Heart of Honor (19 page)

Realizing his error, Leif just shrugged. It was only a coincidence, he realized. Alex Cain had no way of knowing that in Draugr, he was called Leif the Dragon-hearted, a named earned by his ferociousness in battle. “
Sea Dragon.
It pleases me.”

Cain just smiled. “I thought it might. Somehow it just seemed more appropriate.”

They were becoming friends, and even though Leif would soon be leaving, it felt good to think he was beginning to fit in here in this country. He also liked Cain’s partner, dark-haired, dark-eyed Dylan Villard. Even better, he liked the proposal Villard made, that if Leif began a trade route and goods become readily available, he should speak to Cain and Villard before dealing with anyone else.

“Continental Shipping is interested in expanding,” Villard had said at a meeting in his office at the dock. “We’re more than eager for new ports of call.”

“That is good. May—perhaps, in time, we will be able to do some business.”

As Leif left the meeting, hailed a hansom cab and climbed aboard for his return trip home, he felt relaxed in a way he hadn’t in weeks.

He had earned far more money than he required. He had found himself a ship and soon would have a crew.

What he needed was a wife.

He thought of Krista and his groin tightened. He wanted her back in his bed, wanted to make love to her again. He wanted to take her whenever and in whatever manner he wished.

It was time he spoke to Krista’s father.

It was late in the afternoon two days later that Leif’s opportunity arose. He asked the professor if they might speak, then sat down across from the older man at the round mahogany table in the corner of the professor’s study.

Leif wasted no time in presenting his case, and ended with the amount he wished to offer.

“Surely I did not hear you correctly,” the professor said, leaning forward in his chair.

“I am sorry, Professor, did I misspeak the words?”

“Perhaps you did. I thought I heard you say you are offering me twenty thousand pounds for Krista.”

Leif shoved himself to his feet. “I have insulted you. I knew I should have offered more. Your daughter is worth far more than—”

“Sit down, my boy. You have not insulted me in the least.”

Leif sank back down in his chair.

“The fact is, twenty thousand pounds is a great deal of money. I’m sure Krista would be flattered, but the truth is I cannot accept your very generous offer. In England, we do not sell our daughters into marriage.”

“This you have said before, and yet your women come to a man with a dowry. Is that not the same kind of thing?”

“Well, I suppose in an opposite way it is, but—”

“I am the right man for her. Surely you must see this.”

The professor released a breath. “It is clear she cares a great deal for you, Leif, but even if I believed the two of you would suit, it wouldn’t matter. The choice is Krista’s alone.”

“But you are her father. It is your duty to see her suitably wed.”

The professor looked away. “I wish I could help you, son, but unless you are willing to stay in England—”

“I must go back. You know this.”

“Then I don’t believe Krista will marry you.”

A bitter taste rose on Leif’s tongue. “This is because of her duties to you and her grandfather.”

“Perhaps she feels that way. I’m not completely certain. But the truth is Krista’s life is here in England. Her family is here and she loves the work she does at the gazette. The magazine has already done a great deal to help pass important reform legislation, and there is far more work to be done.”

“She is a woman. She needs a husband, a man to take care of her.”

The professor slowly rose from his chair. “I wish that man could be you, Leif, truly I do. But she can’t go with you. She simply wouldn’t be happy in a place like Draugr Island. And you said yourself you cannot stay here.”

Leif rose, as well. “Do you forbid this union?”

“No. As I said, the choice is Krista’s. I only want her to be happy.”

Leif pushed the heavy box of coins he had brought with him over to the professor. “If you cannot accept a bride price for Krista, take the money as repayment for the debt I owe. I have lived on your generosity for months. You have clothed me, fed me, given me a very fine place to sleep. You have taught me more in these past months than I ever thought to learn. For that I will always be in your debt.”

“This is far too great a sum, Leif, and there is really no need for repayment. We made a bargain and you certainly kept your part.”

“The money is yours, Professor.” Leif said no more, just left the box on the table, turned and walked out of the study.

He didn’t go in search of Krista. He already knew what she would say.

Though he believed she well understood that she belonged to him, she was as stubborn as a high mountain goat and her will was as strong as his own. It didn’t matter. He knew what was best for her, even if she did not.

Vikings had been capturing their women for years.

When his ship,
Sea Dragon,
sailed for home, Krista Hart would be on it.

T
he October night was windy and cold, yet the sky was clear and a full moon shone down on the London streets. For the past two days, Krista had been trying to prepare herself for Leif’s departure, but now that the time had come, she wasn’t prepared at all.

Wasn’t it only yesterday that she had discovered him in chains, rattling the iron bars of his pitiful cage? She would never forget her first sight of him without his unkempt, long blond hair, clean-shaven, bare-chested and grinning.

The handsomest man she had ever seen.

It seemed impossible that in the months since his arrival, he had educated himself, won himself a modest fortune and turned the heads of half the females in London.

It seemed impossible that Krista had fallen in love with him.

She moved through the house like a specter, her heart shrouded in sadness.

It seemed impossible that on the morrow, he would leave.

But his final preparations had already been made. With the help of a man named Alexander Cain, an acquaintance Leif had made playing cards, he had acquired a ship and crew. Yesterday, he had proudly taken her and her father to see the vessel he had purchased to carry him home. It was, he had said, a sixty-foot schooner, small enough to be handled by Leif himself, a captain and two crewmen he had hired for the weeklong journey.

He had introduced her to the captain, a burly man named Cyrus Twig, and the two sailors, a leather-skinned, sun-browned man named Felix Hauser, and another, smaller fellow with a patch over one eye, named Bertie Young. According to Leif, the crewmen, who had no family in England, had signed on for a bit of adventure and the promise of an interest in the trading company he hoped to form.

After the brief introductions, Leif had taken her on a tour of the ship, showing her the crew’s quarters aft of the forward mast, and the small but efficient master’s cabin in the stern, which would serve as his quarters during the voyage.

“It should do well enough,” he said with a smile, “though I would have liked the berth to be bigger.”

It wasn’t all that small, though it seemed so to Leif. As big as he was, he filled the tiny cabin. Yet it would clearly serve his purpose. Krista had left the ship mired in depression and trying to hold back tears.

Leif seemed not to notice. When they returned to the house, he waited until her father went back to work in his study, then led her into the drawing room.

“Come with me,” he said simply. “You have seen my ship. It is a sturdy vessel, not like the one that brought me to your shores. It will carry us safely back to the island.”

“I—it’s a very fine ship, Leif.”

He smiled. “I am glad you are pleased. Now it is time for us to wed. Say you will be my wife.”

Her heart squeezed. Leif’s simple proposal meant more to her than all the fancy words Matthew Carlton had ever spoken. She loved Leif so much. Her heart ached with longing and yet she could not accept his offer. “I wish I could marry you, Leif. You will never know how much.”

“Then speak the words. Say you will come with me.”

She swallowed past the tightness in her throat. “I can’t. I cannot go for the same reasons you cannot stay.”

“You were meant to be mine. Do you deny it?”

She shook her head, the lump in her throat growing even more painful. “In a way I will always be yours.”
I love you,
she wanted to say, but didn’t. Losing him was painful enough without making matters worse.

It occurred to her that Leif had never said those words to her, and she wondered if perhaps a Viking didn’t equate wanting with love. Perhaps their parting hurt him far less than it was hurting her.

“Is there naught I can say that will change your mind?”

She only shook her head.

Leif said only one thing more. “Then so be it.” Jaw set, eyes hard, he strode out of the drawing room. She knew he was angry. How could she make him understand? She watched him disappear down the hall, and fought to keep from crying.

She was in love with him.

And tomorrow he would leave.

The hours ticked past. Supper came, but Leif declined to join them, opting instead to go out for the evening. She and her father ate mostly in silence, both of them mired in gloom. The professor seemed no happier to lose the man who had become a son to him than she was to lose the man she loved.

The hour grew late, but Leif did not return. She waited and waited, then gave up and retired to her room without seeing him. Perhaps saying farewell was harder for him than she had believed.

It was well past midnight when she heard his footfalls on the stairs. He was due to leave at daybreak. Surely he wouldn’t go without a final goodbye.

But Leif didn’t come, and as she lay there staring at the ceiling, aching with love for him, she knew what she had to do.

Pulling her blue silk wrapper on over her cotton nightrail, she moved toward the door, her feet bare beneath the hem of her robe. Checking to be sure no one saw her, she stepped out into the hall and quietly made her way to his room. When she reached his door, she pressed her ear against the wood and listened for any movement, but there was only silence.

She considered going back to her bedroom, but her feet refused to move in that direction. Instead, she reached for the silver doorknob, found the door unlocked and let herself into his room.

A single candle burned on the bedside table, and in the flickering light she saw that he lay on top of the bedcovers and that he was awake. He wore only his trousers, no shoes or stockings, nothing to cover his heavily muscled chest. His brilliant blue eyes watched her as she approached.

“I—I came to say goodbye.”

“I do not like farewells,” he said darkly.

“I don’t…don’t really like them, either, but I—I wanted to see you one last time before you went away.”

He came up off the bed like a lion whose sleep had been disturbed, stalking her, his eyes piercing and his jaw hard. “Perhaps there was more that you wanted than just to see me. Perhaps you wanted to feel me inside you one last time.”

She shook her head. “No, I…” Warm color rushed into her cheeks. It was the truth and she knew it. She wanted him to make love to her, wanted the memory to carry in her heart once he was gone.

He looked into her face. “Say it. Tell me why you have come.”

Krista moistened her lips, which suddenly felt bone-dry. “I needed to see you. I want…I want you to make love to me.”

He made no movement, but his gaze turned hot and fierce. “And yet you will not wed with me.”

Tears pooled in her eyes. “I cannot.”

She thought he might simply ignore her, turn and walk away, but instead he began to unfasten the buttons on the front of his trousers. He pushed them down his long legs and stepped out of them. He was naked underneath and she saw that he was heavily aroused.

“Take off your clothes.”

There was something in the way he said the words, something that demanded she obey. She took off her robe with hands that faintly trembled, then pulled the string on her nightgown and let it glide down over her hips.

For long seconds, he simply stood there, his gaze running over her breasts, measuring the width of her waist, the curve of her hips. Suddenly, the lion moved, so swiftly she bit back a startled cry. Krista shivered as he lifted her into his arms, carried her over and settled her atop the bed, then came down beside her.

She thought he would kiss her, but instead he wrapped his hands around her waist and lifted her astride him, spreading her wide, making her feel vulnerable and exposed, yet wicked in a way she had never felt before. She saw the heat in his eyes, felt his powerful erection pulsing beneath her, and a sense of her own female power rose inside her.

“Unbraid your hair.”

Her pulse speeded up as she complied, pulling the ribbon at the end, running her fingers through the thick blond strands, letting the silky weight form a curtain around her shoulders. He slid his hand behind her neck and dragged her mouth down to his for a deep, ravaging kiss. He caressed her breasts, molded and shaped them, teased and pinched her nipples until they began to ache and distend.

Heat enveloped her. Desire washed into her stomach and slid out through her limbs. His mouth moved down to her breasts and he suckled her there, and she had never felt such burning pleasure. Her head fell back, giving him better access. She shifted restlessly above him and he groaned.

“I will give you what you came for.” His hands tightened around her waist again. He lifted her and she felt his hard length sliding inside until he impaled her completely.

“You will ride me this night,” he said. “You will take what you want from me.”

And so, greedily, she did, learning how to move, how to shift her body to take him deeper, how to lift herself and then sink down and in doing so gain a rush of pleasure.

Up and then down, the heat building, building. She bit her lip to keep from crying out as he gripped her bottom to hold her in place, and began to thrust hard inside her.

A whimper escaped, then another. The pleasure was too fierce, too sweet, too urgent to bear, but Leif did not stop, just took her and took her, until the tight coil inside her burst free and her body shattered into a thousand pieces. Waves of pleasure washed over her, a medley of sensation so delicious she cried out his name.

Leif followed her to release, lifting her off him at the last minute, spilling his seed outside her body.

She told herself she was grateful. She would bear no fatherless child. But instead of relief, she was overwhelmed with sadness. No golden-haired babe. No son of Leif’s to remember him by in the empty days ahead, no one to fill the lonely, loveless future she faced without him.

She started to weep. She simply could not hold back the tears. She felt Leif’s lips pressing softly against her forehead.

“Do not be sad,
elsket.
In time, all will be well.”

The word meant beloved, and she started weeping again. But she had no right to cry. He had offered her marriage and she had refused. The desolate future ahead of her was of her own making.

They slept for a while, Krista curled in Leif’s arms, but she couldn’t take the chance someone might discover her in his bed, so she left him sleeping, quietly dressed and returned to her room.

Eventually she cried herself to sleep.

Little by little, Krista awakened. It was still dark, but a sound in her bedroom, a movement somewhere near the door, had roused her. Then she saw the shadow of an intruder next to her bed. She tried to scream, but the instant she opened her mouth, a gag was stuffed between her teeth and her hands quickly bound behind her back so that she could not remove it. For an instant, she was afraid, but as the gag was tied in place and her feet bound at the ankles, she recognized the big, blond brute who wrapped her robe around her and slung her over his shoulder as if she weighed nothing at all.

Fury engulfed her. Krista tried to kick him, tried to scream, but only a muffled croak came out. She wanted to pound on his big, muscular, arrogant back, wanted to rail at him for the unfeeling beast he was, but it was too late. He had her down the back stairs and out the door, had her wrapped in a blanket and tossed into a rented carriage before anyone had the slightest notion she was gone.

He was taking her to Draugr Island.

He was abducting her against her will.

And Krista would never forgive him.

The harbor was quiet this hour of night. A stiff breeze blew over the ocean, driving little ripples across the surface of the water, but the sky was clear, the air cold and clean.

In the owner’s cabin, Krista lay beneath the covers on Leif’s berth, plenty big enough for two, she realized, no matter what he thought. He hadn’t removed the gag. She would be screaming her head off if he had.

He hadn’t untied her. She would probably do murder if he did.

She listened to the crewmen moving about the deck above her, tossing off the bowlines, preparing to sail. With a creak and groan, the ship lurched away from the dock and began to move out into the harbor. As the vessel made way, the captain called out an order for one of the crewmen to climb the mast and unfurl the topmost sail, then the rest of the sails were raised. The ship heeled into the wind and began moving rapidly into the open sea.

Krista lay on the berth, fury overwhelming her despair. Through the planking overhead, she listened to Captain Twig continuing to shout his orders. Leif might be a Viking, once the finest seamen in the world, but the people of Draugr had been land-bound for somewhere near three hundred years and he was smart enough to know his limitations.

She had noticed the stacks of books on sailing and navigation that Leif had been poring over in her father’s study for the past few weeks. Krista figured that in theory, he probably knew as much as the captain about sailing the
Sea Dragon.

Dragon.
How well the name fit him!

She had likened him to a lion, but dragon suited him better. Heartless, unfeeling, concerned only with his own personal wishes. For the first time, she saw him as the ruthless man he was. A man determined to have his own way no matter the cost.