THE VIKING AND THE COURTESAN Read online

  “What I told you? Well, I believe that was to sit down and be still. You’ve no business getting out of those blankets there. Why do you think I stowed all of you here?”

  “T-t-to . . . to-ooh . . .”

  Her body tightened. He felt every muscle strain, then, as she leant over the side, her limbs slackened, going so soft, he was forced, against his better judgement to wrap his arms around her. He’d paid for her, hadn’t he? And sea-sickness . . . sea-sickness was much like her. A curse.

  Disconcerting wasn’t it? She was soft. And he . . . holding her like this . . . wasn’t. What was more, despite everything, the scent of her hair, faintly brine-kissed winding its way round his nostrils, was delicious. So delicious it stole his breath.

  Shock edged the ice-cold hairs along the back of his neck. It wasn’t like his body to betray him over someone so ugly, his heart to hammer in want. The knowledge of the dampness seeping from her clothes into his and climbing up him in waves was ridiculous.

  Snotra with her sun-kissed, sweet-smelling hair, never a strand out of place, her pretty lips he always tasted nectar on—sensuous lips, curving lips, nothing like this bedraggled witch’s—Snotra’s eyes, grey and boundless as the silver ocean were the things his body stirred for. Not this damned wretch. She jerked her chin up.

  “G-g-god, this is embarrassing.”

  Yes. In every regard. He kept his voice calm, forced himself to stare straight ahead. “Look at the horizon.”

  “The, the w-w-what?”

  He kept his heartbeat calm too. “Over there. The edge of the sea. You’re sick, aren’t you?”

  He was just lonely. The redhead had stirred him. What it meant was he probably wouldn’t be choosing the redhead. Nothing more. Only then she turned her exquisite turquoise eyes up to meet his.

  “S-sick? No . . . I . . . W-well . . .”

  Shock clogged his throat. He honestly didn’t know which was worse. Her clawing and hissing like a wild cat, so half his men needed treatment for their wounds, or her staring up at him with these brilliant eyes of hers. Even as he dismissed her lips, his gaze was drawn back to them. To their soft, pink fullness. So even her troll’s teeth seemed attractive. Especially as he imagined what he’d like to insert between them. This . . . this was ridiculous.

  She would not make ashes of his cold blood. His body either. Not when she had made it very plain what her thoughts were on being a bed slave, kicking his balls, biting his men. Maybe sea sickness made her more amenable?

  Well, it didn’t make him. Not when the horizon lay like a pale, silver line, through the mist. Mist? Hadn’t the sun been rising a second ago? He deliberately edged his gaze away. “Eight days.”

  “E-eight days?”

  “With a fair wind, that’s how long this is going to take, which is why I suggest you get some rest if you’re going to do any better than you’re doing so far. Go on.”

  No. At least he’d made up his mind about some things. Even it came down to choosing the gargantuan goat he might have to rethink this, but not the redhead and not her either.

  He’d sooner give his bones to a flock of vultures.

  Eight days. Could this get any worse? As she lay flat out on the deck, looking at the gulls circling endlessly overhead, her doubts that it couldn’t, grew feet, legs and everything anyone cared to name. The tribulations were just too great. Every bone in her body ached. Fists clenched her stomach. Just when she thought she couldn’t possibly be sick any more too.

  “Don’t you think you’re the clever one?”

  She clutched the woollen edge of the blanket closer. Had she really thought things could get no worse? Oh, if only she could go home. Just go to sleep and then, in the morning, wake up in a different place. One where she had never hacked her hair to bits, her clothes too and been dragged aboard this dreadful ship by a dreadful man. She’d just made the biggest fool of herself.

  How could she have been sick over the side? Even if it was better that being sick on him? If she hadn’t been sick she’d have soon stolen Miss Bleach-face’s thunder. Why did she have to be one of these people whose stomach could churn on a mill-pond? A six inch deep mill-pond. It churned now. She might have counted seagulls to take her mind off it. She couldn’t. Instead what she did was breathe the carthorse, fetid and disgusting.

  “Do you think we didn’t none of us see what you was up to there? Trying to better Tova?”

  So that was the flame haired creature’s name?

  “Trying to steal him with your fancy ways. Well, it ain’t going to work Me-lady Poshlugs. You can do all your fancy oh please forgive me, Drottin to you’s and ooh, please do watch I don’t fall over the side, as I throw meself on your chest, as you like, he ain’t yours. He’s mine. I’m having him by fair means or foul. Do you understand that?”

  Not exactly. Unless the man had a fondness for carthorses, Malice could have him with no trouble at all. Right now wasn’t exactly the time to argue about it. Not unless she wanted to be flattened further, lying here, on hard boards, trying not to let the contents of her stomach hit the backs of her teeth.

  No. The woman had thrown down a gauntlet, like everyone else in her sorry damned existence, Cyril, the damnable Lady Grace, Aunt Carter. But Malice had proved it, hadn’t she? A man could find her attractive. At least she had the feeling that one could. While she was like a vomiting ragbag too.

  She had surely won the battle.

  So long as she didn’t find him attractive back.

  Chapter 5

  Brilliant sunlight pierced Malice’s consciousness—her unconsciousness rather. She jerked her head to the side, the dazzling vision of Lady Culbert’s ball vanishing. A dream. One that like everything in her life seemed destined to disappear just as it proved to get interesting. She’d been about to step onto the chequered floor, to dance with . . . that was gone too, but whoever it was, he’d had eyes to drown in. The sensation she was going to drown too had been warm, like sinking into a bath of niceness. Of heady, breath-stealing aromas. Hmm. Tangy, fragrant bergamot. Silky, aromatic, Chinese lily. Exotic musky anise.

  She edged her tongue around lips, lips that must be hers since they were attached to her face, but that no longer felt as if they belonged to her. In fact nothing did.

  “Hoi. Looks like we’re here.”

  Except perhaps her ears. They belonged. Obviously. Her ribs too, dented ribs rather.

  “Hoi. I said—”

  Here? They couldn’t be here. Had she’d been semi-conscious for eight days? She couldn’t have lain about the deck for that long, although she recalled nightmare visions of being so violently ill, so sick, so drenched with rain, she didn’t care where she lay. But the rocking did seem to have stopped.

  “I know what you said. Elbow me again and I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” Gentle’s rancid breath washed over her. God almighty, was her own like pig swill? “You’re not listening, Poshlugs.”

  There it was again, that insulting nick-name which suggested she thought herself a cut above everyone.

  Malice tried turning over. There must be an inch of space that was Gentle-free but every bone in her body felt as if it was broken, in ten places, so the furthest she could manage was an arm above her head to shield her eyes from the dazzling sun.

  “Don’t look then. But we’re here. See for yourself. And thanks to you we got to go the last bit in style too. I did anyway. That’s because he knows how well I look after you.”

  She flicked her eyes open. The thing about Gentle was she never seemed to sleep. It didn’t matter when Malice had opened her eyes—not that she’d done much of that the last few days—she’d been aware of Gentle’s beady ones scuttling like beetles around the deck, of the mountainous heap sitting sentinel-like and silent. Looking after her though?

  She jerked u
pright, instantly giving a shriek. Had she thought her body felt broken in ten places? She reckoned thirty shattered places in her spine alone. Twelve in her neck. Truth to tell, as she grasped the edge of the cart, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The dazzling, cloudless sky, these hideous squat buildings, pigs and chickens oinking and squawking, towering mountains on the other side of the river and a smell that was worse than the Thames at low tide.

  She closed her eyes and shrank back down. At one point she’d asked Gentle what year it was, then pretended she’d meant day of the week, when Gentle laughed at her pottage-head. 898 AD were not words she’d wanted to hear. The funny thing? Before she’d been dreaming of that ball, she’d been dreaming of her mother and before that the awful row Aunt Carter had with Great Aunt Julia and Uncle Perry about Malice’s coming out.

  “A gal needs a chance,” they’d insisted when Aunt Carter had meanly said for reasons Malice had never understood, it would be over her dead body. If only someone would give her that chance now.

  A cart? How the blazes had she come to be in a cart? Who had put her here? And with a stinking piglet sticking its snout in her face too, licking her chin. She suppressed a groan. Although really when she appeared to be in Viking Scandinavia, how she came to be in a cart was of no consequence. What was, was that she hadn’t managed to return to the convent. She hadn’t managed anything. She was trapped. Not that it mattered but what had she been thinking about getting in competition with anyone? Even this piglet?

  “That’s Trotter. Drottin wanted me to look after it too. That’s ‘cause I’m good with pigs.”

  “Fine.”

  “I’m good with lots. Him and me have got quite matey.”

  “Good,” Malice said. After all, did she really want to be a bed-slave? All she wanted was to sleep. Just keep her eyes closed and never wake up.

  “In fact it was me what suggested the cart. Cos we were matey and you were out cold. And of course none of the men exactly wanted to be bitten.”

  Why not remind her of that? Falling asleep and never waking up was taking quite a bit of doing with Gentle’s voice ringing in her ears.

  “I dunno if I fancy his missus though.”

  Malice almost didn’t dare look. It was bad enough the damn blankets were twisted round her legs, this piglet probably smelt better than she did right now and it would be horrible if she sprawled on the ground like a mermaid, but her eyes pinged open before she could stop them. She grasped the side of the cart too, hauled herself up to stare across the yard at who must be Snotra. Her gaze froze. Didn’t fancy the look of? The simplest, softest beige gown may have reached all the way to the woman’s ankles, it may have had the plainest linen shift underneath, the color still accentuated the soft fire of her eyes, the most translucent shade of grey Malice had ever seen. Then there was the matter of her tall, slender figure, a figure that didn’t need ornamentation of any kind to stand out. As for her hair glinting like fine, newly minted gold in the sunlight . . . not a strand was out of place. If only what was left of her own would sit like that.

  Why on earth did he want a bed slave when he had this? Was it custom? Something whoever wrote the illustrated Viking and his biceps hadn’t known about? Or was he so damned randy it was to spare her? Wasn’t he called Sin after all? And actually, that moment on the Raven when he’d held her . . . the side of the cart gave way and Malice clattered onto the ground, before she could think what the actually was or not.

  What was wrong with her? Had the possibility some man might finally want to bed her turned her into a raging nymphomaniac? Or was she that way already?

  “Oh. Oh. Trust you to bring her over here. Very sorry, Drottin. She’s just a bit dazzled by all this. You know the trouble she’s been.”

  Trouble? Malice swallowed the grimace as she pressed her palms into the earth. She swallowed the mouthful of dirt and grit too. Still, so long as her nose wasn’t broken to add to her other miseries—a hammer thudding in her head, a throat drier than the Sahara, more pins and needles in her legs than in Agnes’ pin cushion, a gnawing in her stomach that said she’d swallowed a crocodile and now it was eating her—how much worse could this be?

  While it almost killed her, she ignored her buckling knees and struggled to her feet, brushing grit and earth from her palms and tunic. How much worse could it be? Dear God, Madam Faro’s shoes . . . Where were they? Gone and she didn’t even care? Why should she? Be interested even? She would never care about, or be interested in, anything again.

  Snotra’s lips parted. She sped across the stones. “Sinarr . . . Sinarr . . .”

  Sinner? His name was actually Sinner? Really?

  “Sinarr . . . what . . . what is that creature?” She pointed shyly in their direction.

  That creature? How awful to be so plump, people didn’t just think you were a behemoth, they imagined you were also completely deaf to the insulting things they said. The warrior returned home and having flown across the yard, now all the woman did was peer around him.

  “Good Gna . . . a . . . troll. No! No!”

  “Snotra . . .”

  How far did Malice’s heart go out, knowing how viciously people had whispered about her? Actually? Not at all. Why should it? All was fair here in love and war and as Gentle’s flattening of her on the deck had shown, this was war. Snotra? A madam? She just needed a little cultivating. That was all. And wasn’t Malice, as the owner of Strictly just the one to do it too? Especially now she was really beginning to understand these various strange tongues for some very odd reason.

  “No! No! I won’t have it. A troll! Good Gna, a troll. Oh . . . Oh . . .”

  It was astonishing though, that at that moment, as he grabbed Snotra by the arm—he tried to anyway—Snotra began to shriek, scream and back away. She held her fingers out too.

  A sign was a sign in any language. Maybe this one wasn’t quite as crude as some Malice had seen when she was little and some of the local children had spat at her calling her a witch and a gypsy. Maybe it wasn’t crude at all. More a sort of save me from that troll sign. Still why on earth was Snotra making that sign at her? Cowering behind it too? Was Plumplugs right about her after all?

  “Snotra . . .” He caught her by the forearms. “Snotra, we talked about this. Remember?”

  “No. No. No, Sinarr. We did not. We never said troll. And that is a troll.”

  Malice breathed heavily through her nose. Troll? She was not a troll. She was not anything like a troll and if that bacon-brained bitch said so once more, she would prove it too.

  “A troll in the home we are going to share. And bring up our babies? Balder, Haldor and Egor?”

  Did they have these babies already, the way she spoke? Because names-wise they made ‘Malice’ a tag fit for a princess of the realm.

  “I told you she was a madam.” At least the carthorse didn’t smirk. “Imagine what she’ll be like to whatever one of us he picks?”

  Smirk? Why smirk when there was method in shovelling it on with a garden spade? In obliterating the opposition with fear? Well. Malice wasn’t afraid.

  “It ain’t going to be me, I tell you.”

  Right.

  Of course she must concede that Snotra knew exactly what she was doing. That Snotra was merely stamping her foot on the matter of bed slaves. That Malice—very well, Gentle too—could resemble Helen of Troy, for that matter, a very unlikely matter for a carthorse but then carthorses had their beauties amongst them.

  How could he fail so conspicuously to see through this though, standing there putting up with it? Well, he was a man of course. And men, certainly in her estimation, only thought with one thing. And that one thing certainly wasn’t their brain.

  “Droplugg, Gunnhilda and—”

  “Troll’s toes.”

  Or did he see? Was that why Snotra managed to dr
ag her hands free? For him the grit was quite anguished. But if he didn’t want to have a bed-slave why was he doing it?

  And really, despite what she’d thought on the Raven, did she really want anything to do with it? She still had her face. It would be nice to keep it.

  Snotra threw up her hands in exasperation. “Well, of course Sinarr, if you are going to insist on treating me with disrespect . . .”

  “I am not treating you with disrespect.”

  “Oh, but you are.” Now, Snotra began sweeping up and down, stomping over the stones that littered the yard, treating her skirt with a certain amount of disrespect as she swished the folds about her. “If you were respectful, you would not bring in a troll. A malicious . . .”

  “She’s not a troll.”

  “You wouldn’t bring home any woman at all. No. You’d send her away. All of them away. That fat ragbag she’s got with her, that—”

  “She’s a woman, just like you.”

  Malice’s throat, already scarified as dry bone, dried further. He didn’t mean that, did he?

  “So’s Gentle.”

  Oh, this was too much. Really. Why should her gaze be riveted by how tall, how lean he was? Why did her pulse thrill to the low timbre in his voice? His voice that resonated at the foot of her spine?