Viking: Legends of the North: A Limited Edition Boxed Set (87 page)

“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…

“My lord!” came Yakov’s high nasal voice as the steward brushed past Zora at the last moment, almost tripping over his own feet in his haste to reach Rurik first. Clearly agitated, the spare, middle-aged man shook a piece of paper at him. “My lord, you must see this! It’s a list of things she wants me to buy at the market—”

“If you’re referring to my wife, Yakov, then address her properly,” said Rurik, sternly rebuking the steward who appeared just as startled as Zora that he had done so.

Taking the paper, Rurik perused the list and saw that it was made up of common household items such as woolen cloth, needles, thread, and so on. Certainly nothing threatening. He lifted his gaze to find Zora watching him, her expression grown anxious, but he turned his attention back to the steward.

“I see nothing here that should cause such alarm.”

“Then…then I am to do what she says…forgive me, what your wife has requested of me?” asked Yakov, his pallid face flushed with indignation. “I thought I should seek your counsel first…it’s so irregular…I mean, I’ve always been the one to see to what is needed without any interference from—”

“Do you want these things, Zora?” Rurik interrupted him, finally understanding just what the steward perceived his problem to be, a case of someone encroaching upon his duties.

“Yes I do, but not for myself,” she answered, her beautiful eyes very wide as if she couldn’t believe that he would ask her opinion. “Those items are for the people who lost their homes in the fire. I—I’ve been around to all of them to apologize and to ask if there was anything I could do to help. The women told me that there wasn’t enough extra cloth to be found to make a change of clothes for their families, so I thought perhaps we could buy enough to see them through until more can be woven.”

“And you are protesting this?” demanded Rurik, glaring at the steward who gaped back at him round-eyed as if he didn’t know quite what to say.

“Not…not that the cloth isn’t needed, my lord, but that this woman—”

“For the last time,
this woman
is my wife, Yakov, whose wishes will be obeyed. If she requests something from the market in Novgorod, you need not come to me first. I trust that she is well trained in the workings of a household, however large, and I expect you to respect her judgment in such matters. Are we understood?”

“Yes, yes of course, my lord,” the steward said in a nervous rush, his hands shaking as he took back the list.

Rurik turned to Zora, finding that it had given him a great deal of pleasure to speak out on her behalf. “Does this satisfy you, wife?”

Zora couldn’t have been more astounded. After how coldly Rurik had treated her earlier this afternoon, she would never have expected him to be so solicitous. Suspicious, yes. Brusque, yes, but to champion her as the mistress of his household?