“Aye, for now. Just stay out of Miles’s way.”
“Why does he always reappear like this, just when I think I am free of him?” There was true anguish in Ivo’s voice, a depth of despair almost beyond Gunnar’s understanding. Gunnar had lost friends in battle, he had seen things that would make other men curl up and ask to die, but he had not watched a beloved sister destroyed in the hands of evil. Such a memory was Ivo’s burden—his sister’s death at the hands of Sir Miles, his half-brother.
“Maybe,” he suggested softly, “you will never be free of him, until you finish with him.”
Ivo’s dark eyes were reddened with lack of sleep, and maybe more than that. He held up his gloved hand—the deformity was not evident through the leather, but Gunnar had seen the missing fingers. “Until I kill him, do you mean? I tried once, remember? Miles is my brother, my own flesh and blood! I hate him, Gunnar, but he is my brother.”
Lord Fitzmorton had said that—flesh and blood. It had not made sense; it still did not.
Gunnar had never had a brother, but he understood the ties and bonds of family. Even hate could be a bond.
Ivo looked away, his mouth a thin, tight line.
Gunnar pretended to stretch and yawn. “Miles might not come back. Fitzmorton might send him north again.” He shrugged, “I am not always right, my friend.”
Ivo managed a faint smile. “Neither are you always so modest.” His eyes narrowed, as if something had suddenly occurred to him. “Where were you? I waited for hours. Have you found a woman? Of course.” He shook his head in resignation, his wild hair dancing about it like a black halo. “Gunnar Olafson always has a woman in his bed, wherever he goes. If you were in hell, my friend, an angel or two would follow you down.”
Gunnar managed a laugh. “Not this time. I was keeping watch on Lady Rose. She is in danger, Ivo. Her knight is untrustworthy, and now she knows it.”
“But are they not lovers?”
Gunnar kept his face smooth and expressionless, but there must have been something in his eyes to give him away. As Ivo’s pale face broadened into a wide smile, transforming his fierce features, Gunnar cursed himself for a fool.
“You do want her for yourself. And you are jealous of every other man on Somerford Manor. Ah, Gunnar, take her body if you must, but do not seek to own her every word, her every look. You will go mad.”
Gunnar lay back down and closed his eyes. “You do not understand,” he said coldly. “She is not what you think. She is an honest woman caught in an intolerable situation. I must save her, Ivo.”
Ivo took a moment to think this over. “I do not doubt you will save her, Gunnar—if anyone can, it is you. But if you rescue the lady, you will lose the land.”
“Why would I want land?” he mumbled, closing his eyes again. “We still have the whole of Wales to subdue, my friend…”
Ivo laughed softly, and then his voice grew serious again. “Be careful. Men have been blinded before when it comes to the woman they lust after. Is she really what you think her, Gunnar, or has your desire turned you into a fool?”
But Gunnar kept his eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. After a pause Ivo returned to his own bed, settling noisily for a few moments of rest before they were all due to rise.
Gunnar knew well enough he would lose the land, but then it had never truly been his. It had always belonged to Rose, and now that he knew what she was, he could not see himself stealing it from her and being able to live with himself.
When she had asked him last night whether his conscience kept him awake at night, he had not told her the truth. It did. Not because of the men he had killed and the blood he had spilled, but because he knew in despair that he could not have what he dearly wanted. A haven, land for himself and his men, a chance to put his skills to a use other than killing for coin. He would have been a good lord, but now he could not take Somerford without losing his honor. And what would he be without that? He would be like Miles de Vessey and Lord Fitzmorton—men without souls.
Honor is all very well, Gunnar, but can you touch honor? Can you eat it and drink it? Can you ease yourself upon it at night?
The voice was his mother’s, but it was gentle, understanding, accepting. Gudren knew her only son too well.
“I am an old woman,” she had informed him, her pale eyes all but closed in the smoky room at Crevitch. “I have had five children, but only one lived beyond the birthing. You are all I have, Gunnar. I need grandchildren, my son. And you need a wife. You will grow bitter and nasty, like Forkbeard. You do not want that, Gunnar, do you?”
As Forkbeard was his mother’s worst-tempered billy goat, Gunnar had assured her that he did not. “But wives do not like their husbands going away to fight and not coming home for months, sometimes years,” he had reminded her. “What wife would put up with that, my mother?”
“Have you tried asking?” she had retorted, half smiling.
“I know the answer already.”
“Then if you have not tried, you have not met the woman you want to ask.”
“You are a maze, Mother, and I cannot find my way to the point you make.”
Gudren had laughed and hugged her big son, and pride and love, mingled with exasperation, shone in her eyes.
Gunnar wondered what she would think of him now, if she knew that he hungered after a Norman lady. A lady whom Radulf believed treacherous, a lady whose land he could be master of, if he proved her so. And then he wondered what Rose would do, if he asked her to wait for him while he went off fighting—for weeks, months, and maybe even years. Would she laugh in disbelief, or turn her back on him in disgust?