Lord of Hawkfell Island (Viking Era 2)

Einar said slowly, “You will be a queen. You will have everything you wish. You will have endless jewels and slaves. You will breed two or three sons, then he will leave his age-spotted hands off you. Mayhap even his rod is age-spotted. Does that happen to old men? I wonder.

“Even though we haven’t the same father, I still honor Audun. Through my efforts, you, his daughter, will be a queen. I do suggest that you quickly produce a male child, else the old king just might have your lovely throat slit and another virgin fetched to his bed.”

The truth prodded at her, but she was too afraid and too wise in her half-brother’s ways to speak the words.

“As will you,” she said and shrugged as if she didn’t have a care. “He is an old man. Mayhap he will die soon.” She paused and tried to make her eyes glitter as his did. “Mayhap I will assist him to his just rewards.”

Einar laughed. He released her hand. He drank deeply. “Aye, I like the sound of that, but you will have to take care, Mirana. It is strange, but you have changed,” he added, frowning a bit. “There is a difference in you. I will learn it quickly enough, for I know you well, don’t I?” Still he frowned, then he shook it off, for the mead was thick in his blood and in his brain. “Tell me what Rorik Haraldsson did to you. Did he mistreat you badly? Don’t lie, Mirana. Emund and Ingolf already told me all of it, including your paltry falsehoods to them about being wed to this Rorik. They said Sira told them how vilely you were treated, both by his hands and at the hands of his family. Sira told them how he hated you so much he even whipped you. Did it hurt, Mirana? How did he whip you?”

She wanted to vomit. “You have said many things, Einar. What do you wish to know first?”

He frowned at her, and leaned closer. “Tell me about the whipping.”

She said calmly enough, “One doesn’t like to be whipped. You whipped me, remember?”

“Aye,” he said, and there was remembered pleasure in his voice. “You deserved it. Tell me, did he hurt you?”

“It hurt.”

“Did he strip off your clothes?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Of course you do. Did he strip you naked and have one of his men hold you whilst he wielded the whip?”

She could only shake her head, knowing she was showing weakness in front of him and that it wasn’t wise. But he was drunk, surely he would leave her alone tonight. “I don’t wish to speak of it more, Einar. I am very tired, surely you can believe that. May I seek my bed now?”

He brooded, obviously displeased with her answers to him. “You keep things from me, Mirana. I don’t like it. Your tongue is as sharp as always, but at the same time you are different. Mayhap it is your weariness that allows these evasions, this mockery I’ve heard in your soft voice. I suppose it has been hard for you, this captivity and your long voyage back to Clontarf. But I wish to know more of this whipping he gave you before I let you seek out your bed. Be certain that I will avenge you; that is why I wish to know.” He leaned closer to her, his eyes on her mouth. “Tell me and I will make this Rorik’s death longer and more painful than any before.”

Very well, she thought. “He hurt me badly, Einar. He stripped me naked and threw me to the ground. He had one of his men hold my hair away from my back. He tied my wrists to a stake. He beat me until I was unconscious.”

His breathing was coming fast now. By the gods, she’d given him too much, she’d made a mistake. She’d gone too far. Her tale hadn’t excited fierce protectiveness in him toward her. No, she’d excited him surely, but her words had brought him pleasure, a dark ugly pleasure. His nostrils flared and his eyes gleamed with a light that terrified her. “Did he touch you afterward?”

She shook her head as she rose quickly. She said loudly, “I am glad to be home. You are all my friends and you wish me well, my dear brother most of all. Tonight, I sleep safely.” Then she quickly turned on her heel and left the hall, praying that Einar wouldn’t come after her and perhaps whip her to see if he could best what she’d told him Rorik had done. No, he wouldn’t do that, now he could not afford to, for there was the king who wanted her. Nay, he would whip another, an innocent, just because she’d taunted him and excited him with a lie.

What if Emund told Einar what she’d said of him? He wouldn’t kill her for there was too much at stake. But what would he do? She wondered now as she had many times before what was in his mind.

He was staring after her. Sira was looking at him. There was no smile on her lips now.

26

MIRANA KNEW SOMEONE was there even before she was fully awake. Gunleik, she thought, and felt a surge of hope. She opened her eyes but it wasn’t Gunleik who stood there.

It was a beautiful young girl with golden hair—not the silver blondness of Sira—no, golden as the wheat in August, and brilliant golden eyes. She was dressed in pure white linen with a tunic of the finest white wool over it. Mirana frowned a bit for those thick, beautifully designed silver bracelets at her wrists and on her upper arms surely belonged to Einar. She realized then that it was the same girl Ingolf had taunted Einar about just before Einar had killed him.

“You’re awake, witch,” the girl said, her voice vicious and low.

“Who are you?”

“I am your brother’s mistress. Those other two women no longer hold him except on rare occasion, the bleating sheep. I have been here since you’ve been gone. I am more beloved by Einar than any before me and that includes you as well. He found me in Dublin and brought me here, nay, begged me to come here. I am the one he loves. You are here only until he can contact that old bastard, King Sitric, to come and fetch you. Then you will be gone and I will be glad. All the people will realize that I am here to take your place, and then they will have to respect me and obey me as they now do you.”

“What is your name?”

The girl straightened now and simply stared down at her. She appeared fine-boned, yet tall, lithe, and sleek. “Einar told me you were beautiful. He said your flesh was as white as goat’s milk, that your eyes were the same color as his, but it isn’t true. The green of your eyes is impure, dulled with other colors, not the pure vibrant green of his. Nay, you are nothing with your ugly black hair. Einar remembered you in his image and endowed you with his own beauty. I know why. It was because you have such value to him. He wants you to be comely so the king won’t be angered. Aye, he was afraid you would be lost to him forever. I had believed that Einar feared nothing, but I was wrong. He fears that old king and that advisor of his, Hormuze.

“I listened to you speak to him last night. You spoke sharply to him; you were cold when you wished to be; you taunted him, surely you lied to him about that whipping the Viking gave you. You did not treat him with respect, with the honor he deserves, yet he didn’t strike you. Mayhap he wanted to but he didn’t want you marked for the king. Aye, that is it. You’d best pray the king will fetch you quickly, else Einar will grow weary of your bitch’s deceit and insolence. He will strike you and I will enjoy watching him do it. Else he will stick his knife in your breast, just as he did to that bastard, Ingolf, and I will enjoy watching him to do that as well.”

“Has he struck you?”