Come Back to Me (13 page)

The eyes, set deep beneath layers of folded skin, widened with effort. The small mouth twisted.

"Rycca." He said her name with a mixture of loathing and satisfaction that sent a shudder down her spine.

"What?" A younger version of himself appeared at his side, cruelly yanking at his horse's reins. "
Rycca
?"

"Look for yourself." The older man waved a hand contemptuously in her direction. "I knew we'd find her." He rested his hands on the pommel of his saddle and nodded, well pleased with the turn of events. "You stupid bitch. Did you really think you could get away? Gad yourself up as your weakling brother and hie for Hawkforte? What were you thinking, to take ship for Normandy?" He laughed, a deep and rasping sound. After a moment the younger man joined in, grinning broadly as he surveyed her.

"By God, you were right. She and Thurlow are in this together. First he takes off and then she disappears. They plotted this as one to humiliate and harm you."

"No!" Despite her fear, which was sensibly real, Rycca could not let such libel pass. "Thurlow had nothing to do with this. I acted alone."

At once, the younger man reached out to strike her. She sidestepped him quickly and his blow fell on empty air, which only infuriated him more. He began to dismount, obviously intent on chastising her.

There was nowhere left to run, nowhere to turn, and no strength left. For an instant she remembered how it felt to be held and cherished, protected and pleasured. Her eyes welled with tears even as she fought to restrain them. Yet did her heart, which had so lately seemed to be absent, suddenly fill with yearning so great that she was unable to contain it. It built and built, filling her entirely and finally soaring beyond her in a simple, terrible, and utterly silent cry for the hero of the strange land in which she had too briefly dwelled.

"Bitch," Ogden said, echoing their father, and smashed his hand across her face. Burning pain tore through her. She stumbled and fell onto the hard earth.

Above her, the Lord of Wolscroft reached out to the true son he had managed to get off his craven wife, one of two good ones to be fair and thankfully nothing like the twin whelps she bore him last, before dying in childbirth. From one hand to the other passed a black, coiled whip.

"Make it quick," he said. "We cannot linger here." As an afterthought, he added, "Do not kill her. She may still have some use."

Sprung into the air, the whip cracked. Rycca lay unmoving, curled in as tight a ball as she could manage. She did not have to see Ogden's face to know how much he was enjoying this. Worse yet, she did not need to see her father's cold anticipation of her suffering. She knew both all too well. Desperately, she sought the only escape still left to her. Down and down into her mind she went, as she had from tenderest childhood when cruelty and callousness became overwhelming, down and down away from the world into a place so much gentler, so much better, and so very still that she scarcely had to breathe.

A place that had never before had more than the most indistinct shape yet now, suddenly, had clear form. The lodge, the perfumed bed, the soft murmuring of the nearby river, the smell of woodsmoke, and above all, warming her with his smile and his arms, the man.

She was almost there, almost curled tight within herself, when a sudden sound ripped through the fabric of her mind and hurled her back into harsh reality.

"Hold."

Dragon drew rein before the party stopped on the road. Even as disbelief roared through him, he looked from the girl lying facedown in the dirt to the man poised above her with a whip and farther to the older man who was clearly in command. A man of some substance that one, judging by his garb and by the men-at-arms who attended him. They were all looking at Dragon with some surprise and, not unexpectedly, concern. But not too much of the latter for he was, after all, only one lone man.

So did the older one obviously think, for he gestured contemptuously to several of his men, sending them in Dragon's direction. They came with clumsy speed, yanking their swords from their scabbards. Watching them, Dragon sighed. He released Sleipnir, who trailed behind him, and the well-trained horse immediately moved off to the side. Beneath Dragon, Grani tensed in happy anticipation. The attackers were almost upon him when Dragon reached behind without undue haste and drew the blade sheathed across his back. At the same instant, he dug his heels into the stallion.

The first man to reach Dragon fell before he could do more than swing his sword a few inches. He landed hard on the ground and groaned, clasping the wound to his shoulder, which, though not fatal, would most likely end his career as a man-at-arms. The second followed an instant later. The third lasted just a little longer, enough to actually engage so that steel rang against steel for a scant moment before that man, too, tumbled. All three lay cursing and moaning, yet alive for so it had pleased the stranger to leave them. True, compassion played some role in his thinking, yet he was also disinclined to allow such carrion the passage to Valhalla that death in battle would grant them.

Wolf, brother to the Dragon, was said to be the greatest warrior ever to come out of the northlands since the ancient gods themselves strode forth, but Wolf himself said that he had only trained the greatest and his name was Dragon. That sunlit spring day in the peace of blessed Alfred, no man on the Hawkforte road would have disagreed.

Certainly Ogden did not, for he tumbled backward as
Dragon approached, kneeing Grani forward slowly as his ruddied blade flashed in the sun. Tripping over the whip, landing hard on his ass, Ogden held out his hands in panicked surrender.

"No, don't! Just a misunderstanding…"

"To send armed men against an unknown stranger who has done you no harm?" Dragon looked from the craven lordling lying in the dirt to the older man who watched from his mount, his formerly florid complexion now paled with shock and there, in his eyes, the light of swift calculation as he reassessed the situation. Brutal to be sure but not stupid.

"Yes, I would call that a misunderstanding," Dragon said. "And this, too…" He pointed the tip of his sword at the girl, who rose from the ground, threw the hair from her eyes, and looked at him in stunned amazement as though the sun and moon together had just appeared before her.

That was rather gratifying but he wouldn't let it appease his anger quite yet.

Ignoring the lordling, Dragon gave his full attention to the older man. "What do you here?"

"A sad but necessary task, the chastisement of an errant daughter, for daughter she is despite her boy's garb, should that have fooled you. Therefore, this is no concern of yours. Go on your way."

Daughter. Dragon stiffened but as quickly concealed his reaction. That put rather a different twist on the matter and required some delicate handling. Keeping his expression blank, he said, "I would know to whom I speak."

The older man frowned but he could hardly refuse, faced with a warrior who had single-handedly disabled three of his men and made his own son whine in the dirt. Ogden would pay for that, to be sure, yet he truly could not be faulted overmuch for he had always been raised to do whatever was needful to survive, even crawl to an over-wheening king who imagined himself a peacemaker.

A cold smile preceded his response, as though he anticipated the warrior's reaction when he realized whom he had challenged. "I am Rudyard, Lord of Wolscroft in Mercia. Does that satisfy you, whoever you may be? You handle a sword well enough but I have not seen you in the levies of the king nor those of the Lord of Essex. Mayhap you seek to make some reputation for yourself by standing against your betters."

The warning implicit there, even the threat, should have brought any man up short. Yet Dragon scarcely heard it. He stared at the Mercian in darkly forming shock before swiftly turning his gaze upon the girl.

"Wolscroft… ?"

Frowning, Rudyard nodded. "Now sheathe your sword and stand aside. We will be on our way."

Dragon made not the slightest move to comply but he did return his attention to the older man. "Then your daughter would be… ?"

Rudyard frowned as well he might for surely this upstart stranger had no business asking anything at all about his daughter. Yet, if it would compel him to move on, he would have his answer. "The Lady Rycca of Wolscroft and you would be well advised to take your eyes from her. She is betrothed to a Norse lord who comes soon to claim her."

Slowly, Dragon sheathed his sword. Slowly, he dismounted from Grani. Never taking his eyes from her, he walked toward Rycca. Ogden had stumbled to his feet and foolishly thought to interpose himself. A single cuff from Dragon's mighty fist returned him to the ground.

Rycca did not move. A horrible thought, so dread as to be almost beyond grasping, began to form within her. The hero of her strange land had recognized her family's name. That she saw clearly even as she struggled desperately to see nothing beyond. But the veil of her ignorance would not remain. Before the fire deep within topaz eyes, it shredded and dissolved away.

"You are Saxon…" she said desperately. "You must be. You speak Saxon as well as I do and—"

"I speak many languages. They come to me easily."

"You were without attendants!"

Yet gifted with use of a lodge that must belong to the Lord of Essex himself, provided with every luxury and comfort, and possessed of the two most magnificent horses Rycca had ever seen.
Sweet Mary and all the saints, why hadn't she realized?
Who else would dare to go alone about the countryside, certain of his own overwhelming skill as a warrior as she had just seen but certain also that no man would dare raise a hand to him without answering to the Hawk and even the king himself? Yet how then could he have been so kind to her, so patient and caring? That fit with nothing she knew buried deep within in her darkly haunted dreams.

"So did I choose to be. I wished for a few days to myself." His mouth twisted. "To contemplate the future. Yet contemplation seems not to have been enough for you. You preferred action."

Cold dread filled her yet still it warred with disbelief. Exactly whose arms had she lain in, whose body had gifted hers with nearly unbearable pleasure, whose tender strength had led her to spin dreams of gossamer that now threatened to choke her?

"You cannot be…" she moaned, staring into hard-set features and eyes that swept her with cold derision.

"What is this?" Rudyard demanded. "You two have met? By God, identify yourself or all your skill will not save you from the wrath of the most feared Viking to come out of the northlands in a generation or more, a man savage as a devil, drenched in blood, a man who—"

"Has a name," Dragon interrupted. He whistled for
Grani, sprang up onto his back, and from that height spared a moment's stern scrutiny for Rycca, who was still staring at him ashen-faced.

Fighting the insane temptation to comfort her, he regarded her loathesome father. Though quiet, his voice filled the shadowed road where all men had suddenly fallen silent.

He spoke simply, without boastfulness and his words rang all the harder for their simplicity. "I am Dragon Hakonson, Lord of Landsende, and I have indeed come to claim my bride."

Scarcely had he uttered those words than Rycca began to laugh, at first softly, then helplessly. She doubled over, holding her waist, as the sheer, horrifying absurdity of it all overwhelmed her. She had risked her life to flee from the very man to whom she had given herself and who stood now before her, outraged because she had betrayed him with… himself.

What could possibly be funnier except perhaps life itself?

Rudyard cursed virulently and from the saddle made to strike her. So he would have had Dragon not blocked his way. "No," he said in a tone that brooked no argument.

The Lord of Wolscroft looked disposed to argue but even he saw how foolish that would be. Dragon was not a man to be challenged, and in any case, a father's rights must give way before the authority of a husband.

"A thousand pardons, Lord Hakonson," Rudyard said. Swiftly, he assumed the demeanor he used with Alfred, humble and sincere. "My daughter has betrayed us both. Were it left to me, she would be shut away forever. As it is—" Raw hatred and grim pleasure mingled in the look he shot her.

"As it is, obviously no man of your high standing can be expected to take her to wife when there is no knowing where she has been or, more to the point, who she has been with. If you encountered her, so may others have done the same. Should you be willing to even consider going forward with this marriage, she will be examined. I pledge to you that if she is no longer virgin, she will die."

A father's hideous promise hung on the air, drifting like rank fog over the silent road. Dragon glanced at Rycca; their eyes met. Unspoken between them was the understanding that he had been handed the weapon to free himself from a marriage he had not wanted and a bride he could not trust. Examined, proved unchaste, no one would believe her if she claimed the very man she had lain with was the man she was supposed to marry. All he had to do was keep silent and she would die.

Dragon did not hesitate, nor did he draw out the moment. Merely, he spoke with implacable will. "No one touches her. Our marriage is the pledge of peace between our peoples. It goes forward regardless of her feelings." Quietly, he added, "Or mine."

Before anyone could reply, Dragon leaned over, hooked a steely arm around Rycca's waist, and deposited her on the saddle in front of him. His face grim, he whistled to Sleipnir, set his heels to Grani, and set off at a gallop for Hawkforte.