Loveweaver (20 page)

Slayde walked on, kept private his thoughts of Llyrica’s spells. “To believe in such things or not, ’tis up to the individual.”

Ailwin fingered the worn braid of his own tunica. “It could be just coincidence that makes it seem true. Perhaps a baby with lack of appetite is given a tunica with Llyrica’s braid, and on the same day the mother drizzles extra honey in the oat porridge. If the baby is given to sudden hunger, is it the braid’s doing or the sweetened gruel?”

Inwardly Slayde shrugged, outwardly he ran his thumb over the pommel of his sword in a moment of idle superstition. “At this late date, I would not want to change the design on our tunicas as an experiment to find out, any more than you would trade your longbow for another. Men need their good luck charms.”

“Many say your wife also sings love spells into the braids. A man must beware lest he be given a tunica endowed with the Songweaver’s handiwork. He might find himself in a trap of the worst kind, that of female persuasion.”

Ailwin served his purpose well, echoed Ceolmund’s warnings. StoneHeart must keep his facade intact, needed this devil on his shoulder. “No need to beat around the bush, Ailwin. I have heard the rumor that I am under the Songweaver’s spell. Cease squinting at me as if you think to see inside me. I am in no trap.”

“Then why do you visit her before sailing up the River Lea?”

Slayde was ready with an answer, full of logic. “In my written log is a list of obligations to be met before tomorrow. Aye, one item is to see to the safety of my legal wife. Have you not also seen to the loose ends of your own business?”

“I have no loose ends that involve women, ealdorman. A wise state to be in, for a man of war.”

Damn if this did not put StoneHeart on the defensive, though he tread with trepidation when dealing with Ailwin. “Question my military decisions, if you can or dare find fault. In these matters, I welcome unsolicited opinions. Otherwise, heed not my personal affairs.”

Ailwin did not reply to this, but all he had said before proved its worth. StoneHeart was now sufficiently armored to tell Llyrica farewell.

The noisome streets turned onto the plank walks of the harbor, and was accompanied by another round of reports singing the praises of the Songweaver’s braids, the two men continued on to Athelswith’s house. Down at her private dock, a golden knorr rocked at moor, its sail furled on a dismantled spar and resting on T supports. Up the slope, thralls transported chests and barrels, newly arrived shipments unloaded from below. Others carried down stores ready for export. Athelswith’s guards let Slayde and Ailwin in amid the scuttle of comings and goings.

The warmth of the fine day ushered Slayde and Ailwin through the open door, but their arrival garnered no immediate notice. Slayde’s visual sweep of the hall viewed yet more evidence of Athelswith’s thriving business. A dozen thralls rolled wovengoods and furs into bundles, wrapping, then tying them into the protection of oiled cloths. Small, neat coils of Llyrica’s braids were among the materials packed into barrels.

Slayde kept his gaze from her a moment longer. He first studied the tall, bronze-fleshed man apparently in mid-negotiation with Athelswith and Llyrica on the far side of the hall. As the man conversed with the women, fingering one of the Songweaver’s braids, StoneHeart marked him at once as a Danish merchant. A casual assessment of his appearance disclosed a handsome face and eclectic style: embroidered violet tunica, cobalt blue braccas and fur boots to the knee. Gold was his choice of jewelry, a dazzling brooch at his shoulder, a buckle at his belt and three tasteful rings. Damn now his open smile at StoneHeart’s wife as he handed her a sack of coins and received her lilting laugher in return. A fleeting fantasy, Slayde saw himself marching across the hall to hurl a fist into the merchant’s face then boot him out of the door.

Yet StoneHeart remained rooted to the floor beside Ailwin, cool, reserving thoughts for another time that Llyrica had met a man who suited her in race and profession and matched her in appearance. Both were blond, with the clean, even features of the Norse. No doubt this merchant did not suffer the malady of sleepwalking.

“StoneHeart. And Ailwin.” Athelswith acknowledged them at last. “Why are you not off fighting Vikings? Present company excluded, of course,” was her wry addition.

Slayde did not hear her next comment to the merchant, but the man opened his mouth with mild surprise. Prompted by his gesture, the women preceded him around the thralls at labor. Only then as the three approached, did Slayde turn his attention to Llyrica. With staid observation he summed up her appearance, the quiet pastels of lavender and green silk, and sunlight hair. The expression of levity she had just shared with the merchant faded, became a pleasant mask that revealed little. Her aqua eyes though, gave evidence of injury, perhaps questioned why the sleepwalker had visited but once since their marriage, and that only two nights ago. Worse, they condemned the StoneHeart for his cold absence. Her opinion of him could not matter yet, nor by daylight would he think of her whisper softness. His body responded though, against his will, with a swift, rigid arousal.

“On the morrow at first light we ship out,” Slayde said. “We have made sure that this campaign will be over soon and that Surrey and Wessex have seen the last of Haesten and his thieves.” He watched Llyrica, noted that she did not so much as blink at the mention of her father’s name.

“Ealdorman of Kent, may I introduce you to Canute Olafson,” said Athelswith. “And Ailwin, his second.” The Dane merchant nodded. “Canute is a distributor with connections to markets in Rome, the Baltic and Far East. He will take the Songweaver’s braids far and wide.”

“Your fleet that guards the Wantsum Channel has more than once saved my knorrs from marauders,” Canute told Slayde. “If all coasts had such protection I would not have to travel with a small army.”

“Would that Danes did not prowl the coasts in search of easy loot,” Ailwin interrupted. Slayde delayed his reprimand, gave the merchant opportunity defend himself.

Canute stiffened visibly. “In the light of your conflicts here, I will forgive your insult. But know that I have seen men of all races pirating the seas, Saxons no less than any. And just as conscienceless.”

“You dare put the name ‘Saxon’ in the same breath with ‘pirate’?” A vein raised on Ailwin’s forehead. “I suspect if you did not make a profit merchanting, you and your crew would revert to your plundering instinct soon enough!”

Two steps, two men and they were nearly nose to nose. StoneHeart now thrust his arm between them, forced Ailwin back. “Our blood is heated from training and from preparing for tomorrow,” Slayde told Canute. “But my second agrees that now is neither the time nor place for battle. And that you are not the enemy.”

Red faced, Ailwin glared at Canute, then finally conceded. “I will take my leave, StoneHeart, and wait with the guards at the gate.” He directed a glance at Llyrica then spun on his heel and exited.

Athelswith waved her hand as if to make the tension vanish. “This is what happens when more than one man is in a room.”

Canute chuckled at her comment. “I shall take this interlude in our business dealings to see to the loading of WingedHorse. I do not hold your second’s attitude against you, StoneHeart.”

Christ. The merchant was levelheaded as well. “It is his only fault else I would not keep him on,” said Slayde. “I do not condone his prejudices but he served my father before me and is a valued warrior.” But there was a deeper connection than this. Since Slayde and Ailwin had been four years old, Ceolmund had favored the blond boy over his own son.

“The incident is already forgotten.” Canute turned to Athelswith as she laid a hand on his arm. “I meet all types and must deal with them.”

“Let me join you at the dock,” Athelswith said. “I can review the inventory while we leave these two to their own affairs.”

Slayde watched the merchant’s every move, saw his smile broaden in appreciation when he turned to the silent Llyrica. Canute still held a bit of her braid, had wrapped it around his finger. “My offer stands, should you wish to take it. In any case, this shipment will be the beginning of your fortune.”

Llyrica responded with a blush of peach. Startling. StoneHeart had assumed it was his alone and now found it easily given to another. Blood pounded hot through his veins at the thought that she and this man had come to some sort of understanding.

“My songs go with it,” she replied to Canute. “As does a verse in the braid you hold in your hand. It is a charm for safety when sailing the foreign seas.”

With his polite nod to Llyrica and Slayde, Canute led Athelswith out the open back door.

Against his intentions, and except for the thralls busy at packing, Slayde was alone with Llyrica, close enough to smell the light fragrance of ginger. He wrestled with the sleepwalker’s half-a-heart, fighting to quell jealousy, desire, and guilt. The urge to pull Llyrica against him was nearly overwhelming. Without Ailwin’s presence, nothing would stop the effects of Slayde’s fraying restraint

“Since you are here, you can take these,” Llyrica said. She pointed to a bundle of black garments on a nearby table. Flat, her voice gave no sign of intimacy with the sleepwalker or of their shared passion. “Byrnstan collected your co-captains’ tunicas for me. Here in the ample space of Athelswith’s yards, they have been redipped to dark black. I have also provided each with new braid. I have made Ailwin a new tunica, since he would not part with his old.” 

Disbelief combined with Slayde’s mounting vexation. “What have you done? Men do not change their routines before battle ere bad luck befall them!”

She reproved his remark with a puff of air through pursed lips. “Do not worry, I have not woven lovesongs in any of your men’s braids.” Shoulders squared and chin held level, ready for confrontation, Llyrica seemed worldlier than when she was first snatched from the sea. A creature newly emerged from a life in hiding, she moved toward becoming a woman of some renown. Her independence found, she did not need him and could swiftly slip away from him. “’Tis the song of strength and protection I have always used.”

“You give these charms most readily, it seems. Even to a stranger.” StoneHeart nodded to the view of Canute and Athelswith descending the slope to the river.

“Canute is scarcely more a stranger than you, husband! Though vastly more attentive.” Her aqua eyes glossed with angry moisture.

A stone heart bound him to saying the wrong words. “I never professed to attentiveness and warned you off from the start. What has
he
said? Or promised you?”

“What cares you enough to feign jealousy? You have made all aware that our marriage is due to your gallant gesture to save me from Xanthus, and nothing more. Why have you come at all? Go off to be with your men. Go to off to battle. It is what you do best!”

“Weaving spells into a man is what you do best!” A predatory urge seized StoneHeart, propelled him into catching Llyrica in a fierce embrace. She gasped sharply as he hauled her against his chest, her neck arching over his hand to stare up at him with wide, bewildered eyes. Spread across her lower back, his other hand jerked her up into a bone crushing fit to his erection.

He should ask her about her father, why she withholds the truth. Nay, only the sleepwalker knows her secret and StoneHeart needs her to use against Haesten.
I cannot have her until the warlord is out of the way, then I will tell her I am the sleepwalker.  Nothing else will matter. Then I can tell her that he ... that I ... love her.

“Goddamn it.” His mouth slanted across hers possessively, his devouring kiss a remedy for unspoken words. He kept his heart aloof, let his body take the brunt of unexpressed emotion with blinding desire. No weak sentiment here, just hard lust and ownership. She had given herself freely to him, bound them together by her love spell. This soft form was his for the taking, every lush curve and ripe mound yielding against his body. If not for this cursed bad timing and unfit location, she would already be under him, receiving the searing brand of his claim on her.

He came up for air, and dove again into her mouth, roving, seeking a satisfaction that lay just beyond his reach. A harder press, a deeper plunge of his tongue availed him a fiercer need, one a kiss would not meet.

Now Llyrica’s returned fervor stunned him, sweet softness turned torrid. She kissed him hard and long, and bit his lip, clawed at his back as she pulled on him with unexpected strength. Emitting little noises of thwarted efforts, she ground her silk clad need against him, causing him to falter a step back. Restive, frantic, her hands seemed to grope for answers at the lacings at his neck, his belt, and the hem of his tunica. She reached between them, grasped his sex through his braccas and gave it a tug and a painful squeeze. In anguished pleasure, Slayde heard his groan fuse with her whimper of defeat. He shared her raging frustration. Everywhere she touched him, his skin ignited, but there would be no disrobing and vehement joining here among witnesses in Athelswith’s house.

Slayde pulled away to suck at her neck, did not loosen his grip. Nor did Llyrica let go of him. His voice would be hoarse and thick when he tried to speak.

“Dare not have designs on the merchant nor plan to leave with him. You are my legal wife, whether I like it or not.”

Hot, her breath blew past his ear, took him to the very brink of release. “Divorce me then.” With devastating force, surprising for her small stature, she shoved him away.