Chapter 5
CHESSA STARED AT Ragnor of York.
“Aye, I’ve got you now, you little bitch, and you’ll not escape me.”
“What do you want, you miserable piece of swamp weed?”
Ragnor stood slowly, took two steps toward her, and slapped her hard. She fell to the rug-covered wooden planks. Pain seared through her hip. He stood over her, his hands on his narrow hips, looking down at her. He was quite pleased with himself. He was smiling down at her.
“I like you at my feet, your face down. It becomes you. You will never again speak to me with any words save modest ones. Do you understand, Chessa?”
She looked up at him, standing there over her. She swallowed words she knew would only lead to more pain, though she wanted to shriek at him, tell him what she thought of him, throw herself on him, and pound that smirk off his silly face.
“I asked you a question, Chessa. Answer me.”
Still, she couldn’t get her throat to work, couldn’t seem to make meek words come out of her mouth.
He kicked her in the ribs. She jerked at the pain and pulled in on herself, hugging her arms around her.
“Answer me,” he said, his voice shrill now.
Kerek said, “You don’t want to risk killing her, my lord. Perhaps she has no breath to answer you, perhaps—”
“Keep your opinion in your throat, Kerek. She’s willful, stubborn, and has more pride than any hundred women. I will enjoy breaking that pride of hers. Aye, and I will. She fed me poison. She would have killed me if I hadn’t been so strong.”
She got herself to her knees, her palms on the floor, the pain in her ribs pulling and prodding at her, but she managed to draw her breath. She looked up at him then and said, “Why did you bring me here?”
He raised his foot, but Kerek grasped his arm, saying urgently, “It is a modest question. She doesn’t realize why you have taken her. If you tell her, the knowledge will make her even more modest, even more sweetly meek.”
Kerek was blind. She would never be meek and Ragnor knew it, but he did slowly lower his foot.
When he’d raised it, she’d flinched, and that had pleased him.
Perhaps Kerek was right. Perhaps he’d shown her that she would come to accept him as her master.
“Attend me, then,” he said, and sat himself again in his chair.
She was on her hands and knees in front of him, her hair loose from its thick braid, all that sinful black hair, as black as the hair of the heathen Picts who lived northward in that savage land of Scotland, the damned feral beasts who stole sheep and cattle and women from the outer farmsteads.
At least her hair was shiny and clean, unlike the greasy matted hair of the Picts.
He supposed she was comely enough. Her eyes were an odd green, near moss green, and that made her more acceptable to him as a wife.
He’d wanted to bed her, but that hadn’t happened, and in instances of rare honesty, he knew it had been foolish of him to try to seduce her.
She was a princess and even the future ruler of the Danelaw didn’t bed a princess and walk away.
But he didn’t want to marry her. He wanted Inelda, the daughter of a Norwegian jewelry merchant in York, her hair so blond it was nearly white, her eyes the palest blue.
By Freya, he wanted her, but his father demanded that he wed Chessa, that damned bitch who’d turned him down, who’d poisoned him, who’d made him puke up his guts.
Inelda only turned him down because she was so very innocent, so shy.
And she really hadn’t said nay to him, only whispered that she was afraid, not of him, oh, never of him, but of what would happen if he got her with child.
What would she do? Ah, she was so very afraid.
He adored her for her fear, knew that once he’d wedded Chessa, he would return to Inelda and make her his wife in everything but name.
He would take care of her. She could breed a dozen children, he didn’t care. He just wanted her.
“Attend me,” he said again when Chessa raised her head to look at him. To look up at him. “You asked why I had you brought to me. I’m taking you back to York. You will wed with me. You will be the future queen of the Danelaw.”
“So,” she said slowly, the pain in her ribs less now, “your father still orders you about, does he?”
He leaned forward, grabbed her braid and yanked it upward until her face was at the level of his knees.
“You will keep silent or I will make you regret it.” He was shaking with rage.
“By all the gods, I would like to beat you senseless. But I won’t.
Instead I’ll do what I did in Dublin. I’ll bend you to my will with my words again, and you, you silly girl, will listen to me and believe me.
Admit it, Chessa, you wanted me, you loved me, you wanted to marry me then. You wanted me to bed you.”
To his surprise, she nodded. “Aye, I believed you loved me and thus I was open to you. I believed that you were honest and sincere. I believed you were a good man. But then I saw the truth in you and it sickened me. You sickened me. I sickened myself because I’d believed you.
Would that I had more malle leaves and fist root.
You liked that drink, didn’t you, since I added ginger?
You puked and puked, I heard, and it pleased me no end.
It wasn’t poison, but I’m pleased you were so ill you believed it was. ”
He was utterly still. “I wanted to kill you for that.”
“You deserved it. You were a liar. You deceived me. You were dishonorable.”
“I merely wanted to bed you without having to see your damned face every day. You poisoned me.”
“I told you that I didn’t. If I’d wanted to kill you, I could have. I just wanted you to be so sick you’d want to die but you wouldn’t.”
He dropped her braid. He remembered too well the awful pain in his belly, the unending cramps, the bile, the smell of himself after days of sickness.
He would pay her back for that. But let her guess now what was in his mind though he wanted to strangle the life from her.
“No more honeyed words for you, Chessa. I wanted to bed you and I will, and I don’t care if you like it or not.
You try to harm me again and you will have an accident and I will make a good show of grief when I tell of it to my father. ”
“You won’t touch me, Ragnor, or I’ll kill you, I swear it.
Ah, how I wish I could have seen you puking up your guts.
Aye, I heard about it and I laughed and laughed because you got what you deserved.
You wronged me, Ragnor. I merely took my revenge.
Is that not what a man would do? Why not a woman, then?
” She stopped then, knowing that more pain would come because his face was pinched, his eyes red with rage.
But she couldn’t keep the words unspoken.
It was the truth and she had to say it. Now she would pay for the truth.
The air around her thickened with his anger.
He dropped to his knees in front of her.
He took her throat between his hands and tightened his fingers.
She grasped his wrists, trying to pull loose, but he only tightened his grip.
She struggled, jerking sideways, pulling him down with her.
Suddenly, he released her throat, shoved her onto her back and came down over her.
“This is all I ever wanted from you,” he said, pressing his palm into her belly. “This is what I will have from you.”
He ground himself against her and she froze. She felt the weight of him, the shape of him, the hardness and force of his body, and she hated it.
“My lord, the captain wishes to leave now. He wishes to speak to you. Please, my lord.”
Ragnor had forgotten that Kerek was there, standing only a few feet away, watching.
His father believed the damned Danish bastard to be such an excellent bodyguard for him.
He called Kerek a man of good sense and reason.
Now here he was trying to intercede on the princess’s behalf.
What did he know of anything? He was an old man, lust in him long dead.
Ragnor reared off Chessa and rolled to his feet.
He looked down at her, lying there, her arms over her chest, her face pale.
She lacked the lovely pallor of Inelda; Chessa could only pale to a dull golden color.
He looked at her eyes, that odd green that looked so mysterious with her black hair, mysterious and veiled, hiding knowledge from him.
Her eyes weren’t warm and inviting as Inelda’s eyes were.
He shook himself. “I will return to you. If you are good to me, I will give you no reason to complain to my father. If you hide your arrogance well from me, I will wait to take you until we are wed. If you displease me at all, if you speak to me with insolence, I will strip you and take you in front of any of the men who wish to look. Do you understand me, Chessa?”
“I understand you,” she said, her only thought of how she would escape him.
“You look like the filthiest of my father’s sluts. Kerek will bring you water to bathe yourself. I don’t know if it will be enough, but you will make do. I have brought clothing for you. Array yourself so that I can bear to look upon you.”
“If I hadn’t been fishing at the river, I would have been safe from you. That I look like a slut from my exercise was to your advantage, otherwise this man couldn’t have taken me.”
“Oh, I’d have gotten you, Chessa,” Ragnor said with a laugh. And with that, he left her.
Rouen,
Duke Rollo’s Palace
“She’s been taken,” Bjarni said, still out of breath, for he’d run from the dock to the palace. “Stolen away without a trace. The king is frantic.”
Rollo turned to Cleve. “Could she have run away? Did she not wish to wed William?”
“What she wanted didn’t matter. It wasn’t her decision to make. It was her father’s.” Cleve sighed. “Someone took her. Who would benefit the most?”