“I will not allow anyone to harm this child.”
Móðir tossed her hands in the air. “Then may Freya help you, dottir. No one else will.”
Chapter Fifty
Hulda lay huddleddown in the furs of her sleeping place, a refuge she had known all her life, and waited for the axe to fall.
After her outburst and her condemnation, Móðir had calmed down a little. Offered Hulda something to eat. Told her with some asperity to await her faðir’s arrival.
Which was what she did now.
Her mind insisted on chasing itself, running over all the things she had done wrong. The things her society would insist she’d done wrong.
For in truth, she regretted naught of what she’d done. Taking up a sword and begging Jute to teach her how to use it. Sailing with Faðir and, ja, with Jute after. Acquiring her own boat and hiring her own crew.
Falling deep, deep into love with Quarrie MacMurtray.
But that last—ja, it proved she was a woman after all. As did this babe in her belly, the product of their love.
She folded her arms over that belly in a gesture of protection and stared at the wooden slats overhead. She did not see them. Instead she saw a stretch of rocky shore and Quarrie with his hair blowing in the breeze, his gaze fixed on her in that look he gave to her alone.
The other half of her being. Of her heart.
Ach, it must indeed be an act of Loki, all of it. How ironic that she’d left Quarrie only in an effort to repay her crew for theirloyalty and mayhap avert some of the disgrace Ivor was likely to level upon them. She’d brought disgrace instead.
What had she done wrong, besides love?
Love the wrong man.
And yet…and yet he was the right man, the one man, the only man. She might live a hundred lifetimes only to find him.
She battled—rightfully or no—because it was the way she was made. She would ask no man to sacrifice his life for her. Better to make her own way.
Only, she could not see a way now. The season drew swiftly to a close. Her crew, even if she could persuade them, would not want to venture out again till spring.
By spring she would be great with child. Able to sail? If so, not a man among them would countenance taking her.
She heard a ruckus at the far end of the longhouse, and voices raised. Faðir was home.
She got to her feet and girded herself for a battle she dared not lose.
*
Sometimes her faðirlistened to her quietly. When she could present a reasoned argument, one that appealed to the practical—or even better, the avaricious—side of him, he might hear her out and even, as when she’d first asked to go viking with him, lay aside his own misgivings in favor of her wishes.
Not so this time.
Móðir had reached him first, getting to him and pouring her version of the tale into his ears as soon as he arrived home. No chance at all for Hulda to apply reason.
By the time she went out to join him and Móðir beside the hearth, he was spitting flame.
Indeed, all the household but Móðir’s own serving woman fled. She, at least, had enough loyalty to stay and, having been with Móðir since her marriage, had heard enough arguments to withstand this one.
Hulda shot the woman a look as she joined her parents. Any sympathy there? For ja, Rota would have heard already what this concerned. But Hulda saw no sympathy, only a face kept carefully blank.
“There she is!” Faðir roared as Hulda stepped up. “The dottir who has betrayed me.”
How? How had she betrayed him? By loving?
