Chapter Forty-Three
Dark arrived very late at this time of year, if it came at all. On a clear night, the gloaming might hover in the sky till dawn. Just like at home, where a kind of madness sometimes set in due to the surfeit or lack of light.
It was mad for Hulda to go walking off now, after lying to her men about having another meeting with Quarrie.
We may speak together long, she’d told them. Do not expect me back till late.
Only Garik had looked askance, and he was too tired to object. She’d kept all of them working hard on overhauling Freya, the whole day long. They would sleep well and hopefully forget about her.
Once she veered from the path that led south to the settlement and climbed into the trees, she appreciated the lingering light, even though this night was not a clear one. Soft clouds gathered and obscured the blade of the moon. It might rain by dawn.
The last time she and Quarrie had been together, it had rained. If it did so again, did it mean the very world wept for them? That their love was doomed?
Anyone but a fool of a woman who had lost her heart would know it was. Apart from stolen moments and those hard come by, how could they ever be together?
She reached the half-ruined hut ahead of him and began to fret. He had changed his mind—he was not coming after all. He did not love her.
Then a shadow moved among the trees that had grown up around the hut. The great bound of her heart told her who it was even before he spoke.
“Hulda, love?”
Love. Ach, ja, well she had told him she loved him. Should he not do the same? Should there be anything the one of them withheld from the other?
She went to him, pressed close into his arms, which closed to embrace her fiercely. The rightness of it, sharp as pain, stole her words and closed her throat.
They did not speak. Did not need to. She inhaled his scent while a confusing series of images tumbled through her mind.
A tall young man standing over a washbasin, but half clad in the bright sunshine. Auburn hair and hazel eyes—not Quarrie’s eyes, but those eyes regarded her the same way Quarrie’s did, with love. He was, and yet he was not Quarrie.
A fair-haired man with gray-green eyes, rowing a tiny boat across the far ocean. Her name on his lips. Bradana.
Another young man with light-brown hair, riding on the back of a pony, racing—racing her with his eyes alight and a smile on his face.
The memories twisted together and convulsed her heart. All of these were the man in her arms who had loved her, and loved her, and loved her again.
How could they do anything except love each other now?
She lifted her face to his. “Kiss me.” She spoke, unthinkingly, in Norse, but he understood her anyway and his lips took hers. They molded together, bodies, mouth, tongues, spirits, and her heart steadied, perhaps beating in time with his, while desire rose in a staggering wave.
“Love me,” she begged, even as she had long, long ago.
They moved to the sheltered end of the hut, where Hulda spread her cloak. Undressed themselves and each other.
Before they lay down, he turned her to face him.
Beautiful he looked, standing there in the filtered light of the gloaming, holding her, holding her with his gaze.
Deliberately, he lifted each of her hands in turn to his lips and dropped fervent kisses into the palms. He kissed both corners of her mouth, each cheek. He left a lingering kiss on her brow.
“Myself I do give to ye, Hulda. For all time.”
“Ja, and I—forever.”
They fell onto her cloak and wrapped themselves in each other. As it had been before, the joining seemed familiar yet new, a discovery of an old memory, an ancient song Hulda’s heart had never forgotten.
No beginning to how she loved this man, and no end. She withheld nothing of herself from him and they became, in truth, one being with one flesh.
I love you.
She whispered it to him over and over again, in two languages. Or mayhap he said it to her. Who could tell? Hulda knew only that she existed in this moment with him, and nothing else might be desired.
Time ceased to pass. If there was a wheel upon which the lives of men and women turned, it ground to a blessed halt and let them be.
“I love you,” one of them whispered again before, upon Quarrie’s chest, Hulda fell asleep.
*
Quarrie dreamed. While the woman he loved slept close in his arms, he did.
He was in a chariot behind a team of wild-headed ponies.
His best friend—a yellow-headed lad with a bright, crooked grin—was beside him, handling the traces.
On their way into battle, they were. Secure in their friendship. Secure in their lives.
His friend turned to him. “When I die, will ye take good care o’ my sister?”
The scene changed, tumbled and fogged with smoke and flame.
He ran toward another battle with a sword in his hand.
This land he knew—it was his own stretch of shore, his own settlement.
But it did not look the same. No keep stood on the knoll, only a roundhouse—a dun—and the dead lay everywhere.
He stepped over them to reach his opponent.
The dream tumbled again. He saw a man, black hair streaked with gray, a cruel sneer on his face. He would fight that man to the death if he must in order to free the woman he loved.
Hulda stirred in his arms. Whimpered. It brought Quarrie from the dream.
“Hush, love. Wha’ is it?” He cradled her against him, precious to him as his own life.
“I dreamed—” Her lashes fluttered desperately. He could see her clearly. Morning must be almost come. “You were going off to fight. Ready to die for me.” She gulped back a sob. “Die. For me.”
“Aye.” Had they, after sharing so much, also shared the same dreams?
She began to fight her way free of his arms. “No man need ever fight for me. I fight on my own behalf.”
“Aye, love. Aye.”
“You were a warrior, you were always a warrior, and you tried to sacrifice yourself for me again and again.” She sat up and began to weep, this woman who, Quarrie imagined, very rarely shed a tear. She wept as if heartbroken.
“Love.” He seized her hands and tried to reason with her. “Ye canna keep a man fro’ fighting for what he loves.”
“I can. I can!”
“’Tis his God-given right, that.”
“I will never let you die for me, not again. I will stand for myself. Fight for myself.”
“Aye, so ye can.”
She cradled his face between her hands. “I do not want you to be a warrior. Not ever again.”
“My love, I am what I am, who I am. I was raised to fight in defense of this land.” Against those such as she, though he did not say so. “If ye love me, ye maun accept—”
“I can never accept your dying for my sake.”
“List. List. I am no’ dying. Am I no’ here wi’ ye now? Hush. Hush.”
He drew her back against him, seeking to comfort her. The jumble of images from his dreams still filled his mind. Had she dreamed somewhat else more terrible? Had she dreamed his death?
She kissed him, pouring herself into the caress, into him. Before Quarrie knew it, they were making love again, flesh to flesh and soul to soul, even as the sun grew strong in the sky.
It had not rained after all. The night had been kind to them, allowed them a magical span of time to share themselves with one another.
He had done that, completely. Quarrie dragged his eyes open as the thought occurred to him. During the night past, might he not have given her his child?
Best not to mention that, just like past losses, or future partings.
“It is late.” He roused her. “We maun go home.”
“I do not wish to part with you. I fear if I do, I will not see you again.”
“Aye, but ye will. The end o’ summer is a while off yet.”
“And much, much can happen to separate a woman from the man she loves. I know that. I am not a fool.”
She feared. Since they had found one another, she’d feared losing him even though he doubted she feared much else.
Quarrie thought of the glimpses he’d had in those dreams—of other lives?
Ones in which she might well have lost him, for he’d, aye, been a warrior.
So now she worried about losing him again.
Life made no promises. Like her, he was no fool and faced that squarely. That meant he could make her no false promises either. Only that he would never stop loving her.
That was truth.
“Hulda, love, against all likelihood we ha’ been given the gift o’ meeting one another. We may also ha’ been given glimpses o’ a past or many pasts full o’ risk and danger. We canna change the past by worrying for it.”
“You are right.” She strove visibly to gain control of her emotions, drew herself up, and tossed back her mane of hair, the same he’d loosened from its plaits with his own hands. “I am with you now. It is more—more than anything for which I ever thought to hope.”
“Aye.” Yet he could feel the pain inside her, even as he could feel the love.
“Tell me we will be together here again before I sail for home.”
Dangerous to chance it when each meeting exposed them to possible discovery. Yet he did not possess the strength to deny her. “Aye.”
“When? Tomorrow night?”
“Nay, too soon. ’Twill arouse suspicion.”
She made a sound of protest before she said, “I will try to be patient. But being with you, Quarrie—it is more than desire I feel, eh? It is need. Do you understand?”
“I do.” All too well. And if he had to watch Freya’s sail disappear over the northern horizon, it would half kill him.
Do not think about that yet.
“Come.” He rose and pulled her to her feet, stood for an instant gazing upon her. Naked, beautiful, withholding nothing from him.
He wished he could tell her what he felt in that moment. What he believed. That if destiny had gone to all the trouble of bringing them together this way, there must be a powerful reason for it. A life-changing one.
Instead he told her softly, “We maun hurry. ’Tis already growing light.” He picked up her garments and handed them to her. The two of them dressed as unashamedly as a wedded couple, rushing now.
He said to her before they took their separate paths, “Ye will be strong? Be strong for me.”
“I will.”
But the pain in her eyes when she left him matched his own.