Page 8 of The Shipwreck
“If you’re going to kill me,” he growled, “get it over with.”
She frowned.Kill him?In cold blood?Obviously, he knew nothing about chivalry.She straightened with pride, planting the poker between her feet like a blade.“I can’t do that.Unlike you, my sense of honor prevents me from slaying unarmed men.”
He lifted a brow in mockery.“Give me a blade then,” he suggested.
Avril gave him a sardonic smirk.She wasn’t so foolhardy as to think she could easily triumph over a gargantuan Northman.But she didn’t appreciate his insulting attitude.“I may be honorable, but I’m not soft in the head.”
He half-smiled.“You look soft to me.”
Her composure slipped, but only for an instant.“I assure you, you wouldn’t be the first man I sent limping from the field of battle.”
His eyes narrowed suggestively.“And you wouldn’t be the first woman I laid out flat on her back.”
Chapter 3
Brandr regretted his words as soon as he spoke them.He’d forgotten she’d been the victim of rape.
She winced as if he’d struck her, and then recovered so quickly he thought he’d imagined her hurt.“No doubt,” she coldly replied.
For some absurd reason, he suddenly wanted to defend himself.He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t a berserker.He’d never killed a man without just cause.And he’d never forced himself upon a woman.True, he’d bedded more than his share of eager wenches in his youth, but only at their invitation.And once he’d taken a wife…
Then he gave his head a mental shake.What was he thinking?It didn’t matter what the woman thought of him.They were foes.She probably intended to kill him anyway.If she’d been exposed to berserkers from the North—the kind that violated women, murdered priests, and slaughtered children—she had every cause to want him dead.
And yet there were qualities about her—her independence, her intelligence, her patience with her daughter, the way she talked about honor—that told him she might not kill him needlessly.She might listen to reason.
That was why he’d volunteered the truth about his men and his ship.His fate rested in her hands at the moment.If he gave her cause for mistrust, she wouldn’t hesitate to slay him.He’d do the same in her position.
But if he endeared himself to her, if he made her look at him, not as a Viking, but as a man, she’d have a harder time killing him…and maybe he’d buy himself time to overpower her and escape.
“You know, I’m not really the savage you think I am,” he confided.
She ignored him, setting aside the poker and going into the kitchen.
“I had a family,” he called after her, “a daughter like yours.”He silently cursed as his voice caught on the words.
She froze for a moment, and then cleared her empty shell bowl from the table.
He added, “I, too, would have protected her from men like me.”
She paused again, then sighed and picked up the little girl’s half-eaten pottage.“It’s cold,” she grumbled, approaching to give him the bowl, “but it’ll fill your belly.”
Pain seared his cracked forearm as he lifted the bowl with his bound hands to tip the contents into his mouth.But it was better than starving to death.He finished the pottage in three gulps, and then lowered his hands to rest them limply on his lap, letting the bowl slip through his fingers and onto the floor.
The woman returned to her fire-tending.Her face glowed golden as she gazed into the flames, and her hair shone with reflected firelight.“You said youhada daughter.”She asked casually, “What happened to her?”
It had been almost a year, but the wound still felt new and raw.“She died,” he said flatly.Just speaking the words aloud hurt.
The air grew still.For a long while, she didn’t speak.
Finally she asked, “How?”
He swallowed down the knot of pain in his throat.He didn’t want to talk about it.He didn’t know this woman.She was his enemy.Why should he tell her anything?And yet something compelled him to speak.Maybe it was the soft encouragement in her voice.Maybe it was the dewy compassion in her eyes.Maybe it was the fact that he had nothing more to lose.“Plague.”
Her forehead creased, and she propped the poker against the hearth.“And her mother?”
His cruel mind conjured up Inga’s precious face.“Dead,” he told her woodenly.“My daughter.My wife.My son.All dead.”
He heard the woman’s soft gasp, but she had no words of comfort for him.There weren’t any.There was nothing anyone could say to bring back his family.
