Chapter Twenty-four #2
“But what am I worth?”
“You are still his daughter, and he will still have to see you in the arms of the enemy.”
She pulled her hand from his, uncomfortable with what he was saying.
She had thought perhaps he cared for her, but now it seemed she was merely a way for him to win against her father.
“So, because you have me in your bed, that is punishment enough for him? My stepmother will be happy to see I am being bedded by a barbarian.” Her hand flew to her mouth.
“Is that what I am?” His measured tone gave away little of his feelings, but she had felt him tense.
“It is how my stepmother sees you, yes.” She couldn’t make herself look at him. What had possessed her to say such a thing? She didn’t think of him that way at all, but she knew her kinsfolk did.
“And is it how you see me?”
She shook her head, but closed her eyes and turned away from him.
He sat down beside her and she turned back to him. He took her into his arms. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she managed to breathe out before his mouth closed over hers. The kiss was not at all gentle. There was a dark, possessive power underneath it which made her want to cling to him forever.
All too soon he broke the kiss, but stayed close to her and whispered in her ear. “Then how do you see me?”
“As my husband,” she whispered. “You have never hurt me, not the way I was hurt or punished before—and even though you know you have been wronged, you are still not punishing me for it. My father would not be so forgiving.”
Tormod’s hand slid beneath her skirts and she shuddered as his fingers ran along her bare skin.
When he touched her like this, it was easy to think he wanted her, needed her.
Abruptly, he lay down, taking her with him.
He kissed her again, then kissed around the edge of her face, her neck, while his fingers sought to loosen all the fastenings on her clothes he could reach.
He soon gave up and pushed her skirts up, loosened his own breeks and entered her.
He pulled one knee up and used it to angle himself inside her, his eyes on hers as he sought to maintain a steady rhythm.
Aoife raised her head and kissed him, pleased when he responded.
Somehow, it seemed so much more intimate than their other connections.
His arms slid around her back, hauling her up against him and changing his angle of entry.
Soon, his steady thrusting was hitting just the right parts of her.
She gasped and shuddered through an intense climax but, and this time he stayed inside her as he came.
Then he abruptly stood and fastened his breeks.
Aoife hastily pulled her own skirts back down and sat up, frustrated by his changes of mood and her inability to understand him. “Last night. What did I do wrong?”
“Nothing. You did nothing wrong. When I said I made a mistake, it was only because…” He hesitated and looked at the ground. “It is important we don’t have a child. Not yet. Last night… Last night lust clouded my mind. It will not happen again.”
“What other purpose do I have here? I don’t understand.”
“There is nothing to understand.” He looked back at her, frowning.
She found that hard to believe.
For a moment she thought Tormod would leave, but then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“You asked me last night whether there was a child. There is. My first wife’s son.
He will be sent over. Probably he is with the settlers we are expecting.
Now that I am married, my father will have sent him. ”
“And I will care for him? We will be a family?”
Tormod did not answer right away. “Perhaps. This can be decided when he arrives. For now, let us just be together as man and wife. Am I not enough for you?”
“Yes, of course. I just thought that… Nothing.” After all, what else could she say? At least she no longer worried that she had displeased him. And then the impact of his words hit her. “Your wife’s son?”
“Yes.”
“Not… not yours.”
“No. But to admit that would be to admit that I had made a terrible mistake,” Tormod said.
She smiled cautiously at him. “You would not be the first man to marry a woman who already carried another man’s child. Could you not have divorced her? Your people do not seem averse to divorce.”
“It was not only the child.” Tormod hung his head. “It is more complicated. By the time I realised, I didn’t want to admit that she had fooled me. Not only was the child not mine, but she only wanted me because she thought I was more likely to become jarl than her lover.”
“Who was he?”
Tormod frowned at her. “I don’t know. She would never tell me but we agreed to stay together and she promised to be faithful in the future.”
“But she wasn’t?”
“No, she started sneaking away from the village to meet him.” Tormod sighed.
“Maybe if I tell you what happened you will understand.” He sat for a long moment before he spoke again.
“I thought we had met by chance in the woods one day when I was out hunting. For a few weeks we met in secret at an abandoned hut deep in the woods between her father’s village and my own.
I thought she loved me and persuaded her to run away from home to marry me. ”
“You did not go to her father to ask?”
“No, my father and hers did not get along. They often fought over land, accused each other of stealing cattle.” He shrugged. “I thought I was being so clever, stealing his daughter away from him without his knowledge.”
“You married her, though?”
“After a month or so, she told me she was pregnant.” He stared at his hands, purposefully not looking at Aoife.
“When I told my cousins, I thought they would be pleased, but they were not.”
“They did not believe her?”
“No,” he said, then made a wry face. “They had been away for a few weeks. Their father’s death had caused many problems for the family. I suppose it is one of the reasons I was hunting alone when I met Ingrid.”
“They weren’t happy about the marriage?”
“Ulf was especially outspoken,” Tormod said. “But I don’t know if that was better or worse than Arne not speaking to me for months.”
Aoife smiled. “It is nice to know it is not just Britons Ulf is suspicious of.”
“And it was just as well they did not trust her. I was too willing to believe everything she told me. They kept an eye on her, Arne and Ulf in particular.”
Aoife tilted her head to one side, considering his words. “Why?”
“They didn’t trust her and told me she was lying to me but I refused to see it. Ulf had seen her leaving the village more than once and had followed her back to the hut we had met in. When I confronted her, she said it was because it reminded her of when we had first met.”
“But it wasn’t?”
“No, she told me that she was worried no one in the village trusted her, said my cousins were trying to poison me against her.” He stopped and put his head in his hands.
Then he shook his head and sat up. “Later, I learned she was meeting her lover there. But I believed her and did not listen to my cousins as I should have. What sort of a jarl does that make me if I cannot see through the lies of my own wife?”
Aoife bit her lip and tried to push aside her own guilt. She wasn’t betraying Tormod. Not like that.
“But you were not jarl then?”
Aoife swallowed when he shook his head. She was not being entirely honest with him either, and struggled to work out what to say to him that would not reinforce his negative view. “She, too, paid a high price.”
Tormod frowned. “She did. It was a terrible way to die.”
Abruptly, he left the room, leaving her with more of an understanding of his reluctance to have a child.
The knowledge was a relief in so many ways although if it were only over the child, she wasn’t sure why Tormod seemed so distressed.
She was sure there was more to the story that he was not willing to share with her.
Perhaps one day he would trust her enough for that.