The Captive - By Joanne Rock Page 0,46

come back to her?

She tried to ignore the heart-wrenching hurt in her chest, but the scene kept playing in her mind. Wulf refused to look at her. Refused to love her…

“Gwendolyn.” Wulf’s voice called to her, stern and commanding like the man himself.

Dream and reality blended, the veil between them blurring before it lifted.

She seemed to awaken simply because he wanted her to, a fact which annoyed her considering how hard she’d tried to snap out of the dream on her own.

Now, they lay in Wulf’s bedchamber in the temporary encampment. He’d sneaked her back to the small village of tents, wrapping her in his tunic so that she would not be naked for the short journey. They’d made love on his bed among fine, soft blankets, with a torch burning inside a decorative metal lantern hung from the framework of the tent. The setting had been far more decadent than she would have imagined for the man and she’d wondered vaguely who took such care to erect beautiful surroundings for him that he hardly noticed.

“You were dreaming,” Wulf informed her, his real self becoming more distinct from the vision of him in her nighttime imaginings. “You seemed frightened.”

He held her close, his instincts protective even deep in the night. Her defenses low while wrapped in his arms, she could not help but confide the truth.

“I wanted something from you and you were so unmoved. I pleaded with you.” Gwendolyn remembered the ache in her chest that had felt so real. “But your mind was made up.”

She realized she’d gripped his arm and held him fast, the tension from the dream carrying over into her touch. Forcing herself to loosen her grasp, she wondered where such depth of feeling had come from. For so long, she’d felt like she’d been the one held too tightly. Now, she’d wound herself around Wulf like a clinging vine.

Wulf, however, caught her wrist and held it. His dark hair followed the line of his shoulder like a shadow.

“That is what happened with Hedra.” His grip was tense. “I refused to listen to her when—”

He appeared more shaken now than when he’d confronted eighteen mounted warriors. His pallor faded and he seemed to see beyond her into the past.

“Hedra.” The woman whose death he’d felt responsible for. Would he confide the truth of what happened? “She is the woman Harold fights to avenge?”

He nodded. “I closed my heart to her when she pleaded with me once. I have never forgiven myself.”

“Tell me what happened.” She drew a tightly woven blanket closer to her neck to ward off a sudden chill.

She did not know if he would tell her. He was a proud man. But the haunted look in his eyes suggested he had not made peace with Hedra’s death.

He turned away from Gwendolyn to fill a drinking horn from a heavy silver pitcher beside the bed. He sipped from the vessel and handed it to her.

“As children, Hedra, my brother Olaf and I were inseparable. We were of noble families, but early on, before we understood that their marriage had already been arranged, it was clear that Hedra held a special affection for me.”

She sipped the mead, drawn in by the emotions apparent in his voice. He may have grown into a dispassionate commander, but he had not always been that way.

“Hedra and I were adventurous souls, while Olaf was every inch the dutiful son,” he continued, his gaze directed toward the flickering torch hanging from the tent roof, but not really seeing it. “Hedra and I kissed once—and more—enough to make me think she would never willingly wed Olaf and that one day we would be together. She begged me for patience while she found a way to tell her family. So, imagine my surprise when she wed Olaf with nary a protest.” The hard edge that entered his voice was one she recognized. The hurt Hedra had dealt him was one that remained with him even now.

“Perhaps she did not have the strength to disappoint her family. Every daughter desires to be dutiful.” Anything less was a sin. And while the Danes did not recognize the same religious laws, she knew it could not be so different for them.

A part of her ached for the choice Hedra had been forced to make, even though Gwendolyn couldn’t help a rising tide of jealousy for the woman Wulf had cared about so deeply. What would it be like to have a man care for her