Viking's Prize (12 page)

Had she truly thought she’d known confinement?

Elienor’s tiny call at Baume-les-Nonnes had never seemed
so grand than at the moment. Still, as she had no wish to see any of her
barbarian captors ever again—even to breathe fresh air—she remained
within the confines of the little tent. That she had to suffer Alarik, the
demon—she couldn’t say his name, even mentally, without adding the
epithet—was torment enough!

He was the one who brought her food and water, and
for the first two days had ministered to her head wound solicitously, yet she
felt anything but grateful at the moment.

Some part of her—the part that felt the loss
and guilt most keenly—wished only that he would let her die in peace. How
could she bear to live with such beasts?

She could have borne it had she had someone to
care for, to protect, someone who needed her. But there was no one now. Stefan
and Clarisse were gone, and she’d never been more alone in her life, not even
when she’d been abandoned to the priory!

Turning away from the tent opening and the starry
darkness beyond it, she recalled what Alarik had said to her—that his own
father had thought to put him out as a babe. She closed her eyes, and there the
image plagued her. Desperately, she tried to free her mind, but it was no use.

Why couldn’t she stop thinking of him?

Why couldn’t she simply go to sleep?

He was anything but vulnerable, she knew. So why
was she foolish enough to see him otherwise?

Tugging the coverlet up, she buried her face in
the abrasive wool and managed to coerce herself into a troubled slumber. In her
dream the rain pattered on her back…

“Whatever possessed you to come here at such an ungodly hour?”

Hearing Heloise’s voice, Elienor swung about, hurling herself into the
old nun’s welcoming arms.

“There, there, now,” she soothed. “Sister Heloise will love you now, ma
bonne petite. Together we will care for your maman’s lily. Oui?”

Elienor nodded into the warmth of Heloise’s wool clad shoulder.
Scratchy as the fabric was, it felt good to her little cheeks. “Because Maman
loves lilies... She loves them so much...” She sighed. Here she felt so safe...
so sheltered...

She lifted her face, smiling, to gaze into... his face!

That look! So tender. Alarik was holding her, his arms strong,
shielding her from the pattering rain.

She couldn’t help herself. She let him, sagging against his coarse
mail-clad chest, her arms going around him.

Safe... safe...yet how could it be so?

The sun was shining, sweet and warm upon her face.

But something was wrong.

Something... though she knew not what...

It was much too bright suddenly, the sun glinting off silver helms and
mail. All about her swords clashed with a mighty clang. But she could see no
one!

Shields flashed.

Bringing her hand from around from his back... she discovered blood.

Betrayed? Had she betrayed him? But how?

How was it possible when she’d never given her loyalty to begin with?

It could not be.

All at once she was torn from Alarik—seized by a man without a
face.

Elienor screamed...

“Shhhhh, little one,” a husky voice whispered.
“Shhhhhhh. ’Tis but a dream.” A warm palm smoothed her damp hair away from her
forehead.

Elienor’s eyes flew wide, and her heart leapt into
her throat. As her vision adjusted in the darkness, she found him hovering
inches above her, his expression so... tender—that same expression she
remembered from the church... and more recently from the dream.

Her breath caught as his hands moved to her
shoulders, stroking gently, the gesture oddly soothing yet disturbing in its
intimacy.

“You?” she croaked. Reaching out, she seized his
hand in a desperate attempt to stop his ministrations.

His hands stilled, but remained where he willed
them “Aye,” he whispered, his lips hovering so close to her face that she could
feel the heat of his breath. “You were dreaming. Again,” he added with quiet
emphasis.

Again?

Elienor’s heart somersaulted. Acutely aware of his
hands on her shoulders, as well as his lips so near her own, she licked her
lips gone dry and swallowed. Each night since her injury she’d dreamed that
same distressing dream.

Had he come to comfort her those times as well?

“Again?”

His fingers recommenced massaging her shoulder,
undeterred by the nails she dug into the back of his hand.

“Again,” he said, his warm breath caressing her
lips.

A chill raced down Elienor’s spine. She whimpered
softly, recalling the last time a man—Count Phillipe—had lingered
so close. The possibility that Alarik might kiss her made her heartbeat quicken
and her breath catch in her throat.

What would she do?

Looking down into her frightened face, Alarik wanted
to ask what made her cry out so desperately in her sleep each night, but was
loath to hear that her nightmare was of him. For an instant, he tried to
imagine how he would see himself through her eyes and cringed at the image.
“You were weeping,” he told her, his voice strange to his own ears. “I heard
and came.”

“It… was naught,” Elienor protested, her hand
drawing his away from her shoulder. “As you said... naught but a foolish
dream.”

“Aye,” he replied huskily, releasing her abruptly.
He surged to his feet. “You should go back to sleep.” His breath sounded as
labored as her own. “’Tis early yet...”

Elienor’s heart thrummed in the silence as he
gazed down upon her.

Yet he didn’t go.

He did not so much as move.

Nor did his expression shift.

The silence between them grew until Elienor
thought she would shatter from the tension. Her mind searched desperately for
something to say.

“Why would your father do such a thing?” she asked
impetuously, agitated as much by the way he watched her as with the silence.
“To his own son?” She could understand how it could come to pass that a father
might abandon his daughter to the clergy, for the sake of greed, because it had
happened to her. But murder outright? “Why would any father think to cast aside
an innocent babe?”

He’d altogether forgotten that first conversation.
And then, remembering, he nodded, feeling for the first time in so many years
those conflicting emotions he’d experienced the first time he’d asked that
question of himself. He turned from her momentarily, frowning as he went to the
tent opening, lifting up the flap to peer out from the tarpaulin, into the
quiet night. His face, lit only on one side by the night sky, appeared wholly
sinister in the deep shadows of the tarpaulin.

Only the creak of the wood, adjusting to the
movement of the sea, and the snores of his crew broke the silence.

“Because I was born too soon,” he revealed after a
moment of discomfiture. He turned to face her once more, the unwelcome emotions
swiftly mastered, tucked away even from himself. “Born too soon,” he reiterated
without inflection, “and thus too small.”

“What stopped him?” Something in her tone made
Alarik flinch. The last thing he’d intended was to stir her pity.

He wanted no one’s pity.

He straightened. There was naught to pity. “My
mother’s weeping,” he disclosed matter-of-factly. “’Tis the way it should have
been,” he added in a tense, clipped tone that forbade further questioning. The
way she looked at him in that instant, full of compassion, set his teeth on edge.
“It was my father’s given right’,” he told her, his brows colliding when she
continued to look his way in silence, her eyes scrutinizing him through the
shadows. “Damn you—I’ve no need of your pity, wench—save it for
yourself! You seem to wallow in it more than enough!”

“I have not been wallowing in pity!”

“Nei? Is that why you lie here, day in, day out,
staring blindly and mutely at the ceiling of this tarpaulin?”

She flashed him a look of contempt. “And what
would you have me do instead?” she countered icily, her voice rising with her
anger. “Rejoice over having been taken captive by a hoard of barbarians?”

Alarik felt a rush of satisfaction at hearing the
bite in her tone. If she was angry, at least she was feeling. The more she’d
retreated within herself, the more guilt had gnawed at his gut. Yet quick on
the heels of his relief came an overwhelming rush of resentment, for once again
he mocked himself; why should he care what came of the wench?

He glanced out from the tarpaulin, his scowl as
dark as the night without. To his way of thought, no wench was worthy of more
than a fleeting thought, and he didn’t make it his practice to reflect on them
overmuch. Nor did he idle away his time with them, save to quench his body’s
cravings, and for that there was always a willing body.

Aye, there had been a few who with their expert
ways and comely faces had set his mind to reeling and his tongue ready to
recount any number of love words but only for the time, because once his body
was sated, cold reality crept abed. He’d never spoken the words. Never would.
All it ever took to set his mind straight was to remember another woman who
might have destroyed so much in his life. Deceit and treachery was the way with
them all.

By damn! he cursed himself. He didn’t care!

So why was it he came running to her side at
hearing her cries each night? Nei, why did he wait to hear them so that he
could come?

And he did, Loki take him! He shook his head in
self-disgust, maddened by his conflicting emotions. Resisting the urge to rip
down the tarpaulin where he stood, he turned to face her. “By the jaws of
Fenri, wench, I care not what you do!” he exploded suddenly. “Go back to
sleep—and next time, be certain to smother your cries lest you rouse my
men! I won’t bother to answer them—ungrateful, aggravating, witch!”

Blaspheming himself next, he thrust aside the tent
flap and ducked out into the night.

Witch.

The sound of that single word kindled terror in
Elienor’s heart, as it never failed to.

She dared not sleep again. Dared not dream.
Closing her eyes, she prayed for morning.

CHAPTER
12

Take care what
you pray for.

Recalling
Sister Heloise’s words, Elienor grimaced for the first bright rays of morning
had come too early, with no regard for her body’s fatigue. Yet despite her
weariness—or mayhap because of it—she felt restless.

She sat
abruptly, glaring at the tent opening, hugging her knees, thinking that more
than likely it was he that made her feel so cross. How dare he accuse her of
wallowing in self-pity! Especially when she had every cause to do so!

She
shivered suddenly, rubbing her arms beneath the blanket, remembering against
her will the incredible warmth of his lips.

Don’t
think of that, she scolded herself.

How
could she have felt sympathy for the beast? Amazingly, she had—for the
babe he’d once been, and for his mother—and along with it, she’d
experienced such an incredible urge to comfort—a ridiculous notion, for
he’d seemed not at all affected by his past. His face had remained an
impervious mask, and if anything he’d seemed vexed with her for questioning his
murderous father.

Listening
to the sounds of the crew rousing outside, she wished them all to
perdition—their arrogant leader most especially!

She
stood, shaking off the blanket in the heat of her ire, and began to pace the
confines of the narrow tent, stopping to listen to the ghoulish groans of the
mast. She pounded the wooden pillar soundly with her fist, wanting it to cease
once and for all.

She
couldn’t bear this much longer!

And she
most certainly was not a witch!

What of
the dream? a little voice asked.

Elienor
snorted inelegantly. “What dream?” she countered stubbornly.

Ah, Elienor, you
forget so easily—any one of many—last night when he held you...

“’Tis
naught but coincidence,” Elienor said petulantly, refusing to acknowledge the
other accusation—that she’d allowed him to hold her—regardless that
it was merely a dream. Mother Heloise said it was so.

And you believe
it still? Can you be so blind? Open your eyes at last, bien-aimee.

A
shiver passed down her spine. “Beloved?” Something about the way the endearment
came to her, the way it sounded so clearly in her head, suddenly discomfited
her. It brought back memories of her mother’s soft gentle voice. She swallowed,
glancing about warily.