Dream of Me/Believe in Me (13 page)

He hurried to the stables, determined to find his wayward wife.

L
OOK, CYMBRA SAID. HOREHOUND. SHE EASED THE
small plant from the earth, keeping its roots intact, and nestled it in the palm of her hand. “I had no idea I'd find it here. It's wonderful for coughs and inflammations of the lung.” Smiling, she carefully tucked it away in her sack along with the several dozen other plants, mosses, and lichens she had already found.

“It's amazing how much you know,” Brita said shyly. After several hours in Cymbra's company, helping her
find and collect herbs, the slave had lost some of her reticence. “My mother had a little skill at healing, but nothing compared to what you know. How ever did you learn so much?”

Cymbra hesitated. As always when speaking of such things, she chose her words with care. “I became interested in healing when I was a child. My brother was very kind and arranged teachers for me.”

“You were fortunate. I, too, had a brother….” Brita looked away quickly.

Pain rose in Cymbra, the pain of loss, of fear, of anguish almost too great to be borne. She forced herself to breathe slowly and steadily, not fighting it for she knew by hard experience that there was no point, but separating herself from it, erecting a shield that allowed her to acknowledge the pain without being crushed by it.

In the midst of that pain, she had a fleeting thought of the message Wolf must surely send soon, if he had not already, informing her brother of her whereabouts. She was torn, wanting to reassure Hawk of her welfare and having him see her thus, yet dreading the confrontation to come between husband and brother. A shiver moved down her spine even as she turned away from her own anguish to soothe Brita's.

“I'm so sorry.”

The gentle touch of her hand on Brita's startled the girl. They knelt together on the mossy hillside beyond the keep. Around them, the day glittered, bright with sunlight, soft with the balmy breeze of summer. Brita blinked hard and rubbed a hand across her cheeks. “It was a long time ago now.”

“How long?”

“I was taken in my twelfth year.” As though a dam had broken and released its torrent, she could no longer avoid speaking of what had happened to her. “My family lived near the coast of Ireland, beside a place we call the
Mountains of the Morne. They aren't as big as the mountains here, not at all, but we thought of them as mountains all the same.”

Her eyes filled with memories both sweet and savage. “We'd heard rumors about the Norsemen but none of us had ever seen them until they came of a sudden just two days after Easter. The men fought but there was nothing anyone could do.”

A heart-wrenching sigh escaped her. “I don't even know if any of my family survived. The last I saw was the smoke rising from our burning homes. I was taken many days to a large town and put in a pen there with many other captives, then sold. Eventually, I was brought here. That was five years ago.”

She paused and looked at Cymbra. “There have been times when I thought of dying but our faith forbids it. I was a sheltered girl and just presumed that I would have a home, a husband, children. Never would I have believed that instead I would be a slave, a thing of no account, to just be … used without thought or care.” Her lips trembled. She lowered her head quickly. “Forgive me, lady, I did not mean to burden you.”

Cymbra did not feel burdened. She felt enraged by what had happened to Brita. As well as she knew that the world was filled with suffering, it was impossible for her simply to accept it. Her spirit rebelled. She had no choice but to fight with everything in her.

“There is nothing for you to be forgiven, Brita. Rather it is for others to ask your forgiveness.” She put an arm around the girl and hugged her gently. But there was no gentleness in Cymbra's silent resolve that the situation would not be allowed to remain as it was.

She was just considering how she would speak to her husband about it when the sound of hoofbeats interrupted her thoughts. Both women looked up to see a large, black stallion bearing down on them at high speed. Brita
jumped to her feet and drew Cymbra with her. “Run for the keep, lady! I will try—”

But her protectiveness was both misplaced and futile, as both women realized a moment later when the rider came into view. “Wolf,” Cymbra said, relieved yet also annoyed that he would frighten them so.

Really, what was the man thinking? He had barely spoken a word to her in two days, had hardly even acknowledged her existence since their wedding night, despite her valiant efforts to be a good wife. So she had resolved as she said her marriage vows and so she was determined would be the case no matter what difficulties she might have to overcome. Not only was she sworn before God to do so, but on the success of this marriage might well rest the hope of peace between their peoples. She could not possibly fail, yet as she watched the Scourge of the Saxons come riding down on her like a thundercloud, she could not help but wonder if perhaps she had taken on too daunting a task. Normally she was the most even-tempered of women, but something about her Norse husband brought out feelings she had never known and threatened to shatter the serenity she still sought as a familiar shroud.

Wolf looked from his errant wife to the slave at her side. He pointed at Brita. “Go.”

The girl paled and her whole body shook but, incredibly, she did not obey instantly. Instead, she looked at Cymbra. “Lady?”

Without taking her gaze from the infuriated male astride the immense horse, Cymbra said softly, “It's all right. I just want to have a word with my husband. You goon.”

Brita dared a last, frightened glance at the mighty jarl and hurried off. Wolf glowered at his wife, the slave's disobedience diminishing to nothing as he took in Cymbra's
glowing beauty, the fire in her eyes, and her unmistakable look of annoyance.

His gaze narrowed. She was annoyed?
She?
Odin's blood, what right did she have to be annoyed about anything? Hadn't he been the soul of gentleness and consideration, denying himself these past two days to avoid hurting her again before she was healed? Hadn't he suffered mightily, lying awake beside her at night as though stretched out on a rack? To the point where he could scarcely concentrate on his duties and was questioning his own sanity because he could think of nothing but her?

She was annoyed?

He swung out of the saddle in a single, lithe motion, hooked the reins over a low-hanging branch, and advanced on her. To his satisfaction, she took a quick step back, but only a small one. Hands on her hips, she glared at him.

“You're trampling the plants I was about to collect.”

He stared at her dumbfounded. She was talking, and he could hear her plainly, but she made no sense. She should have been doing anything possible to placate him, instead of rattling on about—“Plants?”

Summoning patience, Cymbra explained. “There is no herb garden. I looked, I really did, and I can't find any sign that there's ever been one. So it has to be started, and these plants”—she gestured to the sack on the ground beside her—“are a beginning.”

She wanted a garden? She had come out of the fortress unguarded, alone except for a female slave, and without having first secured his permission, because she wanted a
garden.

He took hold of her shoulders and shook her hard. “This is not Holyhood, wife, and you are not the pampered sister of an overly indulgent brother who damn well should have known better. This is a hard land and we are a
hard people. Your little luxuries and privileges are a thing of the past. You will learn to do without them, as you will also learn to—”

He was about to instruct his wife in the absolute necessity of obeying him at all times and in all ways when she stared at him blankly and, to his utter astonishment, burst out laughing.

“Luxuries?” Cymbra repeated. She knew she was being rude to laugh but this was just so blatantly, typically, mule-headedly male that she couldn't contain herself. “You think a garden is a luxury? A garden, at least the kind I have in mind, is an absolute necessity if people are to be healthy.”

She gestured down at the sack. “The plants are God's blessing upon the earth, proof that He truly cares for His children and wants us to be well.”

When her husband failed to respond with the interest she felt he ought to have shown, Cymbra faltered slightly. She was extremely aware of his powerful hands on her shoulders. He had stopped shaking her after scarcely a moment but he was glaring at her most fiercely. Perhaps he just didn't understand….

“I told you I am a healer,” she said gently. “I have my medicine chest and am grateful for it, but eventually the supplies in it will have to be replaced as they are used up. These plants and others I expect to find are essential to that.”

“You think to dose people here?” When her silence confirmed his suspicion, it was his turn to laugh. He let go of her, threw back his head, and roared. Birds scattered from the overhanging branches. His horse started and pawed the ground nervously.

Grinning broadly, he gazed at his naïve little wife. Damn, but she was beautiful standing there in the golden sunlight, her hair only thinly covered by a veil, her skin satiny smooth and begging to be touched.

Sternly, he reminded himself of his duty. She was only a woman and a stranger at that; he would have to explain things to her very clearly. “We are not weak like the Saxons who need such cosseting. Our remedies are few— fire on a wound if it won't heal, knife to a limb if it must come off—but sufficient for us. We don't expect to live to old age, indeed the thought horrifies us. A man seeks to die with his sword in his hand so that he may enter Valhalla. Anything else is what we call a ‘straw death,’ unnatural and the path to extinction.”

Color flooded Cymbra's cheeks. His callousness horrified her, but it also confirmed what she had noticed in her two days of exploration. The people of Sciringesheal did look robustly healthy for the most part, but that worried rather than reassured her. It suggested that anyone who was not in peak health simply perished.

“And what about a woman suffering in childbirth or an ailing child?” she demanded. “Do they just give up and die? What about those who do live to an old age even if they do not want to? Are they denied comfort in their final days? I can't believe that all your people are so ignorant and cruel!”

Indeed, she knew better, for Brother Chilton had told her of Norse women, crones he called them, who he claimed consorted with the devil to brew potions of great power. Although she would never have said so to him, Cymbra suspected he had misunderstood what the women were about and that they were merely healers like herself. But there were none such as that here. Perhaps it was because the Wolf's keep was so purely a male domain, with the women relegated to positions of servitude.

“I am a healer,” she said again stubbornly. “I cannot ignore the suffering of others.” Although she held her head high and regarded him steadily, inside Cymbra quaked. She could not imagine what she would do if her husband forbade her the pursuit of her life's calling. If she
was forced to live among these people, to feel their pain without being allowed to help them, she would shrivel and die.

Slowly, Wolf surveyed her. He could see this was very important to her although he didn't understand why. He supposed it had something to do with her overly tender nature—the same nature that had prompted her to take the insanely stupid step of entering the cell with him and the others in order to help them.

He remembered that, seeing her as she had been then, and acknowledged the great courage it had taken for her to act as she did. Courage he could not help but admire. Now that he thought of it, perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing for a woman to be so caring. There might even be some benefit to it.

“I suppose there would be no harm in your caring for the women and children.” He surprised himself, making such a concession so quickly, but it was a small thing really. They were weaker and not expected to have the same strength or stamina as warriors.

Cymbra felt relieved but was far from satisfied. Silently, she vowed that before too long her arrogant brute of a husband would not only acknowledge her contribution to the welfare of his people—all his people, men included—but would thank her for it.

“It's a beginning,” she said, and when he frowned she added quickly, “I will need an assistant.”

Wolf rolled his eyes. Whatever else she was, his wife was not timid about getting what she wanted. He wondered suddenly what it would feel like to be the object of her desire and almost groaned when he instantly hardened in response.

“An assistant?”

“That's right. Someone to help me gather herbs, prepare medicine, care for patients.” Cymbra pretended to think. “It would be much easier, of course, if I could find
someone who already knows something about healing. Let's see …” Her face lit. “Brita told me that her mother was a healer in Ireland. She would be perfect.” That was exaggerating what Brita had said, but under the circumstances Cymbra wasn't about to quibble.

Wolf shrugged. He gave his slaves no thought and had virtually no contact with them. They might as well have been invisible to him. “You are mistress here, the directing of the household is your affair. Do as you like.”

The glowing smile she bestowed on him made his heart lurch and his body harden even further. It occurred to him that they were alone, some distance from the town and the keep, and that the two days just past should have been ample time for her to heal. At least he hoped like hell that they had been because he wasn't going to be able to wait any longer.

“You know, wife,” he said as he advanced on her, “it is much easier to wring concessions from a man when he is in a pleasant frame of mind. In the future, you might remember that.”

His sudden change of manner, and the light that had sprung up in his silvery eyes, surprised Cymbra. She didn't know what to make of either.

There was no escaping the fact that her husband was an extraordinarily handsome man. He possessed immense strength tempered by grace, and when he smiled, as he was doing now, he fair stole her breath away. She had an all but irresistible desire to touch him, to trace the hard, chiseled lines of his face, caress the thick strands of his ebony hair, measure the breadth of his shoulders and trail her fingers down his granite chest to—