Heart's Ease (The Northwomen Sagas Book 2) (7 page)

Vali yanked the child from his reach. “Brenna will want him.”

Toril had wanted their tiny daughter, their first loss. She’d held her for hours, until the body had gone cold and stiff, and he’d had to pry their child forcibly from his wife’s arms. Toril had gone briefly mad, screaming and beating at him with her small fists. The thought of Brenna in that state chilled him.

“No. It will cause her more pain, when she struggles already with so much. Of this I know. She awaited a child she could nourish. And she is in no state now to say goodbye. Your attention should be with her.”

Leif lifted his hands again and held them steady in the whipping snow. This time, his face warped with sorrow, Vali set his son in them. He bent and picked up the linens from the snow at his feet, and he covered the body.

Then he walked away, and Leif cradled the lifeless bundle to his chest.

~oOo~

For a long time, Leif sat before the fire in the hall, holding the body of the child in his arms. He had offered to take him, to spare Vali this pain, but now, he could not seem to act.

So he sat and held the dead child, and old memories carved themselves afresh into his mind. The storm thundered and shrieked beyond the walls.

“Leif.”

Surprised to hear Olga’s voice, he looked up and saw her standing just at the farthest reach of the fire’s glow. He also saw that they were alone in the room. He’d sat there longer even than he’d thought.

It was rare for the hall to be empty at any time in night or day; the castle was full of raiders and villagers sheltering from the winter. But the heavy happenings of this night must have driven everyone to a quieter corner.

“How is Brenna?”

“Weak. She had lost much blood before bringing the babe. Her chest is broken.”

“Her heart, too, I imagine.”

“Not yet. That will come if she wakes.”

“If?”

Olga sighed. “She bleeds inside, where I can’t help her. Only her own will can save her now. And Vali’s, perhaps. He will not be parted from her.” She tipped her head toward him. “You have the child.”

“Yes. I promised Vali I would look after him.”

“Come.” She stepped forward. “We will make a place of rest for him until his father is ready.”

He stood and followed her to the kitchen. As he waited near the banked fireplace, she pulled a basket from a hook in the wall and set it on the long, scarred table. From a chest, she gathered clean linens and padded the basket with them. She filled a bowl of water from the barrel and brought it to the table.

Then she came to him and held out her hands. She wanted the babe.

Once his little body was in her arms, she nestled him close and removed the bloodied cloths. Leif watched as she carried him to the table and washed him, then swaddled him in fresh linens as if he could be given comfort in the snug binding.

She laid him in the basket and brushed her fingers over his slender brow.

Then she turned to Leif and pointed toward the ceiling. “That bundle of herbs there, and that one. Will you bring them?”

He lifted his head to see what she had pointed out, then took down two aromatic bundles of dried plants, one of plain, pale greens and the other of purple flowers atop slender stems. He brought them to her.

She pulled some pieces from the bundles and wove them together.

“Do they mean something?” he asked, his voice low. Reverence and respect was due this happening.

Olga stroked a finger along the pale green leaves, like shaggy grass. “This cleanses the aura and protects the spirit.”

“And the flower?”

“It is known as heart’s ease. To lift the weight of sadness.” She settled the little braid of herbs inside the swaddle, over Thorvaldr’s chest.

“How can he feel sadness?”

“They are not for him, but for those he leaves behind.”

The thought of Vali and Brenna’s loss, the potent, personal knowledge of it, racked Leif’s own heart, and he sighed and leaned on his hands on the table next to the basket. Olga stepped to him and put her hand over his.

“You know this loss—you have had one like it.”

“Yes,” was his only answer. The full depth of his knowing was too much to share in this moment.

With a squeeze of his fingers, she let go and lifted the basket. Again, Leif followed her. She carried the babe into the room off the hall where they took their leisure. In that room was a table carved with strange markings. After months of wondering, they had decided that the marks made a likeness of Estland itself.

Olga set the basket in the middle of that table, and it became the babe’s bier.

They stood together and looked down at the sweet, perfect face of a tiny child at rest.

“I know this loss, too,” Olga said, after a long silence. “I had a boy. I lost him in this way—my husband beat me while I carried him, and my son came too soon. Since then, it seems I can have no more.”

Leif turned and studied her delicate profile. She had endured so much violence, and yet she kept her peace. He couldn’t understand how. “I’m sorry.”

“It is the way of things. And now that man who beat me and killed my child is dead. The world keeps its balance.”

She left the room and went into the hall. Leif followed her to the fireplace and again stood at her side. He couldn’t seem to take his leave of her. He should—he wanted more than he could have, tonight he wanted it desperately, and he knew he should make space between him and his want.

She turned and faced him then, looking up at him with her soulful, beautiful eyes, and Leif’s resolve teetered. He was lonely. He felt desolate in his heart on this sad night, and what he wanted most in the world was to pull this good woman into his arms and hold her close. He wanted to feel her, to fill her, to be joined with her and feel complete and alive.

As if she’d read his thoughts, a small, tender smile turned up the corners of her pretty mouth, and she lifted her hand to his face and stroked his beard. Her touch shot through him like lightning, and he grabbed her wrist. What was between them had not changed. They couldn’t be truly together, and he wouldn’t simply use her.

“Olga, no. There is no future for me here. I won’t take you when I can’t make you mine.”

She jerked her hand free of his hold. “Men! Always you speak of taking. What of giving?”

Her burst of temper had shocked him. “What do you mean?”

Rather than answer, she picked up one of his hands in both of hers. She turned his palm up and traced her fingers over the hard skin. That simple touch made his belly clench and swelled his sex to fullness.

She bent her head and pressed to lips to the center of his palm, and Leif was nearly undone.

“Olga,” he groaned.

“No man has ever cared what I want. They have only taken what they want. Even you never think of what I want.”

That was untrue and unfair. Hurt, he moved to pull his hand back, but she resisted, and he let her keep it. She turned her eyes up and searched his face, her brow furrowed. “It is true, Leif. You make choices for me, like any other man. Different choices, but they are yours, not mine. You think you are saving me from something—from disappointment or sadness, or loneliness, perhaps. But no one can be saved from these things. They are part of living. I am lonely now.”

She let go of his hand and came even closer, laying her palms flat on his chest. He could feel the heat of her body, and he couldn’t resist resting his hands on her waist. Holding her. The span of her body at that point was so narrow that his fingers and thumbs nearly touched.

“You say you won’t take me and leave me. This is my meaning: you speak always of taking and never of giving. But all that men have taken, they have never taken
me
. That is something that can be given only, never taken.”

Her fingers slid into his tunic, where the fabric was split at the neckline, leaving a space of his chest bare. She seemed to give intent consideration to her fingertips playing through the hair there, and Leif closed his eyes and steeled his body against the urge to tremble under her touch.

She spoke again, her voice low, almost distracted. “No man has ever asked me what I want.
You’ve
never asked me. Never have I had a chance before to want. Now I do. I want to give myself to you. I want you to give yourself to me. For the first time since I was a girl too young to know the way of things, I want to know this giving.”

When she paused, her fingers and her words both, Leif opened his eyes and met hers searching his face. “Do you care?” she asked.

“I care. Gods, yes, I care. But, Olga, soon I will sail from here and from you. I cannot stay.” In his mind, it always came back to that, and he had no better rebuttal. “I cannot.”

“Have you never thought that I might leave?

He had. Often. But she was so small, so delicate. “My home—it’s a harsh place. Only the strong thrive.”

“You think my home is such an easy place? That I am so weak?”

He knew her to be strong. On this very night, she had shown her strength. Enduring the life she’d had must have taken real fortitude. Yet he thought of her as fragile. Why? Because she was small and slight? Was the strength of her arms what mattered?

No. The strength of her heart and her will mattered. Her courage.

This world, her home, was nigh as harsh as his own. Only their little corner of it had, until this night, seemed different.

Leif’s mind opened and became bright with the possibility. “You would leave with me?”

“I think,” she said, her hands snaking up his chest and around his neck, as far as she could reach, “that if any would ask what I want, my answer would be that I want to be with you. Wherever you are.”

His hands moved from her waist, smoothing over her back. Never before had he allowed himself to touch her in such a way, to feel her without resisting the impact of the touch. While they stared into each other’s eyes, his hands traveled up to her shoulders, and then her head. He caught the fabric of her headscarf in his fingers and tugged. As it fell loose from her dark hair, it caught in the knotted braid at her nape and unwound it. Her heavy plait dropped over his hand.

He had never seen her hair unwound, and he felt a powerful need to see it now. To see all of her, to feel her.

This woman. She had been brutalized. Enslaved. Wrested from her family. And yet she carried no ill will. Calm surrounded her. Even when she had borne a rope around her neck, that had been true. She lived among men who had savaged her, who had killed many of her people, and she had made them her friends. Her serenity infused the people near her.

She gave Leif peace. She eased his heart.

Could he have her? Could he bring her to Geitland and begin a new life? Was that fair to her? Did it honor her in the way she deserved?

He didn’t know. But he’d heard the words she’d said, the desire she’d expressed. The intent.

“Olga,” he murmured, wrapping her braid around his hand. “I don’t wish you to know more pain.”

“Then do not hurt me,” she whispered back and rose to her toes.

Leif bent to her and claimed her parted mouth with his.

Leif’s mouth touched hers, just softly, and Olga sighed at the caress of his warm lips. He lifted away, a hairsbreadth, and then returned, covering her mouth so that she felt the wet of him. At the press of his tongue against her lips, she opened for him.

At that, hesitation disappeared between them. Leif groaned into her mouth, and his arms tightened around her. Olga wrapped her arms around his neck and grabbed fistfuls of his long hair. When she tugged, he made an animal noise, feral and needful, and then her feet left the floor. He’d stood straight and taken her with him so that she dangled against his body.

Men’s mouths had been on her before, but never like this. Everything Leif did, he seemed to be asking her, with only touch, to follow. And she did. Their tongues slid together, their heads moved to and fro, and there was a rhythm that seemed to be known to them both, even this first time.

He groaned again, the sound trapped in her mouth, only for her, and swept an arm under her bottom, shifting her so that she was cradled in his arms. The brisk sensuality of the move shocked her, and she gasped.

The kiss broken, Leif opened his eyes. They were so blue, like the deepest part of the sea. And alight with desire for her.

“This is what you want?”

Olga nodded and pulled on his hair, wanting his mouth on hers again. “
Jah
. Giving, not taking.”

“Yes.” He kissed her again, lingering as he turned and headed toward the doorway that would take them to his room.

“No. My room,” she corrected. “So that Vali can find me if I’m needed.”

Leif stopped, and in his expression Olga saw second thoughts. Indeed, he said, “There has been so much loss tonight. Perhaps it’s not—”

“Hush,” she interrupted, knowing the concern he meant to voice. “Now is the time. This place needs good to heal. What is between us is good. You feel that, yes?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Then now is the time.”

They searched each other’s eyes for a moment. Olga sought for more conflict in his, but at last she found none. He was with her.

He turned and crossed the hall, carrying her to her room.

~oOo~

“You deserve a grander room,” Leif said as she set the bar across her door.

She liked her cozy space—much smaller than the suites of rooms Leif, Vali, and Brenna and the other raiders had, but more luxurious than any home she’d had before, even including her husband’s officer’s quarters. And because she was not far from the kitchen, her room was generally warmer than the more elegant chambers above. The stone walls drew and held the heat of the cooking fires.

Among the villagers, Olga’s room was better than most. Many others bedded in larger quarters meant for nobles, but slept many to a room. This small nook was hers alone.

“I like this one, and I deserve no more than I need.”

Before she could turn around, Leif was behind her, his tall, broad body like a wall against her back. He kissed her shoulder, and she felt his fingers move lightly over her hip, then the soft tug as he picked up her braid and untied the strip of cloth that bound the end.

With a slow, gentle touch, he unwound the simple plait, all the way to her head, and then combed his strong fingers through her long tresses, scratching lightly at her scalp with each stroke. Olga sighed and leaned her forehead on the door, giving herself up to the feeling of sultry indolence that came with his caress.

“Your hair is magnificent.” His voice was so low he might have been speaking to himself.

Olga had often noted the raiders’ seeming fascination with hair and with grooming in general. Although they reveled in the wash of blood and gore during battle, at times of peace, and in preparation for war, they took great care of their appearance.

They cleaned their clothes and their armor regularly and carefully. They washed often—more than the habit of her people—and they cleaned their teeth. And, men and women alike, they fussed over their hair. They kept many different styles, and they combed and brushed and trimmed and braided and beaded the hair on their heads and, for the men, on their faces. Nearly every single man had a full beard. Some were more impressive than others, but few men chose a smooth face.

Their braids were often works of art. Vali, who kept his head shorn on the sides but the hair on the top and back nearly as long as hers, wove his hair from scalp to ends, twisting two braids around each other to hang like a rope down the length of his back. Brenna kept a simple twist in peaceful days, but Olga had seen her dressed for war, and on those days, she had made an elaborate pattern of tight braids.

Leif wore his hair plain—long and straight. Olga had never seen it any other way. But, except when it had been covered in blood, it was always clean and smooth and gleaming.

She thought it funny that a man from a world where hair appeared to mean so much would marvel at her unremarkable dark waves. But there he stood, twisting the strands through his fingers, bringing them to his face to rub them over his cheek.

He gathered the thick hank of it in his hand and set it over her shoulder, then smoothed his hands down her arms and untied the apron at her waist. She stood with her eyes closed, her head still on the door, sensing in the movement of his body that he had tossed her apron away. His hands came around her waist then, and he loosened the woven belt over her skirt. When he tossed that away, too, her skirt, which wrapped around her body and had been held to her by the apron and belt, fell to her feet.

Wearing only her long, embroidered blouse and her woolen leggings and little leather shoes, Olga felt anxious. No one had undressed her before, not completely, and not in this lingering, favoring way. When Leif’s hands came back to her, resting on her shoulders, his thumbs began to knead the muscles at the base of her neck, and she trembled.

He felt the quiver and paused. “This is what you want?” he asked again, his mouth at her ear.

She turned and put her back to the door. Leif loomed over her, blocking her sight of everything but him. “Yes. I want this. You.”

He cupped her face in his rough hand. “
Sa oled mulle…kallis…väga
.”

Olga covered his hand with hers and smiled. “You are as dear to me, as well.”

With an answering smile, Leif took a step back and unfastened his belt. He tossed it aside with the same lack of concern with which he’d discarded her clothes, then pulled his blue woolen tunic, stained with blood from the tragedies of the night, up over his head. His hair settled over bare, broad shoulders, rounded with muscle.

Olga had seen Leif’s bare chest a few times before, when he trained with the other men in the hall, but she had kept her distance, knowing that he wouldn’t join with her, and seeing no reason to torture herself more.

Now he stood mere inches from her, a golden mountain. She smoothed her hands over the firm expanse, learning the feel of his skin, lightly furred with darker curls and broken by scattered scars. So many scars. Never before, not even when blood had dripped from his beard, had she so clearly understood the violence of his life.

And yet he was beautiful. “
Sa oled ilus
,” she breathed, not realizing that she’d spoken in her own language.

A laugh lightened his voice when he replied, “Not so beautiful as you.”

She drew a finger over the wend of a long scar above his left nipple. A grave injury had made such a scar, and so near his heart. How many times had he nearly died?

“May I see you, too?” he asked, bringing her away from that dark thought.

She had never been fully bare with a man before. Not even in the raiders’ pen; Leif had taken her from it before she had been so abused as the others, and she had kept most of her clothes. Her husband had never been interested in any part of her but that between her legs, and he had never taken the time to expose anything else.

Shyness came over her. But she wanted this. She had made it happen. So she untied the ribbon at her neck and pulled her blouse loose so that it fell from her shoulders.

Leif pushed her hair back and then hooked his fingers into her blouse, helping it on its path down her body. He crouched before her and took her leggings down, too. Then he lifted a foot and untied her shoe, and her other. And then she was only herself, unadorned.

Crouching at her feet, he looked up. Olga bent her head and watched his eyes travel up her body until they met hers. He smiled. “You are a treasure.”

When he stood, he pulled his boots off and shed his breeches, and they were naked together.

Her eyes and hands explored him, and he stood still and let them. Over the ridged muscles of his belly, the smooth planes of his hips, around to feel the swell of his bottom, then down over the massed muscles of his thighs. That darker, reddish-gold hair covered his legs, too, and guided her to a thicker thatch of it at his sex, which stood stiff between them. Thick and long and smooth.

She had seen many of these, but they had either been the soft worms of ailing men in need of healing or the hard weapons of men meaning her harm. Only in this moment did she feel curiosity and desire, and another thing as well, something that stirred deeper in her chest and made her sigh.

“Will you put your hand on me?” Leif asked, his voice like stones rolling in his mouth.

Olga looked up into needful blue eyes. “You want that?”

“Yes. And to touch you. To touch each other.”

She had always imagined that coupling between two people who cared even a little about each other could only have been different from what she’d known. All her life, she had seen women who sought out the attentions of men, and she understood that there was something different in the act for others. Here in the castle with these earthy raiders, village girls sometimes went with more than one man at a time, and giggled while they did.

Olga had been making quite a lot of a particular kind of tea lately, for the girls who went giggling.

She lifted Leif’s hands and set them at her waist. Immediately, those wide, hard palms skimmed up her sides and in, over her ribs, until they covered her breasts. She gasped, and her back arched; the touch seemed to draw her body toward him. He brushed his thumbs over points grown sharply sensitive, and she moaned. Something low and deep in her belly fluttered, and the small muscles between her legs went tight, and then loosened completely.

“Touch me, Olga,” he gritted, his head coming toward hers. “Touch me.”

As his mouth covered hers and his tongue pushed between her teeth, she touched him, wrapping both of her hands around his shaft. It bobbed in her hold, and Leif groaned, a sound of savage pain.

Suddenly, nothing was the same. Between them, in her life, in her ken, all was new.

His hands left her breasts and curled around her sides. He picked her up, lifting her high while their tongues writhed together and she still held his sex. She let go as her feet left the floor, and he tore his mouth away.