Reckless (Age of Conquest #5) - Tamara Leigh Page 0,11

when he claimed he did not know the whereabouts of Bjorn and Nicola following her second abduction.

Contrary Nicola, she silently admonished as she looked from the anxious son to the seething sire, you should not have responded to the earl’s baiting. You vowed you would tame this recklessness that is more dangerous in these circumstances. Now see what you have done!

She had gnashed her teeth when the earl scooted near and whispered she was minutes from once more setting her foul Norman feet on the land of the Saxons. She had pressed her lips when his coarse breath wound her nostrils on the words, “I am pleased my Bjorn will not mate with you.” But then he had to add, “Did I not care much for him and his soft heart, I would pass this Norman whore around my men.”

“What did you speak to her, Father?” Bjorn demanded, and her heart turned slightly his direction. Though she would never love him, under different circumstances they might become good friends.

As she widened her stance to counter the boat’s jostling caused by men climbing out in calf-high water, the earl cleared his throat. “I spoke in truth,” said the aging warrior who would be more formidable were he not given to padding his bulk in the fat of overeating. Still, he was a threat to a young woman of far less muscle and half his weight.

“What truth?” Bjorn pressed.

An argument between the two being of no advantage in this moment, she could not bear to be the cause of a rift that could see an illegitimate son fall out of favor with one of great standing among the Danes.

“Your sire is but disappointed he cannot give the son he loves a wife worthy of his heart and good regard,” she said. “I—”

Realizing she spoke too fast for the Danes to easily peel back her Saxon words, she slowed her pace, “’Twas I who first behaved badly.” She nodded. “As all know, Nicola D’Argent is a…” She nearly called herself a vixen as Vitalis had done when he asked her to deliver the cloth to Maël. Far better she had liked it than termagant as first he named her.

“In this, Lady Nicola does not speak false,” the earl growled, then climbed out of the boat.

“He loses patience, Nicola,” Bjorn said across a sigh. “Do you not soon grow in love with me, he will not let me keep you.”

Such words did not offend as greatly as once they had. Bjorn was a warrior only insomuch as he excelled at following orders and wielding weapons against those who sought to end his life or those of his fellow Danes. Had she to guess, it would be much effort was expended to train aggression into him. And another guess—his intelligence was almost exclusive to warring. An impressive man of arms he had been whilst battling Normans at the inn when the trade went wrong, but otherwise he was mostly a youth.

“If he does not,” Nicola said, “there is the question of what he will do with me.”

Bjorn frowned, then gave his head a shake as if to empty it of unpleasant thoughts and stepped out of the boat. As the murky water soaked his boots, he raised his arms to her.

Were it any other Dane, she would refuse, even at the cost of wet, fouled skirts, but she set her hands on his shoulders and was soon cradled against his chest.

He was of good size and strong, but as he pushed through the water toward the marshy bank, she wondered how much smaller she would feel were he of greater size and strength. Were he an Anglo-Saxon red of hair and thick of beard. Were he—

A squeak parted her lips at the realization she had closed out the sun-lit sky to better envision Vitalis as last she had looked upon him when his height and breadth parted the shadows in the abbess’s chamber.

“You are hurt?” Bjorn asked, halting behind the others ascending the bank.

Donning a smile, wishing she liked the color of his eyes as much as the brown of Vitalis’s, she said, “I am not. It is only my thoughts traveling to places best not ventured.”

“Where?”

“Wherever your sire may go in determining my fate.”

He grimaced and resumed his ascent of the bank. “He is very angry, so kind is his regard for his misbegotten son. But fear not, no harm will befall you.”

That she did not believe, especially after being struck so hard her