Chapter Forty-Five
“My men want to go home.” Hulda whispered the words but a breath from Quarrie’s lips, having just finished kissing him. She had not meant to speak them—not here, not now when his body lay naked beneath hers, in this time apart. The words merely came on their own.
His eyes, which had closed against the pleasure of her kiss, opened. By Freya’s heart, she loved his eyes. That rare hazel sparked with green, they contained all she would ever need of the world. Nei, they contained a world of their own.
His thick brown lashes swept up and down and his gaze narrowed on hers when he said, “Do they, now?” He slid his palms down her back to her naked buttocks and drew her closer in a gesture that had become wonderfully familiar.
It brought desire and comfort in equal measures.
He fitted her, he did. She belonged with him and to him. No need for further questioning.
They had met again at the ruined stone hut, even though it was surely unwise to do so, for they might well be discovered by her men or his people.
Hulda had delivered the message when she and Brynjar had gone for supplies, Garik having made up an excuse to stay away, that Quarrie should come here to her this night.
Now she wondered. Did Garik not wish to see his Morag? Ach, he was stronger, then, than she.
She felt as if she had spun out her endurance for being without Quarrie as long as she could, without dying. And now, when they’d made love once, when she knew she could have him again, she reached to satisfy the even deeper need of confiding in him.
“Ja. And Garik thinks… He thinks most of them will not be interested in returning, come spring.”
He drew a quick breath, one she felt through her whole body, which told her he comprehended the implications. When she sailed away from here at the end of the season, it would cost both of them dear, but knowing she would not return…
“Garik says he would be willing to come, and as the navigator, he is vital to me. I can try to get another crew. But Freya is one boat alone. She is not large. I was able to gather this crew because they were young and largely unproven.”
“That is not so, now.”
“Nei, it is not.”
“Surely”—his gaze held hers—“they feel some loyalty to ye.”
“They should, ja.” Hulda frowned over it. “I did give them a chance. And they will sail home with a measure of riches. But they have not liked all that has happened here.”
“Our alliance, ye mean.”
“And,” she concluded bitterly, “there is little glory in sailing for a woman.”
His hands traveled to her waist and cradled her. Grief showed in his eyes.
She reiterated, “I will do my best to hire another crew. But I—I cannot promise. Without a crew, I cannot return.”
Emotions flickered through his eyes like light on water. That grief. Protest. Terror. Love. Hulda understood them all because she also experienced them all.
“I wish,” she said, “I wish I could promise to return.”
“I wish,” he whispered just as softly, “ye could stay.”
“Stay when the rest of them leave, you mean?” Her heart began to pound as she considered it. It would mean surrendering her life. All she had been. Spending the remainder of it among people who feared and despised her.
Not that she would refuse to do so, for him.
“Are you asking me to stay with you?”
“I am. Become my wife.”
All the breath left Hulda’s body in a rush. She fought to regain it, along with her thoughts. “Your folk would never accept it.” A Norsewoman standing at their head? The mother of their future chief?
“I ha’ lived my entire life for this clan and will live for it every day I ha’ to come. May I no’ ha’ this one thing?”
This one thing he needed, he meant. This fundamental thing that they both needed.
But people, as Hulda well knew, were selfish. They wanted what they wanted. Her crew did even though, ja, they owed her for this chance she’d offered them.
Just as, in a way, she owed them.
With regret, she shook her head. “I want to. I want nothing more than to be your wife. But I cannot give you that promise, either. For me not to return home—well, my faeir has already lost his son; my móeir has. Should they lose their dottir also without explanation? Faeir—he is a powerful man. He is capable of sending a force to attack this place out of revenge. Out of spite.”
“He would do that? If your crew, if Garik told him ye chose to stay?”
“So that I might wed with the man who killed his son?”
“My father did that, not me.”
“No better.” A wry smile twisted her lips and she shook her head again. “Nei, I must go home. Talk to him, and to Móeir. See if I can make explanations and get her on my side. Faeir listens to her, sometimes.”
“Then it seems I maun let ye sail awa’ from me.”
It would be a long winter, unbearably long. And when she returned to Norge, would all this seem like a dream? As if it had never truly happened. Like those other dreams she’d had of Quarrie when he wore another man’s face and body—different yet the same. But that was real. It was a past truth.
“I maun let ye go,” he repeated. “And doing so, I maun ha’ faith. I canna believe fate brought ye to me for this moment in time, only so we might be parted again, forever.”
“Not forever.” A sob rose to her throat. “But ja, perhaps for this life.” She did not want to admit that, did not even want to think it, but it might well be so.
“Then—then, Hulda, we will meet again in the next life. This I do promise ye.”
“Love me,” she beseeched him. “Love me now.”
And he did.
Time, so Hulda decided as she sheltered there in his arms, as she took him inside her, was a fickle commodity. It flew when she was with him. Dragged when she was not. Terrified her when she thought of the span of it before spring.
Became unimaginable when she considered the remainder of her life. She was not yet a score and four years old. How would she live the many years without him?
He was right—she had to try to believe. Believe in something beyond the reach of her own intentions, in the same destiny that, out of a world of men, had brought her to him.
This love they shared was wondrous. It was also terrifying. Could she trust that it had a power of its own?
They lay lost in loving till dawn, when they rose and dressed without words, the cold of the outside world stealing in with the morning light.
Not until they prepared to part, he to take one path through the woodland and she another, did he catch both her hands in his and ask, “Hulda, how many days do we have left?”
“I do not know. If I take Freya out for a few more raids, that may keep the men content and make them willing to linger yet a while.”
The corners of Quarrie’s mouth tightened. He hated it when she went raiding—the price of keeping her near to him.
“Even that takes ye awa’ from me.”
“Ja.”
“Time has become verra precious.”
The tears in Hulda’s eyes blurred his face. She blinked them away. “Quarrie, we must be together as oft as we can before I take Freya home.”
Once more, she saw the emotions flicker in his eyes. Doubt. Protest. A weighing of risk against desire.
He said only, “Aye.”
“Tonight.”
His fingers tightened on hers. He should refuse, as a sensible man would. Instead he said again, “Aye.”
Very well, then. She could live another day. Stave off the thoughts and the dread that accompanied them.
They kissed goodbye, a lingering of lips on lips, a clinging of soul to soul.
“Tonight,” she whispered in parting.
But before the night came, a message arrived in camp brought by one of Quarrie’s guards. The man asked to speak with Hulda alone, and delivered his message with narrowed eyes.
“Chief Quarrie bade me let ye know there is trouble at hand. A fleet o’ longships has been sighted movin’ in fro’ the outer islands.”
Hulda’s heart fell. He would not be able to come. That was her first thought before she focused on what the man had said.
“Longboats?”
“Aye. We see to our defenses.”
Hulda knew what that meant. The gates guarded. Every man armed. The women and children quite possibly sent off to shelter in the forest.
She could not go to him. He would not want to see her now, nor would his folk.
This—this was the reality of their situation. When the monsters arrived from the ocean, she would be seen as one of them.
“I understand,” she told the man, and he went pelting off as if a howling horde pursued him.
As it did.