But he wouldn't go so far as to
believe that it might be true. He couldn't. Not yet.

"Maybe it was," Arne said heavily as if
striking too close again to a painful subject. "After you made it so clear
that she meant nothing to you, flaunting your other wenches in front of her,
can you blame her for wanting to leave? From what I have seen, wives do not
suffer well the concubines of their husbands."

Arne was making so much sense that Rurik was stunned he
hadn't thought of this before, or perhaps he had simply refused to see it. Yet
if what Zora had told him yesterday was true, she had learned about him sending
his women from his bed
before
she had
tried to escape

"Remember, too, my lord, her allegiance to her
father.
 
The struggle she wages within
herself cannot be an easy one."

Believing now that Arne could read his mind, Rurik was
about to say as much when the warrior added, "There's the princess now,
over by the main storehouse."

Glancing over his shoulder, Rurik was surprised to see
Zora engaged in conversation with Yakov, the Slav steward in charge of
overseeing the details of his estate. Waiting for her off to one side were
Nellwyn and the half-dozen guards he had assigned to escort Zora wherever she
went. Suddenly suspicious, he could not help wondering what she might be up to,
his anger pricked just in considering the endless possibilities.

"So we're back to where we started from, aye, my
lord?" Startled, Rurik turned to find Arne frowning at him. "What?"

"You've distrust written all over your face.
Already you're thinking she must be scheming against you. Well, maybe she is
and maybe she isn't, but you'll never have any hope of swaying her loyalty—or
her heart—if you storm over there and demand an explanation. Use a lighter hand
and a little patience with your new wife. You just might turn the wind to your
favor . . . and that's what you truly want, isn't it?"

With that, Arne stomped off, leaving Rurik standing
alone on the training field.

But not for long. With her small entourage in tow, Zora
made her way toward him. The smile on her face, albeit a nervous one, set his
heart racing.

"You win, old bear," Rurik said to himself,
aware that the burly warrior had stopped and turned around as if curious to see
whether or not Rurik would follow his advice.

Loki take him, he could very well be opening himself up
for some treachery, but he was willing to temper his behavior on the chance
that what Arne had said was true. Could he dare to hope that Zora hadn't simply
been taunting him with talk of love? By Odin, what he would give . . .