The Captive - By Joanne Rock Page 0,5

bailey. She’d forgotten this passage off the wall even existed, but then it had been in disrepair ever since she’d arrived here as a girl. The Dane must be mad to tread his heavy foot upon such faulty stonework.

Praying fervently someone would notice them before he escaped the keep all together, Gwendolyn rubbed the back of her head along his arm while he climbed, hoping she could free some of her veil to float in the breeze like a silken flag. Perhaps the jewels and the color would catch someone’s attention as they descended onto the ground floor of the castle.

When that did not work, she twisted her head hard to one side. Escaping his confining hand, she screamed. Far better to risk one of Alchere’s archers shooting her in the leg than to submit peacefully to a heathen who would brutalize her.

“Son of a swine!” she shouted, her mind blank of better insults in the face of her fear. “Rot in Hades, you sheep-loving maggot!”

Too soon, he replaced his hand over her mouth and bent low to speak in her ear.

“There is no one.” The heavy accent of his homeland made his words difficult to distinguish even though he spoke a Saxon language for her sake. “The lord of the keep is too busy flexing his might on the southern side to spare a man for the north. He is a strong fighter and a stupid tactician.”

Was it true?

Sweet, merciful heaven, it must be. How else would this iron-fisted demon be able to breach the fortifications? Why did no one come when she’d called? The heathen moved quiet as a cat, even with her in his arms. Panic bubbled higher.

This time, she bit his hand to free her mouth.

“Danes within the walls!” she shrieked, her sole outburst before he wrenched her tighter, his fingers digging into her cheek as he clamped her lips once again. She tasted his blood on her tongue, and this time she could not move.

As he neared a small gate intended for wood carts and other supplies, Gwendolyn realized the watchtower was empty and other Danes were slipping in and out the entrance, shouldering expensive pieces of the chapel altar and heavy chests that spilled coins on the courtyard stones.

The heathen and his men robbed Alchere blind while her overlord thought he conducted negotiations with them.

And just like her worst fear, she would be part of the war spoils. A captive to the most fearsome man she’d ever seen.

WULF GEIRSSON HAD HARDLY thought anything could tempt him on the raid of a Wessex stronghold held by one of King Alfred’s strongest knights. He didn’t need more riches, after all. As the most successful Viking raider to sail on the coast of Britain, he had more wealth than he’d ever dreamed. He hadn’t even organized the attack on this keep today, but when his small band of men had spied the troop of Danes congregating on a nearby shore to plot the battle the night before, he hadn’t been able to resist the opportunity to thieve the raid from under their noses. He’d planned to simply flaunt his skill before his enemies and make off with the biggest prizes simply because he could, not because the riches tempted him.

But, enjoying the feel of the woman in his arms, he realized he could not have been more wrong. He’d been tempted when he’d least expected it.

The sweetly scented captive fighting tooth and nail against his hold was an unexpected boon. When he’d spied the audacious Saxon beauty climbing up to look out over the castle walls in the hour before battle, he’d been struck first by her dark, exotic look. Brown locks flowed in a glossy stream down her back, dark eyes lit with glints of gold as she narrowed them in the sunlight. Assessing the enemy?

He did not know what she’d sought on the ramparts when all the other women were surely locked safely in the castle’s innermost sanctum. This maid alone had not hidden in the face of a Norse raid, and that snagged his attention more thoroughly than any surface beauty. When was the last time he’d found a female so brazen? Maids who cowered throughout a raid held no appeal. He did not brutalize women.

But fire and spirit in a female? This intrigued him. He’d made up his mind he wanted her—that he would take her—even before she’d nearly fallen off the parapet. The fact that he had surely saved her pretty neck