Season of the Sun (Viking Era 1)

Zarabeth simply shrugged and looked away from him. He guessed she wished to say more about the little girl, but his firmness had directed her away from it, and she said only, “It matters not what opinion you hold. I must go now. To find a new pail. I cannot dally.”

“I will give you one.” Even as she began to shake her head, he added, his voice calm and low, “From this moment forward, my every opinion will count in your life. My every act will touch you, for you will belong to me. You will heed my words and consider them your guidance. Forget it not, Zarabeth. Now, shall I accompany you to your house? To meet your stepfather? Does he ask a large brideprice?”

It was her turn to place her hand on his forearm. She’d gone from amused outrage at his presumptuousness to something like a numb acceptance that scared her to death. Was she losing her wits entirely? She didn’t know this man who’d accosted her but minutes before. “Magnus, please, you move swiftly, much too swiftly. I don’t know you. You must understand.” She stopped, realizing she was wringing her hands. She was so startled by her action that she was silent for many moments. He too remained silent, waiting for her to finish speaking. She drew a deep breath and continued in her usual calm way, “If you wish it, I will meet you on the morrow, here, if you like. We can talk, speak of your life in Norway, of other things too. I must come to know you better. It is all I can agree to now. Can you accept that?”

“You will come to know me well when you are my wife.” He saw that she would still argue with him. He looked impatient, frustrated, which he was, yet he smiled down at her then, and it was a smile of sincerity and tenderness and it made something shift inside her, something warm and wondrous strange, something unusual and unknown. “You are a woman of importance to me. I will move more slowly, though it pains me to have to do so, but hear this, Zarabeth: I will have you as my wife and that will happen very soon. I wish to return home in ten days.”

“Ten days! Why, ’tis impossible! You ask me to—” She broke off, words for once in her life failing her. She waved her hands wildly around her. “This is my home, where I’ve spent the past ten years of my life! I know nothing of your Norway, save that all its people are fair and blond and brutal and vicious. They sail into towns in their long boats and they murder and ravish and take everything!”

“I am not vicious.”

“Ah, do you not go araiding then? Do you not steal and pillage and rape and destroy?”

“From time to time. One grows bored, and there is always need for coin and for silver and gold. It is the wanderlust too that seems to be bred in all Vikings. Undiscovered places to explore, peoples you cannot imagine living in strange ways and wearing strange clothing and speaking in gibberish tongues. I will take you with me, at least when I am trading, if you would wish to go with me.”

“But you are brutal.”

“From time to time,” he said again, and smiled. “When it is necessary. I am not a needlessly cruel man, Zarabeth. I will protect you with my life, you will see. It is what I would owe you as your husband.”

“You seem to claim there is much owed to me, were I to accept you as my husband. But you command me now, when I scarce know you, and you expect me to obey you in all things. I owe you nothing, tr

uly. You must—”

He ignored her words. He clasped her hand and turned it over in his and stared down at her palm. There were calluses on the pads of her fingers, and her hands were reddened from work. “I told you that I am not a poor man. You will have servants to see to the hardest work, and you will direct them. Aye, you will sew my tunics and see that my food is prepared properly, but your hands will be white again, for me, to soothe my temples when my thoughts are harsh, to stroke my back when my muscles are knotted, to caress me when I wish to bed you.”

She stared at him, unable to look away. She’d never met his like before. This painful boldness of his. This matter-of-factness that gave no doubts as to his thoughts or intentions. And when he spoke of bedding her, of her hands touching him . . . it was unnerving, and at the same time, she felt excitement pool deep in her belly. She felt suddenly alive, every sense awakened by his words and by his look.

“I will have you, Zarabeth.”

“I must speak to my stepfather,” she said, desperate now because she’d never seen this man before this afternoon, desperate at what he’d made her feel in only a few moments. He was beyond anything she’d ever before known, and he was beyond her ability to grasp, beyond her ability to deal with in her normally forthright manner. She was indecisive still, she was floundering, and it was obvious to him and to her. She looked away, feeling at once ridiculous and confused. “I must speak to my stepfather,” she said again.

He smiled then, for it was his triumph, his victory, and why not savor it for the moment? He had chosen her and she would come to him. He had been clear in his intentions, not mincing matters, and she’d bowed to him. He was certain of it, and quite pleased with himself. “Very well. I will be patient, Zarabeth. I will see you here on the morrow, after your Christian morning matins.”

When she only stared up at him, unspeaking, he smiled, lightly touched his fingertips to her chin, and leaned down to swiftly kiss her closed mouth. Then he was gone, striding from Coppergate square as if he were its owner, as if all its minions were his to order.

She stood there silent and wondering until he disappeared from her sight. She saw several of the women coming toward her. She quickly turned and walked away. She wanted none of their sly questions. Doubtless they wanted to ask her what the wicked barbarian had wanted of her.

And he was a barbarian. She’d forgotten that, and she shouldn’t have allowed herself to. And wicked, from what he had told her he did to his mistress. She was a Christian, as was Lotti. Ah, her little sister. When she wedded, Zarabeth had always known that Lotti would go with her, for Lotti was hers now and had been since Lotti’s second birthday, that day when her mother had died. That day when Olav had told Zarabeth that her mother had run off with another man, taking Lotti with her, and he had caught them and her mother had died from the blow the other man had dealt her. But why would the man have wanted to hurt her mother? Hadn’t he run away with her? Hadn’t he loved her? Zarabeth hadn’t understood, but she’d seen the rage, the boiling violence in her stepfather’s eyes, and kept quiet. Her mother was dead, her hair matted and bloody against her head—blood seeping from her nose and mouth, she’d heard some women say. Aye, her mother was dead, long dead. Her beautiful mother, who had supposedly loved her but left her, taking Lotti with her and leaving her behind.

Zarabeth shook away the memories. They lay in the past, dead as summer ashes, and no reason could be made of them, for there were none alive to explain them, none save Olav. And she would never speak of the past to him. Odd that the memories were still painful and frightening. Odd how she still shied away from them.

When she allowed herself to think about her situation as it was now, she realized quite clearly that Olav believed her to have taken her mother’s place. Only she wouldn’t run away from him as her mother had. She belonged to him as any child belonged to its father.

And now this Viking had come into her life.

3

Olav stared at his stepdaughter as he chewed on the potato cake she’d prepared for supper to go with the broiled beef strips. It was moist and well-baked, yet oddly, it chewed dryly in his mouth, then settled badly in his stomach. He continued to stare at Zarabeth. She was serving her little sister now, that damned little freak that Olav should have thrown into the gutter that day he’d discovered what she’d become and from whose seed she had sprung.

The child was crazy and stupid, but Zarabeth refused to accept it. Aye, he should have killed her then, but he hadn’t. And now he couldn’t. Zarabeth loved the little idiot and he knew deep down that if he harmed the girl, Zarabeth would turn on him. She might possibly even kill him. He didn’t want to be afraid of her.

He wanted to bed her.

She carried none of his blood. She was simply Irish trash, just like her mother had been, trash, but not the whore Mara had been, and he would have her in his bed, soon now. And after he was done with her, why, then he might just sell her back to the slave market in Dublin, or possibly simply take her to be his wife. Her and that little idiot, curse the fates. Perhaps he wouldn’t remain in York. Perhaps, if he married her, he would take her back to Hedeby, where he’d been born and which he had left some twenty years before.

He swallowed some of the beef, realizing even as he nearly choked on it that it was quite tasty with the honey and flour coating it. He licked his fingers, pausing a moment before he said deliberately, his voice laden with suspicion, “You seem different tonight, Zarabeth. Did something happen today? Something you’re not telling me?”

And because she knew Olav was, unaccountably, jealous of every young man who spoke to her, she looked immediately guilty, even as she quickly shook her head and said no.