“So,” she said slowly, the pain in her ribs less now, “your father still orders you about, does he?”
He leaned forward, grabbed her braid and yanked it upward until her face was at the level of his knees. “You will keep silent or I will make you regret it.” He was shaking with rage. “By all the gods, I would like to beat you senseless. But I won’t. Instead I’ll do what I did in Dublin. I’ll bend you to my will with my words again, and you, you silly girl, will listen to me and believe me. Admit it, Chessa, you wanted me, you loved me, you wanted to marry me then. You wanted me to bed you.”
To his surprise, she nodded. “Aye, I believed you loved me and thus I was open to you. I believed that you were honest and sincere. I believed you were a good man. But then I saw the truth in you and it sickened me. You sickened me. I sickened myself because I’d believed you. Would that I had more malle leaves and fist root. You liked that drink, didn’t you, since I added ginger? You puked and puked, I heard, and it pleased me no end. It wasn’t poison, but I’m pleased you were so ill you believed it was.”
He was utterly still. “I wanted to kill you for that.”
“You deserved it. You were a liar. You deceived me. You were dishonorable.”
“I merely wanted to bed you without having to see your damned face every day. You poisoned me.”
“I told you that I didn’t. If I’d wanted to kill you, I could have. I just wanted you to be so sick you’d want to die but you wouldn’t.”
He dropped her braid. He remembered too well the awful pain in his belly, the unending cramps, the bile, the smell of himself after days of sickness. He would pay her back for that. But let her guess now what was in his mind though he wanted to strangle the life from her. “No more honeyed words for you, Chessa. I wanted to bed you and I will, and I don’t care if you like it or not. You try to harm me again and you will have an accident and I will make a good show of grief when I tell of it to my father.”
“You won’t touch me, Ragnor, or I’ll kill you, I swear it. Ah, how I wish I could have seen you puking up your guts. Aye, I heard about it and I laughed and laughed because you got what you deserved. You wronged me, Ragnor. I merely took my revenge. Is that not what a man would do? Why not a woman, then?” She stopped then, knowing that more pain would come because his face was pinched, his eyes red with rage. But she couldn’t keep the words unspoken. It was the truth and she had to say it. Now she would pay for the truth.
The air around her thickened with his anger. He dropped to his knees in front of her. He took her throat between his hands and tightened his fingers. She grasped his wrists, trying to pull loose, but he only tightened his grip. She struggled, jerking sideways, pulling him down with her. Suddenly, he released her throat, shoved her onto her back and came down over her. “This is all I ever wanted from you,” he said, pressing his palm into her belly. “This is what I will have from you.”
He ground himself against her and she froze. She felt the weight of him, the shape of him, the hardness and force of his body, and she hated it.
“My lord, the captain wishes to leave now. He wishes to speak to you. Please, my lord.”
Ragnor had forgotten that Kerek was there, standing only a few feet away, watching. His father believed the damned Danish bastard to be such an excellent bodyguard for him. He called Kerek a man of good sense and reason. Now here he was trying to intercede on the princess’s behalf. What did he know of anything? He was an old man, lust in him long dead.
Ragnor reared off Chessa and rolled to his feet. He looked down at her, lying there, her arms over her chest, her face pale. She lacked the lovely pallor of Inelda; Chessa could only pale to a dull golden color. He looked at her eyes, that odd green that looked so mysterious with her black hair, mysterious and veiled, hiding knowledge from him. Her eyes weren’t warm and inviting as Inelda’s eyes were.
He shook himself. “I will return to you. If you are good to me, I will give you no reason to complain to my father. If you hide your arrogance well from me, I will wait to take you until we are wed. If you displease me at all, if you speak to me with insolence, I will strip you and take you in front of any of the men who wish to look. Do you understand me, Chessa?”
“I understand you,” she said, her only thought of how she would escape him.
“You look like the filthiest of my father’s sluts. Kerek will bring you water to bathe yourself. I don’t know if it will be enough, but you will make do. I have brought clothing for you. Array yourself so that I can bear to look upon you.”
“If I hadn’t been fishing at the river, I would have been safe from you. That I look like a slut from my exercise was to your advantage, otherwise this man couldn’t have taken me.”
“Oh, I’d have gotten you, Chessa,” Ragnor said with a laugh. And with that, he left her.
Rouen,
Duke Rollo’s Palace
“She’s been taken,” Bjarni said, still out of breath, for he’d run from the dock to the palace. “Stolen away without a trace. The king is frantic.”
Rollo turned to Cleve. “Could she have run away? Did she not wish to wed William?”
“What she wanted didn’t matter. It wasn’t her decision to make. It was her father’s.” Cleve sighed. “Someone took her. Who would benefit the most?”
Bjarni said, “King Sitric believes it to be Ragnor of York. He said that the Danelaw king, Olric, wanted her to marry his son.”
Cleve laughed, unable to help himself. He told Rollo what Chessa had done to Ragnor of York. “Thus, sire, I cannot imagine that Olric ever planned to negotiate with Sitric, for he knew it wouldn’t work. Nay, he simply took her. He will wed her to Ragnor and it will be done.”
William, who should have been profoundly distressed by the news, said in an almost cheerful voice, “Aye, it is most probably Ragnor of York. Lothaire the Bald, one of King Charles’s ministers, also told me that Olric of the Danelaw wanted her for his son. Even King Charles wants her, though his eldest son is only eleven years old.”
“You never said a word of this to me,” Rollo said, bending those compelling dark eyes of his on his only son.
William merely shrugged. “The French want one of Sitric’s sons to wed into their family. They don’t want the Irish alliance with Normandy that Chessa would bring. Thus it wouldn’t surprise me that Charles assisted Olric and Ragnor to kidnap the girl.”
“Thisgirlis to be your wife, William.”
