Chapter 9
Motivated by the substantial price offered to him, Bo, the cobbler, worked diligently and Sven was able to present Eahlswith with the new boots when she came to find him the following evening.
“I’m embarrassed,” she said, taking them with obvious reluctance. But he hadn’t missed the light in her eyes at the sight of the beautiful pair. She loved them. Something in his chest warmed. It felt good to bring her joy.
“Don’t be. There is snow everywhere, you needed new boots.” She didn’t contradict him, as that was undeniable. “If you really want to thank me, make sure that when my brother comes back he finds his wife looking her usual self.”
Eahlswith nodded, as if relieved to have been given a way to repay his generosity.
“She does look tired. But I’m here now.” She nodded and clutched the boots to her chest. “I’d better go.
I left all three girls sleeping in the hut and the pottage bubbling.
I don’t want it to spoil. Thank you. I do love the boots. ”
With those words, she hurried back to his brother’s hut.
Sven took to wandering around the village in the hope he would walk into her by carefully contrived accident but it was another three days before he saw her again. In the end it was pure chance that he met with her.
He was gathering wood in the forest when he happened upon her.
Delight was instantly replaced by confusion. What in the name of Odin was the woman doing?
Basket in hand, Sven came to a halt at the edge of the clearing, making sure to stay hidden from view so as to observe her.
Eahlswith was standing under a snow-covered beech, her face raised to the skies.
He watched, bemused, as she reached for the branch above her head and gave two tugs in quick succession.
A shower of glimmering powder fell over her, dissolving like dust into the air.
She laughed, the sound as crystalline as the flakes whirling around her, adorning her cloak with their diamond-like brilliance.
It was a perfect vision of beauty and innocence, like her.
His Alva. Never had she deserved the name more.
Before he knew it, he’d walked over to the beech.
At the sound of his crunching footsteps, she turned around, the laughter getting stuck in her throat when she saw that she was not alone. Or perhaps because she had recognized him, the man she was going out of her way to avoid.
“Sven.” She sounded slightly out of breath, like someone caught doing something illicit—or a lover recovering from an intense release.
He stopped in front of her, utterly entranced, and put his basket down on the ground.
She was breathtakingly beautiful and wet all over.
Her inky black hair was sprinkled with rapidly melting snowflakes that glittered in the pale morning light.
Her skin was damp, her eyelashes dotted with tiny droplets of water that clung to their silken ends.
“What are you doing here at this hour?” he asked, his voice raw with desire. If he kissed her now her lips would feel cool and taste as sharp as freshly fallen snow. The temptation was hard to resist. Perhaps he should have left her to her games and carried on gathering kindling for the fire.
“I was up for the best part of the night with little Liv and I found it hard to go back to sleep. So I didn’t and went for a walk instead, leaving everyone to rest.”
“I hope you are getting enough sleep?”
It wouldn’t do for her to sport the dark circles that had started to disappear from beneath Cwenthryth’s eyes. That had not been the plan. But she did look like a picture of health that morning.
“I’m fine, don’t worry. It won’t be too long before Steinar is back anyway.”
No, unfortunately not.
He nodded at the boots peeking under her skirt. “How do they fit?”
“They’re perfect,” she answered, pleasure making her cheeks go the color of a wild rose again. So lovely. “With them, I didn’t hesitate to come into the forest.”
“So that you could shake snow all over you?” he teased, nodding at the branch she had just shaken.
The color on her cheeks deepened. “I couldn’t resist. We used to love walking in the forest and getting drenched in powdery snow. It is a wonderful feeling.”
Who was this mysterious person with whom she loved to get lost in the forest? “Who’s we?” he asked, doing his best not to let his jealousy peak through.
Eahlswith winced, like someone regretting her words.
Evidently, she hadn’t meant to mention someone else, which only increased his curiosity further.
Edwin. The name flashed through his mind and he knew he would have to ask her about him.
She had told him she was not involved with anyone but it was clear that she had been at some point.
“My…friends and I. As girls we used to roam the woods. In the winter we liked to get covered in snow. I haven’t done this for more than ten years.” Her eyes sparkled again. “I’ll tell you what I haven’t done in years either. Eat some freshly fallen snow. In town, it is best avoided.”
Yes, in towns snow landed on all manners of filth you wouldn’t want anywhere near your mouth. But out here in the forest it was as pure as it could be, white and unspoiled. In fact people often melted it to drink, a much safer source of water than ponds and even rivers.
“I did that too, as a child,” he admitted. Feeling like a boy of ten again, Sven bent down and gathered a handful of immaculate snow from the padding covering the boulder by his side. “Shall we? Feel young and innocent again? I dare you.”
He should have known Eahlswith would not be one to eschew a challenge.
She scooped the top layer from the blanket of snow at her feet and cradled the precious flakes in her palm.
Sven had to avert his eyes when she stuck out her tongue to lap at them with obvious delight.
In that moment he felt nothing like an innocent ten-year-old boy, but definitely like the fully-grown, virile man he was.
Never once had he thought he would regret not being made out of snow.
With more determination than grace, he crammed the snow he was holding into his mouth, hoping it would help cool his blood.
The tiny crystals dissolved on his tongue, filling his mouth with a spoonful of liquid he quickly swallowed.
The taste, slightly metallic, for want of a better word, had not changed in all those years, and he couldn’t repress a smile. He should do that more often.
When he dared to look up at Eahlswith he saw that the melted snow had left a droplet of water at the corner of her lips.
“Allow me.”
Before she could refuse or even guess what he was about, he reached to wipe it off with his thumb.
She stilled, and watched while he brought the hand to his mouth to lick the drop.
His cock jerked when his tongue made contact with the pad of his thumb.
He wanted her to lick it, to lick every part of him.
He could not forget the feel of her lips on his skin when she’d explored his body that first night, licking him all over before focusing on his cock.
Her teeth, playful when she had nipped at his inner thighs, her tongue, soft when she had licked him like the most delicious treat, her throat, tight and hot when she had taken him to the root.
Never had he allowed himself to spend in a woman’s mouth before but with her it had been impossible not to.
He had been so aroused by the notion that he’d remained hard enough to show her his appreciation afterward, lifting her onto his lap and making her ride him.
A shuffling noise overhead cut through the lewd memory.
“Oh, look, a wren,” he said, a desperate attempt at distraction.
He had to steer his mind away from thoughts of Eahlswith suckling the part of his body currently threatening to escape from his braies.
Thank the gods it was winter and he was wearing a cloak.
If he managed to keep his face impassive she would not suspect he was ready to burst.
Eahlswith turned her head so sharply the little bird took fright and disappeared in a flurry of feathers, leaving a trail of glimmering dust behind him as he wove through the maze of branches.
Sven expected Eahlswith to bemoan the lost opportunity. She didn’t. Instead she paled, so much that her cheeks became almost the color of snow.
“I hope Steinar will be here soon,” she said, looking at her feet. “I won’t be able to stay much longer.”
Sven’s stomach fell. Why was she telling him that now, when they were sharing a moment that could only have been called intimate and pleasurable?
There was no need to remind him that she was only here temporarily, unfortunately he knew it all too well.
With Steinar not back home yet, she was still needed at the village, and anyway, Cwenthryth would not turn her out the moment her husband came back.
Eahlswith wouldn’t have to leave, she merely wanted to escape him, as she always did.
Why? What was he doing wrong? He didn’t understand.
At times she seemed to respond to his advances.
They had been laughing together just now, sharing stories from her childhood.
She had welcomed him back into her bed the other day.
And yet every time he thought he was making progress, for no reason that he could discern, she drew away and fled like the startled little wren had just now. It was exhausting.
“I have to go. Cwenthryth will be waiting for me,” she breathed.
Another excuse. Only a moment ago she’d told him her friend was asleep. He took her by the wrist before she could turn away.
“Before you go, I have one question.” Taking her silence for a permission to ask it, he took in a deep breath and asked what that had been torturing him for days. “Who is Edwin?”
Eahlswith stared at Sven for a long, agonized moment. He’d asked her the last question she’d expected him to ask and he’d mentioned the last person she wanted him to mention.
How on earth did he know about Edwin anyway?
She started to panic. How did he know? Had Cwenthryth mentioned him to Steinar who, in turn, had told his brother?
And then she remembered. Sven had pretended not to speak their language when she and Osbert were talking while he’d repaired the roof, but, of course, he had understood everything.
And the old man had mentioned Edwin while they ate their soup that first night.
She had managed to cut him short by spilling soup on her dress, so she had hoped that Sven would not have thought the name of any particular interest.
Obviously she’d been wrong.
“Osbert’s son,” she said as calmly as she could while she disentangled her wrist from his hold. His fingers were warmer than they had the right to be, considering that he was not wearing gloves and only a moment ago he’d been handling snow.
“Yes, I thought he might be. I mean, who is he to you?”
No one. Not anymore.
“He’s…dead.”
She turned to hide the tears that had sprung to her eyes at the terrible words.
A moment later, she felt Sven’s arms wrap around her and she didn’t even think of pulling away.
It felt too good. Eahlswith melted into the embrace and drew from his warmth and strength.
After a while she was able to speak again.
“Why are you asking me this?”
“The first night I stayed in your house, you dreamed about him,” he said in her ear. “You clung to me and kept saying I was back. Obviously, you’d mistaken me for him and I didn’t have the heart to contradict you or wake you up. I held you and you fell back to sleep. You don’t remember?”
Oh, she did remember. She’d had that exact same dream many times over the years.
But usually, she ended up waking up to her own screams, not falling back to sleep in a man’s embrace.
She also remembered the sense of peace she had felt in the morning, as if she’d finally been granted absolution.
Sven had done that for her? He had heard her call out for another man and yet he had comforted her?
She wasn’t sure what to think, except that it was one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for her.
“That’s why I thought he might be your lover, someone you’d had an argument with and wanted back,” he carried on, keeping his hold tight around her.
She nodded slowly. If he’d thought she had a lover it would explain why he had asked her if she was free to be with him that second night in her house when he’d been poised at her entrance.
He had not had any reason to think she had someone else in her life in the summer but after hearing her call out to Edwin in her sleep, he’d wanted to make sure he wasn’t about to take a woman who was involved with another man.
He was as honorable as she’d suspected.
“No. Well, yes, he was my lover but he… It was more than that. He was supposed to be my husband.”
She could tell from Sven’s sudden stillness that she had rendered him speechless.
“Do you want to tell me about him?”
“Do you want me to tell you about him?” she countered. Why would he? Weren’t men supposed to be jealous of other men? Didn’t they prefer to pretend the woman they were bedding hadn’t had anyone before them even if they knew it was not the case?
Sven had the honesty not to hide his discomfort but he met her gaze without flinching. “I will listen if you think it would help you.”
It didn’t take her long to see that it would. Odd as it was, she wanted to tell Sven about her lost love. “I think it would.”
He took her hand in his. “Come then. Let’s take a walk.”